Chapter 32: The Test of Blood
This novel is translated and hosted on Bcatranslation
Irene’s shrieks were so loud and piercing that they could make anyone’s head throb. It was almost impossible to imagine how such an awful noise could come from an oil painting. It was as if the entire canvas served as a giant speaker, blasting her furious voice right into Yu Sheng’s ears.
Standing there, Yu Sheng pressed his palms against his ears, looking both helpless and annoyed. “Don’t ask me how it works,” he said with a weary sigh, glancing at Irene’s painted figure, “because I honestly have no idea. All I know is that I can open these things I call ‘doors.’ And through them, I can get to all sorts of strange places. They could lead to the Otherworld, or someplace far, far away—like what you just saw. I still can’t tell if those places are alternate worlds, distant planets, or maybe parallel universes.”
He paused for a moment, then looked thoughtful. “Maybe I should try asking someone on the other side. Though that elf we saw earlier didn’t look very friendly…”
Irene, stunned into silence for a long moment, finally spoke. Her crimson eyes were fixed on Yu Sheng. “So… what about the conditions?” she asked. “How do you trigger these doors in the first place?”
Yu Sheng shrugged, trying to explain as simply as possible. “I’m not totally sure,” he said. “It seems I can open them whenever I want, at least most of the time. There appear to be two methods. The first is using ordinary doors that already exist. It’s surprisingly easy—sometimes I do it without even meaning to, and before I know it, the door I open leads somewhere strange. The second way is what you saw me do just now—”
He made a gesture as though pulling a door open right out of thin air.
“This way is harder,” he continued. “It takes a lot of focus and energy. If I lose my concentration, the door just disappears. The good news is, at least I won’t open one of those doors by accident and find myself face-to-face with some Otherworld monster.”
Irene studied him closely, her painted eyes following the movement of his arms. Then she asked, as bluntly as ever, “Are you even human?”
Yu Sheng’s face twisted in disbelief. “What’s that supposed to mean?!”
“Oh, don’t pretend you don’t know,” Irene said, leaning forward within her painted world. She tried to recall his own words and then perfectly mimicked his tone and expression, “—‘If I’m not human, are you?’”
She straightened up and looked him directly in the eye. “Some humans have supernatural abilities, that’s true. But I’ve never met anyone quite like you.”
Yu Sheng frowned, feeling defensive. “Maybe you have and just forgot. After all, your memory’s not exactly perfect.”
Irene blinked, seeming thrown off-balance. “…Oh? Really?”
For a second, Yu Sheng felt uncomfortable. He’d only been teasing her, as he always did during their arguments. He hadn’t expected Irene to take his words so seriously—much less admit that she might not remember everything. She looked oddly thoughtful, as if she understood something about herself that he did not.
He cleared his throat, trying to steer the conversation back on track. “Anyway, it looks like when I ended up in that valley, it wasn’t the house’s weird properties that caused it. Instead, I must have opened a door myself. So, if I can do that again, I might be able to return to the Otherworld. That’s just a theory, of course.”
Irene’s expression turned serious. “Can you control this ability of yours?” she asked quietly.
“…Mostly,” Yu Sheng said, speaking slowly. “I can decide when I’m just opening a normal door and when I’m trying to open one of these special passages. But I don’t have a way to know where the passage will lead. It might open into a sunny meadow, or straight into a volcano. However, I have confirmed at least one thing.”
Irene leaned forward again, eager. “What’s that?”
“I can recreate a passage,” Yu Sheng explained. “Under certain conditions, I can open a door to the same place more than once. That elf you saw just now—I’ve run into her before.”
Irene looked surprised. “Oh. That explains why she looked so annoyed when she saw you.”
Yu Sheng rubbed the back of his neck, looking a bit embarrassed. “I’m not entirely sure how I managed it before, but I have a fuzzy memory of how it felt. If I keep practicing, I might be able to open doors to places I’ve visited more reliably. The main problem is that the first time I got into that valley, I wasn’t ready at all. I’ve forgotten most of what it felt like, which makes it tough to do it again.”
Irene nodded, thinking hard. “At least you have a lead now, right?” she said, doing her best to sound encouraging. “Before, your plan to rush back and save that fox sounded completely nuts. Now it seems like you actually have a chance. Right? Isn’t that good?”
