Chapter 278

Chapter 279: Harvest

Yu Sheng was surprised, both by the monster’s ruthlessness and by her sharp judgment in cutting off her arm at a key moment.

He was getting more and more curious about this strange enemy.

The one-armed Metal Doll now stood quietly a short distance away. In the lamplight shot through the dense fog, her tall figure looked like a beautiful yet eerie statue, even giving off a faint sense of something “holy.”

Her smiling metal face watched Yu Sheng in silence. She slowly raised her remaining left arm, and the half-meter blade-fingers clicked faintly.

Yu Sheng’s living body was breaking down fast. He swayed, then lifted his head and, draped in death, walked slowly toward the “statue” with that strange holiness.

The Metal Doll stepped back half a step.

Yu Sheng reached out the hand that had been pressed to his chest. Fresh blood dripped into the fog, then hung in the air, floating around him like tiny living plankton. He smiled and invited the monster: “Come on, don’t be scared. It’s warm.”

Something clacked inside the Metal Doll. She hopped back another step.

“So you can feel fear, and you can think,” Yu Sheng said, stopping to look straight at her: “What are you, really?”

The Metal Doll dipped her knees as if to rush. Then she changed her stance in an instant and leapt back high.

A sudden layer of shadow wrapped her figure, and she vanished into the thick fog.

Yu Sheng did not chase.

Yu Sheng died.

In the swift Descent into dim chaos, Yu Sheng’s thoughts drifted. He kept thinking and replaying every detail of the fight with the monster.

[Other than the Dark Angels, that was the hardest enemy I’ve faced. The pressure she gave me was worse than uglier, more terrifying things. It wasn’t only her power. It was the weird atmosphere she carried.]

[She looks like a person but isn’t a person. Like something alive, but the dead part of her outweighs the living.]

[And she is really strong. Her speed is scary. Her strength is high. Her footwork is ghostly. No flashy skills, just simple melee weapon work, but every strike from those ten blades is deadly. Her fight IQ is high. She knows how to fake, when to run, and when to fight.]

[She can even cancel a self-destruction.]

[Her shell is very tough. I hit her with a full swing and saw no clear damage. Foxy’s Fox Fire landed a few times. Flames that can melt ordinary steel only left scorches. Sure, Rapid Fire Fireball isn’t a heavy hitter, but that defense is still wild.]

[But she isn’t without weaknesses. She can think. She feels fear. She deceives, and she can be deceived.]

His awareness floated in the dark as he reviewed the battle and waited for the symptoms of death to fade. After a while, he felt a sharp drop.

Death faded. Life returned.

Hard ground pressed his back. Cold, wet fog filled his nose. Yu Sheng opened his eyes and found himself lying on a foggy street.

He drew a deep breath. The reborn body was clean and strong. He rolled up and scanned the area.

It was the same “battlefield” as before. The strange Metal Doll was long gone and clearly had not returned to check the scene.

Something caught his eye a few meters away.

Yu Sheng stepped over and saw a metal arm lying quietly on the Open Ground.

He bent to pick it up. It was cold to the touch. This weapon of slaughter was now lifeless. Loose joints drooped and gave off a faint rasp of metal. The half-meter narrow blades that served as fingers gleamed silver with Chilling Light under the streetlamp. The blood was gone from their surfaces, but Yu Sheng could still feel a link between himself and this arm.

And not only to this arm.

Yu Sheng narrowed his eyes, sensing the hazy tug of his blood.

A far-off “blood trace” was moving quickly, deep in the vast city.

The Metal Doll had cut off her arm without hesitation, but it was not enough. His blood still had a faint hold. The connection was weak and blurry, and the distance was far, so he could not track her exact position. He could not, like in the Museum with the Entity “guard,” borrow the target’s eyes to watch its surroundings.

He felt a bit of regret.

Still, a trace was better than nothing. If she came near again, he was sure he could catch her “signal” at once.

