Chapter 202

Chapter 202: One of Ten Thousand Gates

After the call ended, Yu Sheng held his phone and stared at it for a few seconds before finally looking down at Irene by his feet. “I can’t even tell if she’s mad…”

“This time she didn’t swear, but I think that’s just because she’s used to it,” Irene said, analyzing with unsettling seriousness. “Look on the bright side—at least you didn’t suddenly get inspired at midnight and decide to do something.”

Yu Sheng coughed, shoved that bite of guilt down, and focused on the door in front of him.

A mottled, old wooden door leaned against the basement’s white wall at an angle. Strange, complex lines and symbols covered the surrounding floor and frame. A few candles burned quietly nearby. The air carried a faint scent of spices—still that cheap batch from the five-yuan store.

Whether the spirit-infusion ritual would actually succeed was hard to say, but the atmosphere looked perfect.

Yu Sheng took a slow breath and calmed his nerves. Then, following the modified method he’d come up with, he cut his palm and guided his blood into the door.

Spirit-infusion meant pouring one’s “spirituality” into lifeless material. If clay could become a doll’s flesh, and rebar could become a doll’s bones, then a door could become a spirit-infusion target too.

The candles crackled. The flames gradually grew higher. Blood seeped soundlessly into the mottled wood. Little by little, the lines and patterns on the floor—originally drawn with ordinary ink—darkened into a deep red, as if blood was replacing every part of the array’s structure. Yu Sheng even heard a faint scorched sound, like something burning from the inside out.

His eyes widened.

“What is it?” Irene asked at once. “Does it feel wrong?”

“No,” Yu Sheng said, disbelief in his voice as he sensed the connection forming through his blood. “It feels… too smooth. When I shaped your body before, I never had such a clear feeling of something taking form. But now I can feel my spirituality reshaping this door like it’s right in my hands. Is it because of those amplification nodes you added?”

“Maybe it’s because you’re linking to a door,” Irene said, still thinking hard. “And that’s your power to begin with.”

Then she straightened, smugness kicking in. “Of course, the main reason is definitely because I set the amplification nodes perfectly!”

Yu Sheng ignored her bragging. He only grew more careful as he controlled the spirit-infusion ritual, keeping his hand on the handle while continuing to “remake” the door.

Just like when he reshaped clay and lotus root into a doll’s torso and limbs, the door’s form began to change.

A faint creak came from within. The edge of the frame softened and warped as if it had come alive. The wooden structure gradually “melted” into the wall behind it, forming a living, sticky bond. Fine vein-like patterns surfaced across the door, then settled and sharpened into thornlike lines with a faint metallic sheen.

Yu Sheng turned the handle lightly.

The connection to the valley snapped into place instantly.

But he didn’t push it open like he usually did. He held it at the brink of opening and carefully sensed the situation on the other side.

He needed to fully shape the “connection point” in the valley as well.

That step wasn’t easy. He had to split off a large part of his focus to generate a door device—something with a physical form that could exist long-term—at the corresponding position on the valley’s platform. Even though he could control mud and rock in the valley to shape anything, this was still remote control. Ensuring precision, position, and stable connection all at once was difficult.

He failed three times in a row.

By the fourth attempt, the candle flames along the array’s edge were already flickering wildly.

But this time, he succeeded.

He felt a fixed connection lock into place. A physical door appeared at the corresponding position in the valley, and it stayed stable even after he loosened his grip.

A few minutes later—after repeatedly confirming the channel was steady—Yu Sheng finally exhaled and released the handle.

Foxy had been watching nervously the whole time. Now she blinked. “Benefactor… did you do it?”

“I think so,” Yu Sheng said, smiling as he nodded. He glanced at the door now fused into the wall, then stepped aside. “Irene, try it. In theory, this door is like the front door of Wu Tong Road No. 66 now. Anyone like you and Foxy who has accepted my blood should be able to open it, and it’ll always lead to the valley.”

Irene didn’t trust it, but after a moment’s hesitation, she nodded and stepped forward.

The little doll stood in front of the door in solemn silence.

Silence thundered at 66.6 centimeters.

Yu Sheng: “…Should I leave you a little—”

“Shut up!”

“No!”

“I can reach!”

Irene spun around, pointed at Yu Sheng, screamed three times in a row, and flipped him off.

Then the other two Irene walked over. Right in front of Yu Sheng, the three dolls stacked into a neat triangle formation, finally grabbed the handle, and twisted hard.

The door opened.

The valley’s wide, pleasant scenery flooded into view.

