Yu Sheng's mind was submerged in a vast, indescribable tide of darkness. The shadow cast by the "true body" of Hunger was of a scale even more staggering than he had imagined—yet such immense proportions felt precisely like the form Hunger ought to take: the greatest, most primordial terror suspended over the heads of all living things, buried deep within their hearts.
Then, in the depths of that shadow, he sensed that slowly drifting, squirming... "entity."
He could hardly describe what it truly was. It seemed to possess countless tentacles and bloated, proliferating masses of flesh, every part of its body constantly shifting form, as though collapsing into new structures or fissures in real time in response to Yu Sheng's gaze. Its surface was pitch-black, yet deep within the tangle of tentacles, shifting colors seemed to lurk, carrying a deranging texture that caused the mind to lose its grip.
The instant Yu Sheng perceived the thing, it perceived him as well.
Before he had any time to react, countless new tentacles and branching structures spread from within it in the blink of an eye. Laden with malice, the tentacles arrived in a flash and coiled violently around Yu Sheng's mind.
Yu Sheng felt ten thousand voices detonate inside his "head." With no way to resist or dodge, an irreversible connection was forged between his mind and something infinitely vaster. The creature shrieked in the depths of his consciousness, transmitting frenzied, terrifying thoughts—yet the next second, Yu Sheng realized that the thing possessed no genuine reason or thought at all.
It was merely a colossal, feral "instinct." The mad thoughts and coaxing delusions he felt were merely tools this massive instinct had mimicked in order to "hunt."
They originated from the living beings it had once devoured—the madness and despair at the end of their starvation, the lingering echoes of its victims' dying wails. All of it converged into the monster's complete malice, allowing what had originally been an aggregate of pure instinct to grow into what it was today, even becoming a powerful "entity" that actively "foraged," actively tempted, and actively drove its prey to ruin.
And it was still growing at a rapid pace. What had once been merely mimicked thinking abilities was gradually turning into its true "thoughts"!
Now, it began attempting to dismantle Yu Sheng's mind, attempting to turn the uninvited guest before it into fresh "nourishment."
The sensation of his mind gradually "dissolving" set in. Yu Sheng felt himself being rapidly "digested," turning into a part of the monster. He strained with all his might to break free from the tentacles binding him, only to find that the harder he struggled, the stronger their grip grew!
Right then, Yu Sheng suddenly sensed something.
He snapped his gaze toward the massive entity squirming in the darkness. In the next second, he saw countless eyes of varying shapes abruptly surface amidst the kaleidoscopic colors deep within that dark void—and one pair of those eyes... was his own.
He felt his vision lurch again. In the darkness, he saw countless tentacles reaching forward, their tips wrapped around a human silhouette that struggled endlessly.
He felt the monster digesting and absorbing him.
He felt himself devouring something.
He was feeding.
He was feeding.
Just as Yu Sheng could barely distinguish where his perspective truly lay, no longer able to tell where the boundary between himself and that monster began or ended, Irene's startled cry suddenly echoed faintly from the depths of the darkness—
"Holy shit?!"
The next second, Yu Sheng felt a violent plunge.
That excruciating experience of an abrupt awakening from before hit him all over again in an instant.
Yu Sheng snapped his eyes open. Fierce stabs of pain, deafening ringing, and aches coursing through his entire body overwhelmed all his senses in a heartbeat. Rolling over, he braced himself against the nightstand and retched violently, feeling as though he might throw up his very heart, yet nothing came out. Only after a protracted dozen-odd seconds did the terrible aftereffects finally begin to recede.
Leaning heavily on the nightstand, Yu Sheng struggled to push himself up. He saw the faint morning light filtering into the room through the curtains, and the doll carrying the picture frame sitting on his bed, her tiny face filled with immense unease and tension.
"Are you okay?! Is that still you?" Irene scrambled over on all fours, grabbing Yu Sheng's arm and shaking it frantically. "Do you still remember who I am?"
"Stop shaking, stop shaking, my head is still spinning... God, why does my whole body hurt..." Yu Sheng hastily cut the doll off. "I'm awake, Irene. I'm fine."
Irene stared at Yu Sheng wide-eyed for several seconds before finally letting go. "You scared me to death! You, you, you... you were suddenly like a corpse! All mental response vanished! And then you suddenly came back to life with your whole mind in total chaos! I didn't even know what on earth I was waking up! You scared me half to death! Absolutely to death!"
Irene repeated that she had been scared to death several times, clearly having been frightened out of her wits. But Yu Sheng hardly had the energy to comfort the little doll. The immense shock from forging a deep link with "Hunger" still lingered at the bottom of his heart, almost like a colossal shadow refusing to fade. Yu Sheng struggled to shake off its influence, leaning against the headboard and gasping for breath for a long time before his head finally cleared completely.
