Chapter 14: Hu Li

Under the chaotic night, amid the ruins of a broken temple, on one side was a girl with silver hair and a fox tail, crouching among broken bricks and debris, stuffing rotten vegetable leaves she’d fished from a garbage bag into her mouth. On the other side was Yu Sheng, who had died three times already, standing behind a broken wall, staring in disbelief at the scene across from him.

They stood frozen in the darkness, facing each other in silence. As a first meeting (the headbutt earlier didn’t count), this was a scene Yu Sheng probably wouldn’t forget for the rest of his life.

Then he saw the fox-tailed girl’s eyes slowly widen. Vast astonishment and joy—perhaps mixed with a touch of disbelief—gradually filled those golden-red pupils. She finally stood up, still clutching a handful of vegetable leaves, then seemed to suddenly snap out of it. She raised a hand, pointing at Yu Sheng, her voice choked as if she were about to suffocate: “Human!? Ah, human! You’re human?! You… who are you? Where did you come from…”

Yu Sheng had already prepared an opening line, including how to introduce himself and how to ask her for information, and also how to express that he was broad-minded and didn’t mind the “favor” of that earlier headbutt. But the moment she spoke, he was stunned. Half the words he’d rehearsed flew out of his head. He only felt that her reaction was nothing like what he’d expected.

What did she mean by “You’re human”? Was the fact that he was a human such a big shock to her? Had she never seen a human before, or simply not seen one for a very long time? And more importantly…

Maybe it was an illusion or a misunderstanding, but Yu Sheng had the feeling that she was reacting as if she were seeing him for the first time. Yet earlier, when he was struggling with that monster, she had already seen him—though their meeting might have been a bit unconventional. After her headbutt, his overall outline might have been quite different from now, but at the very least, his face shouldn’t have changed much…

Even if she hadn’t carefully examined the crime scene after the impact, she should at least have some impression of the soul that had passed beneath her head. Not act like this, as if seeing a complete “stranger” for the first time.

“We… met once before,” Yu Sheng finally couldn’t help saying after holding back for two or three seconds. “Just now, on the open ground outside. You said you came to save me… Don’t you remember?”

The fox girl across from him tilted her head, as if she genuinely had no idea what he was talking about. But soon her attention shifted elsewhere. She pointed at the bag of kitchen garbage on the ground, her eyes seeming to glow in the night: “Is this… yours?”

She spoke with strange pauses, as if she hadn’t communicated with anyone for so long that every word needed to be rethought and recalled before it could come out.

Yu Sheng’s tone was odd: “Uh, yeah…”

“Can I… eat it?” the fox girl said quickly, still a bit halting. Then she tightly gripped the vegetable leaves in her hand, as if using immense willpower to resist the urge to shove them directly into her mouth. Her mouth moved—she was chewing what she’d already swallowed. Then she glanced at Yu Sheng again, asking rapidly, “I’m hungry. I want to eat. Sorry…”

Her hands were trembling slightly, her voice urgent, yet she kept restraining herself through sheer will, as if what she needed to control wasn’t just her appetite but something more dangerous… something on the verge of losing control.

Yu Sheng felt a flicker of dizziness. He thought he saw a faint shadow floating behind her, slowly spreading from the distance like a hunter waiting in the dark for the moment its prey’s spirit relaxed.

But the shadow quickly dissipated.

Yu Sheng stepped out from behind the broken wall. He had already sensed something wrong with the girl before him (though her messy pile of tails was plenty strange in itself), but he still mustered his courage and walked forward: “You can’t eat that stuff. That’s…”

He felt unable to continue—because he had never been so hungry in his life.

By then, the girl had slowly crouched down, as if she couldn’t wait for Yu Sheng’s response and intended to pick up the scattered leftovers from the ground.

“Wait! I think I have something to eat!” At that moment, Yu Sheng suddenly called out loudly, stopping her. He seemed to remember something, and as he spoke, he quickly fumbled through his pockets.

Finally, he pulled out two small packaged pastries and a chocolate bar the size of a palm. He had originally planned to keep them for a late-night snack.

Because of his work habits, he often stayed up late.

The fox girl watched his movements with a mix of wariness and confusion. Yu Sheng walked up to her and demonstrated how to tear open the pastry packaging—with the sound of plastic ripping, the aroma of bread wafted out. The girl’s eyes instantly lit up, and she grabbed Yu Sheng’s hand almost at an afterimage speed, pulling both the hand and the pastry toward her mouth.

Yu Sheng barely reacted in time. The girl was not only incredibly fast but also astonishingly strong. He exerted nearly all his strength to pull his arm back, barely managing to yank his hand out of her mouth before she bit his fingers off, though his index finger was scratched by her sharp canine teeth, and blood quickly seeped out.

