Chapter 54: Yu Sheng's Return

The chewing sound that filled the entire valley surged like waves, the whole otherworld now turned into a grand feast, and soon everyone hidden in the cave realized what that sound meant.

Li Lin bravely approached the cave entrance, his scalp tingling as he peeked outside.

Teeth in the mountain ridges were tearing at each other; trenches like giant mouths were collapsing inward, constantly splitting into more fissures, devouring and dissolving one another. The foraging tendrils covering the ground had begun digesting themselves, while massive flesh beasts kept spawning from certain shadows, only to be swallowed by an invisible force in the blink of an eye.

Against the backdrop of this terrifying feast, he saw a figure—Yu Sheng stood in the open space outside the cave, staring absently at the sight of everything devouring itself in the valley.

Li Lin felt a momentary haze, but in a blink he forgot this subtle dissonance—he had already forgotten the scene of Yu Sheng's death, and simply felt as if the other had only briefly left the group.

Hu Li and Ailin, guarding the entrance, also spotted Yu Sheng's figure at once.

"Benefactor! You really didn't die after all!" Hu Li was the first to call out, but then immediately grew anxious, "Benefactor, get in here quick! It's dangerous outside!"

Yu Sheng turned around, hurried a few steps into the cave, muttering under his breath, "I feel like that thing up in the sky, though creepy, doesn't seem to have much aggression..."

Ailin didn't pay attention to his muttering; instead, she anxiously examined him from head to toe. "Are you really okay? Mentally sound?"

"Can't you ever wish me well?!" Yu Sheng glared at the doll. "Was it easy for me to get back here?"

As he spoke, he looked up and glanced outside again. "'Hunger' should be about done for, but I have no idea where that big eyeball in the sky came from. It's not part of 'Entity-Hunger,' and it doesn't even feel like it originally belonged to this valley."

Ailin had been ready with plenty of banter to lighten the mood, but now she froze. "Huh? It's not from this valley?"

"No," Yu Sheng shook his head. Even now, he maintained a subtle connection with this otherworld, so he could still clearly sense that gaze falling from the sky, and the 'boundary' between that eye and the valley. "Right now, all the hunger entities are within my perception. I can clearly tell that eye is an outsider—it's just been 'lying' over this otherworld for many years, replacing the original sky."

Ailin's mouth hung open, seemingly stunned into silence, but then a deep voice came from deep inside the cave, breaking the brief quiet.

"That's an 'Angel.'"

Yu Sheng looked up in surprise and saw the burly man, nearly two meters tall, walking over from deeper in the cave. The blue foxfire cast sharply defined shadows on the man's cheek.

The big man looked Yu Sheng up and down, his expression carrying an unusual gravity and caution. "Did you fall behind earlier?"

Yu Sheng couldn't shake the feeling that the man's gaze was a bit strange, filled with great vigilance and wariness—not exactly hostile, but neither was it the normal concern or curiosity one would show a temporary companion who had 'fallen behind and returned.'

But Yu Sheng didn't dwell on it for now. He was more interested in the odd name the man had just mentioned.

"I couldn't keep up earlier, but don't worry, nothing serious," Yu Sheng waved his hand, then quickly asked, "What do you mean by 'Angel'?"

"More precisely, 'Gloom Angel.' A kind of... dangerous thing of unknown origin. Sometimes it also refers to special phenomena caused by these dangerous individuals," the man said carefully, choosing his words. "Every Gloom Angel is different—in form, ability, and method of appearance. The one occupying the sky right now probably parasitized this otherworld many years ago. It was its influence that caused the entities here to mutate."

Yu Sheng listened in surprise, then quickly realized that this big guy must know even more about the so-called 'Gloom Angel'—there had to be more detailed information.

But the other hadn't revealed everything, whether due to confidentiality or some other concern.

That was normal, though—they didn't know each other. Even though they had fought side by side, they still hadn't introduced themselves. Under these circumstances, sharing intel at all was already a sign of goodwill.

"I'm Yu Sheng," Yu Sheng extended his hand to the man. "These two are Hu Li and Ailin—my friends."

The two-meter-tall man hesitated for a moment, then still reached out and shook Yu Sheng's hand. "Hello. I'm Xu Jiali."

Yu Sheng froze.

