Chapter 110

Chapter 110: Test

It was a very interesting and unbelievable process.

Mud and rock shaped themselves to his will; piles of ruins sank like chocolate dropped into hot milk as the earth melted and swallowed them. The far fields already had neat outlines, and on the site of the old temple’s rubble a flat stretch of open ground formed so smooth it looked machine-made.

Then stones rose from the center of the open ground and became a wide platform floating about ten centimeters above the ground.

Yu Sheng felt his link with this Valley grow tighter, and control came more naturally. He focused harder, refining the platform’s details and steadily increasing its strength and how deeply it could take root underground. [This felt like getting used to a brand-new limb.]

He planned to use this Valley as a base. The day he confirmed this Otherworld was harmless, he had already wanted to do it: this place could grow crops, serve as Irene’s “test range,” let Foxy run wild and train, and later, any project not fit for the outside world could be done inside the Valley.

He just didn’t expect construction to begin like this.

Foxy, eyes wide, stood to the side with the two Irenes and watched Yu Sheng work with open admiration. After a long while she sighed: “Benefactor could totally become an engineering immortal.”

“Do people from your hometown make everything into some kind of immortal or what,” Irene could not hold it in anymore; she had wanted to complain for ages, “do you also have a fried-noodles immortal, a stewed-noodles immortal, and a beef-flat-noodles immortal?”

“That’s called the cooking immortal,” Foxy said with a straight face, “if you register each one separately, it would waste lots of social resources. The Immortal Alliance would never approve it.”

Irene looked stunned: “Wow, there really is a cooking immortal!”

Just then, Yu Sheng finished laying the foundation. On top of it, at one corner of the platform, he shaped a small shelter good enough to block wind and rain, though this Valley seemed to have neither. He walked over to Foxy and Irene and asked, curious: “What are you two talking about?”

The two dolls raised their hands together and pointed at the fox maiden: “Silly Fox says you could be a plastering immortal.”

“No, an engineering immortal,” Foxy corrected with perfect seriousness.

Yu Sheng’s mouth twitched, but he held it in. He turned to introduce the fruits of his labor: “Look, from now on this will be our second base outside Wutong Road 66. I’ve got a grand building plan. I’ll raise a big structure on the old temple’s ruins, the kind that looks like an ancient temple-majestic and mysterious. It will become the headquarters of our ‘hotel’ organization.”

“Three people claiming a whole city, huh. Real bold,” Irene shot back without hesitation. Then, curious, she pointed at a gray block on the edge of the platform that looked like an oversized Little Match Girl box: “Is that a temporary toilet?”

Yu Sheng froze for a moment before mumbling: “That’s step one of the building plan. You can call it Temple Mark I.”

Irene fell silent. For the first time, the chatterbox had nothing to say.

Yu Sheng seized the chance to change the subject: “Just warming up with basic shapes first. Anyway, let’s handle the real task and test the ‘remote range’ of your new body.”

Irene’s attention flipped at once. The two dolls looked up at Yu Sheng together: “How do we test it? Should I start running in two directions and see when the link breaks?”

“With those two short legs, when would you ever get there?” Yu Sheng gave her a look, then quickly grabbed the doll body with the frame on its back-the main unit-and pointed at the other one: “That body goes with Foxy. Head toward that side, run straight to the Valley’s The End Web. I’ll carry your main body and use Door Opening to go to the mountain edge we reached last time. We’ll see what happens.”

Before he finished, Foxy had already bounded ten meters away and flopped to the ground. A swirl of glow and mist rose, and a nine tailed fox the size of two vans stepped out of the light. She looked down at the doll on the ground with bright expectation: “Irene! Come run with me!”

Irene remembered racing across the Valley with this rocket-boosted supersonic fox last time and instantly scrunched up her little face: “Can’t we use another plan…”

Yu Sheng immediately handed her the doll with the painting strapped on: “Then swap. This one rides with Foxy. You come with me.”