“Jeez, how long have you been starving…” he couldn’t help muttering.

The girl seemed completely deaf to the world around her. She stuffed the food into her mouth frantically, as if trying to force it directly into her stomach. Her cheeks bulged, and with each chew, her eyes grew wide. Yu Sheng was afraid she’d choke to death any second, but she somehow swallowed the food down. Then her gaze fell on the other pastry.

“Slow down, catch your breath first. If you keep eating like that, you’ll choke,” Yu Sheng had to block her, looking into her eyes seriously. “Okay? Do you understand?”

“I, understand…” The fox girl nodded vigorously, swallowing hard.

Only then did Yu Sheng hand over the second pastry. He watched the girl clumsily tear at the plastic packaging—her technique was wrong, but her strength was astonishing. She tore the bag apart almost instantly, then ripped the bread in half and shoved it into her mouth. But halfway through, she seemed to remember Yu Sheng’s words, or perhaps realized the preciousness of the food, and quickly slowed down, tearing the bread into small pieces and putting them into her mouth with extreme restraint.

At the same time, her gaze kept drifting back to the last piece of chocolate in Yu Sheng’s hand.

“This is chocolate…” Yu Sheng started casually, preparing to hand it over. But just as his hand was halfway there, he hesitated and stopped, his expression turning odd.

He thought quickly for several seconds, then finally called out in his mind: “Irene.”

The voice of the doll in the painting immediately filled his mind, full of noise: “Yu Sheng! What happened to you just now? Why did you suddenly go silent? And no matter how I called, you didn’t…”

“The situation here is complicated. I’ll explain slowly later. First, I need to ask you something…”

“You… fine, go ahead.” Irene’s voice sounded displeased, but she finally showed patience despite it.

“Dogs can’t eat chocolate, right?” Yu Sheng suppressed the strange feeling in his heart. He secretly glanced at the expectant fox girl across from him, trying to keep his tone as serious as possible.

“…Right,” Irene felt the question was out of the blue. “That stuff is poisonous to dogs. But why are you suddenly asking this? You’re trapped in a foreign realm, and you have the leisure to…”

Yu Sheng ignored her subsequent muttering: “Can foxes eat it?”

“Foxes probably shouldn’t either… right?” Irene hesitated a bit. “After all, they’re both canids. Hey, let me tell you, a lot of human food is poisonous to non-human species. To put it this way, your human diet is outright insane in the eyes of not just animals, but even in the eyes of ‘different species’ like me. You’re basically eating poison with strong alkali, downing acid soup every meal, letting biochemical agents run through your intestines, and gulping rotten stuff…”

Yu Sheng interrupted this blabbermouth again: “What about foxes that have cultivated into spirits?”

Irene finally choked on her words: “…What?”

It turned out that even a chatterbox like her couldn’t handle such a bizarre topic shift.

“I mean, a fox that has taken human form—you know, a fox immortal, a fox demon, understand?” Yu Sheng said quickly in his mind, because he noticed the fox girl had almost finished the small pastry and was about to snatch the chocolate from his hand. “Is a fox immortal still considered a fox? Is it more human or more fox? If the latter is dominant, does a fox immortal count as a canid?”

Irene: “…What the hell is going on over there?!”

“There’s a fox girl here who’s starving to death—white hair, red eyes, nine tails… maybe six or seven, they’re all matted so I can’t tell. But I only have one piece of chocolate left.”

Irene listened dumbfounded, then with astonishing adaptability shot back: “If she has nine tails, she can definitely handle it. If she didn’t have that kind of cultivation, why would she have grown all those tails—just to use them as propellers when swimming? Hey, wait, what’s really going on over there? Didn’t you say it was an uninhabited foreign realm? How did a…”

Hearing Irene’s first half, Yu Sheng found it quite reasonable. Without bothering to respond to her follow-up chatter, he handed the chocolate to the girl opposite. Still, he didn’t forget to remind her: “Here, eat it. But you’d better try just a little first. I’m worried it might be bad for you.”

“Thank… thank you!” The fox girl quickly took the chocolate, clumsily unwrapped it, and took a cautious bite.

A look of surprise appeared on her face, followed by her eyes slightly narrowing, as if immersed in immense happiness.

“Alright, that’s all there is. I don’t have any more,” Yu Sheng shook his head when he saw this, spreading his hands. “I don’t know if it’s enough to fill you up… uh, and I don’t know what to call you.”

“Thank you,” the fox girl said again, this time more solemnly than before. After she was no longer so hungry, she looked into Yu Sheng’s eyes, then pointed at herself and said earnestly, “Hu Li.”

“Huh?” Yu Sheng didn’t catch on at first.

“Hu Li,” the fox girl pointed at herself and slowly smiled. “I have a name!”

(End of chapter)