Chapter 79: Changes

Going out for a bit?

Hu Li was stunned when she heard Yu Sheng’s words, then immediately and swiftly dried the remaining bowls on her tail, and casually grabbed another tail to wipe the sesame paste from her mouth: “Okay, I’m just about ready…”

Yu Sheng’s eyelids twitched as he watched this girl: “There’s no need to rush that much—did you really use your tail to wipe your mouth?”

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

“I’m used to it…” she murmured. “I forgot there are better tools at home.”

“It’s fine, no big deal,” Yu Sheng said, wiping the water off his face. “Also, next time you shake water off, watch out for the people beside you—and the electrical appliances.”

“Ah, sorry, Benefactor!” Hu Li only then realized she had splashed water all over Yu Sheng’s face. Flustered, she hurried over and used another dry tail to haphazardly rub at his face while asking, “Then… where are we going? Is it time for a fight?”

“Stop, stop, I can wipe it myself—” Yu Sheng hurriedly pushed away the tail scrubbing his face and spat out two silver-white tufts of fur from his mouth. “We need to go back to that valley, but it shouldn’t involve fighting this time.”

Hu Li instantly froze in place, her whole body tensing.

The tension and fear in her eyes were impossible to miss—in fact, Yu Sheng had known this would be her reaction even before he spoke.

But precisely because of that, he felt it was necessary for Hu Li to see with her own eyes the strange changes happening in that valley.

“Don’t be afraid, I’m here,” he said, stepping forward and gently pressing down on the fox girl’s hair. “I know you’re repulsed by that place, but some unusual changes have occurred there. I think it’s important for you to see it for yourself. Don’t worry, we won’t get trapped inside again.”

Hu Li stared blankly at Yu Sheng. After a few seconds, she nodded stiffly, as if summoning immense courage to make that decision.

Yu Sheng then took her hand and led her back to the dining room. Together with the little puppet who had been waiting for a while, he opened the door leading to the valley’s other realm. The three of them (though the ‘human content’ wasn’t high) stepped inside.

The valley under sunlight spread before their eyes. A fresh breeze brushed through the bottom. In the distance, the rocks and wasteland were bathed in daylight. After the night had receded, everything appeared so bright and vivid.

Even the remaining scars from the “feast” looked… softened and reassuring under the light.

Eileen sat on Yu Sheng’s shoulder, her eyes wide as she took in the scene. After a long pause, she blurted out, “This is really like Yu Sheng jumping into a furnace—damned strange…”

Yu Sheng instantly forgot whatever he had been about to say. He turned to look at the puppet on his shoulder with a complicated expression. “Could you stop making up proverbs about me?”

“Then you explain this first—” Eileen pointed at the valley before them. “The Entity-Hunger’s aura has completely vanished! This place doesn’t even feel like the original other realm anymore!”

“Not the original other realm anymore?” Yu Sheng noticed her phrasing and his expression shifted. “What does that mean?”

“The environment has entirely changed. I don’t know if you can sense the difference in ‘atmosphere,’ but this place now has…” Eileen furrowed her brow, looking Yu Sheng up and down several times before hesitantly continuing, “It has your atmosphere, or rather… the atmosphere of 66 Wutong Road.”

Yu Sheng: “…?”

While Yu Sheng was still processing that, Hu Li nervously scanned her surroundings. She had been tense when they first passed through the door, but now only confusion remained. She didn’t have Eileen’s peculiar, precise ability to ‘sense’ other realms, but as a fox spirit, she had an instinctive perception of anything that had once threatened her.

Entity-Hunger had truly vanished from here, and after so long, there was no sign of it regenerating.

It was then that Yu Sheng’s words interrupted Hu Li and Eileen’s attention: “That’s not all I wanted you to see.”

With that, he crouched down and extended his hand toward the pitted, muddy ground before him.

The earth was covered in grooves and corrosion marks left behind when Entity-Hunger’s tentacles had preyed upon it.

Hu Li and Eileen didn’t understand, but they both instinctively looked in the direction of Yu Sheng’s fingers.

They saw the soil there beginning to slowly churn.

They heard faint scraping sounds from deep within the earth.

The ground was healing. The grooves gradually filled. The corrosion quickly faded.

Green appeared among the stones and dirt—delicate, fragile—but those tiny bits of green were enough to stun them.

The valley was ‘healing.’ That was the only description that came to Eileen’s mind at that moment.

She turned her stiff neck to look at Yu Sheng’s face beside her.

