Chapter 48: Day of Feeding

The fox girl’s eyes widened as she stared at the large pile of things Yu Sheng had placed on the ground. She stood there dazed for several seconds, seemingly unable to process the situation at all, until Yu Sheng opened a can of Eight Treasure Porridge and held the food to her lips.

"Eat. I brought all of this for you—if it's not enough, there's more."

The aroma of food. Real, actual food.

Not stones, not dirt, not bricks and wood—not those phantoms from her dreams that could never fill her stomach no matter how much she imagined.

Hu Li's eyes slowly grew wider, and then, as if suddenly jolted from a frozen state, she sprang to life. She reached out and snatched the can from Yu Sheng's hand, skipping the spoon and pouring the contents directly into her mouth, making muffled, indistinct whimpering sounds as she swallowed.

She finished the entire can in barely ten seconds, then began to lick the edges of the tin meticulously. However, she soon grew agitated again because she couldn't lick the food clean from the inside—just as Yu Sheng intended to help, Hu Li gripped the can with her fingers and tore at it with force. Accompanied by a sharp screech of breaking metal, she actually managed to rip open the quite sturdy metal can. She then proceeded to tear it into continuous, narrow strips of metal, licking every single drop of food clinging to them.

"There's more here," Yu Sheng said hurriedly, rummaging through his pockets to pull out a piece of bread and a bottle of water. "Eat slowly."

A blur flashed before his eyes, and the food was already in Hu Li's hands.

The fox girl ate ravenously; for the time being, eating became the only thing she did. Neither Yu Sheng nor Irene spoke. The only sounds in the ruins were the noises of Hu Li eating and the occasional muffled sounds from her throat, as if she wanted to speak but couldn't bear to stop eating.

Then, Hu Li suddenly began to cry.

Quite unexpectedly, tears streamed down the fox girl's face. She stuffed bread into her mouth, but she didn't sob or wail; the tears simply flowed calmly down her cheeks, falling onto the bread, which she then shoved into her mouth.

Startled by the scene, Yu Sheng hurriedly reached out to wipe the dirt from Hu Li's face. "Don't cry. You'll get a stomachache from the wind if you cry. Stop, there's more, and there will be more in the future..."

Only then did Hu Li seem to finally snap out of it, finding enough mental energy to think about other things. She stared blankly at Yu Sheng for a long while before suddenly handing him half of her bread. "Benefactor, you... eat too."

Yu Sheng waved his hands dismissively. "I ate before I came here. I'm not hungry."

Hu Li did not move; she stubbornly maintained her gesture. Even though all the food here had just been brought by Yu Sheng, she insisted on sharing her bread with him, as if doing so held some profound significance to her.

Yu Sheng finally reached out and took the half-piece of bread.

The fox girl smiled, then grabbed a pack of compressed biscuits from the ground. This time, she didn't gorge herself; instead, after tearing open the packaging, she nibbled carefully, one small bite at a time, as if trying to prolong the process of eating as much as possible.

She seemed to finally be less hungry, even if only temporarily.

"It's delicious," she whispered. "Benefactor, it's delicious..."

"'Benefactor' doesn't go before 'delicious'," Yu Sheng flinched, remembering some unpleasant things. "Just... as long as you're full."

"Mm-hmm." Hu Li nodded gently.

"Finally recovered, I see," Irene spoke up at last. Looking at the fox girl, whose mental state had visibly stabilized, she let out a sigh of relief. "It's a good thing you were able to hold on this long..."

Hu Li was slightly startled. It seemed she only now noticed the doll on Yu Sheng's shoulder—or rather, she only just realized that this 66.6-centimeter-tall creature could actually talk and move. Her face filled with astonishment. "This... is alive!?"

Irene's eyes widened. "...No kidding! Of course I'm alive! I just helped you bite open a sausage!"

"This is Irene, a living doll from Alice's Cottage," Yu Sheng introduced quickly. "She's the helper I mentioned. Don't let her size fool you; she's very capable. It was thanks to her help that I was able to contact you from the dreamscape."

Irene held a kitchen knife in one hand and rested the other on her hip, looking quite proud on Yu Sheng's shoulder.

Hu Li thought about it. She didn't know what a living doll was, nor did she understand how such a tiny "humanoid" could talk and move, but she understood that this was the Benefactor's friend. After a few seconds of hesitation, she handed over the compressed biscuits. "Irene, you eat too."

Irene's proud expression instantly turned awkward. "Uh... I can't eat this. Dolls can't eat food..."

Hu Li instantly pulled the biscuits back and continued nibbling in small bites.

Irene: "...Hey! You just took them back without even giving me a chance?! You weren't this attitude when you were sharing bread with Yu Sheng!"

