That enormous eye vanished silently, leaving behind no secrets.
The people in the cave glanced at each other, unsure of what to do next.
The overwhelming pressure brought by that eerie eyeball lingered, even though it had disappeared.
A faint sense of unease and disbelief remained in everyone's hearts.
"Did it really just leave like that?" Aileen murmured, looking quite anxious.
"What if it’s hiding behind the clouds?"
But Yu Sheng shook his head.
"It really has 'left.' It's no longer in this strange land."
He felt certain about this; he could sense that the gaze which had been hovering over the valley had indeed vanished.
"Why?" Aileen continued to mutter, "What was that thing even doing here? It hid for so long, suddenly woke up to scare us, caused chaos in this place, and now it just leaves... What’s the point?"
Yu Sheng pondered for a moment.
"Maybe it was just resting here, and now that it has rested enough, it decided to go."
Aileen blinked in surprise, casting a doubtful look at Yu Sheng.
"Really? Is that so?"
Now it was Yu Sheng's turn to be shocked—did she really believe that?!
"No one knows the purpose of the Shadow Angels," Xu Jiali's voice interjected, breaking the pointless debate between Yu Sheng and Aileen.
"In fact, we can't even confirm if they have a 'purpose' at all. Their appearances tend to be random. Sometimes it takes great effort to drive them away, and other times... they leave on their own. Analyzing the actions of Shadow Angels is futile. We should be grateful that this eye wasn’t one of the more aggressive ones."
Yu Sheng nodded slightly, stroking his chin thoughtfully.
Just then, he noticed Li Lin at the cave entrance, observing the outside world.
A sense of inexplicable familiarity rose within him.
Yu Sheng furrowed his brows; memories stirred in his mind, and suddenly, a scene flashed before him.
"Wait! Have we met before?" Yu Sheng blurted out, staring at Li Lin with wide eyes.
"Recently! We definitely have! Where was it... at the little supermarket! Yes, the little supermarket!"
He took a couple of steps forward, examining Li Lin's face, which seemed so plain that he would hardly remember it if not for the effort he was putting into recalling.
This time, he made the connection: "You bought a box of instant noodles, right?"
Li Lin smirked slightly; he realized at that instant that Yu Sheng had recognized him, but he showed no surprise—because he had recognized Yu Sheng's face back when they first met in the ruins of the old temple.
Even though it was just a fleeting encounter at the little supermarket, as a specially trained agent of the Special Operations Bureau, his memory and observation skills far surpassed those of ordinary people.
Recognizing each other was only a matter of time.
Seeing the other’s reaction, Yu Sheng quickly connected various dots, and his gaze swept over Xu Jiali, then to the little girl in the red hat who was resting a short distance away.
"Where exactly did you come from?" Yu Sheng asked, a slight frown creasing his forehead.
"Let me reintroduce myself," Li Lin sighed, straightening up and pointing to himself.
"Li Lin, officer from the Second Action Team under the Borderland Geography Council's Special Operations Bureau."
Xu Jiali approached too, adjusting her posture, and spoke softly, "Special Forces group of the Second Action Team, senior deep diver, Xu Jiali—this is indeed my real name."
Yu Sheng gaped, turning to look at the seemingly youthful "little red hat."
"So you are also from the Special..."
"I'm not," the little red hat interrupted, crossing her arms and looking up at Xu Jiali with her chin raised.
"I’m their child labor."
Yu Sheng was stunned, staring at Xu Jiali in disbelief.
"Your organization even employs children?!"
“Child what?!” Xu Jiali glared at the little red hat. “Holiday worker! Can you at least call it work-study?!”
Yu Sheng felt a haze in his mind.
His first thought was that high schoolers in this borderland were surprisingly hardcore, doing work-study that involved battling monsters in strange lands.
His second thought was that he finally encountered the "professionals" Aileen had mentioned, but these professionals looked nothing like he had imagined.
As for his third thought...
"So, you're here because of me?" Yu Sheng looked at the three "professionals" before him, finally piecing together many things.
"You followed me all the way into this strange land just to find me?"
To his surprise, as soon as he spoke, Xu Jiali and Li Lin sighed in unison, even the little red hat lowered her head in a sigh, now covering her face instead of her arms.
Xu Jiali pulled out a cigarette, her face clouded with worry as she lit it and took a third of it in one puff.
