The colossal eye departed, soundless in its leave-taking, revealing not a single secret.
Those inside the cave looked at one another, none quite knowing what to do. The eerie eyeball's oppressive presence had been so staggering that even now, with it gone, a lingering tremor of dread and disbelief remained in everyone's chest.
"Did it really just leave like that?" Irene muttered to herself, thoroughly unsettled. "Could it just be hiding behind the clouds?"
Yu Sheng shook his head. "It really has 'left'—at least, it's no longer in this foreign domain."
He was certain of this, for he could clearly sense that the "gaze" that had blanketed the valley all this time had indeed vanished.
"Why, though?" Irene continued to grumble. "What on earth did that thing come here for? It hid here for so long, woke up all of a sudden to scare everyone, messed with the entities here, and now it just up and leaves... What was it after?"
Yu Sheng thought for a moment. "Maybe it was just resting here, and now that it's had enough rest, it moved on."
Irene stared blankly at him, eyeing him with a hint of suspicion. "R-really?"
Now it was Yu Sheng's turn to be astonished—she actually bought that?!
"No one knows what a Murky Angel's purpose is," Xu Jiali's voice cut in from the side, breaking up the pointless discussion between Yu Sheng and Irene. "In fact, we can't even be sure they have any concept of 'purpose' at all. The appearance of these things has always been random. Sometimes it takes an immense cost to drive them away, and other times... they leave on their own before long. Trying to analyze the actions of a Murky Angel is meaningless. We should count ourselves lucky that this eye wasn't one of the more active ones."
Yu Sheng murmured an acknowledgment, rubbing his chin in thought. Just then, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Li Lin watching the situation outside from the cave entrance.
That inexplicable sense of familiarity welled up from deep inside again. Yu Sheng couldn't help but frown, memories stirring in his mind, until suddenly a scene flashed across his recollection—
"Wait! Have we met before?" Yu Sheng suddenly snapped to attention, staring wide-eyed at Li Lin. "Recently, I definitely have! Where was it... the convenience store, right, the convenience store!"
He stepped forward two paces, scrutinizing Li Lin's nondescript face from head to toe—a face that blended into any crowd and couldn't be recalled without straining one's memory—and this time it finally aligned perfectly with his recollection. "You bought a case of instant noodles, didn't you?"
The corner of Li Lin's mouth twitched. He had known the moment Yu Sheng recognized him, but he showed no panic or surprise whatsoever—because back when they first met in the ruins of the ruined temple, he too had recognized Yu Sheng's face.
Although they had only brushed past each other once in that convenience store, as a professionally trained operative of the Special Affairs Bureau, his memory and observation skills were far superior to ordinary people's.
It had only been a matter of time before they recognized each other.
Seeing Li Lin's reaction, Yu Sheng instantly connected the dots. Dawn began to break upon him, and his gaze swept over to Xu Jiali beside him, then to Little Red Riding Hood resting not far away.
"Where on earth are you people from?" Yu Sheng asked, his brows knitting slightly.
"Allow me to properly introduce myself," Li Lin sighed, straightening up and pointing to himself. "Li Lin, operative of the Second Operations Brigade, Special Affairs Bureau, under the Boundary Council."
Xu Jiali walked over as well, adjusting his posture and speaking in a muffled voice: "Attached Special Operations Unit of the Second Operations Brigade, senior deep diver, Xu Jiali—and yes, that really is my real name."
Yu Sheng's mouth hung open. After staring dumbfounded for a long moment, he turned his head to look at Little Red Riding Hood, who looked just like a high school girl. "So you're with that Special Affairs whatever too..."
"I'm not," Little Red Riding Hood replied, crossing her arms and jutting her chin toward Xu Jiali. "I'm child labor they hired."
Yu Sheng blinked, looking at Xu Jiali in astonishment. "Your organization hires child labor?"
"Child labor my foot!" Xu Jiali glared at Little Red Riding Hood. "Holiday job! Couldn't you at least call it a work-study program?!"
Yu Sheng felt as if his brain had turned to mush. His first reaction was to wonder if high schoolers in the boundary zone were all this hardcore, doing work-study jobs over the holidays that involved running into foreign domains to shoot it out with monsters. His second reaction was that he had finally met the "professionals" Irene had mentioned, though their style was nothing like what he had imagined. And as for his third reaction...
"So you came for me?" Yu Sheng looked at the three "professionals" before him, feeling as though many things had finally clicked into place. "You followed me all the way into this foreign domain just to find me?"
He hadn't expected that the moment the words left his mouth, Xu Jiali and Li Lin would heave a simultaneous, long sigh. Even Little Red Riding Hood let out a sigh and hung her head, dropping her hands from her arms to cover her face instead.
