Chapter 258
Chapter 258: New Clothes
The moment Irene saw Yu Sheng’s expression change, she scooted closer and peeked at the screen. One glance was enough.
Her eyes gleamed with the kind of joy only a troublemaker could have. “Oh-ho. So what now? You wouldn’t go meet your online friend, so your online friend is sending someone to meet you…”
Yu Sheng didn’t have time for her smugness. He stared at the messages, clicked his tongue, and muttered, “I’m telling you, I’ve got a bad feeling. A really bad one.”
“Your spiritual intuition twitching?” Irene asked, delighted.
“Not exactly.” Yu Sheng frowned, torn. “Maybe this is just… beyond the range. Or maybe I’m overthinking it. The world can’t be that full of coincidences, right…”
“Then I can only agree,” Irene said, sitting cross-legged on the table like she had front-row seats to a show. “You look worried enough. So how are you going to reply? Make an excuse and refuse? You aren’t that close anyway. Or you could open a door to some desolate planet and do wilderness survival for a few days. Say you went out on fieldwork.”
She leaned in, voice dropping into gleeful menace. “Because if it really is that kind of coincidence, it’ll be so awkward.”
“That’s easy for you to say.” Yu Sheng shot her a look. “If I’m going to do wilderness survival on some dead planet, I’d rather face the online friend who’s coming with a knife.”
He hardened his heart. “Fine. I’ll meet him. So what? Maybe it’s not that kind of coincidence. And if it is… that’s actually better. At least I won’t have to keep thinking about it afterward.”
He typed a reply: “Sure. If someone knowledgeable can come chat, that’s great. But where are we meeting? Do you need an address? I live a bit out of the way. Most people can’t find it…”
A moment later, a response came in.
“No matter. I have some connections with the Special Operations Bureau. Once my disciple arrives, I will have them help arrange it. Just wait for the news.”
After a few more messages, Yu Sheng set the phone down and exhaled.
It felt strange—like making a decision had settled something heavy in his chest. The weight didn’t disappear, but it stopped shifting. His mind cleared.
Irene crawled closer, grabbed his face with both hands, and stared at him, turning his head left and right like she was inspecting a fruit.
Then she announced, gleeful as ever, “You’re going to have bloodshed!”
“I spray blood every few days,” Yu Sheng said, swatting her claws away. “At this point, that’s not even a disaster.”
He picked up the little dress he’d finished and handed it to her. “Try it. I loosened the back a bit, and I took apart the hot-glue parts and stitched them properly. It should feel like normal clothing now, not… whatever it was before.”
“Oh! Oh, okay!” Irene lit up instantly. Hugging the dress, she hopped off the table. “I’ll change… change… Ah. The attic doesn’t have a place to change. I have to go downstairs…”
“Why bother?” Yu Sheng grabbed an old cardboard box that used to hold junk, stood it upright on the floor, and set it down like a makeshift booth. “Change in this. Leave an opening on the side. It’s dark inside anyway.”
“Fine, but you’re not allowed to peek!”
Yu Sheng waved a hand, already tired.
Irene crawled into the box. After some rustling and dramatic muttering, she stepped out in a new purple dress, beaming as she spun in place.
“Looks good, right?”
“Looks good,” Yu Sheng said casually. “I saw it once already. It fits. Does it still itch?”
“It doesn’t itch anymore!” Irene said, delighted. She climbed up Yu Sheng’s leg and back onto the table. “Your skills are pretty good. Maybe you could become a professional puppet maker someday?”
“You jump to whatever idea pops into your head,” Yu Sheng said, shaking his head. “I know my own limits. Being able to patch your clothes and make you a barely usable body is already impressive. If I tried to be a puppet maker for real, I’d starve.”
Irene’s eyes darted, and she leaped to a new topic like it was waiting in line. “So that unfilial disciple or whatever—did he say when his disciple is coming?”
“He said at least five or six days,” Yu Sheng replied, waving a hand. “Not just because it’s far, but because he has to handle paperwork and stuff. I’ve never traveled far or lived outside the Borderland, so I don’t really get their process, but it sounds like a hassle for an ‘outsider’ to come to Boundary City.”
“Well, it’s the Borderland,” Irene said. “The highest-security place in the universe is probably right here.”
Over the next two days, Yu Sheng finally got some peace—at least by his standards.
That online friend across the sea of stars was still handling paperwork. The Special Operations Bureau had no new updates. The room at the end of the second-floor corridor stayed quiet. No otherworld opened a door onto the street. No entity crashed into Wu Tong Road 66’s kitchen.
Foxy lived her ideal life: eat until full, wait for the next meal, and when bored, demand that Yu Sheng brush her tails.
