Chapter 49: A Killer Opening (No Errors)

The wind in the valley grew restless.

Yu Sheng didn't know what was happening, but he could clearly feel the "atmosphere" permeating this entire exotic realm shifting. It was a sensation difficult to describe in words; if he had to, he would say...

He felt as if the entire valley was gradually "coming to life."

The distant forests were awakening, the mountains were awakening, the earth was awakening, and even the sky overhead was transmitting a skin-crawling, cold, and hunger-filled gaze.

He noticed Hu Li beside him trembling slightly. The fox girl gripped her food tightly, her face etched with terror. She lifted her head to look at the pitch-black night sky above, inching her footsteps backward toward Yu Sheng, muttering incessantly. Only when she drew close could Yu Sheng hear the repeated words

"This is how it was when the Immortal died... this is how it was when the Immortal died..."

"What's going on?" Irene asked quickly. The little doll grew tense as well, her entire body stiffening as she clutched the kitchen knife in her arms. "Do you know something?"

However, Hu Li did not answer her. She seemed to have fallen back into a state of mental instability, doing nothing but repeating that same sentence over and over.

Soon, both Irene and Yu Sheng could no longer afford to worry about Hu Li's abnormality.

Yu Sheng felt a familiar presence approaching. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a physical entity rapidly coalescing within the shadows at the edge of the ruined temple. Deformed, swollen masses of flesh proliferated, and grotesque limbs—looking as if they had been sliced from various creatures—grew in layers from the meat. Dozens of hungry eyes opened across the monster's surface, while fangs and tearing maws continuously emerged between the eyes, emitting a muddy low growl.

Entity—Hunger, had finally appeared near its prey.

"Holy sh*t!" Irene cried out instantly. "That thing is hideous!"

"Watch out for its sneak attacks. Its limbs can deform, and it can suddenly sprout tentacles and tails from its body," Yu Sheng warned immediately. He then turned to Hu Li. "Just protect yourself for now. You've been deeply eroded by this thing; you can't fight it."

Hu Li's current state was highly abnormal. After the monster appeared, she continued to stare at the sky in terror, but upon hearing Yu Sheng's words, she nodded blankly. She grabbed the scattered food from the ground and retreated, yet she didn't dare go too far, as if fearing something might happen to Yu Sheng.

"How do you plan to fight it?" Irene whispered. The monster nearby was still patrolling, seemingly waiting patiently for something, but this delay only made her feel increasingly uneasy. "Don't tell me you're planning to charge in empty-handed and fight it with military boxing. You didn't even bring a weapon when you came, whereas I at least have a kitchen knife."

Yu Sheng knew well that he hadn't prepared a weapon. He had tested it before: most of the structures on this monster were harder than stone. Even if he used an axe to hack away at its softer flesh, the effect would be negligible. Thus, he had never intended to bring a "weapon" in the first place. For an ordinary person with no combat training, even if he had brought a Dragon Slayer sword, he would most likely end up hitting himself.

He had prepared a different method of "lethal force."

"It's the same strategy we discussed at home. Just restrain its movements using your threads," Yu Sheng said rapidly. "I'll charge in and 'tear a hole' in it. Keep an eye on me. If I mess up, take Hu Li and run immediately. Don't worry about me. Hu Li has a way to survive that monster, and you won't be actively pursued by Hunger..."

Irene blanked for a moment. "Ah, and then?"

"We regroup after I come back to life and try again. Everything has a breaking point."

"Dammit, so it really is that crude, brute-force logic again? We agreed you'd try not to use 'resurrection' as a basic attack!"

"I said 'try' not to," Yu Sheng replied quickly, but he soon frowned, sensing something wrong with the monster nearby. "Why isn't it attacking yet..."

Irene shared the same doubt. "It feels like it's intentionally stalling, as if it's waiting for something—does this thing actually have a concept of 'strategy'?"

"Then we can't let it wait," Yu Sheng gritted his teeth. "Take the initiative!"

