Chapter 79 – Changes

Going out for a trip?

Hu Li froze for a moment when she heard Yu Sheng’s words, then immediately and rapidly dried the remaining few bowls on her tails, grabbed one tail to wipe the sesame paste from her mouth, and said, “Okay, I’m ready to go right now…”

Yu Sheng watched this girl with a twitching eye: “It’s not that urgent — you use your tail to wipe your mouth?”

Hu Li looked down at the sesame paste on the tip of her tail, only belatedly realizing what she’d done. She stuck her tail back into the sink and scrubbed it clean, then shook it vigorously right in front of Yu Sheng.

“I’m used to it…” she mumbled quietly. “I forgot there are better things to use at home.”

“It’s fine, no big deal,” Yu Sheng wiped the water off his face. “Also, next time you shake the water off, watch out for people nearby — and electronics.”

“Ah, sorry, Benefactor!” Only then did Hu Li notice she’d splattered water all over Yu Sheng’s face. She immediately rushed over in a fluster, using another dry tail to haphazardly scrub at his face while asking, “So… where are we going? Is there going to be a fight?”

“Stop stop stop, I can wipe it myself—” Yu Sheng flailed to fend off the tail rubbing wildly across his face, then spat out two strands of silvery-white fur. “We’re going back to that valley, but this time there shouldn’t be any fighting.”

Hu Li instantly froze, her entire body going rigid where she stood.

The tension and fear in her eyes were of course impossible to hide from anyone — in fact, Yu Sheng had known before he even opened his mouth that this would be her reaction.

But precisely because of that, he felt it was essential to let Hu Li see the strange changes that had taken place in the valley.

“Don’t be afraid, I’m here,” he stepped forward and gently patted the fox girl’s hair. “I know you’re resistant to that place, but some bizarre changes have happened there, and I think you need to see them with your own eyes. Don’t worry, you won’t get trapped inside again.”

Hu Li stared blankly at Yu Sheng. Several seconds passed before she gave a stiff nod, as though it had taken tremendous courage to make that decision.

Yu Sheng then led her back to the restaurant, picked up the little doll who had been waiting for quite a while, and after opening the door that led to the valley Otherworld, the three of them (though the human content was rather low) stepped through.

The sunlit valley filled their vision. A fresh breeze swept across the valley floor, and the distant cliffs and wasteland basked in daylight. With the curtain of night drawn back, everything appeared vivid and radiant.

Even the devastation left behind after the “feast” seemed… softened and somehow reassuring under the blanket of daylight.

Eileen sat on Yu Sheng’s shoulder, eyes wide as she took in the valley’s current scenery. She was stunned for a long while before managing to blurt out: “This is really like Yu Sheng crawling into an alchemy furnace — absolutely unheard of…”

Yu Sheng instantly forgot whatever he’d been about to say and turned to look at Eileen on his shoulder with a complicated expression: “Could you please stop using me to create idioms?”

“Then first explain to me what’s going on here—” Eileen raised a hand and pointed at the valley before them. “Entity-Hunger’s presence really has completely faded! This place doesn’t even feel like the original ‘Otherworld’ to me anymore!”

“It’s no longer the original Otherworld?” Yu Sheng caught Eileen’s phrasing, his expression shifting slightly. “What do you mean?”

“The environment has completely changed. I don’t know if you can sense the difference in ‘atmosphere,’ but this place now has a kind of…” Eileen trailed off, furrowing her brows slightly, turning to look Yu Sheng up and down several times before continuing with some hesitation, “It has a kind of your atmosphere, or rather… the atmosphere of No. 66 Wutong Road.”

Yu Sheng: “…?”

And while Yu Sheng was still processing that, Hu Li had also been nervously surveying their surroundings for a long time. When she first passed through the door, every muscle in her body had been taut, but now all that remained was bewilderment written across her face. She didn’t possess Eileen’s peculiar and precise ability to “perceive” the Otherworld, but as a fox spirit, she had an instinctive sense for things in the environment that had once threatened her.

Entity-Hunger had truly and completely vanished from this place, and after all this time, there wasn’t the slightest sign of it regenerating.

Just then, Yu Sheng’s voice interrupted both Hu Li’s and Eileen’s attention: “What I wanted to show you isn’t just this.”

As he spoke, he crouched down and extended his hand toward the pockmarked patch of earth ahead.

It was covered in furrows and corrosion marks left behind from Entity-Hunger’s tendrils feeding.

Hu Li and Eileen didn’t understand what he was doing, but both instinctively looked toward where Yu Sheng’s fingers pointed.

They saw the soil there begin to slowly churn.

They heard faint friction sounds rising from deep within the earth.

The ground began to heal. The furrows were gradually filled in, the corrosion rapidly dissolved away.

Green appeared among the soil and stones — delicate, fragile, but those tiny shoots of green were enough to leave one stunned.

The valley was “recovering.” That was the only description Eileen’s mind could conjure in this moment.

She turned her head stiffly to look at Yu Sheng’s face beside her.

Yu Sheng let out a long breath and slowly rose to his feet.

