"I'm starving to death."
I lay quietly on the ground, limbs upturned. The Serpent King had been gone for hours and still hadn't returned. Spirit Snake was still playing Gomoku with the Tabby Cat King.
The Tabby Cat King kept losing, but he was no longer as irritable as before. Now he was completely absorbed in the world of Gomoku. But I knew just how strong Spirit Snake truly was.
In my instinctual space, the Eight Ghost Souls played mahjong, chess, and poker, but most often Gomoku. Among them, Spirit Snake was the strongest at Gomoku, never losing a single game.
"Your chess style really suits you—sinister and cunning. But soon, I'll win."
The Tabby Cat King said this as I crawled over, barely able to move, too hungry to walk. When I got closer, I saw the board was crowded with interlaced black and white stones.
"You're getting better and better at this."
The Tabby Cat King proudly stroked his whiskers. The board was almost full, making my head spin. Spirit Snake placed a white stone in the corner of the board.
The Tabby Cat King widened his eyes and scratched his head. After watching for a while, I realized there were already four stones lined up—no matter what the Tabby Cat King did, he'd lost.
"I'm done playing."
The Tabby Cat King lay back down, stretching lazily in satisfaction.
"This really is interesting. A game invented by humans... Makes me want to see it all, everything in the world of the living."
I smiled and replied.
"Maybe I have a way to take you there."
The Tabby Cat King immediately turned his round head toward me.
"Really?"
"If you don't cause trouble, I'll figure out a way to take you."
The Tabby Cat King immediately looked at me suspiciously, then started laughing.
"Qingyuan really might be able to take you to the world of the living. Don't doubt it."
"Alright, alright, I get it. I won't cause trouble. Anyway, just find a way to take me to the world of the living."
At that moment, I noticed Spirit Snake’s form was starting to turn translucent, its ghost aura extremely unstable.
"Qingyuan, I should go now. I’m really sorry for wasting so much of your ghost aura."
As Spirit Snake spoke, it left. Instantly, I felt a tightness all over, mouth open and clutching my stomach, drool streaming down uncontrollably.
"Starving to death."
The feeling was unbearable. Suddenly, my mind filled with images of a horde of ragged, wild-haired hungry ghosts, reaching out their shriveled hands with bared teeth, all clamoring. Their hands stretched toward me, as if they wanted to grab me. I snapped out of it and shook my head.
"You’re already seeing the realm of hungry ghosts. If you don’t eat soon, you’ll fall into the Hungry Ghost Path."
I swallowed hard. The Tabby Cat King lifted his own tail.
"It’s not exactly edible, but I’ll let you have some. You can only eat half, though."
His furry, bushy tail swayed in front of my eyes, then patted my cheek.
"Hurry up."
I kept swallowing, pressing both paws against the Tabby Cat King’s tail, mouth open and ready to bite. But then I saw his furry paws.
"These look even tastier."
The Tabby Cat King pressed his paw against my nose.
"You should be grateful for the tail. You want to eat my hand too?"
"Forget it, then."
With that, the Tabby Cat King pulled his tail back and slapped me to the ground. This feeling of starving to death was unbearable—I’d never felt this way before.
My head started to feel heavy and dazed. Darkness closed in around me, and wailing sounds echoed in my ears. I had no strength left. Somehow, my ghost aura felt depleted, and my Ghost Souls seemed petrified, unable to produce any ghost aura.
A chill rose from my spine. I swallowed, feeling the cold stirring along my back. The sobbing sounds agitated my nerves. Tilting my head, I saw cracks forming on the ground, and beneath them, starving ghosts were wailing, leaping, and reaching out to grab me.
Shriveled fingers reached up through the cracks, scraping along my spine. The sensation was horrifying—if I fell, I’d become one of them. I couldn’t even make a sound, just stared in terror, powerless. The Tabby Cat King, just as my vision faded, smiled mysteriously, as if he didn’t care at all.
The cracks on the ground grew wider. I felt myself falling, unable to take it anymore. My mouth hung open, whimpering, as a dry, shriveled laughter echoed in my head.