Yu Sheng let out a long breath and slowly straightened up.

Within a radius of several dozen meters around him, the ground had gradually recovered, but that was the limit he could manage at the moment.

As for the land farther away, he could sense a subtle connection with it, but he couldn’t simply ‘activate’ or ‘reshape’ it like this.

Yet even so, he could feel that what he was doing had an effect on the entire valley. It was like planting a seed, starting a slow, continuous reaction. He felt the entire valley was gradually waking up, bit by bit regaining its vitality.

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

“I’m not sure about the exact principle, but this should still be a connection established through ‘blood,’” Yu Sheng said slowly, thinking. “Ever since the last incident, I’ve felt some kind of stable ‘link’ with this valley. Probably because I died so many times in this crappy place—enough blood to water the ground… Anyway, at some point, I became aware of it, just like this.”

He pointed to the patch of ground beneath his feet, which had already healed.

Eileen stared at Yu Sheng’s eyes in shock, almost in horror. After a long pause, she blurted out, “What the hell kind of sorcery is your blood?!”

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

“No,” Yu Sheng sighed. “If I could control you, would I still let you kick me all night while sleeping?”

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

Then she looked at Hu Li, who had been silent until now. “Your hometown is about cultivation—you have a different perspective. What do you think?”

Hu Li looked at Yu Sheng with adoration: “Benefactor, your immortal arts are profound, able to communicate with natural changes. You could be a landscape greening immortal!”

Yu Sheng: “…”

He couldn’t even tell if the fox girl was complimenting him or not. He decided to take it as a compliment.

“I should have known not to expect much insight from you,” Eileen sighed after hearing Hu Li’s answer, then poked Yu Sheng’s head. “Anyway, we can put aside the ‘link’ between you and the valley for now. The most critical thing is the ‘Entity’ that occupied this place—it hasn’t regenerated for so long. It might really be gone.”

“Has something like this never happened before?” Yu Sheng asked skeptically.

“Of course not, at least not that I’ve heard of,” Eileen replied without hesitation. “Entities are ‘inevitable phenomena’ in the operation of other realms, not independent beings that can be eliminated. Where there’s an other realm, there are entities. But then again—”

The little puppet paused, looking around with a subtle expression.

“Now the entire ‘atmosphere’ of this valley has changed. At least from what I can sense, it really is no longer the other realm that bred Entity-Hunger. If that’s the case, then Entity-Hunger might truly be gone for good…”

The puppet girl frowned deeply, as if she’d found a logical explanation, but her rationality still couldn’t bring herself to believe it.

Hu Li, however, didn’t understand what Eileen was agonizing over. She only understood one thing: that monster wasn’t coming back. Ever.

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

“It seems so,” Yu Sheng said after a moment’s thought. “Unless this valley loses its connection to me and reverts to its previous state on its own.”

Upon hearing this, Hu Li stared blankly at Yu Sheng. She didn’t know what she was thinking.

Then suddenly, she lunged forward and hugged him tightly—with so much force that Yu Sheng’s body, now far stronger than an ordinary person by an unknown factor, creaked audibly. Not only that, she even wrapped a bunch of tails around him: “Benefactor, this is wonderful! Wonderful!”

Yu Sheng hadn’t expected this. In an instant, the air was almost squeezed out of his lungs. Forget about feeling the warmth of the fox spirit’s embrace—he felt as if he were being crushed by seven or eight hydraulic clamps from all directions. “Loosen… loosen… I’m dying… tails…”

Hu Li only then snapped out of it. She quickly released him and jumped back in alarm: “Ah! Sorry, Benefactor—I got so excited that I…”

Yu Sheng, having narrowly escaped, supported himself on his knees and gasped for breath. It took him a while before he could wave a hand: “You… your tails have so much strength too!”

“You scared me too!” Eileen protested strongly. “One of your tails swept right over—it almost knocked me off!”

Hu Li just kept apologizing frantically, her ears practically flattening against her head…

But it was obvious she was still overjoyed.

It was a thorough, relieved joy that even surpassed the happiness she had felt when she first escaped the other realm.

By then, Yu Sheng had finally caught his breath (and repaired a few minor hairline fractures). He reached out and pressed down on Hu Li’s hair to calm the girl, then straightened up and looked into the distance.

Eileen immediately noticed his posture and expression.

The little puppet quickly said to Hu Li, “I think he’s getting another idea…”

“Want to go a bit farther?” Yu Sheng indeed spoke up. “You guys, what do you think is beyond this valley?”