Chapter 49: Door Kill (For Real)

The wind in the valley grew restless.

Yu Sheng didn't know what was happening, but he could clearly feel the "atmosphere" that filled this entire foreign land changing. This feeling was hard to describe in words. If he had to say it...

He felt that this entire valley was gradually "coming alive."

The distant forest was awakening, the mountains were awakening, the earth was awakening, and even the sky above was sending down a chilling, hungry, and desirous stare that made his scalp crawl.

He noticed Hu Li beside him trembling slightly. The fox demon girl clutched the food in her hands tightly, but her face showed fear. She raised her head to look at the dark night sky above, slowly shuffling backward toward Yu Sheng, muttering something over and over. When she got close, Yu Sheng could finally make out the repeated words:

"When the immortal died, it was like this... When the immortal died, it was like this..."

"What's going on now?" Ai Lin asked quickly. The little doll also tensed up, clutching the cleaver in her arms, her whole body stiff. "Do you know something?"

But Hu Li didn't answer her. It was as if she had fallen back into a confused state, only repeating the same sentence over and over.

And soon, Ai Lin and Yu Sheng couldn't spare any more attention for Hu Li's strange behavior.

Yu Sheng sensed that familiar aura appearing nearby. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a form rapidly coalescing in the shadows at the edge of the ruined temple. The malformed, swollen flesh proliferated layer upon layer, as if cut from various creatures. Strange limbs stacked on top of each other sprouted from the meat mass. Dozens of hungry eyes opened across the creature's surface, and between the eyes, sharp teeth and tearing maws constantly emerged, emitting hoarse growls.

Entity-Hunger had finally appeared near its prey.

"Holy crap!" Ai Lin immediately cried out. "This thing is ugly!"

"Watch out for its sneak attacks. All its limbs can deform, and it can suddenly grow tentacles and tails from inside its body," Yu Sheng immediately warned, then turned to Hu Li. "You just protect yourself. You've been deeply eroded by this thing; you can't fight it."

Hu Li's current state was very off. Even after the monster appeared, she still stared at the sky in terror, but after hearing Yu Sheng's words, she nodded blankly, grabbed the scattered food on the ground, and backed away, but didn't dare go too far, as if afraid something might happen to Yu Sheng.

"How do you plan to fight it?" Ai Lin asked quietly. The monster not far away was still prowling, as if patiently waiting for something, but its delay only made her more uneasy. "Don't tell me you're going to charge in with bare hands and throw punches. You didn't even bring a weapon when you came. I at least have a cleaver."

Yu Sheng naturally knew he hadn't brought a weapon when he came, because he had tried before. Most parts of this monster were harder than stone. Even if he could chop off some of its softer flesh with an axe, the effect was negligible. So from the start, he hadn't planned to bring any "weapon"—for an ordinary person who had never received weapon training, even if he were carrying a dragon-slaying sword, he'd probably cut himself first.

He had prepared other means of "killing."

"Same idea we discussed at home. You restrain its movements with your threads," Yu Sheng said quickly. "I'll charge in and 'tear a hole' in it. Watch closely—if I mess up, take Hu Li and run. Don't worry about me. Hu Li can survive the monster's attacks, and it won't actively chase you..."

Ai Lin was stunned for a moment: "Ah, then what?"

"I'll regroup after I revive, and try again. This thing will die eventually."

"Damn it! So it's still that simple-minded plan. You promised to try not to use 'resurrection' as a basic attack!"

"I'm just 'trying,'" Yu Sheng said quickly, but soon frowned, sensing something off about the monster nearby. "Why isn't it attacking yet..."

Ai Lin shared the same doubt: "It feels like it's deliberately stalling, waiting for something. Does this thing already have a concept of 'strategy'?"

"Then we can't let it wait any longer," Yu Sheng gritted his teeth. "Go!"

With that, he moved toward the monster, and almost at the same time, Ai Lin, sitting on his shoulder, nimbly flipped off and landed on the ground, her right hand extended toward the monster. The moment she landed, the doll's eyes turned pitch black, and countless fine, chilly black threads emanated from her hand, spreading like a rapidly growing spiderweb throughout the entire space!

All the "webs" avoided Yu Sheng's trajectory. He accelerated again within the spreading net of threads, his enhanced body almost leaving an afterimage as he lunged toward the grotesque, terrifying flesh beast!

The monster finally moved. Faced with the "prey's" initiative, it seemed momentarily startled, but quickly counterattacked. A hideous claw rose high from the beast's back and slammed down at the path Yu Sheng had to take.

At that instant, Yu Sheng once again felt that strange... "premonition."

He sensed which muscles in the monster were contracting, felt its desire to attack and the true focus of its gaze at that moment. It was as if he could see a tentacle extending from behind the claw, sealing off all possible escape routes in the next second...

Whether it was an illusion or not, he felt this "premonition" was even more accurate than before, and he even began to realize that it wasn't what people called "spiritual intuition."

Because now he had genuine spiritual intuition and had experienced what that felt like. He found that when he anticipated the monster's actions, what he "saw" and "felt" was fundamentally different from spiritual intuition.

When he sensed the monster's movements ahead of time, it was almost from a first-person perspective.

All thoughts flashed in an instant. Yu Sheng crossed the last few meters in the blink of an eye, and the flesh beast's claw came crashing down.

Yu Sheng didn't dodge at all. From the corner of his eye, he saw the threads spreading behind him already converging in the air. The next moment, countless black lines wrapped around the monster's limbs, and like some kind of penetrating phantom, wove through its claws, tentacles, maws...

Cold, numb, sluggish—as if even his thoughts were instantly pierced full of holes, his soul wrapped in layers of a chilling spiderweb...

Overwhelming negative sensations surged up. Yu Sheng saw some kind of illusion for an instant—he saw himself trapped in a spiderweb, countless strands wrapping around him, even penetrating his limbs. At the edge of the web, a shadow with blood-red eyes lurked in the darkness, then slowly crawled toward him in a strange and twisted posture...

"Yu Sheng! Don't space out! I can barely hold it!"

The sudden shout in his ear jolted Yu Sheng awake. He looked up and saw the flesh beast frozen in an odd pose at the center of layers of black threads. The ends of the threads were taut, as if they would snap at any moment.

Without time to think about the illusion he had just experienced, Yu Sheng lunged toward a position on the monster's side. In the precious window Ai Lin had bought, he grabbed a black thread midair with one hand, while the other hand reached into the air, concentrating all his energy, and slowly pulled—

A door appeared. The surface of the gate that materialized out of thin air shimmered with flowing light like a phantom.

Opening a gate out of thin air required much more effort and time than opening a physical door. Yu Sheng had to complete this process in a relatively stable environment. Now, watching the monster's limbs tremble and the black threads begin to slowly crack, even just a few seconds felt like an eternity.

—Although in recent times, his "eternity" hadn't been very long either.

The next second, accompanied by the sound of the door opening, the illusory gate finally swung fully open.

It was larger than any door he had opened before, large enough to toss the entire monster inside.

Blazing firelight burst out from within the doorway, illuminating a wide area around it.

On the other side of the door was a churning lake of lava.

That was the "surprise" Yu Sheng had discovered during his countless door-opening experiments before.

He didn't know what place it was, only that it contained endless molten rock and erupting flames, like a scene from hell.

Entity-Hunger was powerful, but its threat came more from mental contamination and the "hunger" power that was almost a kind of rule. As for its physical "vessel"—compared to the rules, it wasn't particularly tough.

It could be roasted.

If roasting didn't work, then use more firepower.

"Throw it in!"

Yu Sheng yelled to Ai Lin.

"On it!"