As soon as the words left his mouth, he charged toward the monster. Almost simultaneously, Irene, sitting on his shoulder, performed a nimble flip to jump down, extending her right hand toward the creature. The moment she landed, the doll's eyes turned pitch black, and countless fine, dark threads radiating a strange, chilling aura surged from her hands, spreading wildly through the space like a rapidly growing spiderweb!

All the "spider silk" bypassed Yu Sheng's trajectory. He accelerated again within the expanding web of threads, his enhanced body leaving an afterimage in the air as he lunged toward the hideous, fleshy behemoth!

The monster finally moved. Faced with the prey's proactive attack, it seemed momentarily taken aback, but it quickly launched a counterattack. A hideous claw rose high from the beast's back, smashing down violently toward the path of Yu Sheng's charge.

In that instant, Yu Sheng suddenly felt that wondrous... "prediction" again.

He felt which part of the monster's muscle was contracting; he felt its desire to attack and the true focus of its gaze. It was as if he could see a tentacle extending from behind the claw in advance, sealing off every possible escape route for his next second...

Whether it was an illusion or not, he felt his "prediction" was even more accurate than before. In fact... he began to realize that it wasn't what one would call "spiritual intuition."

Because he now possessed true spiritual intuition and had experienced what it felt like, he discovered that what he "saw" and "felt" while predicting the monster's movements was fundamentally different from that.

When he perceived the monster's actions in advance, it was almost like a first-person perspective.

All thoughts flashed in an instant. In the blink of an eye, Yu Sheng crossed the final few meters, just as the fleshy behemoth's claw came crashing down.

Yu Sheng did not dodge at all. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the threads spreading from behind him converge in mid-air. In the next instant, countless black lines entwined the monster's limbs and, like some bone-piercing phantom, interlaced through its claws, tentacles, and gaping maw...

Cold, numb, sluggish—it felt as if his very thoughts were being pierced into a thousand holes, and his soul was being wrapped layer by layer by a chilling web...

A tidal wave of negative sensations surged forth. For a moment, Yu Sheng saw a vision—he saw himself trapped in a spiderweb, countless threads winding around him and even piercing through his limbs. At the edge of the web, a crimson-eyed shadow lurked in the darkness, slowly crawling toward him in a grotesque and hideous manner...

"Yu Sheng! Don't zone out! I can't hold it much longer!"

The sudden shout in his ear jolted Yu Sheng awake. He looked up to see the fleshy behemoth frozen in a bizarre posture at the center of the layers of black silk. The ends of the threads were pulled taut, looking as if they might be forcibly snapped by the monster at any second.

Without time to ponder the "vision" he had just experienced, Yu Sheng lunged toward a specific position beside the monster. Utilizing the precious window of time Irene had bought, he grabbed the black threads in mid-air with one hand and reached into the void with the other, concentrating his mind with all his might before slowly pulling—

A door appeared, a gateway manifesting out of thin air, its surface shimmering with flowing, phantom-like light.

Opening a door from nothing required far more energy and time than opening a physical one. Yu Sheng had to concentrate within a relatively stable environment to complete the process. Looking at the monster's trembling limbs and the black silk that had begun to slowly crack, even a few seconds felt as long as a lifetime to Yu Sheng.

—Though his "lifetimes" hadn't been particularly long lately.

In the next second, accompanied by the sound of the gateway opening, the fictional door finally swung wide.

It was even larger than the doors he had opened before, large enough to throw the entire monster inside.

Blazing fire erupted from within the door, illuminating a vast area around the entrance.

On the other side of the door lay a churning lake of magma.

That was the "surprise" Yu Sheng had discovered during his countless previous door-opening experiments.

He didn't know where that place was; he only knew it contained endless lava and erupting flames, like a landscape from hell.

Entity—Hunger was powerful, but its threat came more from mental pollution and its own "hunger" power, which bordered on a law of nature. As for its physical "vessel" once materialized—compared to a law, it wasn't actually that durable.

It could be roasted.

And if it couldn't be roasted, he would just use even greater firepower.

"Throw it in!" Yu Sheng shouted to Irene.

"You got it!"

(End of Chapter)