Connection

The moment he heard those four words, Li Lin felt his blood run cold. Just a moment ago, he had been mourning Yu Sheng's sudden death from the monster's sneak attack; the next, he felt he might not outlive him by much. "How can this be... The records never mentioned a Murky Angel infesting this place..." Li Lin mumbled to himself. Under that cold gaze from the sky, he felt a rising din of chaotic static surging into his mind. "How could this happen..." "Dormant state... Every Murky Angel has different traits... Fucking hell, I'd rather go back to trading shots with those Angel cultists on the wasteland!" Xu Jiali couldn't help letting fly a stream of curses. He couldn't fathom how his routine return from an official mission—a relaxing little stakeout in the boundary zone—had taken a nosedive straight into this absolute hellhole. Everything had defied his expectations: plunging into a foreign domain out of nowhere, running into that "door-opening eccentric" he had met once on that wasteland planet, finding him accompanied by a half-meter-tall doll and a fox demon who looked as though she had been exiled for a century. Before they could exchange two words, the mysterious door-opening eccentric had dropped dead right before his eyes without fanfare. The doll's reaction was absurd beyond belief, followed by even more Entity-Hunger beasts, and now a Murky Angel had popped up in the sky... All the imagination he had possessed in his entire life couldn't have simulated such a cursed string of events! Restless low growls rose from the wolves all around. Shadows shaped into wolves prowled in circles. The cold stare of the celestial eye pressed down upon even these uncanny creatures with immense dread and fear. Yet Little Red Riding Hood, astride one of the wolves, knitted her brows. "...Strange. Why aren't those monsters coming closer?" Irene, nestled in Hu Li's arms, blinked in surprise before noticing the abnormality as well. The giant flesh beasts gathered around the ruined temple were still roaring and prowling chaotically. Strangely, though some time had passed, not a single monster stepped forward; not one launched an attack. The cold, solitary eye floating in the sky merely observed in silence, showing no intention of making a further move. "I think we'd better run while we have the chance," Li Lin broke the silence. "Never mind why these monsters are spacing out." Little Red Riding Hood cut him off, asking calmly, "Run where?" The indifferent eye in the sky gazed upon every inch of the valley, and the entire foreign domain was shifting as if coming alive. Under that gaze, any thought of fleeing was instantly crushed by the despair of having nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. Just then, Irene seemed to remember something. She tilted her head up from Hu Li's embrace. "Didn't you say something like this happened before? On the day the immortal died, it was like this too, and your parents hid you in a cave?" Hu Li froze for a second, then nodded frantically. "Where is that cave?!" Hu Li finally came to her senses. Holding Irene close, she turned to leave. "I remember! It's near the back mountain—I'll take you there!" Yet suddenly, she halted, hesitating as she looked down at Yu Sheng's corpse on the ground. Her benefactor's eyes were still open, looking thoroughly unresigned in death. "Benefactor... what about Benefactor?" the fox-demon girl asked, at a complete loss. Although she knew about Yu Sheng's resurrection trick, she didn't know many details; during their brief time together before, Yu Sheng hadn't had the chance to explain much. "Just leave him here, don't worry about it," Irene said immediately. Having spent plenty of time talking with Yu Sheng, she clearly knew far more than the fox did. "It'll disappear in a bit anyway. He has a way to find me." Hu Li was taken aback, then nodded blankly. Then Irene remembered something else and quickly added, "Oh right, where's my kitchen cleaver from earlier... Ah, over there on the ground, help me pick it up. Hey, hang the oil painting on me first—I can't be separated from this painting... The cleaver isn't damaged, right? As long as it's not broken. If I lose that thing, he'll definitely nag me when he comes back—forget the corpse, it's useless..." The little doll rattled off instructions in rapid fire, and the naive fox-demon girl carried them out in a daze. Beside them, Li Lin's trio watched in sheer bewilderment. They watched Hu Li tenderly retrieve a kitchen cleaver that wouldn't fetch more than a hundred yuan at a supermarket, completely disregarding their companion's remains on the ground. After choking on her words for a while, Little Red Riding Hood finally couldn't take it anymore: "You're just going to leave him here?!" Irene poked her head out of Hu Li's arms. "It's hard to make a run for it carrying a corpse!" Little Red Riding Hood parted her lips, about