Chapter 283

Chapter 283: Foxy’s Confusion

Yu Sheng had a dream.

In the dream, he entered the thick fog again—but Foxy and Irene weren’t with him. A strange street stretched straight out from his front door, and something at the far end seemed to tug at him. He kept walking, deeper and deeper into the fog, as if he’d been there for ten years… a hundred…

He walked without tiring. Gradually, the city in the fog grew more and more bizarre. Buildings bent and drooped like wax in hot wind. Roads curled upward into the sky like strands of seaweed floating in water. Countless upside-down shadows drifted above the city, glowing faintly through the fog.

Still, he kept going. He passed through layer after layer of warped mirage until the fog around him thickened into heavy darkness. Shadows with real substance gathered into massive clumps, moving slowly and silently above a barren, shattered land. The dream dimmed, and then he stood at the end of that broken wasteland and saw her again.

The Holy Revere Hermitage’s artificial saintess.

She glided toward him with graceful, dance-like steps—then her backside suddenly kicked into rocket acceleration, and an iron headbutt slammed straight into his chest.

Yu Sheng jolted awake with a yelp.

Daylight flooded the room. Irene was sitting cross-legged on his chest, clearly still asleep, her eyes shut tight as she shouted, “Me, Alice doll, pay up!”

Then she faceplanted, rolled off his stomach with a wobble, flopped onto the bed, and kept snoring with her limbs splayed out.

Yu Sheng’s yell didn’t wake her at all.

He lifted his head—and saw another Irene hugging his calf like a koala, dangling there while muttering, “So trash… who are you calling trash… your whole family… hehehe…”

A third Irene was crawling across the floor in a dark, unsettling way. She must’ve fallen off the bed sometime in the night, then started sleepwalking, wriggling as she tried to find her way back—only she was headed in completely the wrong direction.

Yu Sheng sat up, dazed.

He shook his head, forcing himself awake, carefully eased his leg out of the Irene at the foot of the bed, then glanced at the oil painting frame on the nightstand. The bedroom wasn’t large, so he didn’t worry about going beyond the painting’s link distance. Whenever Irene slept at home, she always set her frame on the nightstand.

Inside the frame, the teddy bear was still sprawled on a chair covered with a red velvet blanket, staring blankly out at the world with shiny button eyes.

Yu Sheng tapped the painting in greeting to Irene’s “main body,” then grabbed his phone. It was almost ten in the morning.

No point trying to go back to sleep.

He got up and went to wash up.

As soon as he finished brushing his teeth, the Irenes in the room woke up too. Three bleary Little Dolls lined up and wandered in, greeting him in a messy chorus.

“Good morning.”

“Morning, Yu Sheng.”

“Yawn… did you kick me onto the floor in the middle of the night?”

Yu Sheng mumbled a few half-hearted replies, turned on the faucet, and bent down. He picked up one Irene and washed her face, smearing water around with a few wet fingers before setting her back down. He tossed her a tiny towel, then picked up the second and third and did the same.

It was smooth, practiced routine. By the time he finished washing the last one, the first still hadn’t finished drying.

The three Irenes stood in a circle on the floor, using the same towel to wipe each other’s faces. While wiping, one of them looked up. “So what’s the plan today?”

Yu Sheng checked his phone and shook his head. “Nothing special. We’re mostly waiting to hear from the Special Operations Bureau—whether Bai Li Qing’s Deep Diver team finds any clues about that artificial saintess in the fog.”

“We can’t do this kind of dragnet search ourselves.”

One Irene held up the towel, surprised. “Still no news?”

“Of course not. It hasn’t been that long, and the fog is complicated. Movement gets heavily affected.” Yu Sheng took the towel back and hung it on Irene’s dedicated hook.

The Little Doll technically could wash up in the master bathroom by herself. Yu Sheng had even put a small step stool next to the sink so she could climb up without help. But ever since she slipped once and fell into the sink like she’d taken a bath, she refused to climb again. Now she always needed help just to wash her face.

Yu Sheng was pretty sure she was being dramatic.

