Chapter 28: Hunger

Falling, being tossed up, and then falling again, endlessly repeating this process amidst extreme cold and emptiness. His thoughts were churned into a mess, and chaotic perceptions pierced his mind like sharp knives, stabbing incessantly until his consciousness nearly snapped. Only then did a sense of sudden liberation from the brink of drowning finally strike, jolting Yu Sheng awake from that infinite fall into cold darkness.

He bolted upright in bed, losing his balance so abruptly that he nearly tumbled to the floor. At the last second, he managed to grab the edge of the nightstand to prop himself up, his head spinning violently.

A sharp, continuous throbbing made him suspect his brain was actually boiling.

Fortunately, the sensation did not last long. Once he truly regained consciousness, those unbearable sensations in his mind receded just like the dream, leaving behind only a few unpleasant impressions.

Yu Sheng sat on the edge of the bed, catching his breath. He looked out the window to see the setting sun gradually approaching the rooftops of the distant urban area, the sky darkening bit by bit.

"...An entire day has passed..." he muttered with some surprise. Leaning on the nightstand, he stood up, went to the table to gulp down a glass of water, and then slapped his face, trying to recover some spirit from that restless sleep before leaving the bedroom for the first floor.

"I really didn't expect this 'sudden awakening' to be this miserable," Yu Sheng complained to the oil painting on the dining table as soon as he arrived. "I thought it would at most be some dizziness or a racing heart, but good grief, the moment I opened my eyes, I almost threw up last year's New Year's Eve dinner..."

After his complaint, Irene did not immediately respond with her usual string of chirps. Instead, she was very quiet. Sensing something was wrong, Yu Sheng turned to look at the painting on the table, only to see Irene slumped in the red velvet chair as if malfunctioning. She was clutching a teddy bear, staring blankly upward with vacant eyes, occasionally twitching her eyeballs before leaning over the edge of the chair to dry heave.

Yu Sheng: "...How can your 'sudden awakening' make you look this pathetic too?"

Irene looked up at him. Just as she was about to speak, another wave of nausea hit her—however, as a doll who had been sealed for countless years, let alone a New Year's Eve dinner, she didn't even have gastric acid in her stomach (in fact, Yu Sheng even suspected she didn't even have a stomach). Thus, she could only hunch over the edge of the chair in misery, retching as if her head might fall off at any second.

It took a long time for the unlucky doll to recover. She looked up at Yu Sheng, her voice as weak as if she were on her deathbed. "It wasn't me who 'woke' the two of us up. It was you."

Yu Sheng: "...Huh?"

"That last shout of yours scared that fox awake; I didn't even have time to react!" Irene said with a face full of indignation. "Why did you yell so loud!"

Yu Sheng was a bit dazed, but he understood her meaning. He scratched his hair awkwardly. "I didn't know. I just wanted to alert Hu Li; I felt like her state was very dangerous."

"Well, your intuition was right," Irene said, before leaning over the chair to gag again. After a couple of dry heaves, she caught her breath and glared at Yu Sheng. "Fine. The good news is you successfully woke her up before that fox sank any deeper. Although she 'ejected' the two of us when she woke up, she should be able to stay lucid for a while."

Yu Sheng walked over, pulled out a chair by the dining table, and sat opposite Irene, his expression gradually turning serious. "And the bad news?"

Irene remained silent for a moment. After a few seconds of stillness, she nodded slightly. "You probably guessed it—she won't last much longer."

Yu Sheng frowned and said nothing.

Yes, he had indeed felt it. He had felt it while trapped in the valley—that hunger and madness buried deep in Hu Li's heart, spreading like some kind of growing blight. Although he didn't know what it was at first, during his final confrontation with that flesh monster, he realized that "hunger" was not as simple as it appeared on the surface.

And the scene he had just witnessed in the depths of his dream allowed him to grasp Hu Li's situation more accurately.

"If you want to help that fox, you'd better act quickly," Irene said from the side. "The thing bewitching her is trying to turn her into... 'nourishment.' Killing people isn't its goal; 'madness born of hunger' is what it wants. It's incredible that the fox's will is strong enough to have resisted this long, but the longer she holds on, the more 'nutrients' she will provide when the 'transformation' occurs. It will be troublesome—very, very troublesome."

