Chapter 282

Chapter 283: Foxy’s Confusion

Yu Sheng had a dream.

In it, he entered the thick fog again without Foxy and Irene. A strange street stretched straight out from his front door. Something at the far end pulled at him like a magnet. He kept walking, deeper and deeper into the fog, as if he walked for ten years, a hundred years…

He walked without tiring. The city inside the fog grew more and more bizarre. Buildings sagged and bent like candles melting in hot wind. Roads curled up into the sky like odd seaweed drifting in water. Countless upside-down shadows floated above the city, glowing faintly in the fog.

Still he walked forward, cutting through mirage after mirage, until the mist turned into heavy darkness. Thick shadows, almost solid, massed and drifted silently over a barren, broken land. The whole dream dimmed. At the far edge of the wasteland, he saw that tall, slender figure again.

The Artificial Saintess from Holy Revere Hermitage glided toward him with steps elegant as a dance, then suddenly blasted forward like a rocket and smashed a steel-hard headbutt into his chest-

He yelped awake. Morning light filled the room. Rebar Irene sat cross-legged on his chest, fast asleep. Eyes still shut, she mumbled: “I, Alice’s Doll, pay up!”

Her head tipped, she toppled from his belly onto the bed, and sprawled on her back snoring.

His shout didn’t wake any of the Irenes. He looked down to see another Irene clinging to his calf like a koala, muttering: “So lame… who are you calling lame… your whole family… heh heh…”

A third Irene was crawling across the floor, probably fell off the bed, and was now sleep-migrating, wriggling the wrong way while trying to find her path back up.

Yu Sheng sat up, blank for a second.

[How did a doll that used to be sealed in a Painting end up sleeping like this, scattered everywhere and crawling around?]

He shook his head clear, gently freed his leg from the koala Irene, then glanced at the Oil Painting Frame on the nightstand. Since the bedroom isn’t large and he doesn’t worry about exceeding the Painting’s link distance, Irene always puts her frame on the nightstand to sleep at home. In the frame, the teddy bear lay slumped on a chair covered with red velvet, button eyes staring blankly out at the world beyond the frame.

Yu Sheng tapped the Painting to greet Irene’s “main body” and the teddy bear, then checked his phone. It was almost ten o’clock.

It was too late to go back to sleep, so he rolled out of bed to wash up.

He had barely finished brushing his teeth when the Irenes woke too. Three sleepy dolls lined up in the doorway and greeted him out of order: “Good morning.” “Morning, Yu Sheng.” “Yawn… did you kick me off the bed?”

He waved off two of the comments and turned on the tap. He picked up one Irene, splashed water on her face with a few fingers, set her down, tossed her a small towel, then grabbed the second, then the third. The whole routine flowed like clockwork. By the time he finished the last one, the first was still dabbing with the towel.

The three Irenes stood in a little circle and took turns wiping each other’s faces with the same towel. Between swipes, they looked up and asked: “What’s the plan today?”

Yu Sheng checked his phone and shook his head: “Nothing special. We’re mainly waiting for the Special Affairs Bureau. Let’s see if the Deep Divers find any lead on that Artificial Saintess in the fog. A big sweep like that isn’t something we can help with.”

“No news yet?” one Irene asked, holding the towel.

“Of course not. It hasn’t been long. And that fog is complicated. It slows everything down,” he said as he took the towel back, hung it on Irene’s hook, and added, “You could wash up on your own, you know. I even set a little ladder by the sink for you.”

She pouted. After she once slipped, fell in, and accidentally took a bath in the sink, she refused to climb up again and always wanted help. Yu Sheng figured she was being dramatic.

“I’ll start breakfast,” he said. “Go check if Foxy is up. If she isn’t, wake her.”

“Got it,” the three Irenes chorused.

They stepped out-and saw Foxy was not only awake but had probably been up for a while.

Her door stood wide open. The Fox Maiden sat cross-legged on the bed, facing the window with her back to the door, perfectly still like she was meditating.

“Whoa,” Irene whispered, surprised, “is this the legendary cultivation? Spiritual energy absorption? She’s working hard.”

It was Yu Sheng’s first time seeing this too. He didn’t dare disturb the fox’s “cultivation,” but curiosity tugged. He led the three dolls closer to peek. The moment he stepped in, Foxy’s big ears twitched. She turned with a bright smile and said: “Benefactor, Irene, you’re awake?”

Irene actually jumped-one of her frames even jolted on her back-and said: “I thought you were doing spiritual energy absorption.”

“Spiritual energy absorption?” Foxy tilted her head. “That’s ancient power conversion tech. Isn’t it easier to refine a reactor and store it in your body?”

“…”

“So what were you doing?” Yu Sheng asked.

“Spacing out. Thinking,” said Foxy.

“Thinking?” he echoed.

Foxy solemnly picked up two dazzling golden objects from the bed and held them out: “Benefactor, Bai Qie and Yan Ju look stranger and stranger. Is this what chickens grow into here? They feel less and less like the free-range ones in the Valley.”

Catching a glimpse, Irene yelped: “Whoa! Why are they so bright?”

Yu Sheng stared for a full thirty seconds.

Foxy was holding two long-necked, long-tailed, golden-crested, gold-winged… well, chickens. Almost nothing about them still looked like chickens, except for their cross-eyed stares. The two chicklings now looked like they had absorbed way too much heaven-and-earth energy and were about to metamorphose and ascend any minute.

They were clearly a size larger than their siblings back in the Valley. Foxy could still hold them steady, but their long tails, now shining with prismatic light, almost touched her folded legs. And you could tell they hadn’t hit their limit yet. A youthful air still clung to them. Give them time, and they would keep leveling up into this ridiculous style.

“Uh…” Yu Sheng finally found words: “These are still Bai Qie and Yan Ju?!”

“Uh-huh,” Foxy nodded hard. “They’ve been growing fast for a while, but this change was a lot. I was going to take them out to sunbathe, but the moment I pulled them out, they were glowing on their own. It scared me.”

There wasn’t much Yu Sheng could say. He was scared too.

The two “divine birds” seemed to get bored. They spread their wings and fluttered up, then drifted around Foxy in a slow circle-almost without flapping. They traced faint glowing paths in the air, like they were riding spirit energy. After two loops, they landed on Foxy’s shoulders and stared cross-eyed at Yu Sheng again.

It was like seeing dark celestial birds under a silly spell.

Foxy laughed out loud, delighted: “Oh, you can fly now. By the way, can chickens fly?”

Yu Sheng’s mouth twitched: “…”

[Does she still think she’s raising chickens? The species has obviously changed.]

Irene tugged Yu Sheng’s pant leg, looking up in confusion: “Yu Sheng, what’s the principle here?”

“How would I know?” Yu Sheng slapped his forehead. “One thing’s for sure. We can’t eat them. Not anymore.”

Foxy blinked, then nodded fast: “Right. They look so spiritual now. We can’t eat them… then what do we do, Benefactor?”

“What else? Let them be your wingman roosters,” Yu Sheng sighed. “Think of them as your left and right guardians. You said keeping them would be useful. Looks like you were right.”