Chapter 279

Chapter 279: Harvest

To be honest, Yu Sheng was pretty surprised—both by how vicious the monster was, and by the cold judgment it showed in cutting off its own arm at the critical moment.

He was growing more and more curious about that strange enemy.

The iron doll, now missing one arm, stood quietly not far away. In the streetlight glow filtering through the thick fog, its tall figure looked like a beautiful yet eerie statue. It even seemed to radiate a faint sense of “holiness.”

That smiling metal face watched Yu Sheng in silence. Slowly, it raised its remaining left arm, and the half-meter blade-fingers clicked softly.

Yu Sheng’s body was collapsing. He swayed, then lifted his head, half wrapped in death, and started walking toward that “goddess statue” with steady steps.

The iron doll stepped back half a pace.

Yu Sheng reached out with the hand he’d been pressing to his chest. Blood dripped into the fog, but the droplets floated in midair, circling around him like living plankton. A slow smile spread across his face.

“Come on,” he invited, voice almost gentle. “Don’t be afraid. It’s warm…”

A discordant clacking came from inside the iron doll. It stepped back again—this time almost hopping away.

“So you can fear, and you can think,” Yu Sheng said, stopping to stare at it. “What… are you, really?”

The iron doll bent its knee slightly, like it was about to charge. Then it shifted posture and suddenly leapt high backward.

A sudden shadow wrapped around its body, and in a blink, it vanished into the thick fog.

Yu Sheng didn’t chase.

Yu Sheng was already dead.

In the chaotic darkness of rapid descent, his thoughts drifted. He kept replaying the fight, over and over, picking at every detail.

He had to admit that, aside from dark angels, it was the most troublesome enemy he’d ever faced—the one that put the most pressure on him. And that pressure wasn’t just because it was strong.

It was the aura.

Like a person, but not a person. Like a living thing, but in its presence, the dead part outweighed the living.

And it really was strong.

Incredible speed. Massive strength. Ghostlike movement. Even though it didn’t use flashy close-range skills and only attacked with cold weapons, every strike of those ten blades was brutally lethal. More importantly, its combat intelligence was terrifyingly high. It knew how to deceive. It could fight and run.

It even had a self-destruct it could cancel mid-countdown.

And its shell was insanely tough. Yu Sheng had landed hits, but a full swing didn’t leave any visible damage. Foxy’s fox fire had struck it several times too. Flames that could melt ordinary steel only left a few scorch marks.

But the iron doll wasn’t without weaknesses.

It could think. It could feel fear. It knew deception—and it could be deceived…

Yu Sheng’s awareness drifted in the darkness, reviewing the battle as he waited for death to loosen its grip. Then, after who knew how long, he felt a sharp drop.

Death faded. The living returned.

Hard ground pressed beneath him. Cold, damp fog filled his nose. Yu Sheng opened his eyes and found himself lying in a fog-filled street.

He sucked in a deep breath. His reborn body was clean and strong. He rolled over, stood up, and swept his gaze around.

This was still the same battlefield from before. The iron doll was gone, and it didn’t seem to have come back to check the scene.

Something a few meters away caught his eye.

Yu Sheng walked over and saw a metal-cast arm lying quietly on the ground.

He bent down and picked it up. It was icy in his hand. This weapon, once deadly enough to punch holes through him, had completely lost whatever “life” it carried. The joints hung loose with a faint metallic scrape, and the long, thin blades that served as fingers—over half a meter—shone with cold silver light under the streetlamp.

There was no visible blood left on the surface, but Yu Sheng could still feel the connection between himself and this arm.

And it wasn’t just a connection to the arm.

Yu Sheng narrowed his eyes, sensing the vague guidance coming from his blood.

A distant blood trace was moving quickly, deep within this massive fog-city.

The iron doll’s decision to cut off its arm had been decisive—but it wasn’t enough.

It did help a little. Yu Sheng could feel the distant link, but it was weak and blurry. And with the distance already so far, he couldn’t track the target’s exact location, nor could he do what he’d done back in the museum—controlling the entity “security guard” and observing through its eyes.

That was disappointing.