Yu Sheng was caught off guard. He took a good, hard look at Irene—this doll-like figure sealed inside a painting. She squirmed a little, as if his stare made her nervous. “Why are you looking at me like that?” she snapped. “I already told you, you and a two-dimensional character—”
Yu Sheng cut her off before she could finish with her usual mean joke. “This is the first time I’ve heard you say something nice to me. I always thought you had nothing but insults.” He sounded truly astonished, which only made Irene’s face scrunch up in annoyed silence.
Despite her grumpy demeanor, Yu Sheng felt surprisingly cheerful. Even her rude remarks seemed kind of funny now, like a quirky background hum in his life.
Feeling better, Yu Sheng flexed his hands and got up from his seat at the dining table. He began pacing around the room, his energy returning as he thought about what he needed to do next.
Irene noticed this and suddenly looked worried. “You’re not thinking of… training right here and now, are you?”
“No time like the present,” Yu Sheng said lightly. “Besides, I slept all day, so I’m wide awake. And this kind of practice doesn’t need a lot of space.”
Irene rolled her eyes and hugged her stuffed bear more tightly. “Just be careful,” she warned. “If you open a door and that elf appears again, she might hurl a fireball at you. Then you’d be all over the place—your blood spraying everywhere, and I’d be stuck here looking at the mess!”
Despite her harsh words, Yu Sheng just waved a hand as if shooing away a fly. His gaze landed on the kitchen door. Using an existing door was the easier way to practice. Creating a door out of thin air required too much effort.
But before he could begin, another idea popped into his head. He turned to Irene thoughtfully. “What was that you said just now?”
Irene frowned. “Just now? I told you to be careful so you wouldn’t get blasted.”
“No, not that—the rude bit,” Yu Sheng clarified.
Irene’s mouth twitched as if annoyed he would make her repeat it. “I said not to get your blood all over me.”
“Yes, that’s it. I want to test something.” Yu Sheng smiled oddly and walked back to the table, picking up a small fruit knife.
Irene’s eyes went wide, and she hopped off her tiny painted chair, clutching her stuffed bear protectively. “H-hey! What are you doing?! I was just kidding! Don’t go crazy on me! If you need to hurt something, scratch the canvas or something, not yourself!”
She started to babble nervously, but Yu Sheng looked at her with a calm frown. “Why are you panicking? I never said I was going to hurt you.”
Without another word, he pressed the knife against his own finger, then seemed to think better of it and turned the blade against the back of his hand instead. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and made a quick, neat cut. The pain was manageable, just a sharp sting.
Irene watched, stunned, as Yu Sheng held his bleeding hand up to the painting. She backed away inside her painted world, flustered. “What are you doing?! You’re not actually trying that old ‘blood bond’ ritual you read in novels, are you? I warned you about reading too much!”
Yu Sheng gave a small snort, looking offended. “For your information, I write novels—unsuccessfully, but still. Don’t act so high and mighty.” He took on a more serious tone. “Besides, this has nothing to do with some silly blood bond. Remember when I was in that valley with the fox? She touched my blood, and after that, something between us changed. I could sense things about her that I couldn’t before. Maybe my blood has special properties. I want to see if something similar happens with you.”
He was remembering how the silver fox had touched his blood and then gained the ability to sense his death. Ever since, Yu Sheng had felt a strange connection to the fox’s thoughts and memories, as if his blood had formed a link between them. He hoped that trying it here might reveal something similar.
Hearing this, Irene quieted down a bit, though she still looked doubtful. She was trapped in this painting, after all, and was hardly the perfect test subject. She couldn’t move freely, and her entire existence now depended on that canvas. But Yu Sheng pressed on.
He carefully smeared a bit of blood along the painting’s frame, and a few drops onto the canvas itself. He remembered how the fox’s bond had been so immediate. Yet, as he worked, nothing like that happened here. No strange tug, no sudden rush of shared feeling. The painting remained as it was, the blood just sitting there, cooling and drying into dark spots of crimson.
Irene lifted her eyes to look at him. Yu Sheng wasn’t sure how her vision worked from inside the painting, but she seemed to register his blood’s presence. Still, there was no dramatic reaction—no mysterious connection formed.
“Do you feel anything?” he asked at last, sounding a bit uncertain.
Irene thought for a moment. “Warm at first,” she said slowly. “But now it’s just cold.”
Yu Sheng sighed, disappointed. “…So it didn’t work.”