Chapter 104

Chapter 104: Yu Sheng’s Alchemy Experiment

He could not fall asleep. Even without Irene beside him making trouble, he still could not fall asleep.

Maybe his first real trip into the Otherworld had him too excited, and maybe he had taken in too much new information lately. Now all of it rushed through his head at once, and Yu Sheng could not stop his thoughts. After tossing and turning for two or three hours, he finally got up, pulled on a coat over his pajamas, and quietly prepared to leave the bedroom.

As soon as he pushed open the bedroom door, the little doll on the bed suddenly sat straight up with her eyes still closed and said: “Going through The Door, where are you going?”

Yu Sheng froze and was about to answer when Irene flopped back down. As she fell she mumbled: “When you go buy money, don’t forget your helmet. You and Silly Fox stuffed yourselves and still didn’t take me to play games…”

[Nonsense sleep talk. And she’s a doll, so why does a doll not only need sleep but even sleep talk?]

After making sure Irene had not woken, Yu Sheng eased the doorway open and stepped into the hall.

The sun had not risen. Night still covered the house, the quietest time before dawn. Everything inside and out was so still that the sound of his slippers on the floor seemed extra loud and out of place.

He looked both ways and first saw the door to The End Web at the end of the hall. He walked over, carefully cracked the door to peek inside, and when he saw the room was the same as always, he let out a small breath and turned toward the stairs at the other end of the hall.

At the top of the stairs, he noticed a jacket hanging on the railing post. It was the coat he had worn last night when he went through The Door. He had come home late and left it there without tidying.

The coat was soaked with large patches of blood, and where the Giant Wolf had bitten it, there was a big tear that looked scary.

Yu Sheng picked up the coat. He had not looked closely when he came back, but now he felt the coat was done for. Fixing that rip would take work, the huge bloodstains might never wash out, and it was not even an expensive coat. He would just throw it away later.

[If I toss a coat that looks like it came from a crime scene straight into the trash, will I scare someone? The neighbors might call the police.]

His thoughts wandered. He sighed over how much he had bled. [So much blood. I should have smeared some around the Exhibition Hall to win more control over the Museum or unlock something new.] He wondered what the Giant Wolf that crawled out of Little Red Riding Hood’s shadow really was, and he worried about the girl being chased by the Evil Wolf.

His eyes kept drifting back to the blood on the coat. Slowly, all his scattered thoughts gathered into one curiosity.

[Blood. My own blood… what is it, really?]

He had held that question in his heart for a long time, but he never had the time or a plan to test anything. Now an idea came to him. Since he could not sleep anyway, after a moment of hesitation he turned and climbed the stairs to the attic.

Moonlight pooled through the window, and the attic lay in a deep blue gloom. The big table that Irene had turned into an Alchemy Bench sat in the darkness, with the tools he had used last time to make a body for the doll still spread out on it. A few old books were stacked on the corner, next to an old desk lamp.

Yu Sheng did not turn on the main light. He switched on the old lamp instead and sat at the table, letting the small circle of light help him focus while he thought.

He had rebuilt Irene’s arms with two sections of lotus root, turning the little doll into a little person made of lotus root. She protested a lot, but aside from her fussing, there was one important point.

In Irene’s professional doll-making knowledge, that kind of hack job should never have worked. Clay, flour, even dirt dug up from the garden could be materials for making a doll, but lotus root was not.

After a short pause, Yu Sheng took a disposable mixing cup from the drawer, picked up the craft knife, gritted his teeth, cut a slit on the back of his hand, and let his blood drip into the cup.

He did not know much about the occult. Besides the mechanical steps in the doll-making process, Irene had only told him some basic ideas about Spirit Infusion, guidance, and activation, and even those she had only explained in passing.

But to Yu Sheng right now, those basics were enough to satisfy his curiosity.

After finishing an Otherworld run with Little Red Riding Hood, he was full of interest in the things of that Domain and eager to build up experience and knowledge.

Following the steps he remembered from Irene, he set candles for a Spirit Infusion Ritual on the table, placed his blood at the focal points of a pattern of concentric circles and connecting lines, and tried to stir his “spirituality,” then pour that power into the blood outside his body.

Irene had said that blood is a perfect natural alchemical wonder. The flow of fresh blood symbolizes life, the greatest miracle in the universe. It is the material most likely to react in an alchemical rite. Even a clumsy beginner can use it for many tests.

Yu Sheng ran into a problem on the first step.

He did not know how to rouse his “spirituality.” Although he had been feeling his Spiritual Intuition more and more clearly lately, he still could not treat that so called essence of the human soul as something concrete and controllable. He sensed no special energy in himself, so he could not pour anything into the blood.

[Nothing. How am I supposed to push anything into the blood?] He tried to imagine it, and he imagined so hard he almost fell asleep. After ten minutes, he saw the blood in the cup start to clot and gave up on this path.

Maybe he needed some auxiliary materials. Yu Sheng thought a bit, opened the drawer, and took out a bag of clay.

He had bought more after using up the last batch. In case Irene needed emergency limb repairs in the future, he now kept these supplies at home.

[We can’t use lotus root every time. I really want to try it again, but she would go crazy.]

Shaping clay was the only alchemical operation Yu Sheng had done successfully so far.

He mixed the blood from the cup into the clay and kneaded it well, then carefully added tea powder and rose oil in the ratios Irene had taught him. After his careful prep, he began shaping the clay into a forearm and hand.

He might as well take this chance to practice his doll-making craft so Irene would stop complaining that his work looked ugly whenever she remembered the “rebuild.”

Yu Sheng told himself this and worked with all the patience and care he had. He formed the arm, then used a scraper and a needle tool to make a small palm at the end. After working hard, he found that… it was still ugly.

But at least it was better than last time. It actually had five fingers.

[I never dared tell Irene that the first body I made for her had two six-fingered hands. After the doll finished self remolding, she fixed it on her own and never noticed.]

After finishing, Yu Sheng set the arm at the center of the Alchemical Array. He pictured a link formed through his blood, then slowly moved his right hand, trying to make the arm on the table move with him.

It did not move at all.

He frowned, poked the arm with the scraper, and when it still had no reaction, he gave in and set it aside.

The first light of morning began to shine through the slanted roof window, and the attic slowly brightened.

But Yu Sheng was absorbed in his work. He did not even notice the light changing.

He let out more blood and prepared more clay.

Crafting is easy to get hooked on.

Since he had already made one arm, he might as well make a whole body. Whether the Alchemy worked or not, practicing the sculpting would help. He could call it a spare body for Irene. She had said she would not switch bodies for a few months, and this stretch would be perfect for practice.

[Give the little doll a small surprise.]

With that thought, his enthusiasm rose. Letting out fresh blood one time after another did not make him feel unwell. He made a new torso, another arm, and two legs. Then he opened a new pack of clay and began shaping the doll’s head.

He felt he had improved a lot. Compared to last time, this body was now roughly symmetrical. Arms looked like arms and legs looked like legs.

The doll’s head was even harder than the body. He not only had to shape the five features well, he also had to think about a more complex makeup process. He did not know if he could pull it off. The first time he built a body for Irene, he skipped the face makeup step and let Irene grow that face herself. This time he wanted to try the harder challenge.

He had even bought a small set of makeup tools for dolls and figures when he bought the clay. It would be a waste not to use them.

Yu Sheng worked with deep focus.

In fact, he was a little too focused, so much that he did not notice at all that the fingers on the first arm he had made were trembling lightly, and the torso on the edge of the table had a chest that was rising and falling so slightly it was hard to see with the naked eye.