Chapter 059

Chapter 59: Repair

Thirty minutes later, Yu Sheng stood by the Alchemy Bench, a bit nervous, looking down at the little doll lying there.

Propping herself up with her hands, Irene slowly sat up and stared into space, thinking about life.

Doll, 66.6 centimeters tall, smells like lotus root.

Experiment successful.jpg.

After a long look, Yu Sheng decided she seemed fine, and his confidence grew: “See? I told you it would work. If flour works, why not lotus root…”

“Be quiet and let me sort this out,” Irene raised a hand to stop him, then stared at her palms with a strange look, “I don’t get it. How can it work? It makes no sense. How did it work?”

Yu Sheng tugged at the corner of his mouth: “You were the one who let me try. Why don’t you believe it now that it worked?”

“I never should have let you! How was I supposed to know you’d actually succeed! My arms are lotus now!” Irene puffed her cheeks and glared at Yu Sheng. “I just wanted to laugh at you. Your messy ‘Alchemy’ should not have worked! I wanted you to give up… Why did it work? How did it work?!”

“I don’t know,” Yu Sheng said, still dazed, “you said okay, so I tried. You didn’t say you only wanted to watch me fail. I thought you supported my research.”

Irene wanted to jump up and bite him, but her legs weren’t ready, so she could only sit there and curse: “Research my grandpa! What kind of research is this! My arms are lotus now. What do I do! They really fused! How did you manage that? The power of wishful thinking?”

Yu Sheng thought about it and figured it probably was the power of wishful thinking.

Still, Irene’s fierce reaction surprised him. He had no Alchemy foundation. He only followed the doll’s instructions step by step. When he injected blood and completed the Spirit-Infusion on two sections of lotus root, he hadn’t thought anything at all. He didn’t even realize it was supposed to be impossible. When the two blood-and-spirit-treated lotus pieces wriggled by Irene’s elbow and turned into living arms, he honestly thought that was normal.

He hadn’t expected to scare the little doll this much.

“Sorry…” Yu Sheng scratched his head, suddenly uneasy. “Should we replace them? I can go downstairs and grab an axe…”

He didn’t finish before Irene’s glare shut him up.

“Okay. Forget I said it.”

“It’s done. What else can we do,” the little doll muttered as she lifted her arms, resigned and exhausted. Then she very carefully curled her fingers into fists and flexed each finger one by one, nervous like she had octopus tentacles attached to her body and any random twitch might send the two arms into chaos.

Very soon, she realized the arms Yu Sheng had slapped together actually worked pretty well.

Even if they had started as lotus root.

“Um… test complete?” Yu Sheng asked carefully, making sure she wouldn’t lunge to bite him. “They work, right? No pain?”

Irene sighed: “They work. No discomfort.”

“Good. You scared me,” Yu Sheng finally relaxed, then looked at Irene’s legs that still couldn’t hold her up. “Now for your legs. Let me see how bad they are.”

“Wait. What are you going to use?” Irene narrowed her eyes at him. “If you pull out a bag of lotus starch, I swear a dump truck will run you over in your dreams.”

“I don’t get you,” Yu Sheng said, puzzled, “your body is clay, and you don’t mind using flour as a substitute. Why are you so against other similar materials?”

Irene pointed at his nose, but her hand was too small to be scary: “You humans keep pets, right? Then why not keep cockroaches? You eat organic matter, right? Then why not eat p-”

“Okay, I get it,” Yu Sheng cut her off and instantly understood how different species could see things differently. “Relax. I have normal patching material.”

As he spoke, he opened the drawer on the other side of the table and took out a small can of epoxy putty.

“In theory, the best way to fix a clay doll is with the same clay, but we’re out. This will work too. The important part is the Alchemy treatment, right?” he asked to confirm. “Then I smooth it with a scraper, right?”

“That… is fine,” Irene finally nodded, then grew curious, “when did you get that?”

“It came as a free gift with the clay. I shoved it to the bottom and forgot,” Yu Sheng said, reading the instructions on the label. “Alright, show me the wounds.”

Only then did Irene relax. She slowly lifted the ornate skirt and rolled down the stocking on her right leg.

Her ivory-like calf was covered with black cracks of all sizes. Some ran through her knee and reached up toward her thigh.

Yu Sheng jumped: “Whoa!”

“At least it didn’t snap,” Irene still sounded carefree. “If it had, you would stick another lotus segment on me.”

“It isn’t about snapping. How are you this calm? Are you sure it doesn’t hurt?” Yu Sheng’s voice tightened. He had seen plenty of blood these last two days, even his own mangled flesh, but the sight of Irene’s shattered-looking leg still made his heart thud. It hit him in a way that was totally different from getting a hole punched in his own body.

Maybe it just looked too eerie, even scarier than Miss Doll’s broken arms.

He touched the cracked places. The edges felt hard like wood. Irene’s normal limbs were soft and no different from a human’s. This stiff feel meant the structure there was starting to lose its soul sync. If they delayed, the next step would be what happened to her arms earlier: a complete break.

Irene laughed: “Hey, don’t rub. It tickles. It doesn’t hurt at all… okay, maybe the tiniest bit.”

She held her index fingers very close together to show just how tiny.

Yu Sheng sighed, sliced his hand, and mixed his blood into the patch material. While he worked the putty with a scraper, he muttered: “This is too scary. I don’t really understand how Living Dolls work, but next time, don’t act so calm when you’re hurt. If it’s serious, tell me sooner. I’m the one who has to patch you up.”

Irene rolled her eyes: “You were scary when you were dying too. I didn’t say anything.”

Yu Sheng pouted, finished the preparation, and carefully spread the putty over the cracks in her leg with the scraper.

“Ah, that tickles…”

“Bear with it. Don’t move.”

“Okay.”

Irene was quiet for a while. Waiting was boring, so she started chatting again: “Those two Special Affairs Bureau agents we met today, I actually wanted to talk to them. I wanted to see if they could contact the sisters from Alice’s Little House. I don’t remember the Bureau’s details, but I think it’s an official body in Boundary City. They should have connections with Alice’s Little House.”

“Then why didn’t you say so?” Yu Sheng asked without looking up, still working with great care.

The scraper spread the putty, filling the rifts in the doll’s leg. The blood-mixed patch sizzled softly on contact, melted into black mud and mist, and then fused with the doll’s skin, returning to a flesh-like texture and spring.

“I don’t know. I suddenly felt nervous,” said Irene. “It was a spiritual warning. I didn’t feel settled. Maybe it’s because we just met them, and I don’t dare trust them yet. Or maybe I’ve been cut off from the world too long and I don’t know how the forces in the Borderland are arranged now.”

Yu Sheng paused and looked up at the doll: “So next time we meet them, do you want me to bring it up? They already saw you today. They’ll probably report it.”

“Reporting doesn’t scare me. There is no such thing as a 66.6-centimeter Living Doll in this world. If they report me, they’ll just think I’m an alchemical creature similar to a Living Doll. That isn’t rare to them. As for next time…” Irene hesitated and looked into Yu Sheng’s eyes, “we’ll see. If their identities are real and they are from an official Organization, ask about Alice’s Little House. If they can introduce me to other Living Doll sisters in this city, even better. If I see my own kind, I should feel much safer.”

Yu Sheng rarely saw the doll so torn.

But he felt he could understand.

If he had been sealed away for half a century or longer, then suddenly released into a world that had become completely unfamiliar, not knowing what had become of the things he once knew, nor the current order and power map, then asking other forces for help would indeed be something to treat with great care.

Yu Sheng breathed out softly, set down the scraper, and gently reset Irene’s knee joint.

“Try standing up.”