The fox-demon girl stared wide-eyed at the heap of things Yu Sheng had set on the ground. For several seconds she stood frozen, seemingly unable to process what was happening—until Yu Sheng popped open a can of eight-treasure porridge and brought the food to her lips.
"Go on, eat. It's all for you—and there's more if that's not enough."
The aroma of food. The real, unmistakable smell of actual nourishment.
Not stone. Not dirt. Not brick, tile, or wood—and not those empty phantoms in dreams that could never fill an empty stomach no matter how hard she imagined.
Hu Li's eyes widened by degrees, and then, as though snapping out of a freeze-frame, she sprang wildly to life. Snatching the can straight from Yu Sheng's hand, she tipped it back and poured the contents down her throat without bothering with a spoon, muffled whimpers and gulps bubbling from her throat the entire time.
A full can vanished down her throat in barely a dozen seconds. She immediately set to licking around the rim, but soon grew agitated when her tongue couldn't reach what remained inside. Just as Yu Sheng moved to help, Hu Li clamped down on the metal with her fingers and wrenched hard. With a screech of tearing metal, she ripped the sturdy can wide open, meticulously peeling it into long, continuous ribbons of tin while licking every stray drop clinging to the surface clean.
"There's more here," Yu Sheng said hastily, rummaging through his pockets to pull out a loaf of bread and a bottle of water. "Slow down, take it easy."
A blur flickered before his eyes, and the food was already in Hu Li's hands.
The fox-demon girl devoured it like a starving beast. For the next stretch of time, eating was the only thing she did. Neither Yu Sheng nor Irene said a word. The only sounds in the ruins were Hu Li's frantic chewing and the occasional muffled noise from her throat—as if she wanted to speak, yet couldn't bear to pause her feast for even a second.
Then, Hu Li began to cry.
Without warning, tears rolled down the fox demon's cheeks. She kept cramming bread into her mouth, not sobbing or wailing aloud, only letting tears stream quietly down her face to soak into the bread before being shoved past her lips.
Yu Sheng was startled by the sight. He hurried to reach out and wipe her grime-streaked face. "Hey, don't cry. You'll swallow air and get a stomachache. Don't cry—there's more, and there'll always be more from now on..."
Only then did Hu Li seem to truly come back to herself, regaining the mental bandwidth to process anything else. She stared blankly at Yu Sheng for a long while before suddenly holding out the remaining half of her bread. "Benefactor... you eat too."
Yu Sheng waved his hands dismissively. "I ate before I came. I'm not hungry."
Hu Li didn't withdraw her arm. She held the pose with quiet stubbornness. Even though every scrap of food had been brought by Yu Sheng just moments ago, she insisted on giving him half of what was in her hands, as though doing so carried some profound significance to her.
At last, Yu Sheng reached out and took the half-eaten bread from her.
A smile broke across the fox-demon girl's face. She grabbed a packet of compressed biscuits from the ground, but this time she did not tear into it ravenously. After opening the wrapper with great care, she nibbled on it in tiny, deliberate bites, as if determined to stretch the act of eating for as long as humanly possible.
She seemed, at long last, not quite so hungry anymore—even if only for the moment.
"Delicious," she whispered softly. "Benefactor, delicious..."
"Don't put 'benefactor' right next to 'delicious,'" Yu Sheng shuddered, a few deeply unsettling possibilities springing to mind. "Just... as long as you can eat your fill."
"Mhm, mhm." Hu Li nodded meekly.
"Finally pulled herself together," Irene chimed in at last. Seeing the fox demon's noticeably stabilized state, she breathed a visible sigh of relief. "It's a miracle you held out this long..."
Hu Li started slightly. Only now did she seem to notice the doll perched on Yu Sheng's shoulder—or rather, only now did she realize this 66.6-centimeter-tall figure could speak and move. Astonishment flooded her features. "This... is alive?!"
Irene's eyes flared wide. "...Well of course I am! What kind of nonsense is that? I even helped you bite open a ham sausage just now!"
"This is Irene, a living doll from Alice's Cottage," Yu Sheng introduced quickly. "She's the helper I mentioned. Don't let her small size fool you—she's remarkably capable. If she hadn't helped me, I wouldn't have been able to reach you in your dream."
Irene cradled her kitchen cleaver in one arm and planted her other fist on her hip, striking a proud, dignified pose atop Yu Sheng's shoulder.
Hu Li pondered this. She had no idea what a living doll was, nor did she understand how such a miniature human figure could talk and move, but she understood that this was her benefactor's friend. After a few seconds of hesitation, she held out her compressed biscuit. "Irene, you eat too."
Irene's haughty posture instantly turned awkward. "Uh... I can't eat that. Dolls don't eat food..."
Hu Li snatched the biscuit back in an instant and went back to nibbling on it.
