Chapter 15: Trapped in This Place

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When Yu Sheng first heard the pronunciation of his name from the girl, his initial reaction was that she was quite straightforward—how could she just take “fox” as her own name? After asking several times, he finally realized she said “Huli,” not “fox.”

Her name was Huli—a somewhat odd name, but quite fitting for someone with so many tails.

“I’m Yu Sheng,” he said as they sat together amidst the ruins of the broken temple, introducing himself. “I come from… well, I don’t know if you can understand this, but I’m from ‘outside,’ not just outside the valley.”

“You really came from ‘outside’!” Huli’s eyes widened. She seemed to immediately grasp the meaning behind his words, and that look of astonishment carried another layer: she knew that “outside” existed!

Huli quickly and cautiously took a small bite of chocolate, staring wide-eyed at Yu Sheng’s face. “How did you get in? Do you know… the way out? Is it… in the sky?”

As they spoke, Huli’s speech gradually became more fluent, as if she was rapidly regaining her ability to communicate.

Yu Sheng was taken aback by her question: “The sky? Why do you ask that?”

“The immortals said before they died that we all came from the sky, but then suddenly it went dark, and we couldn’t go back,” Huli stammered, trying to organize her words. Though her speech was smoother now, long sentences still came out haltingly. “Then the land got more dangerous, it became poisonous… many of those who came died, and couldn’t return…”

Yu Sheng listened in stunned silence, piecing together her chaotic story with a strong dose of imagination. He realized that this valley, which Erin had simply labeled as “exotic,” hid a complex tale. And this girl with many tails had an unfathomable origin.

She was trapped here too!

But when he tried to ask where exactly the “sky” was, who the “many people” she mentioned were, and how they came here, her answers became confusing again.

“The sky… it’s the sky. I’ve been trying all these years to get back there, but I can’t,” Huli explained with gestures. “I try to jump up, but I hit something, and it hurts. Everyone… they don’t remember much. There were fathers, mothers, immortals, and… others. We came down on a big boat…”

At this, Huli suddenly seemed to recall something, pointing toward a dark part of the valley: “Over there, the boat fell and became part of the mountain. Father always wanted to go back and get things, but then… something killed everyone, and no one knows how to get back inside the boat.”

What Huli described grew eerie and grim, and Yu Sheng felt a chill run down his spine.

He did his best to make sense of it—setting aside the specific meaning of “immortal” and the exact nature of the “sky,” he pieced together a fragmented truth from her jumbled words:

Years ago, Huli, her family, and a group called “immortals” arrived in this valley aboard a large vessel—likely a flying transport of some kind. At that time, this place probably wasn’t a “dead land.” But then the sky suddenly darkened, an unknown environmental catastrophe occurred that sealed this place off, trapping those who came with the ship. Afterward, the trapped were brutally attacked by a powerful enemy, nearly wiped out.

The ordeal was horrific, and the only survivor left was Huli herself.

But Yu Sheng knew this was just the story he constructed from her fragmented memories and confused perspective. Even Huli herself probably couldn’t fully understand or recall the true reality.

Her mind was clearly very disturbed.

“How long have you been trapped here?” he couldn’t help but ask.

“I don’t know, but… a very long time,” Huli slowly shook her head, carefully holding the half-eaten chocolate. “Nothing ever changes here. I don’t know how to count days. When I get hungry, I faint, and when I wake up, it feels like a long time has passed…”

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Yu Sheng frowned as he looked at Huli’s tattered clothes and recalled her chaotic story. He realized she must have been trapped here far longer than he imagined—measured in years, at least.

“How have you survived all these years?” he asked instinctively. “What do you eat? Do you scavenge in the broken temple? But there doesn’t seem to be anything edible here…”

“No food,” Huli shook her head again. “Sometimes there are fruits in the forest, but they’re poisonous. Eating them makes you faint. Almost everything here is toxic except the water, so most of the time, I’m just hungry.”

She slowly smiled, pointing to herself with some pride. “I’m a youkai, very tough. I won’t starve to death, just… the feeling of hunger is awful.”

