Chapter 49: Door-Opening Kill (No Mistake)

The wind in the valley was turning restless.

Yu Sheng did not know what was happening, but he could distinctly feel that the "atmosphere" permeating the entire alien realm was undergoing a change. This sensation was difficult to describe in words; if he had to put it into terms...

It felt as though the entire valley was gradually coming "alive."

The distant woods were waking up, the mountain ranges were waking up, the earth was waking up, and even the dark sky overhead was transmitting a hair-raising gaze, cold and filled with a ravenous, hungry desire.

He noticed that Hu Li beside him was trembling slightly. The fox-spirit girl was clutching her food tightly, a look of terror creeping across her face. Raising her head to gaze at the pitch-black night sky above, she inched backward behind Yu Sheng step by step, continuously muttering something under her breath. As she drew closer, Yu Sheng finally made out the repeatedly muttered words:

"This is how it was when the immortal died... This is how it was when the immortal died..."

"What is the current situation?" Irene asked rapidly. The little puppet was also growing tense, holding her kitchen knife to her chest while her entire body stiffened. "Do you know something?"

Yet Hu Li did not answer her, as if she had once again plunged into a state of derangement, knowing only how to endlessly repeat those exact words.

Soon, neither Irene nor Yu Sheng could afford to care about Hu Li's abnormal condition anymore.

Yu Sheng felt that familiar presence manifest nearby. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw an entity rapidly coalescing within the shadows at the edge of the ruined ancient temple. Deformed and bloated flesh layered and bred together, grotesque limbs—seemingly severed from various creatures—sprouted in overlapping layers from the lump of meat. Dozens of hungry eyes popped open across the monster's body, while sharp fangs and torn mouthparts constantly emerged between the eyes, emitting a turbid, low growl.

Entity—Hunger had finally appeared near its prey.

"Damn it!" Irene immediately cried out. "This thing is so ugly!"

"Watch out for its ambush; every limb on this thing can deform, and it can suddenly grow tentacles and tails from within its body," Yu Sheng warned immediately, before turning to say to Hu Li beside him, "Just protect yourself for a moment. You've been deeply eroded by this thing; there's no way you can fight it."

Hu Li's current state was deeply wrong. Even after the monster appeared, she continued to stare in terror at the sky, but upon hearing Yu Sheng's words, she gave a dazed nod. Gathering the scattered food from the ground, she backed away, yet dared not retreat too far, as if terrified that something might happen to Yu Sheng.

"How do you plan to fight from here?" Irene whispered. The monster not far away was still prowling, seemingly patiently waiting for something, but this delay only made her feel increasingly uneasy. "Don't tell me you're planning to charge in bare-handed and throw punches at it with military combat arts. You didn't even prepare a weapon when you came here, whereas I'm at least holding a kitchen knife."

Of course Yu Sheng knew he hadn't prepared a weapon when he came, because he had long since tested it: most of the structures on this monster's body were harder than stone. Even if he wielded an axe and managed to hack off a small portion of its relatively soft flesh and skin, the effect would be negligible. Therefore, from the very beginning, he had never intended to bring any "weapons"—for an ordinary person who had never received weapon combat training, let alone wielding a kitchen knife, even if he were handed a legendary dragon-slaying blade, the probability was that he would end up hacking himself first.

He had prepared a different "lethal" method.

"We'll stick to the strategy discussed at home. Just restrain its movements—use those silk threads of yours," Yu Sheng said quickly. "In a moment, I'll charge in and 'tear an opening' for it. Keep an eye out; if I accidentally mess up, you take Hu Li and run immediately, and don't worry about me. Hu Li has a way to survive under that monster's hands, and you won't be actively pursued by Hunger..."

Irene froze for a moment. "Ah, and then what?"

"We'll regroup after I come back to life and try again. This thing is bound to die eventually."

"Damn your entire family, it really is this simple and brutal strategy, isn't it? We agreed not to use 'resurrection' as a basic attack!"

"I am 'trying' my best," Yu Sheng said quickly, but then frowned, feeling that the monster not far away was acting a bit strange. "Why isn't it attacking yet..."

Irene shared the same suspicion. "I have a feeling it's deliberately stalling for time, as if waiting for something—does this thing already possess the concept of 'strategy'?"

"Then we definitely can't let it keep waiting," Yu Sheng immediately gritted his teeth. "Charge in!"

