Chapter 59: Repair
Thirty minutes later, Yu Sheng nervously glanced at the little doll lying on the Alchemic Platform.
Irene slowly propped herself up with her hands, looking a bit dazed as if contemplating the meaning of life.
The doll, measuring precisely 66.6 centimeters, exuded a faint, refreshing fragrance akin to lotus root.
[Experiment successful.jpg]
After observing for a while, Yu Sheng concluded that Irene seemed perfectly fine, and his confidence gradually built up.
“See? I told you it would work! If you can use flour, why can’t you use lotus root…” Yu Sheng began, but Irene raised her hand to cut him off.
“Give me a moment to process this,” Irene said, her gaze fixed on her hands with a strange expression. “I just don’t get it… How did it even work? It doesn’t make sense! How did it succeed?!”
Yu Sheng couldn’t help but smirk. “You let me try, and now that it worked, you don’t believe it yourself?”
“I shouldn’t have let you try in the first place! How was I supposed to know you’d actually succeed? Now my arms have really turned into lotus roots!” Irene glared at Yu Sheng, puffing up in frustration. “I just wanted to watch you make a fool of yourself! Your reckless Alchemy should have never worked! I only agreed so you’d give up—how did it actually work?!”
Yu Sheng looked puzzled. “I have no idea. You said it was okay to try, so I tried. I thought you genuinely supported my research…”
Irene almost wanted to pounce on him and bite, but with her legs still out of commission, she could only sit on the table and hurl insults.
“Research, my foot! What kind of messed-up Alchemy is this?! You turned my arms into lotus roots! What am I supposed to do now? How did you even manage it—was it the power of ‘thinking’ or something?!”
Yu Sheng scratched his head, genuinely bewildered. Maybe it really was the power of thought at work.
Still, he hadn’t anticipated Irene’s intense reaction—he genuinely had no foundation in Alchemy. Every step was just following the doll’s guidance, without understanding any of it. Even when he infused blood into the segments of lotus root and performed the Spirit Imbuement Rite, he didn’t feel anything special. When the two segments of enchanted lotus root wiggled and fused with Irene’s elbows, he thought it was completely normal.
He never expected his little doll to be so terrified.
“Sorry…” Yu Sheng muttered, starting to feel a bit uneasy. “Maybe we could replace them? I’ll go downstairs and grab an axe…”
His words were cut short by a deadly glare from Irene.
“Right, forget I said that.”
“Well, it’s done now. What can I do?” The little doll begrudgingly raised her arms, resignation written all over her exhausted face. Carefully, she made a fist, flexing each of her fingers one by one. She looked tense, like she was afraid the makeshift arms Yu Sheng had randomly attached would suddenly go berserk.
But soon enough, she discovered that despite the bizarre method, the two new arms actually worked surprisingly well. Even if the original material was… lotus root.
“Um… did the test pass?” Yu Sheng cautiously asked, finally daring to break the silence after confirming the doll wouldn’t bite him. “They should work fine, right? No pain?”
Irene let out a long sigh. “Yes… they work fine. No discomfort.”
“Great! You scared me for a second,” Yu Sheng relaxed at last, his gaze shifting to Irene’s still-crippled legs. “Alright, time to fix the legs. Let me see how bad the damage is.”
Irene let out a noncommittal grunt but suddenly fixed her gaze on Yu Sheng with a hint of warning.
“Wait—you’re not planning to use something weird again, are you? If you pull out a bag of lotus root powder, I swear I’ll make sure you get run over by a dirt hauler tonight!”
Yu Sheng couldn’t quite understand her resistance. “I just don’t get it. Your whole body is made of clay. You didn’t even mind using flour before, so why are you so against similar materials now?”
Irene pointed a tiny finger at Yu Sheng’s nose, but given how small it was, the gesture lacked any intimidation whatsoever. “You humans keep pets, but why not cockroaches? You eat organic food, but why not s—”
“Okay! Got it! You don’t have to say it,” Yu Sheng quickly interrupted, instantly grasping the cultural gap between species. “Don’t worry. I’ve got proper repair materials.”
While talking, he opened a drawer on the other side of the table and pulled out a small jar of epoxy resin putty.
“In theory, the best way to fix a clay doll would be to use the same type of clay, but I’m all out. This stuff works as a substitute since the important part is the Alchemy treatment, right?” he confirmed with Irene. “I’ll just smooth it out with a spatula, and it should work fine, right?”