Within a radius of several dozen meters around him, the ground had gradually restored itself, but this was already the limit of what he could do right now.

For the land beyond that range, he could sense a subtle connection between himself and it, but he couldn’t simply “activate” or “reshape” it the way he just had.

Still, even so, he could feel that what he’d just done had affected the entire valley — as though he’d planted a seed, initiating a slow, continuous reaction. He could feel the whole valley gradually awakening, bit by bit regaining its vitality.

“How did you do that?” Eileen finally couldn’t help but ask.

“I’m not sure of the exact mechanism, but it should be another connection established through ‘blood,'” Yu Sheng said slowly, thinking as he spoke. “Ever since the last incident ended, I’ve felt some kind of stable ‘connection’ between myself and this valley. Probably because I died too many times in this godforsaken place — I bled enough to irrigate the fields… Anyway, from some point onward, I just felt it. Like this.”

He pointed at the now-healed patch of earth beneath his feet.

Eileen stared at Yu Sheng’s eyes in astonishment — even horror — and after holding it in for a long while, managed: “What the hell kind of thing is your blood?!”

Then it hit her: “Wait! You used your blood to shape my body too, and you smeared it on my picture frame — doesn’t that mean you can also control…”

“No,” Yu Sheng immediately sighed at her words. “If I could control you, would I put up with you kicking me all night in my sleep?”

Eileen thought about it and relaxed: “Oh, fair point.”

Then she turned to Hu Li, who had been silent throughout: “Your homeland is the cultivation world, so you’d have a different perspective. What do you think?”

Hu Li gazed at Yu Sheng with an expression of pure adoration: “Benefactor, your immortal arts are profound and can channel the transformations of nature — you could be a landscape gardening immortal!”

Yu Sheng: “…”

He couldn’t even tell whether this fox girl was actually complimenting him. He decided to take it as a compliment.

“I shouldn’t have expected you to have any useful insights,” Eileen sighed after hearing Hu Li’s response, then reached over and poked Yu Sheng’s head. “Anyway, your ‘connection’ with the valley can be set aside for now. The most critical thing right now is the ‘entity’ that had occupied this place — it hasn’t regenerated after all this time. It might really be gone for good.”

“Has this really never happened before?” Yu Sheng asked with some skepticism.

“Of course not, at least not that I’ve ever heard of,” Eileen answered without a moment’s hesitation. “Entities are an ‘inevitable phenomenon’ of an Otherworld’s operation, not independent beings that can be destroyed. Where there’s an Otherworld, there are entities. But then again—”

The little doll paused, her gaze subtly shifting as she surveyed their surroundings.

“Now the entire valley’s ‘atmosphere’ has changed. At least from what I can feel, it truly is no longer the Otherworld that gave birth to Entity-Hunger. If that’s the case, then Entity-Hunger really would permanently disappear…”

Miss Doll furrowed her brows tightly, as though she’d found a logically coherent explanation but rationally couldn’t bring herself to believe it was real.

Hu Li, standing beside her, didn’t understand what Eileen was struggling with. She only grasped one thing: that monster would apparently never come back.

She tugged at Yu Sheng’s sleeve: “From now on, that monster won’t come out to hurt anyone anymore?”

“It seems that way,” Yu Sheng considered for a moment and gave a slight nod. “Unless this valley breaks free of its connection with me and somehow reverts to what it was before.”

Hearing this reply, Hu Li simply stared at Yu Sheng, her mind seemingly lost in a whirl of thoughts.

Then she suddenly threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around Yu Sheng with such force that even his body — now who knows how many times stronger than an ordinary person’s — creaked audibly. And not only that, she even wound a whole mass of tails around him: “Benefactor, this is wonderful! This is wonderful!”

Yu Sheng hadn’t expected this at all. In that instant, the air was nearly squeezed completely out of his lungs. Never mind feeling whether the fox spirit’s embrace was warm — it felt like being clamped from every direction by seven or eight hydraulic presses: “Let… let go… dying… tails…”

Only then did Hu Li realize what she was doing. She hastily released him and sprang to one side in alarm: “Ah! Sorry, Benefactor — I got too excited and just…”

Yu Sheng, having narrowly survived, braced both hands on his knees and gasped desperately for breath. It took him quite a while before he had the strength to wave his hand: “How… how are your tails that strong too?!”

“Scared me too!” Eileen protested vehemently. “One tail just whooshed right at me — nearly knocked me off!”

Hu Li stood there apologizing profusely, her ears practically flattened against her scalp…

But it was clear she was still very happy.

It was a thorough, reassuring joy that even surpassed what she’d felt when she first escaped from the Otherworld.

By now Yu Sheng had finally caught his breath (and incidentally repaired several minor bone fractures), and he reached up to pat Hu Li’s hair, settling the girl down, before straightening up and gazing into the distance.

Eileen noticed Yu Sheng’s shift in posture and expression in an instant.

The little doll immediately said to Hu Li: “I think he’s about to have another idea…”

“How about we take a walk further out?” Yu Sheng said, right on cue. “What do you think might be beyond this valley?”

(End of Chapter)