"Dolls can't eat," Hu Li whispered. "Giving it to you is a waste of food."

Irene puffed out her cheeks in anger, but no one paid her any attention.

Yu Sheng's attention had already shifted to the dark, cold night surrounding them.

He could feel that with his arrival, the atmosphere in the valley was gradually changing. The "entity" lurking in this foreign realm had become active, and his act of bringing food to temporarily relieve Hu Li's hunger had stimulated the monster.

He had come today first to save Hu Li, and second to find a way to deal with the hungry entity lurking here. Originally, this wasn't a necessity, but now that he had established a "connection" with the monster and knew it was gradually learning to think, he had to find a way to eliminate this hidden threat.

Yet, for some reason, the monster had not yet shown itself before his eyes.

A hint of doubt surfaced in Yu Sheng's mind, and just then, a faint sound drifted along the night wind, reaching the ears of everyone present—

It was the distant howl of wolves.

Yu Sheng and Irene exchanged glances. The latter hesitated for a moment. "Yu Sheng, did you hear that just now?"

"It sounded like wolves. I thought I misheard..." Yu Sheng frowned, then turned to look at Hu Li, who was seriously nibbling on her biscuits. "Are there wolves in this place?"

"No, there's only me and that monster," Hu Li said, looking equally bewildered. "This is the first time I've heard such a strange sound."

Just then, the howling rang out again, interrupting their conversation.

The sound seemed closer now.

A pack of wolves was approaching, either chasing something or being chased.

In the dark, dense forest, the massive, fleshy behemoth was like a terrifying nightmare wandering through the woods, constantly shifting its position within the shadows of the trees, appearing in the mist one moment and abruptly vanishing from sight the next.

But no matter which direction one ran, the monster would appear eerily nearby, launching attacks from unexpected angles.

Wolves materialized from the shadows, leaping from the trees to pounce on the fleshy behemoth as it surged through the darkness. Then, more wolves swarmed from all directions, attempting to blockade the monster's movements.

However, countless tentacles and barbed, bone-like limbs suddenly thrust out from the behemoth's body. The newly gathered wolf pack was instantly repelled, leaving a massive gap in the encirclement.

The behemoth's many eyes simultaneously locked onto a figure outside the wolf pack—Little Red Riding Hood was riding the largest wolf, her calm eyes staring down the monster's dozens of icy gazes from a distance.

In the next second, the middle of the behemoth's body split open violently. A pitch-black, scaled "long tongue" shot out with a whistling sound, piercing toward the girl's throat like a malicious, sharpened arrow.

Little Red Riding Hood merely tilted her body slightly. At the very instant the long tongue was about to make contact, she abruptly raised her right hand.

The slender girl's arm suddenly exploded and expanded. Flesh made a sizzling sound as smoke rose, and blood and mist intertwined in an instant, transforming into a massive, pitch-black wolf head. The wolf head bit down fiercely, catching the "long tongue" that could no longer change its trajectory.

The behemoth reacted, lunging backward, but Little Red Riding Hood continued to "bite" down on it. She and the mount beneath her were like nails driven into the ground, locked in a stalemate with the monster. In that brief moment, another figure suddenly leaped from the shadows of the forest—

Li Lin rushed toward the side of the monster like an agile leopard, a short blade in his hand glinting with cold light in the night—it was a spare weapon temporarily lent to him by Xu Jiali. The monster immediately noticed this sudden ambusher; as several eyes turned toward him, a raised claw swung down directly toward Li Lin.

However, the true ambush was still to the side. Halfway through his charge, Li Lin suddenly dropped his body, dodging the monster's claw with a movement no ordinary person could perform. Another tall figure leaped out from the monster's blind spot behind it—a burly man nearly two meters tall raised a beam dagger, which was large enough to be used as a short sword by others, and stabbed fiercely at a fleshy tumor on the monster's back.

With a *sizzling* sound, the scorching light blade pierced into the tumor without resistance, even slicing the entire mass off.

Yet the monster only let out a chaotic, ear-piercing roar. It then spun violently, shaking off the struggling Little Red Riding Hood and sending the burly man, who hadn't had time to brace himself, flying.

Xu Jiali tumbled into a nearby thicket with a muffled groan.

Li Lin rushed to the thicket, dragged his colleague out, and then both looked toward the direction of the monster.

The monster's silhouette had vanished at some unknown point.

The mist in the dense forest grew thicker. Amidst the undulating fog, one could vaguely see countless twisted, grotesque phantoms growing, crawling out of the soil, and swaying slightly in the cold wind.

Shadow upon shadow, infinite and endless.

The entire forest seemed to have transformed into a giant mouth, waiting to feed.

Xu Jiali gasped sharply. "We can't stay! Keep running toward the edge of the forest!"