Irene hesitated but eventually nodded. “It should… be okay,” she admitted, curiosity getting the better of her. “When did you even get that?”
“Oh, it came as a bonus when I bought the clay before. I stuffed it at the bottom and forgot about it,” Yu Sheng replied nonchalantly while examining the usage instructions on the package. “Alright, let me take a look at your injury.”
Irene finally let out a sigh of relief, carefully lifting the intricately decorated skirt, revealing her right leg as she pulled down the long stocking.
Her calf, pale as ivory, was marred with a web of dark cracks, some of which ran through her knee, reaching all the way up to her thigh.
Yu Sheng couldn’t help but gasp. “Holy… shit!”
“At least it’s not broken,” Irene replied, completely nonchalant. “If it were, you’d probably just stick another piece of lotus root on me.”
“That’s not the point! How can you be so indifferent? Does it really not hurt at all?” Yu Sheng’s voice trembled slightly. Despite being used to blood and gore over the past few days—even seeing his own flesh torn apart—something about the fractured state of Irene’s leg struck him differently, making his heart pound. It was more unsettling than even the sight of Doll Lady’s severed arms.
He cautiously touched the cracked areas of Irene’s leg, feeling the unnaturally hardened surface—like wood. Normally, Irene’s limbs were supple and indistinguishable from those of a Human. This rigid texture indicated that the area around the cracks had begun to lose “Soul Synchronization.” If they delayed any longer, the next step would be complete disintegration, just like her arm before.
Irene just chuckled, clearly amused. “Haha, don’t rub it, it tickles… No pain at all… well, maybe just a tiny bit. Very, very faint.”
She gestured with her hands, bringing her index fingers close together as if to show just how minimal the pain was.
Yu Sheng sighed, taking a small knife and slicing his palm. He let his blood mix with the repair materials, muttering as he carefully blended it with a spatula. “You really freak me out sometimes. I still don’t get how you Living Dolls work, but can’t you at least warn me when you’re hurt? I mean, I’m the one who always has to fix you up in the end…”
Rolling her eyes, Irene shot back, “You look pretty scary yourself when you’re dying. I didn’t say anything about that.”
Yu Sheng made a face but continued processing the mixture, gently applying the repair compound to the cracks on her leg. As soon as the blood-infused material touched the fractured surface, it emitted a faint hissing sound before dissolving into a black, misty sludge that gradually merged with the Doll’s skin, restoring a lifelike texture and elasticity.
“It tickles!”
“Hold still,” Yu Sheng admonished. “Don’t move.”
“Okay.”
Silence fell for a while, but the process was slow, and Irene’s boredom soon got the better of her. “Those two Special Affairs Bureau Operatives we saw earlier—I actually wanted to talk to them, see if they could help me get in touch with the other Alice’s Little House sisters. I can’t remember much about the Special Affairs Bureau, but it’s supposed to be a legitimate organization in Boundary City. Maybe they’ve had dealings with Alice’s Little House before…”
“Then why didn’t you say anything?” Yu Sheng asked without looking up, his hands still meticulously working on the repair.
“I don’t know,” Irene admitted, looking uncertain. “Suddenly felt uneasy—like a warning from my instincts. Maybe it’s just because I’m not used to them yet? Or because I’ve been cut off from the outside world for too long… I’m not sure what the power dynamics in Borderland are like nowadays…”
Yu Sheng paused, glancing at her. “Should I bring it up next time we meet them? They’ve already seen you, and they’ll probably file a report…”
“I’m not too worried about that,” Irene replied, hesitating slightly. “There aren’t any other Living Dolls like me around—at least not at my size—so they’ll probably think I’m some kind of alchemical construct instead. That’s not unusual to them. Next time… we’ll see. If they really are from an official organization, I might ask them about Alice’s Little House. If they can help me find other Living Dolls in the city, that would be nice… Meeting my own kind again… it would make me feel safer.”
Yu Sheng was surprised by the hint of vulnerability in her voice. He could empathize, though. If he had been sealed away for half a century or more, only to wake up to a completely unfamiliar world, he would also feel hesitant to trust anyone or anything.
He took a deep breath, carefully pressing her knee joint back into place.
“Try standing up.”