Chapter 53 – The Feast

Through a mode of “perception” he couldn’t yet fully comprehend, Yu Sheng felt himself establish a connection with this valley. His consciousness flowed between rocks and soil, threaded through the depths of the creeping, undulating forest, submerged itself in the water and wind here, and then, through countless pairs of grotesquely twisted eyes, observed the sky above the valley.

That enormous eye, large enough to cover the entire sky, gazed down upon the earth with calm indifference. From beginning to end, it showed no change whatsoever, as though it were an observer transcending mortals, watching the things inside a petri dish.

But Yu Sheng could feel it—that eye had noticed him. The instant he established his connection with the valley, the eye’s gaze had landed precisely upon “him.”

The eye was puzzled, curious, though it displayed no emotion or “shift in expression” whatsoever. Yet Yu Sheng had almost directly “read” these thoughts—some vast “consciousness” trembled throughout this space. Its every thought stirred up massive waves here, yet ordinary people could not perceive the rumbling that echoed through the Otherworld. Even Yu Sheng, borrowing the perception of the entire Otherworld, only vaguely sensed the mental activity behind that eyeball.

But strangely, Yu Sheng detected not the slightest hostility from the eye—nor any goodwill.

Then after a while longer, he noticed the eyeball’s focal point shift away from him. Or rather, it was no longer gazing at the entire valley, but had focused its sight on a specific location within it.

The eyeball slowly swept its gaze across the land, as though tracking, searching for something.

Yu Sheng’s consciousness gradually diffused outward, and over the next few minutes, he came to understand something…

The entire valley was stirring to life. Some eerie, terrifying “vitality” had transformed this entire stretch of Otherworld into a hungry, living thing.

Li Lin watched helplessly as rows upon rows of sharp teeth sprouted from the distant ridgeline. Between the teeth were horrifying torn trenches, and those ranks of fangs rolled and undulated like waves, their depths emitting thunderous roars.

He also saw that on another side of the valley, an entire forest had come alive. Black tentacles had replaced the trees that once stood there, spreading along the rocky shore at the valley floor, engulfing everything in their path like a swarming mass of predatory insects.

All of this transpired under the cold gaze of that enormous eye in the sky—bizarre, terrifying, like a nightmare.

Little Red Riding Hood’s wolf pack howled around them, continuously biting through and driving back the tentacles, eye-stalks, and tongues that grew from the soil. But no matter how hard the wolves fought, the group’s foothold continued to shrink.

The young Special Operations Bureau agent couldn’t help but feel a creeping despair. He turned to look ahead and saw the girl with the mass of tails running at the front, cradling the doll in her arms. She was hunched forward, and even while carrying something, her movements were incredibly agile and fierce, like a nimble beast of the mountains—while he, as a human, could barely keep up with that “beast” anymore.

But just then, Hu Li finally slowed her pace.

Carrying Eileen (and Eileen’s cleaver), she arrived at a depression at the foot of the mountain. She stood on a large rock, craning her neck to survey the surroundings. The foxgirl’s pair of large, fluffy ears atop her head trembled slightly in the wind, as if catching every sound and movement nearby. Then she gave a vigorous sniff of the air and finally fixed her gaze in a particular direction.

“This way! The entrance is right here!”

Before she’d even finished speaking, she had already jumped to the ground with Eileen in her arms. The others scrambled to follow, running with her toward the mountainside, where they found a cave opening just barely wide enough for two people to pass through.

“It’s very spacious inside!”

Hu Li called back to the others, then was already the first to duck into the cave.

Pale blue fox-spirit fire ignited from thin air, drifting up from the tips of Hu Li’s tails to hang in midair, illuminating the interior of the cave.

It appeared to be nothing more than an unremarkable primitive cavern, seemingly a natural part of the mountain itself. Some sections of the walls bore marks of having been manually carved and widened. In the corners of the cave, a few crude, simple implements could still be seen—clearly, someone had lived here for a period of time.

Xu Jiali detached a palm-sized black device from her waist and carefully scanned the cavern once, speaking in a low voice: “No toxins. Material structure is stable. No signs of corrosion.”

Little Red Riding Hood waved her hand, stationing several wolves near the cave entrance. The rest of the wolf shadows returned to her side, gradually merging into the shadow at her feet.

Hu Li carefully carried Eileen to a stone platform near the cave entrance and set the little doll down, her face showing a look of worry.

“Are you… alright?”

She raised a hand to point at Eileen’s severed arm and her right leg, which wasn’t in great shape either.

Judging by appearance alone, Eileen’s current state was absolutely wretched—second only to the benefactor who had just died with his eyes open moments ago.

The foxgirl clearly didn’t know much about “living dolls.”

“I’m fine. This body was only temporary to begin with—some of the parts aren’t very sturdy,” Eileen said with characteristic good humor, even comforting Hu Li at a time like this. “Don’t worry, Yu Sheng will fix me up when we get back. He’s the one who made this body of mine. Though, well… his craftsmanship is a bit… rough.”

The foxgirl’s eyes widened slightly: “It sounds like the benefactor is very impressive?”

“…Maybe?” Eileen sounded a bit hesitant as she said this. “Sometimes even I feel like he’s not quite human. He’s got a whole bunch of strange abilities and ideas…”

But halfway through her sentence, the doll girl seemed to sense something and suddenly looked up, gazing toward the cave entrance.

From this position, looking outward, one could barely see anything outside the cave.

“What is it?” Hu Li asked curiously.

“Could you… carry me over to see what’s outside? Just to the cave entrance is fine,” Eileen said with some hesitation. “I can’t see anything out there from here. It makes me uneasy.”