Xu Jiali pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it with a face full of sorrow, smoking down a third of it in a single drag.
"If we had a choice, we wouldn't have wanted to either—this wasn't our plan to begin with..."
Yu Sheng: "?"
He could tell the burly man before him wasn't very happy, and upon reflection, he didn't dare ask more.
Fortunately, however, things here were finally settled—many questions remained, but they could all be sorted out after everyone safely returned to the mortal world.
Irene transferred from Hu Li's embrace back onto Yu Sheng, who carefully cradled the pitiful little doll as he became the first to walk out of the shelter of the cave.
"It's completely quiet now," Irene said, perched on Yu Sheng's shoulder, wrapping her broken arms around his head as she gazed into the valley's depths with an expression of wonder and disbelief. "...A total mess."
"Yeah, a total mess, but at least Entity-Hunger is gone," Yu Sheng agreed, nodding as he looked at the valley whose very top layer of earth had been entirely gnawed away. "...By the way, will that thing appear again later?"
"Yes. As long as the foreign domain exists, the entity will reappear. And foreign domains never disappear—even if you bombed it ten thousand times over, it would still restore itself," Irene said softly, holding his head. "Only... this time, it will probably take a long time."
"Time to get out of this place." Yu Sheng let out a long breath. Now that Entity-Hunger had temporarily vanished, even the air in the valley seemed noticeably fresher. A brisk wind blew in from afar, and bright daylight had dispelled the eternal night that once hung here. Despite the fractured and ruined scene before his eyes, he felt a wave of relief wash over him. "Hu Li, how are you feeling now?"
The fox-demon girl had been following closely behind Yu Sheng. Hearing him, she immediately looked up. "I'm... great! Not cold, not hungry anymore—I ate my fill just now!"
As Hu Li spoke, she beamed happily, smiling for the first time without any burden, bright as sunshine.
Yu Sheng smiled back, reaching a hand out beside him. "Then let's go home."
Yet just as he was about to pull open a door to take them home, Hu Li took an unprompted step forward and gently caught his sleeve.
Yu Sheng paused in confusion, looking at the fox-demon girl before him.
"Are you worried about the food you left behind in the ruined temple? It was probably ruined by Entity-Hunger, but did you still want to go back for it?"
Hu Li nodded gently, but then immediately shook her head.
"Benefactor, I want to go to a place. I..."
She spoke hesitantly, seeming worried that she was asking too much, or that what she wanted to do was overly willful, looking terribly torn.
Looking at the hesitant fox-demon girl, Yu Sheng didn't understand what she wanted at first. But suddenly, he remembered the scene he had witnessed deep within Hu Li's dream.
After a moment of silence and consideration, Yu Sheng nodded. "I understand. Is it in those woods?"
Hu Li looked up in surprise, meeting Yu Sheng's eyes.
Then she gave a slight nod.
Li Lin and the other two were completely in the dark, casting questioning looks at Yu Sheng. Yu Sheng didn't explain in detail, merely waving a hand at them. "Don't worry, I have a way to send everyone back in a bit. But wait a moment first—I need to accompany Hu Li to a place. If you're not at ease, just come along."
"Let's go together, then," Xu Jiali was the first to agree with a nod. "Looks like this girl has been here for a long time. She probably has some unfinished business to take care of before leaving. I understand."
The group left the back mountain, bypassed the ruined temple that was now even more dilapidated than before—little more than a few crumbling walls—and crossed the rocky beach at the valley floor, which was crisscrossed with gullies and fissures, finally arriving at what had once been the small grove of woods.
The woods had vanished long ago. The dark, mutated plants had all been devoured during the earlier feast, leaving behind only a pitch-black wasteland pocked with pits of varying sizes and suspicious black debris.
"Is it here?" Yu Sheng glanced at Hu Li beside him and asked in a low voice.
"Mm," Hu Li nodded slowly. "Mom and Dad are right here."
Only then did Irene finally understand why Yu Sheng had followed Hu Li here.
The little doll's eyes widened. She recalled the scene deep within Hu Li's dream—the seductive whispers, the memories blurred between truth and illusion, and the apparitions amidst the freezing cold and starvation. For some reason, a wave of unease washed over her, and the pits of all sizes scattered all around made that unease swell rapidly.
"M-maybe they can't be found anymore!" she couldn't help saying, deliberately speaking in a loud voice. "A whole layer of the ground was chewed away! Maybe they were already taken by those tentacles that burst from the earth—"
Yet Hu Li merely shook her head, cutting Irene off.
"No, I buried them very deep," she said firmly. "Mom and Dad told me to bury them a bit deeper. I buried them very deep."
Chapter 55