Chapter 52: Connection
The moment he heard those four words, Li Lin felt as if his blood had run cold.
A moment ago, he had been feeling sorry for Yu Sheng, who had been killed by a monster ambush, but the next second, he realized he might not outlive him by much.
“How can this be… the files never mentioned a Dim Angel parasitizing this place…” Li Lin muttered to himself. Under the cold gaze from the sky, he felt more and more noise churning in his mind. “How…”
“Sleeping state, each Dim Angel has different characteristics… This is even worse than fighting the Angel Cultists in the wasteland!” Xu Jiali couldn’t help cursing. He couldn’t figure out how his perfectly normal business trip back, a relaxed observation mission in the borderlands, had suddenly taken a nosedive into this mess.
Everything had caught him off guard—falling into a different realm, suddenly seeing the “Door-Opening Stranger” he’d once met on that wasteland planet, finding a half-meter-tall puppet and a fox spirit that looked like it had been exiled for a century standing beside him, and before they could even exchange a few words, that mysterious “Door-Opening Stranger” had dropped dead right before his eyes. The puppet’s reaction was absurd too, and then came more Hungering Entities, and a Dim Angel appearing in the sky…
All the imagination he’d mustered in his entire life couldn’t simulate this cursed chain of events today!
The wolves growled uneasily around them. The shadowy wolves circled nearby, and the stare from that cold eyeball in the sky put even these bizarre creatures under immense pressure and fear. Yet Little Red Riding Hood, riding one of the wolves, frowned. “Strange… why aren’t those monsters coming over?”
Erin, held in Hu Li’s arms, was startled and then noticed the abnormality.
The flesh behemoths gathered around the ruined temple were still roaring and prowling in chaos, but strangely, quite some time had passed, and not a single one had stepped forward. None attacked.
The cold single eye floating in the sky merely watched silently, showing no intention of taking further action.
“I think we’d better take this chance to run,” Li Lin broke the silence. “Don’t think about why these monsters are hesitating right now.”
Little Red Riding Hood cut him off, speaking calmly. “Run where?”
The cold eye in the sky watched every inch of the valley, and the whole domain was changing as if it were alive. Under that gaze, the thought of escape shattered instantly against the despair of having nowhere to go.
But then Erin seemed to remember something. She lifted her head from Hu Li’s arms. “You said before that something similar happened? The day the immortal died, your parents hid you in a cave?”
Hu Li froze, then nodded hastily.
“Where is that cave?!”
Hu Li finally snapped to attention. Holding Erin, she turned and ran. “I remember! It’s near the back mountain. I’ll take you there!”
But suddenly, she stopped, hesitating as she looked at Yu Sheng’s body on the ground.
His eyes were still open, looking quite unwilling to die.
“What… what about Benefactor?” the fox-eared girl asked, at a loss.
She knew Yu Sheng could “die and come back to life,” but she didn’t know the details. During their last meeting, time was limited, and Yu Sheng hadn’t had a chance to explain much.
“Just leave him there. Don’t worry,” Erin said immediately. She had talked a lot with Yu Sheng and clearly knew more than the fox. “He’ll disappear in a bit. He has a way to find me.”
Hu Li stared blankly, then nodded woodenly.
Erin then remembered something else and quickly added, “Oh, right, where’s my kitchen knife… Ah, over there on the ground. Help me pick it up. And first, hang the painting on me—I can’t be separated from this painting… Is the knife damaged? Good. If it’s lost, he’ll definitely blame me when he gets back—forget the corpse, it’s useless…”
The little puppet rattled off orders while the fox girl, dazed, carried them out. Li Lin and his two companions watched, finding it all extremely bizarre. They saw Hu Li carefully pick up the kitchen knife—the kind that would cost at most a hundred yuan in a supermarket—but completely ignore their companion’s body. After holding back for a while, Little Red Riding Hood couldn’t help asking, “You’re just leaving him here?!”
Erin poked her head out from Hu Li’s arms. “It’s hard to run while carrying him!”
