Chapter 52 Connection

The moment he heard those four words, Li Lin felt as though his blood had turned to ice.

A moment ago, he had been feeling a sense of pity for Yu Sheng, who had been killed in a sneak attack by a monster, but now he felt that he might not survive much longer than the other man did.

"How can this be... The files never mentioned that a Gloomy Angel was parasitizing this place..." Li Lin muttered to himself. Under that indifferent gaze from the sky, he felt an increasing amount of chaotic noise surging into his mind. "How can this be..."

"A dormant state, and every Gloomy Angel has different traits... This damn thing is worse than getting into another firefight with the Angel Cultists in the wasteland!" Xu Jiali could not help but curse aloud. He could not figure out how a routine return from official duty, assigned to a simple relaxation-oriented surveillance mission in the borderlands, had taken such a sharp turn for the worse.

Everything had turned out so unexpectedly—suddenly falling into an alien realm, suddenly meeting that "door-opening freak" he had previously seen on the wasteland planet, and even seeing a half-meter-tall puppet and a vixen who looked like she had been exiled for a century standing by his side. Before he could even exchange a few words, that mysterious "door-opening freak" had dropped dead right in front of him in a most decisive manner, the puppet's reaction had been utterly absurd, and then came more entities of hunger, followed by the emergence of a Gloomy Angel in the sky...

All the imagination in his life combined could not have simulated such a bizarre chain of events today!

The uneasy low growls of wolves echoed from all around, and shadow-formed wolves prowled the perimeter. The gaze from the indifferent eyeball in the sky caused these eerie creatures to feel immense pressure, and even fear. Yet Little Red Riding Hood, riding atop one of the wolves, frowned. "...Strange, why aren't those monsters coming over?"

Erin, who was currently held tightly in Huli's arms, was startled by the words and immediately noticed the abnormal situation as well.

The blood-fleshed behemoths gathered around the ruins of the dilapidated temple were still roaring and prowling in confusion, but bizarrely, although a short while had passed since just now, not a single monster had stepped forward, and not a single monster had launched an attack.

The indifferent, single eye floating in the sky was merely observing quietly, seemingly without any intention of taking further action.

"I think we had better run while we can," Li Lin broke the silence. "Let's not stop to wonder why these monsters are spacing out."

Little Red Riding Hood interrupted Li Lin, speaking calmly: "Run where?"

The indifferent eye in the sky gazed upon every inch of the valley, and this entire alien realm was shifting as if coming to life. Under the scrutiny of that eye, the very thought of escape would be instantly crushed by a sense of inescapable, unhideable despair.

At that moment, however, Erin seemed to remember something and raised her head from Huli's arms: "Did you just say something similar happened before? The day the immortal died was like this too, and your parents hid you in a cave back then?"

Huli stared blankly for a moment, then nodded hurriedly.

"Where is that cave?!"

Huli finally snapped back to her senses, clutched Erin, and turned to run. "I remember! It's right near the back mountain, I'll take you there!"

Suddenly, however, she stopped in her tracks and looked back hesitantly at Yu Sheng's corpse on the ground.

His benefactor's eyes were still not closed yet, making him look rather unsatisfied with his death.

"Benefactor... what about benefactor?" the vixen girl asked, looking quite flustered and helpless.

Although she knew about Yu Sheng's ability to "resurrect from the dead," she didn't know many details because their time together last time was limited, and Yu Sheng simply hadn't had the chance to explain much to her.

"Just leave him here, don't worry about it," Erin said immediately. Having communicated with Yu Sheng extensively, she clearly knew much more intelligence than the fox did. "He'll be gone in a bit, he has his own ways of finding me."

Huli blinked in a daze and nodded mechanically.

Erin then remembered something else and hurriedly added, "Oh right, where is that kitchen knife of mine... Ah, over there on the ground, help me pick it up. Hey, hang the oil painting on me first, I can't be separated from this painting... Is the knife broken? As long as it's not broken, that's fine. If I lose this thing, he'll definitely scold me later—and forget about the corpse, it's useless..."

The little puppet rattled off her instructions, and the naive vixen girl executed them obediently. Meanwhile, the trio of Li Lin watched with a sense of extreme uncanniness as Huli carefully picked up the kitchen knife—which would cost at most a hundred yuan in a supermarket—while completely ignoring the remains of her companion on the ground. After holding back for a long time, Little Red Riding Hood finally couldn't help bursting out: "You're just going to leave him here?!"

Erin poked her head out from Huli's arms: "It's hard to run away while carrying him!"

Little Red Riding Hood opened her mouth, seemingly wanting to say something more, but she was interrupted by a rumble echoing from the depths of the valley.