Irene: "...Hey! You took it back just like that without even insisting once?! That's not how you treated Yu Sheng when you shared your bread!"
"Dolls cannot eat," Hu Li murmured softly. "Giving it to you wastes food."
Irene puffed her cheeks in indignation, but no one paid her any mind.
By this point, Yu Sheng's attention had shifted toward the cold, dark night surrounding them.
He could feel that the atmosphere within the valley was gradually shifting following his arrival. The entity lurking within this foreign domain had become active, provoked by the food he had brought and the fact that Hu Li had temporarily escaped its grip of starvation.
He had come today first to rescue Hu Li, and second to find a way to eliminate the hunger entity entrenched here. Originally, the latter hadn't been an absolute necessity, but now that he had forged a connection with the monster and learned it was gradually learning how to think, he had no choice but to resolve the lurking threat.
Yet for some reason, the monster had not shown itself before his eyes.
A seed of doubt sprouted in Yu Sheng's mind. Just then, a faint sound drifted on the night wind, reaching the ears of everyone present.
It was the distant howl of wolves.
Yu Sheng and Irene exchanged a glance. The latter hesitated. "Yu Sheng, did you hear that?"
"It's wolves. I thought I misheard at first..." Yu Sheng frowned, turning toward Hu Li as she earnestly chewed on her biscuit. "Are there wolves in this place?"
"No, there's only me and that monster here," Hu Li replied, looking equally bewildered. "That's the first time I've ever heard such a strange noise."
Right then, the howl rang out again, cutting off their conversation.
The sound seemed noticeably closer.
A wolf pack was drawing near, either pursuing something or being pursued.
Within the dark, dense woods, a colossal flesh-and-blood giant beast moved like a terrifying nightmare wandering among the trees, constantly shifting positions through the forest shadows. At times it materialized through the light mist; at others it abruptly vanished from sight.
Yet no matter which direction one ran, the creature would reappear nearby in uncanny fashion, launching attacks from bizarre, unforgiving angles.
Wolves formed from shadows, vaulting through the trees to pounce on the flesh beast as it surged through the dark. More wolves swarmed in from every direction, attempting to pin the creature down.
Suddenly, countless tentacles and barbed, bone-like limbs erupted violently from the beast's body. The wolves that had just converged were forced back in an instant, tearing a massive gap in their encirclement.
The beast's myriad eyes locked onto a figure beyond the pack all at once—Little Red Riding Hood, mounted atop the largest wolf, met the creature's dozens of cold gazes with a calm, unblinking stare.
A second later, the middle of the beast's body split wide open. Accompanied by the screech of displaced air, a pitch-black, scaly tongue shot forth like a venomous arrow aimed straight for the girl's throat.
Little Red Riding Hood merely leaned slightly to the side. The instant before the tongue struck, she snapped her right arm upward.
Her slender arm burst apart in a violent explosion, swelling and churning with sizzling flesh. Steam hissed outward as blood and mist entwined in the blink of an eye to form a massive, pitch-black wolf's head—which snapped its jaws shut with brutal force, clamping down hard on the tongue before it could swerve.
The giant beast recoiled in shock, but Little Red Riding Hood held fast in her savage bite. She and the mount beneath her stood as though nailed to the earth, locked in a dead heat with the monster. In that fleeting second of stalemate, another figure leapt from the forest shadows.
Li Lin surged toward the monster's flank like an agile cheetah, a short blade glinting with cold sparks in the night—a spare weapon Xu Jiali had lent him. The monster noticed the sudden ambusher immediately. Several eyes snapped toward him, and a towering claw came sweeping down directly at his skull.
Yet the true ambush was already underway. Mid-stride, Li Lin dropped his posture with inhuman agility, slipping cleanly past the lethal claw. An instant later, another towering silhouette sprang from the monster's blind spot—the burly man, standing nearly two meters tall, hoisted a beam dagger that looked like a short sword in ordinary hands and drove it straight into a fleshy tumor on the creature's back.
With a sharp hiss, the searing blade sank smoothly into the growth, slicing the entire tumor clean off.
The monster unleashed a chaotic, ear-splitting roar. Twisting violently, it shook off the straining Little Red Riding Hood and sent the burly man flying before he could recover his momentum.
Xu Jiali crashed into a thicket of shrubs nearby with a muffled grunt.
Li Lin sprinted to the bushes and hauled his colleague out. Together, they looked back toward the beast.
The creature had vanished without a trace.
The mist in the forest grew steadily thicker. Amid the rolling haze, countless twisted, grotesque phantoms began to sprout, clawing their way out of the soil and swaying gently in the frigid wind.
Shadow upon shadow, endless and infinite.
The entire forest seemed to have transformed into a gaping maw awaiting its meal.
Xu Jiali drew in a sharp breath. "We can't stay here. Keep running for the edge of the woods!"
Chapter 48