“If we could avoid it, we wouldn't want to—our initial plan wasn’t this…”
Yu Sheng was puzzled.
This large man did not seem happy.
He thought for a moment before deciding not to ask further.
Thankfully, the matter here had finally been resolved—though many questions remained, they could be addressed after returning to the real world safely.
Aileen had returned from Hu Li’s embrace to Yu Sheng's shoulder.
He carefully held the small, pitiful figure and was the first to step out of the hiding cave.
“It’s completely quiet now,” Aileen said, perched on Yu Sheng’s shoulder, her broken arms wrapped around his head, her face full of astonishment as she gazed into the depths of the valley. “... Such a mess.”
“Yes, a mess, but at least the Hungry Entity is gone,” Yu Sheng nodded, looking at the valley where the ground had been entirely “devoured.” “By the way, will that thing appear again?”
“It will. As long as the strange land exists, the entity will appear again. And the strange land will never disappear. Even if you bomb it a thousand times, it will return to its original state,” Aileen said softly, cradling Yu Sheng’s head. “It’s just… this time it might take a while.”
“It’s time to leave this place,” Yu Sheng sighed deeply.
After the Hungry Entity’s temporary disappearance, the air in the valley felt much fresher, a cold wind blowing from afar, with bright sunlight dispersing the ever-lasting night.
Despite the broken scenery before him, he felt a wave of relief wash over him. “Hu Li, how are you feeling now?”
The fox girl had been closely following Yu Sheng, and she immediately looked up. “I’m very well, not cold, not hungry anymore! I ate a lot just now!”
Saying this, Hu Li laughed cheerfully, the first time she had laughed so freely, under the bright sunshine.
Yu Sheng smiled back, extending a hand towards her. “Then shall we go home?”
However, at that moment, Hu Li unexpectedly stepped forward and gently tugged at his sleeve.
Yu Sheng paused in confusion, looking at the little fox girl.
“Are you worried about the food left in the ruins of the broken temple? Most of it was probably ruined by the Hungry Entity, are you thinking of going back to retrieve it?”
Hu Li nodded gently, then shook her head.
“Benefactor, I want to go to a place… I…”
She hesitated, appearing worried that her request was too much, or that what she wanted to do seemed too selfish.
She looked quite conflicted.
Seeing the hesitant fox girl, Yu Sheng initially didn’t understand what she meant, but suddenly, he recalled a scene he had seen deep within Hu Li's dream.
After a moment of silence and consideration, Yu Sheng nodded. “I see. Is it in that forest?”
Hu Li looked up in surprise, meeting Yu Sheng’s eyes.
Then she slightly nodded.
Li Lin and the others looked confused, casting questioning glances at Yu Sheng, but he didn’t explain in detail, just waving his hand. “Don’t rush. I can find a way to send everyone back soon. But first, I need to accompany Hu Li to a place. If you're worried, you can follow us.”
“Then let’s go together,” Xu Jiali was the first to agree. “It seems like this girl has been here for a long time. She probably has some matters to settle before leaving.”
The group left the back mountain, circumventing the even more dilapidated broken temple, which was now almost just a few ruins left standing.
They crossed the rocky terrain pocked with crevices and deep hollows, finally arriving at a small forest that had once existed.
The forest had long since vanished.
The dark, mutated plants had been devoured in the previous feast, leaving behind only a patch of murky wasteland, filled with various-sized deep pits and suspicious black debris.
“Is this the place?” Yu Sheng glanced at Hu Li walking beside him and quietly asked.
“Yes,” Hu Li nodded slowly. “Mom and Dad are here.”
It was only then that Aileen finally understood why Yu Sheng was following Hu Li.
The little doll's eyes widened as she recalled the scenes deep within Hu Li's dream, the temptations, the indistinguishable memories, and the phantoms in the cold hunger.
For some reason, she felt a sense of unease, and the deep pits surrounding her only heightened that anxiety.
“B-But… you might not find them!” she couldn’t help but say loudly, “The ground has been chewed away! They might have been taken by those tentacles that emerged from the ground…”
Yet, Hu Li only shook her head, interrupting Aileen.
“That's not true. I buried them deep,” she asserted firmly. “Mom and Dad told me to bury them deeper. I buried them very deep.”
(End of Chapter)