Then he would drag out the secrets behind this thing.

Yu Sheng breathed out lightly and pulled open a Door to Wutong Road 66.

The moment he stepped through, he heard Irene and Foxy talking in the living room.

Irene said, half worried, half nosy: “Hey, Silly Fox, checked the time? How long has Yu Sheng been dead?”

Foxy answered: “Over thirty minutes. He should revive, right?”

Irene wondered aloud: “What if that trashy C Buckle doll is camping his corpse? He opens his eyes and gets chopped again…”

Foxy said at once: “No way. That monster doesn’t know our benefactor revives.”

Irene paused, then perked up: “True… hey! I’m sensing Yu Sheng’s mind again! He’s back! He’s close, like right…”

The little Doll looked up and saw Yu Sheng standing not far away, smiling at her.

Irene squeaked: “Wow!”

Foxy launched herself at him, thrilled: “Benefactor, you came back to life!”

Yu Sheng tossed the iron arm aside, sank his stance, and braced to catch Foxy’s hug. While he still had air, he hurried to remind her: “That’s good, that’s good. Don’t wreck the new body. It’s about to snap again…”

Foxy let go in a rush. Her tails spun like fire wheels as she bounced with joy. Irene pattered over, eyed the arm on the floor, and tried to lift it. She got it halfway up and dropped it with a thunk: “Whoa, this thing is heavy! Yu Sheng, not bad. You yanked off her arm before you died?”

Yu Sheng said between breaths, still settling the stitch Foxy’s hug had given him: “She took it off herself. She was trying to shake off the effect of my blood. But I still left a trace…”

He told them what happened after they left and the things he mulled over while he was dead with nothing else to do.

Irene and Foxy listened hard.

“In the end we got something,” Yu Sheng said, breathing out as he bent to pick up the arm: “I left a mark on the Metal Doll. I can tell she’s still somewhere deep in the foggy city and moving fast, so I can’t lock her down. I think she senses something stuck to her and is trying to shake the trace by staying on the move, but sooner or later she’ll rest. Besides that, we picked up this arm. Call it a trophy.”

He set the bladed arm on the coffee table with care. The Fingertip Blades were so sharp he worried they would poke holes in the furniture.

“What can this thing do?” Irene climbed onto the table, curious but cautious. She nudged the palm that joined the blades and studied the build, then sniffed: “Ugh. Crude. Ugly.”

Yu Sheng said dryly: “But it fights better than you.”

Irene cursed him with colorful words.

“Later we can show it to the Special Affairs Bureau. Maybe they can tell what that thing is,” Yu Sheng went on, ignoring the little Doll’s bouncing rage: “What I really want are these blades. They’re great. Light, sharp, tough. One poke and I had a hole.”

Irene stopped mid-rant, stared, and finally choked out: “Wow. Do you hear yourself? You sound like a creep.”

“I’ve been worrying about a good Bloodletting Knife,” Yu Sheng said, like it was the most natural thing in the world: “The knives from The Shop go dull after two stabs. I can’t bite every time. I’m a civilized person.”

Irene gaped: “Civilized, my foot! A civilized person uses a table knife to cut himself, is that it?”

Yu Sheng ignored the little Doll’s complaints and pushed the arm toward Foxy: “See if you can take it apart. Mainly, can you slice off a short piece of her ‘fingernails’? I don’t need this whole length. Ten centimeters is enough. Then I’ll fit a handle.”

The Metal Doll’s shell was very strong. Fox Carrot Gatling only left scorch marks. But those Fox Fire orbs were not high-power techniques. Yu Sheng knew Foxy’s flames came in tiers. He did not yet know how many, but he knew some: hot-meal level, fox-stew level, Fox Carrot Gatling level, Booster Rocket level, and above those, an odd one that grew stronger against stronger things, the “Argon Fox Weld” level.

There had to be a tier of Fox Fire that could cut this thing on the table… right?