The moment his voice fell, he proactively rushed toward the monster. At almost the same time, Irene, perched on his shoulder, performed a nimble flip, leaping off his body while extending her right hand toward the monster. The instant her feet touched the ground, the puppet's eyes had turned pitch black, and countless fine, eerie, and chilling black silk threads billowed outward from her hand, rapidly spreading across the entire space like a frantically growing and expanding spiderweb!

All the "spider silk" bypassed the trajectory of Yu Sheng's movement. He accelerated once more amidst a continuously expanding web of threads, his reinforced body leaving almost a blur in the air as he lunged fiercely toward the terrifying, flesh-bound behemoth!

The monster finally moved. Confronted by the "prey's" active assault, it seemed somewhat taken aback, yet quickly launched a counterattack. A ferocious claw reared high from the giant beast's back, smashing fiercely toward the path Yu Sheng was charging along.

At that exact second, Yu Sheng suddenly sensed that wondrous... "prediction" once more.

He could feel which muscle groups on the monster's body were contracting, felt its aggressive intent and the true focal point of its vision at that moment. He seemed to foresee a tentacle extending from behind the claw, cutting off all his possible retreat routes for the next second...

Whether it was his imagination or not, he felt that this time his "prediction" was even more accurate than before, and even... he began to realize that this was not any so-called spiritual intuition.

Because he now possessed a genuine spiritual intuition and had experienced what that felt like, he discovered that what he "saw" and "felt" when predicting the monster's actions was completely different from so-called spiritual intuition.

When he anticipated the monster's actions in advance, it felt nearly like a first-person perspective.

All these thoughts flashed by in a fraction of a second. Yu Sheng crossed the final few meters in the blink of an eye, and the flesh beast's claw slammed down accordingly.

Yu Sheng did not evade at all. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the silk threads extending from behind him converging in mid-air. The next instant, countless black lines entangled the monster's limbs, piercing through its claws, tentacles, and giant maw like some kind of bone-penetrating phantom...

Cold, numb, sluggish—it felt as if his very thoughts were instantly pierced full of holes, as if his soul were wrapped layer upon layer by a chilling spiderweb...

Overwhelming negative sensations washed over him, and for a split second, Yu Sheng seemed to witness an illusion—he saw himself trapped deep within a spiderweb, countless silk threads entangling him and even piercing through his limbs, while at the edge of the web, a shadow with crimson eyes peered from the darkness, slowly crawling toward him in a bizarre and horrifying posture...

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

The loud shout ringing sharply in his ear instantly jolted Yu Sheng awake. Raising his head, he saw that the flesh-bound behemoth had been suspended in a bizarre posture at the center of layers of black silk, the ends of the threads pulled taut to their limit, as if they would be forcibly snapped by the monster in the next second.

With no time to ponder what the "illusion" he had just experienced meant, Yu Sheng lunged toward a specific spot on the monster's flank. Seizing the precious window of opportunity bought by Irene, he grabbed the black silk threads in mid-air with one hand while reaching out with the other, concentrating his mind to the utmost limit before slowly pulling—

A door materialized, its floating surface shimmering with phantom-like, flowing light.

Opening a door out of thin air consumed far more energy and time than opening a physical door; Yu Sheng had to concentrate his mind in a relatively stable environment to complete the process. Yet looking at the monster's gradually trembling limbs and the black spider silk already beginning to slowly fracture, even a few seconds felt as long as a lifetime to Yu Sheng.

—Though lately, his "lifetimes" weren't particularly long either.

The next second, accompanied by the sound of a door unsealing, that fictional portal finally swung completely open.

It was even larger than the doors he had opened previously—large enough to toss the entire monster right in.

Blazing flames surged forth from the gateway, illuminating a vast expanse of the surrounding area.

On the other side of the door lay a continuously churning sea of magma.

That was a "surprise" Yu Sheng had discovered during countless door-opening experiments prior to this.

He did not know where that place was; he only knew that it held endless molten lava and erupting flames, resembling a landscape straight out of hell.

Entity—Hunger was powerful, but its threat stemmed mostly from mental corruption and its "hunger" power, which bordered on some kind of rule. As for its "vessel" after physical manifestation—compared to rules, it wasn't actually all that tough.

It could be roasted.

And if it couldn't be roasted, he would simply use more firepower.

"Throw it in!"

Yu Sheng shouted loudly to Irene.

"You got it!"