Upon hearing the other party pronounce his name, Yu Sheng's first reaction was that this girl was really straightforward, to simply take "fox" as his name—after asking several times, he finally understood that the other party meant "Hu Li," not a fox.
She's called Hu Li, a... rather strange, but quite fitting name for someone with all those tails.
"My name is Yu Sheng," Yu Sheng, sitting in the ruins of the ruined temple with Hu Li, introduced his own background, "I'm from... uhm, I'm not sure if you'll understand, but I'm from 'outside,' not outside the valley."
"You really, you're from 'outside'!" Hu Li's eyes suddenly widened, she seemed to immediately grasp the meaning of Yu Sheng's words, and that astonishment revealed another layer of meaning: she knew of the existence of 'outside'!
Hu Li took a small, restrained bite of the chocolate, her eyes wide as she looked at Yu Sheng's face: "How did you get in? Do you know... the way out? Is it up in... the sky?"
As the conversation with Yu Sheng progressed, Hu Li's speech gradually became more fluid, as if she was quickly recovering her ability to communicate with others.
Yu Sheng was taken aback upon hearing her words: "The sky? Why do you ask?"
"The Immortal said before dying that we, all of us, came from the sky, but then the sky suddenly darkened, and, we couldn't return," Hu Li struggled to piece her words together, and although she became a bit more fluent now, she still stuttered when talking about these longer passages, "Then, the ground became more and more dangerous, starting to be poisonous, then... many people who came together died, couldn't return..."
Yu Sheng listened in fits and starts, barely managing to make sense of the girl's jumbled description through a strong dose of mental reconstruction. He realized that this valley, which Erin had simply categorized as the Exotic Realm, seemed to hide a complex story, and this girl with many tails had an unbelievably mysterious background.
She too was trapped here!
However, when he tried to ask her where exactly "the sky" was, and who were the "many people" she referred to, and how they actually came here, her answers became scrambled once more.
"The sky... it's just the sky; I've been trying to return to the sky all these years but couldn't," Hu Li gestured as she explained, "I tried jumping up, but I would hit something, and it hurts. Everyone... they don't remember anymore, there were dad, mom, the Immortal, and... and others. We came down in a boat, a very big boat..."
As Hu Li mentioned this, it seemed she suddenly remembered something else, and she pointed towards a certain direction deep in the dark valley: "Over there, the boat, fell and became part of the mountain. Dad has always wanted to go back to get things, but then... everyone got killed by something, and now nobody knows how to... get inside the boat."
The things Hu Li spoke of started to seem eerily chilling, and Yu Sheng felt a sudden coolness on his back.
He did his best to understand what she was saying—setting aside for the moment the specific concept of the "Immortal" she mentioned, and also disregarding what the so-called "sky" was. Based on the fragmented bits Hu Li had blurted out, he pieced together some of the disordered truths:
Hu Li and her family, along with those referred to as "Immortals," arrived in this valley many years ago on a large boat—likely a large vehicle capable of flight. But at that time, this place was not yet a "dead land"; it was only after the "sky suddenly darkened," and an unknown environmental catastrophe occurred, that this area became sealed and the people who came with the boat were trapped and could never leave. In the aftermath, the trapped ones were struck by a drastic calamity, attacked by some formidable enemy, nearly leading to their annihilation.
The process was extremely brutal, and the outcome was that the last survivor was none other than "Hu Li" herself.
But Yu Sheng knew that these were just the stories he managed to patch together with his strong power of imagination; Hu Li's speech was incoherent, many memories had obvious gaps, and there was confusion based on her own perspective, the real truth was something she herself probably could not understand or recall.
The girl's thinking was already very erratic.
"How long have you been trapped here?" he couldn't help but ask.
"I don't know, it's been... a long time," Hu Li slowly shook her head, carefully holding the half piece of chocolate in her hands, "There's always... no change here, I don't know how to count the days. When I'm hungry, I faint, then when I wake up it feels like a lot of time has passed..."
Yu Sheng involuntarily furrowed his brow, as he observed Hu Li's tattered dress and considered her chaotic experiences, realizing that the time she'd been trapped here was probably far beyond his imagination; it was at least measured in "years."
"All these years... how have you survived?" he frowned, asking instinctively, "What do you eat? Just scavenging through the rubbish in the ruined temple? But it seems there's nothing edible here..."
"There's no, food," Hu Li shook her head again, "In the forest... occasionally there are fruits but they are poisonous, eating them will make you faint. Other than water, most things here are poisonous, so most of the time, I just go hungry."
Hu Li said this and then slowly smiled again, pointing to herself, seemingly with a bit of pride: "Monsters are very powerful; they can't starve to death, it's just that, it feels bad, the sensation of hunger."
