Chapter 110

Chapter 110: Test

It was a fascinating—almost unbelievable—process.

Earth and rock shaped themselves as if by their own will. Great swaths of rubble slowly sank into the ground and were swallowed up, like chocolate melting into hot milk. In the distance, farmland lines emerged, and on the original site of the ruined temple, a stretch of open ground formed—flat as if it had been machine-leveled.

Then stones began to rise from the center, assembling into a broad platform that hovered about ten centimeters above the earth.

Yu Sheng felt his connection to the valley tightening, and with it, control came more naturally. He focused harder, refining the platform down to the smallest details, constantly increasing its strength and the “depth” of its foundation underground.

The whole thing felt like learning to use his own limbs.

He had planned to turn this valley into one of his bases. The day he confirmed this otherworld had become harmless, he’d wanted to do it. This place could let him farm, serve as a test ground for Irene, give Foxy room to run wild and “cultivate,” and—down the line—keep any projects that weren’t safe to leave outside.

He just hadn’t expected construction to start like this.

Foxy stood nearby with the two Irenes, eyes wide, watching Yu Sheng work with open admiration. Only after a long while did she sigh, awestruck. “Benefactor could totally be an engineering immortal…”

“So back home, everything has an immortal, huh?” Irene finally couldn’t hold it in anymore. She’d been wanting to complain about this forever. “Do you also have a stir-fried-noodle immortal, a braised-noodle immortal, and a beef flat-noodle immortal?”

“That all falls under the cooking immortal,” Foxy said with a straight face. “If you register them separately, wouldn’t that waste a lot of social resources? The Immortal Alliance won’t approve.”

Irene stared at her. “…No way there really is a cooking immortal!”

Right then, Yu Sheng finished laying the foundation. On top of it, he shaped a small shelter in one corner of the platform—just enough to block wind and rain, though the valley seemed to have neither. He walked over to Foxy and Irene and asked, genuinely curious, “What are you two talking about?”

The two dolls raised their hands together and pointed at the demon fox girl. “Silly Fox said you can be a cement-mixing immortal.”

“No. Engineering immortal,” Foxy corrected at once, dead serious.

Yu Sheng’s mouth twitched, but he managed to hold it. He turned and gestured at the platform. “Look. From now on, this is our second main base outside No. 66, Wu Tong Road. I’ve got a really grand plan. I’m going to raise a huge building on the ruins of that old broken temple—the kind that looks like an ancient-civilization temple. Majestic. Mysterious. Imposing. This will be the headquarters of our Hotel organization…”

“Three people taking over a whole city, huh? You’ve got some nerve,” Irene said without hesitation. Then her gaze drifted to a grayish block by the edge of the platform—a squat “box” that looked like a giant Little Match Girl matchbox. “Is that a temporary toilet?”

Yu Sheng went rigid.

After a long pause, he finally said, awkward and hesitant, “…That’s step one of the construction plan. Think of it as Temple, Generation One.”

Irene blinked.

For the first time, she didn’t even know what to say.

Yu Sheng pounced on the silence to change the subject. “I’m just warming up—basic geometric shapes. Anyway, forget that. Let’s get to business and test the remote-control range of your new body.”

Irene’s attention snapped away instantly, right on cue. The two dolls looked up at him at the same time. “How do we test it? Do I start running in two directions and see when I disconnect?”

“With your tiny legs, how long would it take you to run anywhere?” Yu Sheng shot her a look, then—before she could explode—he reached out and lifted the doll with the painting frame on its back. He pointed at the other one. “This one teams up with Foxy. You two run that way, all the way to the end of the valley. I’ll carry your main body and door-open straight to the mountain range edge where we arrived last time. We’ll see what happens.”

While he spoke, Foxy had already dashed more than ten meters away. She dropped low, aura swirling, auspicious light drifting around her—and in a shimmer, a nine-tailed demon fox as big as two vans emerged. She looked eagerly at Irene’s copy body on the ground. “Irene! Come on, let’s run together!”

Irene remembered the last time she’d crossed the valley on this rocket-boosted supersonic fox. Her little face scrunched up. “Can’t we do a different plan…”

Yu Sheng immediately offered the doll with the painting frame. “Then swap. This one goes with Foxy, and you come with me.”