Little Red Riding Hood opened her mouth as if to say something more, but was interrupted by a rumbling from deep in the valley.
The mountain in the distance split open. Countless pitch-black boulders tumbled from the summit, and in the widening fissures, flesh sprouted from the mountain itself. Teeth ground against the rock, producing a chilling roar.
The forest shook. Tall trees fell as if shedding a disguise, and from where they collapsed, countless tentacles armed with teeth grew, roaring in unison.
And the enormous beasts that had been prowling around the ruined temple, stuck in that eerie sluggishness, seemed stimulated and began stirring restlessly.
Seeing this, Erin let out a yelp and used her stump of an arm to slap Hu Li’s shoulder. “Mom! Time to run! We’re getting out of here. You three can follow or not!”
No sooner had Erin spoken than Hu Li turned and dashed toward the rear of the ruined temple, sprinting toward a gap at the bottom of the valley.
Li Lin and the others exchanged glances. Their minds were full of question marks, but at this point, there was only one choice.
They quickly caught up to the fleeing fox, running full speed toward some kind of “refuge.”
Little Red Riding Hood looked back one last time at the spot where Yu Sheng had fallen.
She gritted her teeth. One of the wolves in her pack broke away and charged toward Yu Sheng’s remains.
But as soon as that wolf had run a few steps, it stopped as if it had suddenly forgotten its mission, circled on the spot for two seconds, then turned back and returned to the pack.
Little Red Riding Hood didn’t turn back. She simply drove the wolves forward, protecting the others while following the silver-haired fox spirit ahead.
She had already forgotten the pool of blood left behind.
Meanwhile, around the ruined temple, the restless flesh behemoths had gradually quieted down again.
These entities spawned from “Hunger” seemed confused. They stood among the rubble, their malformed eyes scanning everywhere, their hideous limbs waving aimlessly. Their huge mouths opened, filled with jagged teeth, emitting indistinct murmurs like sleep talk.
Then, suddenly, those murmurs merged into a clear word—
“Smells good.”
A will was speaking through their mouths.
Smells good.
Should feed.
The behemoths swayed. The eyes that had been scanning blindly gradually stopped moving. One by one, they steadied, their gazes falling on each other.
Feed. Not out of hunger.
The all-devouring, the supreme… feed. Yes. Now was the time to feed.
And then, cold tranquility and merciful eternity—because it was ultimately the all-devouring, the ultimate fairness and the end.
The first flesh behemoth moved. It staggered over to another entity. No fancy attack. It simply opened the largest mouth on its body and bit down greedily.
The one being bitten did not dodge or even cry out.
As if it didn’t even realize it was being devoured by its own “kind,” the monster just swayed and walked toward the nearest entity, while its “fellow” was still gnawing on its body.
None of the “Entity-Hunger” attempted to chase the escaping prey. It was as if, in some moment, their essence had changed. Drawing power from hunger had become unimportant. Sublime feeding was now their sole mission.
In the center of the ruined temple, the last traces of blood left from Yu Sheng’s death were slowly seeping into the soil. Where the blood spread, the color of the earth gradually changed—slowly at first, but accelerating, unstoppable.
Yet the cold giant eye floating in the sky seemed utterly indifferent to these changes on the ground. It hung high above, its enormous pupil betraying no hint of emotion or thought comprehensible to humans. It continued to observe the valley. Its scale was so vast that from the ground, it was impossible to determine where its “focus” actually lay.
If that transcendent gaze even had a “focus.”
But Yu Sheng felt that focus. Because that gaze was now fixed on him.
After floating in the darkness for a while, an indescribable sense of “connection” jolted him awake. At first, he thought he had revived, but soon realized he was still “dead.” Only this time, the “death” seemed different from before.
He found he had an extra “perspective” in the darkness. At first, it baffled him—the strange viewing angle and layered, overlapping information left his mind in chaos. But gradually, he understood one thing.
He was using this “domain’s” gaze to return the stare from the sky.
He had established a connection with this valley.