“I’m going to the kitchen to cook,” he said. “Go see if Foxy is awake. If she isn’t, wake her up.”

The three Irenes answered in unison, “Got it!”

But the moment Yu Sheng stepped out with them, they saw Foxy wasn’t just awake—she looked like she’d been awake for a long time.

Her bedroom door was wide open. She sat cross-legged on the bed, facing the window with her back to the doorway, completely still, like she was meditating.

Irene whispered, amazed. “Whoa! Is Silly Fox doing that legendary cultivation thing? I’ve read about it in novels… absorbing spiritual energy and stuff… she’s pretty hardworking?”

It was Yu Sheng’s first time seeing this too. For a moment, he was fooled. Too curious to back off and too cautious to interrupt, he crept closer with the Irenes to peek.

The instant he entered the room, Foxy’s big ears twitched. She turned around with a bright smile. “Benefactor! Irene! You’re awake?”

Irene jumped so hard the one carrying the frame almost flung it. “Damn it—I thought you were absorbing spiritual energy in here.”

“Spiritual energy absorption?” Foxy tilted her head. “That’s ancient-era energy conversion tech… isn’t it easier to refine a reactor and hide it inside your organs?”

Irene stared at her. Speechless.

Yu Sheng decided not to unpack that. “So what were you doing?”

“Spacing out,” Foxy said. “Thinking about something.”

“Thinking about what?”

Foxy lifted two golden, glowing things from the bed and held them out with a solemn face. “Benefactor, Bai Qie and Yan Ju are starting to look more and more strange. Do chickens in this world grow up like this? They feel less and less like the free-range ones in the valley…”

Irene looked up and let out a shocked yelp. “Holy crap! What is that? Why is it so bright?!”

Yu Sheng stared.

Then he kept staring.

In Foxy’s hands were two golden-winged, jade-crested, long-necked, elegant-tailed… chickens.

They barely looked like chickens anymore. The only thing still familiar was the two pairs of cross-eyed, vacant stares. Everything else looked like they’d absorbed far too much heaven-and-earth aura and were about to undergo metamorphosis and ascend at any moment.

They were also much larger than the brother and sister in the valley. Foxy could still hold them steady, but their long tails—already shimmering with rainbow light—nearly brushed her crossed legs. And it was obvious this still wasn’t the limit.

A strange youthful air clung to them, as if given enough time, these two would keep growing in this ridiculous direction.

“Good lord…” Yu Sheng finally managed. “Are those still Bai Qie and Yan Ju?!”

“Yep!” Foxy nodded hard. “They’ve been growing fast lately, but this time the change was way too big. I took them out because I wanted them to get some sun, but the moment I pulled them out, I saw they were glowing on their own. It scared me.”

Yu Sheng didn’t know what to say.

He was scared too.

The two… divine birds in Foxy’s hands suddenly grew impatient. They spread their wings, flapped once, and rose lightly into the air. They circled Foxy in a floating spiral, barely moving their wings at all, leaving faint shimmering trails like they were gliding on spirit force.

After two loops, they landed on Foxy’s shoulders and stared at Yu Sheng with their cross-eyed gaze.

It was the kind of beauty you got when a dark celestial bird got hit with an idiot spell.

Foxy’s eyes shone with delight. “Aww, you two can fly already… wait, can chickens fly?”

Yu Sheng’s mouth twitched.

This fox still thought she was raising them through a normal chicken-raising process.

The species had already changed.

Irene tugged at Yu Sheng’s pant leg, looking up with a blank expression. “Yu Sheng, Yu Sheng… what’s the principle here?”

“How would I know?” Yu Sheng slapped a hand to his forehead. “But one thing’s for sure—we can’t eat them anymore. Look at them.”

Foxy reacted instantly and turned her head, alarmed. “Oh, right… they’re so spiritual now, I guess we can’t just eat them. So what do we do, benefactor?”

“What else?” Yu Sheng sighed. “They’ll be your retainer chickens from now on. Congratulations. You’ve basically gained left and right guardians.”

He glanced at the glowing birds perched smugly on her shoulders. “You said back then you kept them for a big purpose. Now it looks like they really do have one.”