"This is the result, Zhang Qingyuan. You’re suppressing yourself when there’s no need. If you release everything, you’ll have nothing to fear. Ghosts are like this—if you keep repressing your true self, you’ll never unleash real power. Even if you’ve accepted being a ghost, what’s the point of suppressing such primal desires? Remember!"
I kept swallowing as part of my body began to sink. The hands of hungry ghosts grabbed at the fur on my back and rump, pulling me down. I kept resisting—I had to do something. A vicious aura surged inside me. In my mind, I saw a red-eyed hungry ghost. I was reaching my limit.
Suddenly, with a crack, I fell. The wails of the starving ghosts rang in my ears. Eyes wide, I reached out with a hand.
Just then, with a whoosh, a tail dropped down, wrapped around my waist, and began pulling me up.
I gasped for air. The darkness vanished, and I was back in the hall. The Tabby Cat King was beside me, retracting his long tail.
"How was it? Not a pleasant feeling, right? That’s the fate of those in the Animal Realm. If you can’t eat your fill, when you’re hungry enough, you fall down there."
"You..."
I couldn’t speak for a long time, weakly raising my hand before letting it drop. My tongue lolled out of my mouth. I didn’t even have the strength to lift it. Then I remembered what Spirit Snake had said about consuming so much of my ghost aura. So it was him, and he’d done it on purpose.
"What exactly are you two scheming?"
I asked immediately. Thinking back, when I was sleeping, Spirit Snake had appeared in a materialized form, which consumed a lot of ghost aura. Before, my Ghost Souls could produce ghost aura on their own, so it was nothing. But now, in the Animal Realm, I can only recover ghost aura by eating things.
"Tell me everything you know, honestly. That guy just said that after you fell asleep, you didn’t go to your instinctual space, but were pulled somewhere else by a force. Where did you go? Who did you meet? I can sense a strange aura on you—who was it?"
The Tabby Cat King asked, staring at me with sharp eyes.
"Damn it, it’s all your fault for eating the bird eggs. I nearly starved to death."
At that moment, the Tabby Cat King pulled out three bird eggs from his chest, holding them between his fingers. My eyes widened.
"Give them to me."
"Of course I’ll give them to you. But you have to tell me—who did you see?"
I shook my head with all my strength.
The Tabby Cat King opened his mouth wide, holding up the three bird eggs, ready to eat them. I stared longingly. After a while, he stopped, walked over, cracked the eggs, and poured the yolks into my mouth. I felt a cool sensation in my throat, and the tightness in my stomach eased. The feeling of my chest sticking to my back faded a little, and I sighed in relief.
"This wasn’t my idea—it was your Ghost Soul’s. He seems very interested in where you went and who you saw."
I struggled to crawl up and shook my head.
"I can’t say right now. I already promised that guy, and you can’t see him or sense him anyway."
The Tabby Cat King helplessly waved his hand, then smiled.
"It doesn’t matter to me, Zhang Qingyuan. You saw the starving ghosts in the Hungry Ghost Path, didn’t you?"
I nodded with a grunt.
"If you fall down there, will you get eaten?"
The Tabby Cat King thought for a moment before answering.
"What gets eaten is the ghost aura wrapped around your Ghost Soul. All your power gets devoured by the starving ghosts, leaving only your endlessly hungry Ghost Soul, which eventually becomes one of them, just waiting for food to fall from somewhere else. Actually, every year it’s not just ghosts who die of hunger and fall into the Hungry Ghost Path. Their flesh isn’t even enough for the starving ghosts there. Many animals living here also get thrown into the Hungry Ghost Path."
"What do you mean?"
I stared wide-eyed as the Tabby Cat King smiled.
"Exactly what it sounds like. Those who can’t adapt here, those who can’t even make it to the side of order, get ruthlessly thrown into the Hungry Ghost Path. The Animal Realm is almost saturated now. Haven’t you noticed? The ghost aura here is so complex it’s unbelievable."
I nodded. The ghost aura in the Animal Realm really was impossibly complex, too much to count. That’s why I couldn’t quickly find Yin Choujian, and Bullhorn King couldn’t find me quickly either.
"Anyway, things are really bad here right now."
"So does food get sent here every month and thrown into the Hungry Ghost Path?"
The Tabby Cat King looked at me in confusion.
"I don’t know about that. Where did you hear it?"