She seemed to recall some terrible memories, her smile crinkling on her face, and then she quickly got up and ran to a nearby spot, picking up the bag of kitchen garbage from among the broken bricks—like holding a treasure, she held the bag of leftover food and rotten vegetables in her arms.
"Still edible," she said seriously to Yu Sheng.
Yu Sheng opened his mouth, but didn't know what to say—he wished that he could produce a mountain of food right now or even open a door back to the present world, but he was still struggling to take care of himself.
"Savior..." Hu Li suddenly spoke again.
Yu Sheng was taken aback, not catching on for a moment: "What did you just call me?"
"Savior," Hu Li said again, the expression on her face very serious, "Mother said that those who have helped oneself greatly are considered saviors. You gave me food."
Yu Sheng waved his hand: "…That title is a bit strange, just call me Yu Sheng, I'm used to that."
"Oh, alright, Sav—," Hu Li mumbled, blurring the end of the honorific and then lifted her hand, pointing at Yu Sheng's finger, her face also turning down, "I'm sorry."
"Eh?" Yu Sheng paused, and only then did he notice the wound on his finger again—it was from when he gave Hu Li the bread, she had bit him in her haste. But, for some reason, it had already completely healed. Now only some bloodstains remained on the skin, he waved his hand indifferently, "It's nothing, just a scratch."
However, Hu Li seemed quite worried, "Savior, are you really okay? Bites from monsters... the injury affects the fundamental essence, it can't be healed."
"But it has already healed," Yu Sheng said with a hint of disbelief in his confusion, he casually brushed off the bloodstains on his finger, "Look."
"It really has healed..." Hu Li looked at Yu Sheng's finger with some surprise, "Savior... are you also an Immortal?"
"I'm not, I don't even know what you mean by Immortals—people who have become immortals through cultivation?" Yu Sheng spoke casually, "But why would someone who has cultivated to become an Immortal be together with...uh, 'monsters'? According to what you just said, you all seem to be a group of monsters on the same boat, and then there's an Immortal moving with you, right? But from the stories I've heard... aren't Immortals and monsters not like that?"
Yu Sheng finally asked the question that had been confusing him—
Hu Li had mentioned many terms that he had only heard in stories, and she herself had a tail (yi) that looked like it had been cultivated for a thousand years. In the end, all this information amounted to an "Immortal" leading a group of monsters around, and even after their "Flying Boat" crashed, the Immortal and the monsters stuck together to survive in the wilderness for a while (though the survival attempt ultimately failed). This didn't match his stereotypical impression of Immortals and monsters.
Aren't these two groups always chopping each other up like dumpling fillings in novels?
Yet Hu Li clearly did not understand what Yu Sheng was getting at, and when faced with his question, she just tilted her head in confusion. After thinking hard for a while, she finally spoke up, not very confidently, "Because it was a tour guide Immortal."
Yu Sheng: "…?"
He felt like he heard something absolutely bizarre.
But after asking several times, he confirmed that Hu Li hadn't remembered incorrectly or spoken wrongly.
That was a "tour guide Immortal," or rather, the Immortal was a "tour guide."
Who knows how many years ago, the group of monsters and Immortals who crashed in this forbidden land on the "Immortal Boat" were a TM travel group.
Yu Sheng had just imagined a full 850,000-word immortal-hero story in vain!
Don't ask why there appeared a monster travel group led by an Immortal. The answer is a 99 yuan four-day pure tour with no shopping—the logic is sound; cheap tours are just prone to problems.
Yu Sheng sat amidst the night breeze, letting the cold wind blow through the ruins of the ruined temple, then onto his face.
He felt that this world was profoundly strange.
And he was increasingly convinced of this.
And it was at this moment, he heard the fox girl beside him calling him quietly.
"Savior..."
"Just call me Yu Sheng," Yu Sheng sighed helplessly, "What do you need?"
Hu Li held her stomach, a pained expression on her face: "Savior, my stomach hurts a little."
Yu Sheng responded with a slightly stunned "Eh?" and then looked at the half-eaten piece of chocolate the Fox Deity had nibbled on.
God TM, can't even a Fox Deity handle chocolate?!
"…Fuck! Don't eat that!" Yu Sheng broke out in a cold sweat and immediately reached out to snatch the chocolate from Hu Li's hand, "This thing is bad for you…"
But the moment he reached out, a low growl came from Hu Li's throat, much like a Tibetan mastiff; she then protruded her neck and took a bite on Yu Sheng's hand, "Ao!!!"
The next second, the noise from Yu Sheng was even louder than that of Hu Li.