The two dolls froze.

A beat later, they shouted in unison, glaring at him. “Isn’t that me either way?!”

As they argued, Irene’s copy body had already wobbled into motion. She trudged toward Foxy, muttering, “Forget it. This body can go with Silly Fox. At least it feels duller. Maybe it won’t react as badly.”

Foxy laid one tail on the ground. Irene climbed up it with both hands and feet, and Foxy reminded her over her shoulder, “Sit farther back. Grab some fur. When I speed up, don’t fall off.”

Irene carefully caught a tuft of fur and tried to negotiate. “Just go a little slower later, okay? Don’t do what you did last time and just take off—”

Foxy didn’t even wait for her to finish before nodding rapidly. “Mm-hmm! Don’t worry! My acceleration curve is amazing!”

She hadn’t listened to a word. Her entire mind was filled with the joy of running wild. Several huge tails swished behind her, kicking up sand and stones.

Then she turned, jogged a few steps in the direction Yu Sheng had indicated, and began to accelerate.

With Irene’s scream fading fast into the distance, the great fox demon roared and shot forward. Even the foxfire streaming behind her tails formed Mach rings.

“Being full really makes a difference,” Yu Sheng murmured, watching Foxy tear across the valley floor and listening to the constant thunder of her passage.

Then Irene—his Irene—started yelling from his shoulder. “I never should’ve believed she could slow down! I feel like I’m about to fall apart!”

“It’s fine,” Yu Sheng said with a grin. “If you really fall apart, I’ll glue you back together.” He casually opened a door leading to the other side of the valley. “Come on. We’ll wait over there.”

The rocket-boosted supersonic fox was fast, but no matter how fast she ran, she couldn’t beat Yu Sheng dragging reality open with a door.

By the time Yu Sheng carried Irene to the mountain boundary, Foxy and the other Irene were still only halfway there.

From the mountaintop, they could see a beautiful silver-white Shadowspawn streaking across the valley like a gale. Deep-blue foxfire had gathered into a long, jet-like tail flame, erupting in violent bursts that shoved the great fox demon toward the far mountains. Sand and stones blasted into the air along her route. It was spectacular.

“…I suspect she can actually fly with the boost from those tails,” Yu Sheng muttered, rubbing his chin. “Not this ground-hugging kind. I mean straight up into the sky.”

A moment later, Irene suddenly pressed close to his ear and shouted, “Silly Fox said it! She really can!”

Yu Sheng hurriedly held the doll farther away. “Don’t shout in my ear. I can hear you!”

Irene dangled in midair, swinging slightly by the strap of the painting frame as Yu Sheng held her up. “Oh. Things were too loud around the other body, so I couldn’t switch smoothly for a moment.”

“So?” Yu Sheng asked. “Do you feel any sign the link is breaking?”

“Seems like no.” Irene kept swaying as she sensed with a serious little frown. “Not only is it not breaking—it doesn’t even feel weaker.”

As she spoke, that bright booster tail flame climbed halfway up the mountain. Foxy was closing in fast.

“The connection is still really tight,” Irene added before Yu Sheng could ask. “No delay at all between me and the other body. No decay, either.”

“Not even decay…” Yu Sheng frowned, thinking hard. “Then even if there’s a limit, the distance could be ridiculous.”

“This otherworld is huge,” Irene said. With a nimble shift, she sat up, hooked Yu Sheng’s forearm with her legs, and climbed onto his arm to look out. “Okay, Foxy’s already on the opposite mountaintop. She’s asking what to do next.”

Yu Sheng thought for a moment. “So far, we can only confirm that inside the same space, the communication distance between your two bodies is more than enough. We still don’t know what happens if they’re in different spaces.”

Irene tilted her head. “So…?”

Yu Sheng reached out and pulled a door open.

Outside was an unnamed, dense forest—one of the ordinary coordinates he’d stockpiled during countless door-opening tests.

“Want to test something more extreme?” Yu Sheng asked, looking down at the doll on his arm. “Let’s see how far apart your two bodies can really be.”

“…Is it safe over there?”

“I went in before and checked. Aside from hotspots, there wasn’t much danger.”

Irene hesitated.

Then she clenched her teeth and nodded. “Okay.”