After a moment, he opened his mouth. "Uh... I didn't catch that. Your name is...?"

"He said his name is Xu Jiali—same 'Jiali' as in 'beautiful girl,'" the girl in red sitting on a stone bench broke the silence, looking up at Yu Sheng. "Just call me Little Red Riding Hood."

Yu Sheng blinked, then suddenly understood. "Oh, I get it! I can tell you guys are professionals—using code names on the job, right?"

The two-meter man grunted. "Hers is a code name. Mine is my real name."

Yu Sheng: "..."

What could he say? He could only awkwardly remark that the name was actually quite nice and sounded cultured, then his gaze fell on the last young man who hadn't spoken yet.

He felt that face looked familiar, as if he had seen it somewhere before, but he couldn't place it.

Li Lin didn't hesitate. Seeing the attention on him, he walked over openly. "I'm Li Lin."

Before Yu Sheng could respond, Ailin suddenly piped up, "Hey! That name sounds normal!"

Li Lin was speechless for a moment. He looked at the composition of Yu Sheng's group—a fox spirit with a bunch of tails, a doll barely half a meter tall from head to toe, and the three of them combined barely made one human—and they had the nerve to comment on whether other people's names were normal...

But his attention quickly shifted elsewhere.

The chewing sounds from outside the cave were gradually fading, and the tremors that had filled the otherworld seemed to be rapidly subsiding.

Xu Jiali rushed to the cave entrance in a few strides, poked his head out to look, and saw that the valley's appearance had been almost completely transformed.

It was as if from the distant mountains to the nearby valley floor, everything had been gnawed away a layer. Only countless jagged rocks and bare earth remained on the peaks; the distant forest had vanished, and the ground below the slope was covered in deep ravines.

He suddenly turned his head, staring at Yu Sheng, who was standing beside Hu Li.

"Did you... do this?"

Xu Jiali sounded hesitant when he asked. He knew it sounded a bit ridiculous, because the eerie and horrifying scene in the valley didn't look like something a 'person' could do. But his intuition told him it was all related to Yu Sheng's brief 'departure' earlier.

"Sort of," Yu Sheng replied quite readily. He was in a good mood now, filled with the satisfaction of finally having eaten his fill. He nodded cheerfully. "Took quite a bit of effort, though."

Li Lin also saw the scene in the valley now. When he turned back to look at Yu Sheng, the astonishment on his face was beyond words. "...How is that possible..."

Yu Sheng thought about it and decided it was hard to explain clearly to outsiders what had happened—he had been eaten by 'Hunger,' but his own appetite had surpassed 'Hunger's'? A human (?) had spiritually polluted an entity, so the 'Hunger Entity,' having eaten something dirty, had gotten such a massive appetite that it ate itself?

It wasn't just hard to explain—after explaining, it would be hard to tell who was the villain.

Besides, he didn't want these strangers to know too much about him.

"Got lucky. Found the entity's weakness," Yu Sheng said casually. "I don't know the specifics either, but it seems to have triggered a chain reaction of self-devouring among the entities in this valley..."

His explanation was clearly a brush-off, and deliberately obvious at that. Li Lin immediately understood—some things were other people's secrets.

Then Ailin's noisy voice interrupted the doubts in Li Lin and Xu Jiali's minds. "Hey! Is that thing in the sky slowly floating up?"

Yu Sheng hurried over as soon as he heard, poking his head out to look at the sky above the valley.

He saw the giant eye that had covered the entire valley slowly rising, making no sound, like a projection in the sky shrinking. In just a dozen seconds, the giant eye had already shrunk to a third of its original size.

It was rapidly moving away from this place.

Brighter, more normal daylight spread from the distant mountains; the churned clouds reappeared in the sky. Soon the eye became a palm-sized disc floating in the center of the sky, and after another few breaths, the disc completely disappeared from everyone's sight.

"Ran... ran away?" Ailin craned her neck to look at the sky, momentarily at a loss. Then she turned to the two-meter man (Jia? Li?) nearby. "That 'Angel' you mentioned ran away! What do we do?"

Xu Jiali just let out a soft breath. When he heard the doll's question, he forced a smile.

"What else? Celebrate. After we celebrate, I'll go write my report."

(The chapter ends)