to say something, but was interrupted by a rumble echoing from the depths of the valley. The distant mountains fractured. Countless pitch-black boulders rolled down from the peaks, and within the widening fissures, flesh and blood actually sprouted from the rock, sharp teeth grinding against stone with a bloodcurdling roar. The woods trembled. Trees fell one after another, as if sloughing off a disguise. Countless fanged tentacles burst forth from where the trees had stood, shrieking in unison. And the giant beasts that had been pacing around the ruined temple, trapped in that bizarre torpor, seemed to be provoked, stirring with restless agitation. At the sight, Irene cried out in alarm, lifting her stump of an arm to slap Hu Li's shoulder urgently. "Holy crap! We can't stay here! We're leaving—you three over there, follow if you want!" As Irene's voice fell, Hu Li had already turned with Irene in her arms and dashed behind the ruined temple, sprinting toward a gap at the bottom of the valley. Li Lin's trio exchanged glances. Though their minds were brimming with questions, they were left with only one choice. They quickly took off after the fleeing fox, sprinting toward that "shelter." Little Red Riding Hood looked back one last time toward where Yu Sheng had fallen. Gritting her teeth, she signaled one wolf from the pack to break formation and dash toward Yu Sheng's remains. Yet after only a few strides, the wolf stopped as if suddenly forgetting its mission. It lingered in place for two seconds before turning around and rejoining the pack beside Little Red Riding Hood. Little Red Riding Hood did not look back again. She simply spurred her wolves into a dead sprint, guarding the rest of the group while keeping pace with the silver-haired fox demon ahead. She had already forgotten the pool of blood left behind. Meanwhile, around the ruined temple, the agitated giant flesh beasts had gradually quieted down once more at some point. These entities derived from "Hunger" seemed lost in confusion. Standing amidst the crumbling walls and rubble, their malformed, proliferating eyes scanned in all directions. Hideous, deformed limbs waved aimlessly through the air, and massive jaws parted, muttering incoherent, dreamlike murmurs through rows of serrated teeth. Suddenly, amid the beasts' garbled mutterings, a clear word emerged: "So fragrant." A will was speaking through their mouths. So fragrant. Time to feed. The giant beasts swayed. The eyes that had been scanning about blindly gradually ceased their erratic rolling. One by one, they steadied, their gazes fixing upon one another. Feeding—yet not out of hunger. That which devours all, which stands above all... feeding. Yes, now was the time to feed. And after that, cold serenity and merciful eternity—for in the end, it devoured everything, the ultimate fairness and finality. The first giant flesh beast moved. It lumbered toward another entity. Without any flashy attack, it simply opened the largest mouth on its body and took a ravenous bite. The one being bitten did not dodge, nor did it cry out. As if completely oblivious to the fact that it was being devoured by its own kind, the monster merely swayed as it stepped forward, carrying its devouring fellow upon its back, and strode toward the entity nearest to it. Not a single Entity-Hunger attempted to chase the prey that had escaped. It was as if, at some point just moments ago, their very nature had changed—drawing strength from hunger had ceased to matter; noble feeding had become their sole purpose. At the center of the ruined temple, the last trace of blood left by Yu Sheng's demise was slowly seeping into the dirt. Wherever the bloodstains spread, the soil gradually changed color—slow at first, then quickening, irresistible. Yet the cold, colossal eye floating in the sky seemed entirely unconcerned with what was unfolding on the ground. It hung high above, its gargantuan eyeball devoid of any emotion or thought fathomable to humans. It continuously observed the valley; its scale was so immense that, from the perspective of the ground, one could not even tell where its gaze was focused— —if that transcendent gaze truly possessed a "focal point" at all. Yet Yu Sheng felt this "focus," because the focal point of that gaze was now fixed upon him. After drifting in the dark for a time, an ineffable sensation of "connection" jolted him awake. At first, he thought he had revived, but soon realized he was still in a state of "death"—only this "death" seemed different from before. He discovered an extra layer of "perspective" within the darkness. Initially, this perspective bewildered him; the strange viewing angle and overlapping layers of sensory data threw his thoughts into chaos. But gradually, he realized something. He was answering the celestial gaze with the eyes of this "foreign domain." He had established a connection with this valley.