Chapter 15: Trapped Here

When he heard the pronunciation of her name, Yu Sheng's first reaction was that this girl was incredibly blunt—how could she just take "Fox" as her actual name? It wasn't until he asked several more times that he finally understood she was saying "Hu Li," not "Fox."

Her name was Hu Li, a name that was... a bit strange, but quite fitting for someone with that many tails.

"My name is Yu Sheng," Yu Sheng said, sitting with Hu Li amidst the ruins of the dilapidated temple as he introduced his origins. "I came from... uh, I don't know if you'll understand, but I came from 'the outside.' Not the outside of the valley, but the outside."

"You really came from 'the outside'!" Hu Li's eyes instantly widened. She seemed to understand the meaning of his words immediately, and the look of shock on her face carried a deeper implication: she knew of the existence of "the outside"!

Hu Li took another quick, restrained bite of chocolate, staring wide-eyed at Yu Sheng's face. "How... how did you get in? Do you know... the way out? Is it... in the sky?"

As she conversed with Yu Sheng, Hu Li's speech gradually became more fluid, as if she were rapidly regaining her ability to communicate with others.

Yu Sheng froze upon hearing her words. "The sky? Why do you ask that?"

"The Immortal said before dying, that we... all came from the sky. But then the sky suddenly went dark, and we... couldn't go back," Hu Li struggled to organize her thoughts. Although her speech had become smoother, she still stumbled over these longer passages. "Then, the ground became more and more dangerous, it started to become poisonous, so... many of the people who came together died, and we couldn't go back..."

Yu Sheng listened, stunned, relying almost entirely on his powerful imagination to make sense of the girl's jumbled descriptions. He realized that this valley, which Irene had simply categorized as an "Exotic Land," seemed to hide a complex story, and the multi-tailed girl before him possessed an even more inconceivable origin.

She was trapped here too!

However, when he tried to ask where "the sky" actually was, who the "many people" she mentioned were, and how they had specifically arrived here, her answers became incoherent once again.

"The sky... is just the sky. I've been trying all these years to go back to the sky, but I can't," Hu Li explained with frantic gestures. "I try to jump high, but I hit something, and it hurts. Everyone... they don't remember anymore. There was Father, Mother, the Immortal, and... and others. We came down on a boat, a very big boat..."

At this point, Hu Li seemed to suddenly recall something else, pointing her finger toward a certain direction deep within the dark valley. "Right over there. The boat fell down and became part of the mountains. Father always wanted to go back to get things, but later... everyone was killed by something, so no one knew how to... get into the boat."

The things Hu Li was saying began to sound eerie and terrifying; Yu Sheng felt a sudden chill run down his spine.

He did his best to understand what she was saying—setting aside the specific concept of "Immortal" and the nature of "the sky," he pieced together a fragmented truth from her disjointed narrative

Hu Li, her family, and those called "Immortals" had arrived in this valley many years ago on a large vessel—most likely a massive vehicle capable of flight. However, the valley must not have been a "dead land" back then. Later, the "sky suddenly went dark," an unknown environmental cataclysm occurred, causing the area to become sealed off, trapping those who arrived with the ship. Subsequently, the survivors suffered a devastating blow, being attacked by a powerful enemy that nearly wiped them all out.

The process was incredibly brutal, leaving Hu Li as the sole survivor.

But Yu Sheng knew these were merely stories he had pieced together through sheer mental effort. Hu Li's words were rambling, and much of her memory contained obvious gaps and chaotic perceptions based on her own perspective. The true truth was something even she likely could not understand or recall.

The girl's cognitive state was profoundly abnormal.

"How long have you been trapped here?" he couldn't help but ask.

"I don't know, just... a long time," Hu Li shook her head slowly, carefully cradling the half-piece of chocolate in her hands. "Nothing ever... changes here. I don't know how to count the days. When I'm hungry, I pass out, and when I wake up, it feels like a long time has passed..."

Yu Sheng's brow furrowed. Looking at her tattered clothing and connecting it to her chaotic experiences, he realized she had likely been trapped here far longer than he imagined—at least for years.

"How have you survived all these years?" he asked instinctively, frowning. "What do you eat? Just scavenging through trash in the temple? But there doesn't seem to be anything edible here..."

"There is no... food," Hu Li shook her head again. "In the forest... there are occasionally fruits, but they are poisonous. If you eat them, you pass out. Aside from water, most things here are poisonous, so most of the time, I'm just hungry."

As she spoke, Hu Li slowly began to smile, pointing to herself with a hint of pride. "Monsters are very strong. Hunger won't kill a monster, it's just... an unpleasant feeling, being hungry."