Yu Sheng listened with a heavy expression, supplementing her description with the information he had gathered so far. But suddenly, he sensed something and looked up at the frame opposite him.

"Irene," he said seriously, "do you... know something? About the situation in that valley, and the things inside it?"

Irene hesitated. She first shook her head, but then followed it with a slight nod.

"I don't remember most things, including what exactly happened in that valley. But I seem to have some impression of the situation that fox encountered. I think I've seen records on this before."

As she spoke, she frowned and paused briefly, seemingly struggling to scavenge useful information from her fragmented and broken memories.

"...Entity-Hunger, I think that's the name," Irene said while recalling. "It is an entity with clear malice and high danger levels. It is generated within a containment zone; the environment within the zone becomes toxic, and hunger spreads. It is highly aggressive itself, but its 'influence' is even more dangerous. People targeted by this entity fall into a terrifying hunger, and their willpower is put to an extreme test. I don't remember specific victim incidents, I only remember... it's very dangerous, it has harmed many people, and even worse..."

Irene stopped and looked into Yu Sheng's eyes.

"Hunger turns people into beasts, consuming both dignity and life. Most people shouldn't be able to withstand it, and those who fall become part of Entity-Hunger, endlessly."

Listening to Irene's account, the expression on Yu Sheng's face gradually tightened. A heavy sense of oppression pressed upon his heart. And at that moment, he suddenly remembered something else—

The impulse to feed that had surged in his heart during his clash with the flesh monster!

Could he have also been affected by "Hunger"?!

Yu Sheng's heart tightened, and he spoke rapidly. "Wait, what are the main 'symptoms' after being affected by 'Hunger'?"

Irene gave him a strange look. "...Hunger, obviously."

"I didn't mean that. I mean..." Yu Sheng waved his hands hurriedly, trying to organize his words. "For example, when I saw that monster, I really wanted to take a bite, and I even thought it tasted pretty good. I even came back and cooked two dishes with it. Could that kind of reaction also be an effect of 'Hunger'?"

Irene's expression became visibly blank. Her first thought went to the "local specialties" Yu Sheng had brought back, and that complete meal of four dishes and one soup.

"Right, right, you even ate it..." the doll girl muttered, but then she suddenly realized and her tone changed. "No! Of course not! The influence of 'Entity-Hunger' is to make you go mad with hunger and gnaw on others, not to make you gnaw on it! It bewitches people into madness; it doesn't use itself as bait!"

Irene's outburst startled Yu Sheng, but he immediately understood the logic. Although hunger and appetite are closely related, when applied to the "Otherworld" and "Entities" which are based on strict rules, they are two distinctly defined concepts. Especially when an entity possesses active malice, its influence must operate strictly according to its rules.

To put it simply, if Yu Sheng had truly been affected by "Hunger" while in that valley, he should have gone for Hu Li—not the monster that served as the source of the bewitchment.

Of course, there was a bit of reluctance in his first bite of that monster, but he wouldn't mention that.

Thinking of this, Yu Sheng breathed a sigh of relief, confirming he had not been eroded by that eerie entity. He also recalled that he had indeed felt a normal sense of fullness after eating before he went to sleep. Feeling reassured, he let out a long breath. "That's good then. Seems I'm still quite normal."

Irene stared at him blankly, muttering under her breath, "No, I think the fact that you could feel an appetite for that thing in the first place is already abnormal..."

Yu Sheng waved it off indifferently and moved to the next topic. "So, that abstract-looking but tasty monster is 'Entity-Hunger,' right? If we take it out, we can free Hu Li from its influence—I know entities can't be killed completely, I mean temporarily taking it out."

"Actually... I'm not sure either," Irene's answer was somewhat hesitant. "'Hunger' is a rather special entity. The monster you saw is its 'manifestation,' but as I understand it, the true 'Hunger' actually permeates that entire valley. Do you understand what I mean? What you saw was just its 'tentacle' coming out to forage and sense the situation. Its true body... just like its name, is the hunger that is omnipresent in the valley."

As Yu Sheng listened, his expression gradually turned blank.

Yes, he understood.

"Fuck, a Rule-based entity?!"

(End of Chapter)