Both dolls froze, then shouted in perfect unison while glaring at Yu Sheng: “That’s still me!”

Even so, the doll on the ground wobbled to her feet and trudged toward Foxy, muttering: “Fine, this body can go with Silly Fox. At least this one’s senses are duller, so maybe I won’t feel it as much.”

Foxy dropped one tail for a ramp and watched Irene climb up on all fours. She reminded her: “Sit farther back and hold some fur. I’m going to speed up-don’t fall.”

Irene clutched a handful of fluff and begged: “Please go a little slower. Don’t take off like last time…”

Foxy nodded so fast she didn’t even let the doll finish: “Yep, yep, don’t worry. My acceleration curve is great!”

She clearly hadn’t listened. Her mind was full of the joy of running free. Several big tails whipped behind her and kicked up sand and gravel.

She turned, trotted a few steps in the direction Yu Sheng had pointed out, and began to accelerate.

With Irene’s scream stretching thin into the distance, the big demon fox roared away. The fox fire trailing behind Foxy even formed visible Mach rings.

“Being well-fed really makes a difference,” Yu Sheng said, watching the silver-white blur streak across the valley floor with rolling thunder in its wake.

Then the Irene on his shoulder started yelling: “I never should have believed she could go slow! I feel like I’m coming apart!”

“No worries. If you do, I’ll glue you back together,” Yu Sheng grinned, opened a Door to the Valley’s other side, and said: “Come on, we’ll wait over there.”

The rocket-boosted supersonic fox was fast, but not faster than Yu Sheng pulling a Portal.

By the time he reached the mountain border with Irene, Foxy and the other Irene were still on the way.

From the mountaintop, they saw a silver-white shadow tear across the Valley like a storm. The cold blue fox fire had gathered into a long tail of flame, pushing the big demon fox toward the mountains at the Valley’s The End Web. The blast sent sand flying the whole way, a spectacular sight.

“I think she could actually fly with those tails as boosters,” Yu Sheng muttered, rubbing his chin, “not just skim the ground-I mean really fly high.” [That might actually work.]

A moment later Irene pressed her mouth to his ear and shouted: “Silly Fox says she can!”

Yu Sheng quickly held the doll away by the frame strap: “Don’t yell in my ear. I can hear you!”

Dangling by the strap, the doll swayed: “Sorry. It’s so loud over there that it took me a second to switch.”

“How is it? Do you feel the link weakening with the other body?”

“Doesn’t seem like it,” Irene said, one hand on her chin as she kept swaying, “honestly, not even a little bit weaker.”

Far away, the bright tail flame climbed to mid-slope and streaked toward the opposite mountain border at the Valley’s The End Web.

“The link is still tight, no delay at all,” Irene reported before he could ask, “and no drop-off.”

“No drop-off,” Yu Sheng frowned, thinking aloud, “that means even if there is a limit, the max distance might be ridiculously far.”

“This whole Otherworld plus the surrounding mountains is pretty huge,” Irene said. She tucked her legs around Yu Sheng’s forearm with a nimble crunch and climbed atop his arm to look into the distance. “Okay, Foxy’s reached the far peak. She’s asking what to do next.”

Yu Sheng thought for a moment, then said: “So far we only know that, inside the same space, the control range for the second body is very far. We still don’t know what happens if the two bodies are in different spaces.”

Irene’s eyes brightened: “Oh, so…?”

Yu Sheng pulled open a Door.

Outside The Door lay a dense, nameless forest.

It was one of the many places he had found during countless Door Opening tests. Nothing special, and he had many coordinates like this “in reserve.”

“Want to try something more extreme?” Yu Sheng asked the doll perched on his arm. “Let’s see how far apart your two bodies can really get.”

“Is it safe over there?”

“I checked once. Aside from hot spots, nothing dangerous.”

Irene hesitated.

Then she gritted her teeth and nodded: “Okay.”