Hu Li was a bit puzzled but didn’t think too much about it. She reached out and picked Eileen up, carefully making her way to the vicinity of the cave entrance.

Eileen craned her neck from Hu Li’s arms, mustering her courage to look up at the sky.

That enormous eye still floated above the valley. The magnificent eyeball was like a pupil structure manifesting from the sky itself, breathtaking and awe-inspiring.

“I keep feeling like… that eye has been staring in this direction the whole time,” Eileen quickly pulled her neck back in, muttering nervously. “Why hasn’t Yu Sheng come back yet…”

Hu Li froze for a moment, then looked down at the small doll in her arms: “The benefactor… will be alright, won’t he?”

“He’s definitely fine,” Eileen lowered her voice, glancing back at the three “temporary comrades” in the cavern, and whispered to Hu Li, “Don’t mention Yu Sheng’s ‘death’ to them later, okay? By now they should have already forgotten the relevant events.”

Hu Li tilted her head, her large fluffy ears twitching twice. It was unclear whether she understood or not.

Li Lin curiously glanced up at the fox-spirit and the doll huddled near the cave entrance. He frowned slightly—he wasn’t sure if it was just his imagination, but he kept feeling like he had overlooked something during the frantic sprint here with those two. Something very important had unconsciously vanished from his mind.

He looked toward Xu Jiali and Little Red Riding Hood nearby, but saw no sign of anything unusual on their faces.

Xu Jiali was currently deep in the cavern, cautiously searching and surveying the situation, while Little Red Riding Hood sat on a stone stool with her arms crossed, her eyes fixed on the shadow wolves standing guard near the cave entrance.

Her red coat had been damaged in the earlier battle in the forest—one sleeve was torn to shreds, leaving her entire right arm exposed. That arm was now covered in a dense web of blood-red lines, as if the flesh had been torn apart in every direction and had only barely gathered back together, adhering itself into its original form.

The pale blue fox fire burned silently in the upper reaches of the cavern, casting Little Red Riding Hood’s shadow on the ground. That shadow swayed unsteadily, and occasionally, for just an instant, it would abruptly twist and deform, taking on the same shape as the wolves that emerged from shadows.

The howling, unearthly sounds from the valley streamed ceaselessly from outside, making the silence inside the cavern feel all the more oppressive and heavy.

Li Lin stood up and walked toward Hu Li and Eileen at the cave entrance—he figured now was at least the time for introductions.

But just as he’d gotten halfway there, a bizarre sound made him stop dead in his tracks.

It was an irregular scraping noise, like the sound of sharp teeth colliding and grinding against each other.

And immediately after, his spiritual instincts gave a violent lurch.

Xu Jiali, who had been inspecting the depths of the cavern, and Little Red Riding Hood, who had been sitting on the stone stool trying to recover, both instinctively raised their heads.

The “atmosphere” of the valley had changed.

Two or three seconds later, the area outside the cave fell abruptly silent—silent as though the entire world had plunged into deathly stillness.

But this silence lasted only a moment before strange scraping sounds came from outside again, along with whimpering noises distinctly different from the chaotic shrieks before. These sounds reached everyone’s ears, growing clearer and clearer, louder and… louder.

The fox sitting on the ground near the cave entrance sprang to her feet instantly, staring outside with anxious unease. Eileen also strained to prop herself up against Hu Li’s arm with her broken limb, wanting to confirm what was happening outside the cave—and it was at that moment that the doll girl heard Yu Sheng’s voice—

“Eileen.”

“Yu Sheng?!” Eileen’s heart jolted and she hurried to respond. “You’re alive again? Where are you right now? Can you sense my location? Hurry and open a door to get here! We found a safe hiding spot. It’s not safe outside right now—something’s gone terribly wrong with the valley…”

But before she could finish, the voice from within her mind cut her off: “Eileen, don’t panic—it’ll all be over soon.”

Eileen was stunned: “…Huh?”

The strange scraping sounds from the valley had grown even more rapid and dense than before.

Yu Sheng’s voice continued to resonate from the depths of Eileen’s heart: “Eileen, do you remember what happened when we previously contacted Hu Li through dreams, trying to use her perception to find the ‘frequency’ of this valley?”

Of course Eileen remembered.

“You made direct contact with the true form of ‘Hunger’ back then—it took root in your mind!” the doll girl said rapidly. “Wh-what about it?! Did something go wrong now?! Are you not able to come back to life?!”

The bizarre scraping sounds from the valley grew more and more dense, as if they had already filled the entire Otherworld. The unsettling noise echoed through the cavern, setting everyone’s nerves on edge.

Yet in the depths of Eileen’s heart, Yu Sheng’s voice was calmer than it had ever been.

“Don’t worry, Eileen. I’m fine. I just discovered something—”

Eileen’s eyes slowly widened. She seemed to be gradually discerning what those scraping sounds echoing through the valley actually were.

“Hunger didn’t take root in my mind.”

She heard Yu Sheng’s voice from the depths of her heart.

She heard Yu Sheng’s voice from across the entire valley.

“It was I who took root in its depths.”

She finally heard it clearly—it was the sound of chewing, reverberating throughout the entire valley.

The sublime feast had begun.

The Entity-Hunger that had entrenched itself in this Otherworld began to devour itself.

Book recommendation: “Anomaly Containment: I’m the Lucky One in the Cage” by One Tentacle (just listen to that pen name). An SCP-themed story, still a budding work. If you’re into that genre, go check it out.

(End of Chapter)