Irene spent every day in a loop of “argue with dumb online friends, get banned, get unbanned, argue again.” Sometimes she got hooked on new stupid short dramas or cheap variety shows. Her schedule was busier than Yu Sheng’s.
Yu Sheng, meanwhile, finally dragged himself into finishing an overdue manuscript. This time, his story’s male lead never rode a motorcycle again. Motorcycles were cool, but Yu Sheng forced himself to replace it with a llama.
His editor was clearly shocked.
More shocking: the editor approved it anyway.
For a brief moment, Yu Sheng suspected “late drafts get accepted more easily” might actually be true. He even decided that next time he’d give the male lead a three-wheeled motor cart, just to see what happened.
On the other side, in the valley, the children of fairy tale were doing fine. Everything was slowly getting back on track.
The supporting engineering crew had already withdrawn. Little Red Riding Hood led a group of older students in taking over the remaining home-building work.
Engineer Sun had been furious the day he left. He believed that as a “lord,” he should see things through, and that rebuilding a home shouldn’t be dumped on a bunch of half-grown kids.
That simple belief got shoved halfway back down his throat when he saw the “royal stonemasons guild” the King had summoned.
The other half got shoved down when he saw how seven Thunder Titans built houses—with the cheerful efficiency of someone stacking toy blocks.
Once Yu Sheng confirmed everything in the valley was stable, he prepared to handle something he’d been planning for a while:
He would open an additional stable teleportation door in the center of the “little town,” connecting it to the outside world.
Little Red Riding Hood and the others couldn’t stay in the valley forever. They’d need to go out sometimes. And the employees led by Teacher Su needed to go home every day.
Right now, coming and going meant either calling Yu Sheng to open a door, or using the fixed passage on the portal platform and coming out through the basement of Wu Tong Road 66. Neither was a long-term solution.
Early that morning, Yu Sheng brought Irene and Foxy to the valley.
Near the simple housing area in the little town, they found a construction site in full swing.
A large new foundation had already “grown” into shape. A group of kingdom craftsmen—dressed like they’d stepped out of a storybook—moved with stiff, puppet-like manners but worked flawlessly, measuring the ground and marking lines.
Princess Snow White and several guardians stood at the site’s edge, deep in discussion about later building plans. Meanwhile, the Thunder Titans she’d summoned stacked massive building materials where new houses would be built. Those materials included giant trees from the black forest, huge stones from some distant castle, and a large shipment of rebar and concrete the Special Operations Bureau had delivered earlier.
Yu Sheng also spotted a giant in fine steel armor sitting beside the site. He held a tree trunk in one hand and used the “short sword” he carried to shave it down slowly, as if sharpening a pencil.
Yu Sheng watched for a long moment before realizing the “stick” was a roof beam.
Several finished beams lay beside the giant.
A voice spoke beside him. “I heard the King say these roughly processed logs can’t be used right away. They still have to be dried, dehydrated, then surface-charred or something. Normally that takes forever, so they’re going to build a drying house first. One of the titans Princess Snow White summoned can play with fire. It can go in and speed it up, but it has to be controlled precisely.”
Yu Sheng turned and found Princess Rapunzel standing beside him, watching the site with a bright smile.
“Just hearing it makes my head hurt,” she added cheerfully, “but it insists that’s what makes it satisfying.”
Then she grinned wider. “Bro, you here to see Red Hood?”
Yu Sheng froze. “How did you know?”
“You’ve got this aura like you came to do something serious.”
Yu Sheng stared at her.
Princess Rapunzel bared her teeth and turned toward the town. “Red Hood! Sister Red Hood!”
Yu Sheng saw a figure sprint out, wolves’ shadows swirling around her. In a blink, she was there, eyes sharp. “What kind of screaming is that? Can’t you just send a message?”
Princess Rapunzel pointed. “Brother’s looking for you.”
Yu Sheng smiled at Little Red Riding Hood—then went still.
She’d changed clothes today.
She wasn’t wearing that signature red coat. Instead, she wore a thick blue-and-white jacket, plain and wide-cut, with embroidered text on the chest:
XX High School…
Yu Sheng didn’t say a word.
Little Red Riding Hood followed his gaze, looked down, then looked up with a bright grin. “Well? How is it? This is my school uniform!”
Yu Sheng opened his mouth, then closed it again.
Irene didn’t hesitate. “Honestly? It’s ugly.”
“Yeah, it’s ugly.” Little Red Riding Hood laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world. “But sometimes I want to wear it once in a while. I used to wear that red coat almost every day. Sometimes, if I changed clothes for even one day, my nails would start getting sharp the next…”
She spun once in place, jacket flaring.
“But now I don’t have to worry about that.”
She stopped and nodded to herself. “Yep. Still ugly.”
And she looked happier than Yu Sheng had seen her in a long time.