Still, leaving any trace was better than nothing. If it showed up nearby again next time, Yu Sheng was confident he could catch its signal immediately.

And then drag out the secret behind it.

Yu Sheng let out a soft breath and opened a door back to Wu Tong Road 66.

The moment he stepped through, he heard Irene and Foxy’s voices in the living room.

“Hey, hey, Silly Fox—did you check the time? How long has Yu Sheng been dead?”

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

“…What if that crappy doll with C Buckle is guarding the body? He wakes up and gets chopped again…”

“No way. That monster doesn’t know Benefactor can resurrect.”

“True… Hey! I can feel Yu Sheng’s mind response! He’s alive, he’s alive! And it feels pretty close, like it’s right—”

Little Doll looked up and saw Yu Sheng standing not far away, smiling at her with a half-smirk.

Irene went stiff. “…Wahand!”

Foxy pounced over happily. “Benefactor, you’re back alive~~”

Yu Sheng casually tossed the iron arm to the side, braced himself in a low stance, and took her hug head-on. Then, while he could still breathe, he hurriedly warned her, “That’s enough, that’s enough… Don’t break the new body. Don’t break the new body—it’s about to snap again…”

Foxy quickly let go. Her tails whipped around like a wind-fire wheel as she swayed with joy. Irene pattered over, stared at the arm on the floor, tried to pick it up to hug it, then dropped it halfway with a clunk.

“Mom—this thing is heavy! Yu Sheng, you’re something else. You tore off that thing’s arm before you died?”

“She tore it off herself,” Yu Sheng said, exhaling as he calmed the stitch in his side from a nine-tailed fox hug. “Probably trying to shake off my blood’s influence, but I still left a trace…”

Then he told them what happened after Foxy and Irene left, and briefly mentioned the random thoughts he’d had while dead and bored.

Irene and Foxy listened with surprising seriousness.

“At least we got something out of it,” Yu Sheng said when he finished. He bent down and picked up the arm. “I left a mark on that iron doll. I can roughly tell she’s still deep in the fog-city, but she keeps moving fast, so I can’t lock on precisely… I suspect she can feel there’s still something on her, and she’s trying to shake the tracking by moving like this. But sooner or later, she’ll have to stop.”

He placed the blade-linked arm on the coffee table—carefully, because those finger-blades were way too sharp.

“And aside from that,” he added, “we got this arm. Call it loot.”

Irene climbed onto the coffee table too. Curious but cautious, she poked at the hand and studied its structure with open disdain. “Ugh. Crude. Ugly.”

Yu Sheng deadpanned. “Still fights better than you.”

Irene cursed like a sailor.

“Later we can show it to the Special Operations Bureau,” Yu Sheng said, ignoring her completely. “Maybe they can figure out what it is. Also, what I’m really interested in is her blade-hand—it’s so useful. Light, sharp, tough. One poke in me, one hole…”

Irene choked mid-curse, eyes wide. After a long moment, she managed to spit out, “Damn, why do you sound like a total pervert…”

“I’ve been worrying lately because I can’t find a good bloodletting knife,” Yu Sheng said like it was perfectly reasonable. “The knives you buy at the shop go dull after poking into me a couple times, and I can’t bite myself every time. I’m a civilized person, okay?”

Irene stared at him. “Civilized my ass. A civilized person is someone who cuts themselves with a dinner knife, is that it?”

Yu Sheng didn’t dignify that with an answer. He pushed the arm toward Foxy. “Try taking it apart. Mainly, see if you can cut off a short piece of her ‘nail.’ It doesn’t need to be this long. Just cut about ten centimeters, and I’ll put a handle on it…”

The iron doll’s shell was extremely strong. Foxy-carrot gatling had only left scorch marks when it swept over it, and those fox fire balls weren’t exactly high-power moves. Yu Sheng knew Foxy’s flames had levels.

As far as he knew so far, there was hot-meal level, fox stew level, fox-carrot gatling level, booster rocket level, and so on. And beyond those rankings, there was also the “argon fox welding” level—power unknown, stronger against stronger enemies…

Some level of fox fire had to be able to cut through the thing on the coffee table.

Right?