Chapter 12: There Are People Here!?

Yu Sheng signed off to Aileen, but this time, after saying his goodbyes, he didn’t immediately hang up.

It wasn’t because the thing across from him had suddenly turned vegetarian. Rather, this terrifying giant beast seemed to have fallen into some sort of daze for reasons unknown.

It stood there in the night wind, dozens of eyes jumbled and overlapping on that fleshy sphere, staring at its prey with a bizarre “gaze.” Strange as it was to say, Yu Sheng genuinely felt he could read “confusion” in those eyes—the kind of confusion you get when your mouth and stomach have been arguing for half an hour without reaching an agreement.

Aileen was still frantically calling out something in his mind, but all of Yu Sheng’s attention was fixed on the horrifying monster before him. Aileen’s voice reached him as if through a thick curtain, distant and muffled. His muscles tensed, his heart pounding like a war drum, and every twitch of the monster’s muscles, every ripple of its veins, was crystal clear in his sight.

Even though he’d already prepared himself somewhat when he “revived” in that broken temple, facing the crushing weight of death again still plunged him into immense tension.

The only difference from last time was that the fear mixed into this tension had greatly receded, replaced by something he himself found unfamiliar… excitement.

Then, he suddenly sensed something.

Muscles contracting. Thick, filthy blood gathering. Hunger surging in his gut. An order to feed emerging from a chaotic, muddy mind—in that extremely brief instant, a warning bell rang sharp in his heart, and he accurately traced the outline of that alarm.

The monster was about to strike. From the left. But it was only a feint. The real killing move was a barbed, blade-edged serpent tail that would whip around from behind.

The monster lunged. A gaping maw suddenly split open from one of its limb-tips and snapped toward Yu Sheng’s left side—but before it could even leap, Yu Sheng had already reacted. Without much thought, he sidestepped sharply according to the prompting in his mind, then immediately lunged forward, faster than he himself could believe.

He noticed that his twisted waist had somehow healed completely. Ever since he’d “revived,” his body seemed to be in inexplicably perfect condition.

The giant beast missed. The serpent tail that had been sneaking in from an awkward angle only grazed the “prey’s” back. Yu Sheng felt the wind pressure behind him, the brush with death making his hair stand on end. But beyond that spine-tingling sensation, there was more disbelief in his heart:

He had actually dodged?! What the hell just happened?

But he didn’t have time to think it through, because the next wave of danger came from behind. This time, there wasn’t enough time to evade. He barely managed to scramble up after hitting the ground, only to see a claw smashing down straight at his face.

Desperate, he instinctively raised his arm—that frail human limb—to block the claw, which was falling almost like a meteor.

A deafening bang. The air shockwave scattered grass clippings and dust for meters around. Pain shot through his entire body. Yu Sheng felt as if a dozen bones had snapped at once. He grunted, his breath catching, and stumbled back two steps—

But he blocked it. He had genuinely blocked that blow.

Yu Sheng stared in shock at his own hands. He saw his left hand bent at an unnatural angle—clearly the bone was broken. Yet the pain was fading at an astonishing rate, and the twisted bone seemed to be slowly mending itself.

He still vividly remembered the monster’s first attack on him. He remembered its true strength. Every muscle on that thing could effortlessly crush a human body. And Yu Sheng was a hundred percent certain that if the monster had attacked with full force, he wouldn’t have been able to block it—no matter how many bones broke.

But the monster obviously wasn’t going to give him much time to think. After landing, it adjusted for only a second or two, then let out a chaotic, furious roar and lunged again at the irritating “prey.”

The gale-force wind cut to the bone. The charging monster was like a small mountain falling from the sky. Yu Sheng reacted again in advance, rolling aside ungracefully, then springing up to dodge a tail strike that could split mountains and crack rocks. But the next second, before he could find his footing, the recoiling tail swept him off his feet. Then, the giant beast split open from the middle of its body, and a disgusting, writhing “tongue”—like some kind of tentacle—shot out in the darkness, wrapped tightly around the off-balance Yu Sheng, and dragged him back.

Yu Sheng pushed with all his strength to keep the “tongue” from crushing his chest, at least not too quickly. He watched helplessly as he was dragged right up to the monster. The beast had torn a huge hole in its midsection, inside which countless sharp teeth rose, fell, and ground together, like a ravenous mouth.