Still stacked and clinging to the handle, Irene instantly forgot she’d been angry a second ago. Three mouths spoke in unison: “Wow—Yu Sheng, you’re impressive! It actually worked!”

Then the top Irene hopped down and dashed through the doorway in delight. “I’m going to check it out first!”

Yu Sheng’s stomach dropped as he caught something wrong in the angle of the view. “Hey, wait—I think I messed up the—”

Too late.

Irene’s figure dropped straight down. “Waaah—!”

Then came a wet little splat.

Yu Sheng and Foxy lunged forward and leaned out. Below the platform’s edge, Irene lay sprawled on the gravel, arms and legs splayed in defeat.

The two Irene still on the basement side jumped and shrieked, “Yu Sheng, you uncle! You opened the door right next to the platform edge, didn’t you?! Why don’t you just open it in the sky!”

Yu Sheng hurriedly raised the ground on the other side, lifting the fallen Irene up to the level of the doorframe. He and Foxy grabbed her under the arms and hauled her back through, all while he explained quickly, “My plan was to have the door face the inside of the platform. That way, in the future I can surround the platform with a whole ring of doors. The entire area will be a hall—the Hall of Ten Thousand Gates—leading everywhere in the universe. The platform’s edge is the hall’s outer wall…”

Irene sprang up and seized Yu Sheng by the hair. “Then why did I fall?!”

Yu Sheng winced. “…I opened it backward.”

Irene exploded into a stream of curses that made even Foxy’s ears flatten.

Two minutes later, the profanity finally burned itself out.

By minute three, Irene had cooled down enough to sit on the platform and watch Yu Sheng adjust the door with a sulky expression. “Honestly, your ‘Hall of Ten Thousand Gates’ idea is kind of cool,” she muttered. “It sounds like some mysterious organization that stays off-screen for forty-plus episodes. Every time the main character makes a breakthrough, one of them shows up at the end of the episode with only a back view. Then when the season runs out of ideas, the director wipes out their entire clan—sometimes right at the beginning.”

“Watch fewer brain-dead shows,” Yu Sheng muttered, wiping sweat as he worked. “And can’t you pick an example that’s less cursed? Why does it have to get wiped out?”

“That’s what’s popular now,” Irene said, resting her chin in her hands. “Without a sea of blood and deep hatred, a main character has no motivation. Can you fix it? You’ve been at it forever. If you can’t, just leave it opening backward. It can be a trap. Someone who doesn’t know and tries door opening will faceplant first…”

“Anyone who can do door opening has clearance,” Yu Sheng said without looking up. “Trap my ass.”

A moment later, he straightened. “All right. It’s fixed. Come look.”

Under his control, the teleportation door—minor errors and all—was finally corrected.

A simple, old-fashioned, flat-topped door now stood quietly on the platform. Its frame and panel were both the same rock-like gray-white, plain and unadorned. And yet that simplicity gave it a faintly solemn, mysterious air.

The door’s “handle” was a triangular stone embedded directly into the center of the panel. It had no decoration. The edges were rough, like it had been chipped out and shoved in by force. It looked abrupt, but somehow still fit the door’s overall style.

Now, anyone who had accepted Yu Sheng’s blood only needed to twist the triangular stone in the center to open a passage between the valley and the basement of Wu Tong Road No. 66.

Irene and Foxy leaned in to inspect it. Irene rubbed her chin and nodded. “Not bad. Honestly, it has more design than that toilet you built earlier.”

Yu Sheng looked pained. “How many times do I have to say it? That wasn’t a toilet!”

“Yeah, yeah—your ‘phase one,’” Irene said, waving him off. Then she eyed the triangle handle again. “So why is the handle in the middle?”

“For looks,” Yu Sheng said. “It feels mysterious. Also, it can confuse a first-time user, so you can’t tell which side the hinges are on right away…”

Irene stared at him. “…Are you sick? Then why is it a triangle?”

Yu Sheng rubbed his nose. “That has meaning too. It symbolizes the three giants of the Hotel—the three of us.”

Irene looked even more suspicious. “…Really?”

Yu Sheng sighed. “Actually, I wanted to sculpt a tiger head, but I couldn’t do it. Then I thought, fine, I’ll do a dog head. Couldn’t do that either.”

Irene: “…”

After a long beat, she took half a step back and stared at the door and the triangular handle with a solemn face.

“A shape symbolizing the Hotel’s three founding giants,” she said flatly. “How wonderful.”

Yu Sheng nodded along. “How wonderful.”

Foxy looked from Irene to Yu Sheng, clearly not understanding the mood shift, then clapped anyway. “Mm-hm. How wonderful…”