"Irene, that thing is dangerous," he said.
The little doll stood on Yu Sheng's stomach. "Of course I know it's dangerous! I told you from the very beginning that it was dangerous!"
"No, I mean it's far more dangerous than you realized—it's about to genuinely learn how to think."
Irene stared blankly, freezing in place.
"It only had instinct at first. It was only after devouring countless minds that it learned how to coerce and manipulate," Yu Sheng said, leaning against the headboard as he looked into Irene's eyes. "Crude, simple slaughter yields only limited 'nourishment.' Driving a mind mad through manipulation and torment yields staggering 'nutrition.' That thing didn't understand that at the start; it learned gradually. And now... it's on the verge of developing genuine thought processes."
A trace of dread finally crept onto Irene's face, but in the next instant, she suddenly caught onto something else.
"How do you know that?!" The doll lunged forward, her face almost pressed against the tip of Yu Sheng's nose. "You..."
"...I established a deep link with that thing, far deeper than we originally planned," Yu Sheng did not hide it. "For a moment, I felt like I had actually become a part of that monster... And so, in the depths of the darkness, I saw its most primitive form, as well as the secret behind its continuous growth."
"Holy... holy shit!" Irene practically leapt into the air, followed by a torrential storm of curses. "I told you this wouldn't work! I told you it was too dangerous! Nobody knew what would happen, yet you insisted on trying! What do we do, what do we do, what do we do... We're totally screwed! It definitely took root! You weren't just targeted, you were chewed on by it! 'Hunger' has definitely taken root in your mind, aaaaaah—we're doomed! It's all-over!"
The little doll's frantic commotion grew louder and louder as she scuttled wildly all over the bed and Yu Sheng's stomach. Yu Sheng tried to interrupt her several times to no avail, until finally he had to grab her and hoist her into midair to quiet her down. "Calm down, Irene. Just calm down."
"Calm down, my ass! 'Hunger' has already taken root in your mind! Aren't you even a little nervous?!" Irene dangled in midair, swinging back and forth. "It'll grow in your mind, getting bigger and bigger, and then—*bam*! You'll be done for! Even if you hide in the real world, it won't matter! Do you have any idea what kind of state you're in right now... Don't give me that talk about resurrecting! This thing took root in your mind! Your body can be renewed, but can your mind? Are you certain dying and coming back to life can shake off this kind of 'rooting'?!"
Yu Sheng knew all of this, of course, yet for reasons he couldn't explain, there wasn't the slightest sense of impending doom in his heart, as if his life weren't ticking down at all. Even his "spiritual intuition," which had grown increasingly sharp lately, gave him no warning whatsoever.
He understood the danger on an intellectual level, but an abnormal calm filled his heart.
Still, he knew he couldn't let that calm show too plainly, or Irene would only lose her mind even more.
"As long as we eliminate 'Hunger' before then... I mean, kill the 'entity instance' that's affecting me, everything will be fine, right?" Yu Sheng tried to divert Irene's attention. "The part that took root will take some time to erupt. We still have time."
"Time... right, there's still time! Quick, we have to hurry!" Sure enough, Irene's attention was instantly diverted, and only then did she belatedly realize she was being held in midair. "Put me down! Put me down right now! We're leaving immediately to go take out that 'entity instance'! Yes, yes, right now, while you still don't feel anything..."
Yu Sheng let out a soft sigh, set Irene back down on the bed, and prepared to get up.
Yet the moment he made a larger movement, waves of soreness and pain surged from every bone and limb, making him suck in a sharp breath of cold air.
"Hiss! Why does it hurt so much..." Yu Sheng looked down at himself in bewilderment. "I clearly remember the aftereffects of that 'abrupt awakening' faded very quickly last time... and my body didn't hurt back then. Why do I feel like I've been beaten up...?"
As he spoke, the doll beside him, who had been frantic only a second ago, suddenly fell silent. Irene began inching stealthily toward the foot of the bed, muttering in a low voice, "S-Sometimes an 'abrupt awakening' can produce some physical aftereffects too, you know..."
"Wait!" Yu Sheng suddenly realized something and yanked up his sleeve. "I *was* beaten up—there are bite marks on my arm!"
By now, Irene had reached the foot of the bed. "You grind your teeth in your sleep! You bit yourself!"
"You're telling me I gave myself bite marks this small?!"
"I was just trying to wake you up! If conventional methods don't work, of course I had to use unconventional ones!"
Standing at the foot of the bed with her hands on her hips, Irene spoke with absolute self-righteousness. Then, she turned, jumped onto the floor, and bolted out the door at full speed!
Chapter 45