She seemed to recall terrible memories; her smile creased, and she quickly flew off to a nearby spot, returning with a bag of kitchen scraps from between the rubble—as if it were a treasure, she cradled the bag of leftover food.

“It’s still edible,” she told Yu Sheng seriously.

Yu Sheng opened his mouth but didn’t know what to say. He wished he could pull out a mountain of food or open a door back to the real world, but he could barely keep himself safe now.

“Benefactor…” Huli suddenly spoke again.

Yu Sheng was momentarily stunned. “What did you call me?”

“Benefactor,” Huli repeated seriously. “My mother said anyone who helps you a lot is a benefactor. You gave me food.”

Yu Sheng waved his hand. “That’s a strange title. Just call me Yu Sheng—I’m used to it.”

“Oh, okay, bene…” Huli mumbled, leaving the title vague. Then she pointed at Yu Sheng’s injured finger and lowered her head. “Sorry.”

“Ah?” Yu Sheng was surprised, then noticed the wound on his finger—bitten by her in a moment of urgency when giving her bread earlier. But somehow it had fully healed now, with only some blood stains left on the skin. He waved it off carelessly. “It’s nothing, don’t worry. Just a surface wound.”

But Huli looked worried. “Benefactor, are you sure? Being bitten by a youkai… wounds to the original essence don’t heal.”

“But it’s already healed,” Yu Sheng said doubtfully, rubbing the blood off his finger. “See?”

“It really healed…” Huli looked at his finger in amazement. “Benefactor… are you an immortal too?”

“No, I’m not. I don’t even understand what you mean by immortal—do you mean someone who cultivates to become a celestial being?” Yu Sheng said casually. “But why would an immortal hang out with… youkai? From what you said, it sounds like you were all on the same boat with an immortal guiding you. But from all the stories I’ve heard, immortals and youkai don’t usually get along like that.”

Yu Sheng finally asked the question that had puzzled him since earlier—

Huli mentioned many terms he only knew from stories, and she herself had a large number of ancient-looking tails, hinting she was a being with millennia of cultivation. All these clues pointed to an immortal leading a group of youkai around, even surviving with them for a while after the flying vessel crashed—though ultimately they failed. This contradicted his stereotypical image of immortals and youkai.

In novels, these two groups usually meet to carve each other up, don’t they?

Huli clearly didn’t understand Yu Sheng’s reaction. When he asked about it, she just tilted her head in confusion, tried to recall, and hesitantly said, “Because… it was a tour guide immortal.”

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Yu Sheng: “…?”

He felt like he’d heard something utterly bizarre.

But after asking several times, he confirmed Huli wasn’t mistaken or lying.

That was a “tour guide immortal,” or rather, the immortal was a “tour guide.”

Long ago, the youkai and immortals who came down on the “immortal ship” to this forbidden land were, damn it, a travel group.

Yu Sheng had just spun a whole epic wuxia tale in his head for nothing! All for nothing!

Don’t ask why there would be a youkai tour group led by an immortal—just say it was a 99-yuan four-day pure tour with no shopping stops. Cheap tours always run into trouble.

Yu Sheng sat in the night wind, letting the cold breeze sweep over the ruins of the broken temple and across his face.

He felt this world was utterly strange.

More and more so.

Just then, he heard the fox girl softly calling him again.

“Benefactor…”

“Just call me Yu Sheng,” he sighed helplessly. “What is it?”

Huli clutched her stomach, looking uncomfortable. “Benefactor, my stomach hurts a little.”

Yu Sheng blinked blankly, then looked at the half-eaten chocolate the fox spirit was gnawing on.

Can a fox spirit not handle chocolate either?!

“…Damn it! Stop eating that!” Yu Sheng suddenly broke into a cold sweat and reached for the chocolate in Huli’s hand. “That stuff is bad for you…”

But just as he reached out, a low growl came from Huli’s throat—like a Tibetan mastiff—and she bit down hard on Yu Sheng’s hand. “Ow!!!”

The next second, Yu Sheng’s yelp was louder than hers.