Chapter 037

Chapter 37: First Steps to Build a Body

Yu Sheng was surprised by Irene’s request. He did not know why she chose this moment to bring it up so seriously.

They had talked about making a body for the Portrait Doll more than once before, but they never decided to act. One reason was that they still didn’t trust or understand each other enough. The other was that everything else was a mess, and Yu Sheng had no time to deal with Irene’s body.

Seeing how serious she looked now, he knew it wasn’t a whim.

He gave her a questioning look.

She answered simply: “I want to go with you, to watch your back.”

“You sure?” Yu Sheng’s expression turned a little weird, and he added, “I don’t doubt your strength…”

“Listen,” Irene cut him off as she leaned close to the frame; her face filled two thirds of the painting, and her tone was unusually firm, “I’m not joking. I don’t know exactly how you plan to handle that Entity, but since you brought back a ‘souvenir’ from it, you clearly have some ability. I won’t ask what it is. Still, when you deal with the Otherworld, being able to fight is not enough, especially against something as nasty as Hunger.”

She drew back a little and continued: “Make me a body so I can move freely. It can be rough; I just need to be free of this cursed Painting. I won’t get all my strength back, but I’ll be much stronger than regular Investigators, or the so-called Spirit Realm Detectives and Otherworld Hunters. Even if I’ve forgotten a lot, the instincts of a Living Doll are still with me.”

Yu Sheng held her gaze. Irene’s crimson eyes held his.

“I can help you, Yu Sheng,” she said with full seriousness. “We already worked together once when we entered Foxy’s dream.”

This time Yu Sheng took longer to think than usual, and he had to admit that her reason made sense.

His mind was full of the Valley and the urge to get back there to end the Entity-Hunger. But he also knew that charging in alone and trying to kill it wasn’t very likely to work. He did not fear death, and swallowing the Entity-Hunger had already made him stronger, but that kind of strengthening had a limit, and Hunger was not easy to erase.

He could keep dying to drag the thing down, but that was the worst plan. Having a tough helper who knew some supernatural arts would be better.

All he had to do was give Irene some trust and let her out of the painting.

That trust had already started when they fell into Foxy’s dream together, then woke and saw each other, both ready to puke.

He exhaled and leaned back in his chair, then said, “Looks like I need a trip downtown. I’ll have to buy clay, a wig, and other materials from a craft shop. The old blocks around here don’t have what we need.”

The Doll girl in the Painting blinked, then brightened: “You… you’re agreeing?”

“If you don’t mind the build quality and you trust my hands,” Yu Sheng said with a shrug, “I can try.”

“I’m not picky. As long as it looks human, I can reshape it myself, as long as you don’t mess up during the Alchemy part,” Irene blurted, like she was afraid he would change his mind. Then she looked aside with an odd little twist to her mouth and added, “And if you really can’t find the right materials…”

Yu Sheng looked curious and asked, “If I can’t find them, then what?”

“…You can use dough.”

Yu Sheng froze for two or three seconds, then showed the most shocked face Irene had seen on him: “Huh?”

Irene explained in a small voice: “The material is just a medium. The part that really matters is the Alchemy, your blood and my soul.”

Yu Sheng was still dazed: “I mean, I get having a backup plan, but that backup is way too cheap.”

Irene thought for a second and gave him the most harmless smile she could manage.

It worked.

Even so, Yu Sheng decided to go out and buy proper supplies.

“I’ll get real clay. We’ll need a lot for your body, and I don’t want to waste food. I also have some other things to buy,” he said as he stood up. “Stay home and watch TV. If anything happens, call me remotely. If the TV freezes again, wait until I’m back.”

He grabbed the remote and turned on the TV for her. Irene nodded like a well-behaved student and said, “Okay… come back soon.”

Yu Sheng agreed, put on his coat, and walked to the entryway.

He held the doorknob, steadied himself, and checked his nerves first. [No volcano crater, no meteor shower, no sulfur lake, no little green men with light swords, no full-body cyber-elf big sister.] He took a deep breath, opened the door, and stepped out onto the old street of Wutong Road.

He suddenly found it funny.

Going to the End Web was easy for him now, never mind whether he could make it back or die out there. The hard part was opening a Door and simply walking onto a normal street.

On the way to the bus stop, he looked around.

Somewhere along the way, his mood in this huge unfamiliar city had changed. The pressure from the past days had faded. Walking this street that was not exactly his hometown, he felt calm and even a little excited and hopeful.

Even the sky, bright enough to sting his eyes, looked sunny in a way that lifted his heart.

Vendors sold food at the corner. A few people drifted by. A kid who had probably caused trouble sprinted down the sidewalk, yelling, with a shopkeeper chasing after him and cursing.

[Are the professionals Irene mentioned hiding among these people? The ones who protect this city from the shadows and stand against the Otherworld? Has anyone noticed the small not-quite-right things hidden in this quiet, peaceful old block?] His thoughts spread as he tried to guess which passerby looked unfamiliar, which one looked like plainclothes, which one might be a Spirit Realm Detective or an Investigator.

The uncle flipping pancakes at the corner could be one; today the replacement cook was awful. The aunt hanging clothes on the balcony across the street was a candidate; he had never seen her before. What about the loud kid? Irene said Spirit Realm Detectives could use tricks to change how they looked.

As for the guy in a vest, bleached hair, phone blasting music, squatting on the curb, no way. He didn’t look the part at all.

Humming a tune, Yu Sheng walked through the old street and brushed past that vest-wearing, bleached-hair, phone-blasting squatter, who was actually Li Lin in disguise.

A little later, the nearly two-meter-tall Xu Jiali wandered out, glanced down at Li Lin on stakeout, squatted beside him, lit a cigarette, and looked like a street punk himself.

“This getup of yours really works?” Xu Jiali asked.

“It works great,” Li Lin said, “I dress like this whenever I do stakeouts. The colleagues who sell pancakes got exposed, but not me. I even have an anime cosplay outfit. That one hides even better. I once pinned a border smuggler, and he still wouldn’t believe a cosplayer could be a Special Affairs Bureau spy.”

Xu Jiali stared, confused: “Cosplay outfit? Sounds like field-type Powered Armor. But they don’t let you use that in the Borderland, right?”

Li Lin scooted away a little and said, “I can’t explain it to you. Also, keep your distance. You’re too big. Don’t blow my cover.”

“No chance. I look more unemployed than you,” the big man sniffed. “Tell me the truth. You found nothing all morning, right? Honestly, even if something is hiding here, it’s probably not a person. More likely a weird Entity or an Otherworld corrosion spot. That fits your clues better. And last night the disturbance was huge in Boundary City. Who knows what the Bureau looks like now. Meanwhile we’re stuck squatting here like fools, watching who-knows-what.”

Li Lin didn’t answer. He pulled out a fat power bank, plugged in his phone, and turned the volume up even higher.

Two or three hours later, Yu Sheng had finished shopping at the mall and bought everything on his list.

Now he stood in a quiet spot with a bunch of bulging plastic bags and thought.

He had bought a lot. Weight didn’t matter to him anymore, but hauling all of it onto the bus would be annoying.

So he had a bold idea.

It was worth trying.

He looked up to confirm no one was watching, then reached out his hand toward the air beside him. A Door took shape under his fingers.

Three seconds later, deep inside a hidden layer of Boundary City, alarms exploded through the Special Affairs Bureau headquarters. Countless staff who had been working overtime until their brains went fuzzy sprang out of their chairs, from agents and clerks to Captains and even Director Bai Li Qing.

Yu Sheng stepped through, bags in hand, and went home.