At the very moment he was about to be pulled into that maw, Yu Sheng kicked off the ground with all his might. The rock beneath his feet cracked with a loud bang, and the massive recoil actually yanked the monster into a stumble.

Without a second thought about where his strength was coming from, Yu Sheng seized that fleeting chance. Gritting his teeth, he used every ounce of his power, roaring as he snapped the tongue coiled around him, then grabbed a sharp piece of rubble from the ground and lunged at a cloudy eyeball on the monster’s side that was twitching wildly.

The tongue snapped off. The monster let out a bone-chilling howl. Blood sprayed from the break in its body. It staggered, struggling to regain its balance, dozens of eyes fixated on its prey with madness and hunger—

So fragrant, so fragrant…

The scent of blood invaded its nostrils, stimulated the starving nerves, awakened some instinct that had long slept…

Really, so fragrant.

Yu Sheng felt his heart racing wildly. Something hot, nearly boiling, surged in his blood. A wild joy welled up from the depths of his heart. He tried to identify what this joy was, and finally understood.

It was the thrill of imminent feeding. The reward of a hunger about to be satisfied.

That giant beast, that heap of flesh, that chaotic and fallen spirit, that…

Fine meat.

The sharp rubble slowly crumbled to powder in his hand. His breathing was heavy. Everything around him seemed to slow down.

He charged at the monster. The monster charged at him. Prey embracing prey—in a daze, he felt as though he had never eaten in the past twenty-plus years, or at least had never tasted “real food.” He embraced the monstrous limbs on the beast’s side, while the beast “embraced” him back with even greater force, until bone after bone in his body cracked.

But Yu Sheng seemed to feel nothing. He had already bitten into the monster’s flesh. Unlike last time, when it was a furious, desperate final counterattack before death, he now had a new mindset—

He wouldn’t die. He would come back. This monster could kill him once, twice, or countless times, but he would always return.

And each time, he would understand a little better how to deal with this beast.

It might take a long time.

But he would savor this fine meat, bit by bit.

The dozen or so eyes on the monster’s side twitched frantically. A few of them seemed to sense something and gradually focused on Yu Sheng.

A gaping mouth full of sharp teeth had already bitten into Yu Sheng’s side from one angle. Yet those eyes seemed to slowly cloud with fear.

Yu Sheng felt his body being torn apart by the monster. He knew he had lost this round again—as expected. He would die, be eaten by this creature.

At least this time, he still couldn’t win.

Still, the time he managed to last far exceeded his expectations. He’d thought he would kick the bucket in one exchange, but instead, they’d traded blows.

“Aileen…” he tried to call out in his mind as his consciousness sank into darkness.

Aileen’s voice rang back almost immediately: “Yu Sheng! Yu Sheng, are you okay?! I’ve been calling you, and you didn’t answer…”

“I’m fine. Just that I said goodbye too early. I’m dying now…”

Then, ignoring Aileen’s frantic shouts, he simply waited for death to descend.

But just before the heavy darkness fell, he suddenly heard a voice nearby—a clear voice, truly existing in this valley.

“Don’t be afraid! I’m coming to save you!”

Yu Sheng’s consciousness was already foggy, but at that moment, a bolt of lightning shot through his mind, granting him a moment of clarity—

Someone?!

There are people here?!

With difficulty, he pried his eyes open and looked toward the direction of the voice. He saw a figure rushing toward him from afar. Fuzzily, it seemed to be a girl in ragged clothes. But the next second, he saw other outlines fluttering behind her in the night.

What was that?

A tail?

Fox?

Human?

No, it was a subsonic headbutt.

Yu Sheng watched in despair as the figure who’d shouted about saving him double-accelerated midair like an extended-range artillery shell, head lowered, charging straight at him. And the monster gnawing on him happened to turn sideways (probably on purpose), making him the direct target of that charging figure.

“What the f—”

He barely squeezed two syllables through his teeth.

The charging girl didn’t even see what was ahead.

The subsonic headbutt smashed into Yu Sheng’s chest. Then there was no chest.

Nothing below the neck.

As if evaporated.

“Miss, you, dammit… you hit the wrong target…”

And so, Yu Sheng got saved to death.

(End of chapter)