The distant mountains were splitting apart, and countless pitch-black boulders tumbled down from the peaks. Amidst the continuously widening fissures, flesh and blood were actually spawning from the mountain itself, the grinding of sharp teeth against rock producing a bone-chilling roar.

The forest was shaking, and towering trees were crashing down one by one. As if shedding their disguises, countless tentacle-like vines lined with sharp teeth grew out from the spots where the trees had fallen, letting out a chorus of roars.

And those giant beasts that had been prowling around the dilapidated temple ruins in a state of eerie sluggishness were also seemingly stimulated, beginning to stir with uneasy agitation.

Upon seeing this, Erin let out a cry of alarm, raised her arm which ended in a broken stump, and patted Huli's shoulder hard: "Oh goodness! This is no place to linger! We're pulling back first, whether those three follow or not is up to them!"

As Erin's words fell, Huli had already clutched Erin, turned around, and charged toward the back of the dilapidated temple ruins, sprinting desperately toward a gap at the bottom of the valley.

The trio of Li Lin exchanged glances. Despite their minds being full of question marks, they were left with only one choice at this point.

They quickly caught up with the running fox and bolted at full speed toward a certain "sanctuary."

Little Red Riding Hood took one last look back, toward the direction where Yu Sheng had fallen.

She gritted her teeth, and one of the wolves in her pack broke away from formation, charging toward Yu Sheng's remains.

Yet, only a few steps into the run, the wolf stopped as if it had suddenly forgotten its mission. It paced around in place for two seconds, then turned and trotted back to rejoin the pack beside Little Red Riding Hood.

Little Red Riding Hood did not look back again, instead driving the pack to run at a full sprint, protecting the others in the group while keeping pace with the silver-haired vixen ahead.

She had already forgotten the patch of blood left behind in her wake.

Back around the ruins of the dilapidated temple, those agitated flesh behemoths had somehow grown quiet again.

These entities derived from "hunger" seemed to have fallen into a state of bewilderment. They stood among the broken walls, their misseless, deformed eyes scanning their surroundings, their hideous and ugly limbs swaying aimlessly in the air, while gaping maws opened, emitting muffled, dream-like murmurs from tooth-filled jaws.

Suddenly, a clear word blended into the muffled murmurs of those flesh behemoths—

"So fragrant."

A will was speaking through their voices.

So fragrant.

Time to feed.

The behemoths swayed their bodies, and the eyes that had been scanning their surroundings aimlessly gradually stopped their blind rotation. One by one, their eyes steadied, and their gazes fell upon each other.

Feeding, yet not out of hunger.

That all-consuming, supreme... feeding. Yes, it was time to feed now.

And then came a cold peace and a merciful eternity—for it was ultimately the consumption of all things, the ultimate fairness and the end of the road.

The first flesh behemoth moved. It wobbled over to another entity, made no fancy attack motions, simply opened the largest mouth on the surface of its body, and took a ravenous bite.

The one being bitten neither dodged nor wailed.

As if completely unaware that it was being consumed by its own "kind," the monster merely swayed its body and walked forward, carrying a "kind" that was gnawing on it, heading toward the nearest remaining entity.

Not a single "Entity-Hunger" attempted to pursue the prey that had escaped, as if at some fleeting moment, their very essence had changed—harvesting the power of hunger had become trivial, and the sublime act of feeding had become their sole mission.

At the center of the dilapidated temple ruins, the last remnants of blood left behind after Yu Sheng's death were slowly seeping into the soil. Where the bloodstains spread, the color of the earth was slowly shifting—slowly at first, but accelerating steadily, with an unstoppable momentum.

Yet the indifferent, giant eye floating in the sky seemed utterly unconcerned with these changes on the surface—it merely hung high in the air, its enormous eyeball devoid of any emotions or traces of thought that humans could understand. It continued to observe the valley, its scale so vast that from a terrestrial perspective, it was impossible to determine where its "focus of gaze" actually was.

Assuming such a transcendent, mortal-defying gaze even had a "focus."

Yet Yu Sheng could feel this "focus," because the focal point of that gaze was currently landing squarely on him.

After floating in the darkness for a period of time, a sort of indescribable sense of "connection" startled him awake. At first, he thought he had resurrected, but soon he realized he was still in a state of "death," except this "death" seemed somewhat different from before.

He discovered that he had gained an extra layer of "perspective" within the darkness. At the very beginning, this strange viewing angle and the multi-layered overlapping information left his mind in utter chaos, but gradually, he realized something.

He was responding to the gaze from the sky using the perspective of this "alien realm."

He and this valley had established a connection.