She seemed to be recalling a terrible memory, her smile crumpling, before she suddenly stood up and ran a short distance away. She scavenged through the rubble to retrieve that bag of kitchen scraps—clutching the bag of leftover rice and rotten vegetables to her chest like a precious treasure.

"It's still edible," she said earnestly to Yu Sheng.

Yu Sheng opened his mouth but didn't know what to say. He wished he could pull out mountains of food or even open a door back to the modern world, but he could barely look after himself right now.

"Benefactor..." Hu Li spoke up suddenly.

Yu Sheng blinked, momentarily confused. "What did you call me?"

"Benefactor," Hu Li repeated with a serious expression. "Mother said that someone who helps you with a great deal is a Benefactor. You gave me food."

Yu Sheng waved it off. "...That title is a bit strange. Just call me Yu Sheng, I'm used to it."

"Oh, okay, Bene..." Hu Li mumbled, letting the title trail off. She then pointed at Yu Sheng's finger, her head drooping. "I'm sorry."

"Huh?" Yu Sheng was startled, only then noticing the wound on his finger. It was a bite mark from when she had lunged for the bread earlier, but it had already completely healed, leaving only some bloodstains on his skin. Seeing this, he waved it off dismissively. "It's fine, don't worry about it. It's just a superficial wound."

However, Hu Li looked very worried. "Benefactor, are you truly okay? Being bitten by a monster... the wound affects the primordial essence. It shouldn't be able to heal."

"But it's already healed," Yu Sheng said, skeptical. He casually rubbed the bloodstain off his finger. "See?"

"It really has healed..." Hu Li stared at his finger in surprise. "Benefactor... are you also an Immortal?"

"I'm not. I don't even know what you mean by 'Immortal'—by my understanding, do you mean people who have attained divinity through cultivation?" Yu Sheng said casually. "But why would people who cultivate to become Immortals be with... uh, 'monsters'? Based on what you said, you were all monsters on the same ship, and you traveled with an Immortal, right? But from the stories I've heard... that's not how the relationship between Immortals and monsters works, is it?"

Yu Sheng finally asked the question that had been bothering him.

Hu Li had mentioned many terms he had only ever heard in stories, and she herself possessed a massive array of tails that looked like they belonged to someone who had attained enlightenment a thousand years ago. When all this information was synthesized, it painted a picture of an "Immortal" leading a group of monsters around, and even after the "flying vessel" crashed, the Immortal had lived alongside the monsters in a struggle for survival (though they ultimately failed). This completely contradicted his stereotypes of Immortals and monsters.

In novels, aren't those two groups usually busy trying to slaughter each other?

Hu Li clearly didn't understand his reaction. Faced with his question, she merely tilted her head in confusion, thinking hard before speaking uncertainly: "Because, he was a Tour Guide Immortal."

Yu Sheng: "...?"

He felt like he had just heard something incredibly cursed.

But after asking several times, he confirmed that Hu Li was neither misremembering nor lying.

It was a "Tour Guide Immortal." Or rather, that Immortal was a "Tour Guide."

Some unknown ages ago, the monsters and Immortals who crashed in this forbidden land were a damn tour group.

All that mental effort Yu Sheng had spent constructing an 850,000-word Xianxia epic was wasted! Purely wasted!

Don't ask why a monster tour group led by an Immortal would exist; the answer is: "99 yuan for four days, pure sightseeing, no shopping." It made sense—cheap tours are always prone to trouble.

Yu Sheng sat in the night wind, letting the cold air blow through the ruins of the temple and against his face.

He felt this world was profoundly wrong.

He felt that way more and more.

And just then, he heard the fox girl beside him calling his name in a small voice.

"Benefactor..."

"Just call me Yu Sheng," Yu Sheng sighed helplessly. "What is it?"

Hu Li clutched her stomach, looking distressed. "Benefactor, my stomach hurts a little."

Yu Sheng let out a stunned "Huh?" as he looked at the half-eaten piece of chocolate that this fox spirit had already devoured.

How the hell could a fox spirit not be able to handle chocolate?!

"...Holy crap! Stop eating!" Yu Sheng broke into a cold sweat and reached out to snatch the chocolate from Hu Li's hand. "This stuff is bad for you..."

But as soon as his hand reached out, a low growl erupted from Hu Li's throat, sounding like a Tibetan Mastiff. Then, she lunged forward and took a massive bite out of Yu Sheng's hand. "Augh!!!"

A second later, Yu Sheng's scream was even louder than Hu Li's.