Chapter 285

Chapter 285: Irene Pro Max

After they finished cleaning up the dishes, Yu Sheng took Foxy and Irene through a door into the valley and onto the portal platform.

This time, he brought all three Irenes with him.

Little Doll had to handle several key parts of the ritual herself—drawing the complex arrays, adding the alchemical ingredients, even part of the shaping work. At her current size, one body simply couldn’t manage that many complicated steps at once.

They wanted to push the “completion” of this shell as high as possible, and avoid anything that might lead to defects.

“Still here?” Irene looked around, found the corner of the platform where they’d shaped her body last time, and nodded. “This spot works.”

“Hold on. I’ll put up a wall first so the wind doesn’t blow out the candles,” Yu Sheng said, focusing as he made the platform “grow.” He muttered under his breath while the stone shifted. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have torn down the last wall…”

“Forget the wall. Hurry up and build that temple you planned,” Irene grumbled. “You said ages ago you were going to put some kind of Hub station here, but the platform is still bare except for a door, and there isn’t even a fence. I’m telling you, stop daydreaming over those epic building photos you found online and at least build a Little Match Girl box…”

Cold sweat broke out on Yu Sheng’s forehead. [No wonder Little Doll always lay there watching with that weird look whenever I searched building pictures online. She’d already guessed I was using them as references…]

Even so, his hands didn’t stop.

With the sound of rock grinding and a faint tremor underfoot, the ground around them rose and shaped itself like something alive.

He built a temporary windbreak, then raised a platform of the right size in the open ground as a proper alchemy dais. After that, he had Foxy lay out everything they needed, piece by piece.

The ritual candles they’d “borrowed” from the Special Operations Bureau. Holy grease. Incense. Crystal dust. Ink…

They were the highest-grade materials the borderland could offer, and some were even special-issue items from inside the Bureau—things you couldn’t buy on the open market.

You had to admit, premium stuff really wasn’t like bargain-shop junk. Even the packaging was on a completely different level. Some of the ritual spices were sealed inside gilded cases with warding effects; Yu Sheng distinctly remembered his own supplies coming in plastic bottles.

With all the high-end materials laid out in a row, Little Doll stared until her eyes went round. She turned to Yu Sheng, full of awe. “How the hell much did you grab?!”

“This is hardly anything,” Yu Sheng said smugly. “Foxy still has a lot more in her tail. Besides, you were there when I grabbed the materials last time. What are you even surprised about now?”

Irene blinked, scratched her hair, and finally caught up. “I guess that’s true.”

Yu Sheng didn’t reply. All of a sudden, he stopped caring about whether these materials would make her body stronger. He just wanted to know if they could make Irene a little smarter.

Meanwhile, Little Doll had already started drawing the base array on the platform.

Compared to the simple technique she’d taught Yu Sheng before, the array she drew now was clearly higher-level and far more intricate. Dense runes packed every line. Every spirit-infusion area carried delicate amplification, stabilization, and linking nodes. The ring-shaped base lines ran four layers deep, and the closer they got to the core, the more complex they became—just looking at it made your head spin.

Two Irenes each held a dip pen, carefully tracing the array with special ritual ink. Their faces were tense with concentration, while the third Irene stood outside the formation, checking symmetry and completeness from a wider angle.

Honestly, having multiple bodies work in parallel—plus a dedicated overseer—was perfect for this kind of job. Yu Sheng couldn’t help feeling a twinge of envy.

[If I could have a few extra viewpoints watching when I build houses, I’d never end up making something that looks like a fancy public restroom…]

Even while drawing, Foreman Irene still sounded relaxed. “What are we using for the skeleton material this time?”

Yu Sheng said, “Honestly, I think rebar would work great—”

Before Little Doll could start yapping, he immediately switched gears. “But Foxy just made a new suggestion.”

Foreman Irene froze and turned on reflex.

Foxy raised one tail and gave it a shake. With a massive clang, a huge lump of iron dropped out and slammed into the ground.

Little Doll went blank. “…Holy shit?!”

Yu Sheng hurried to explain. “Don’t make that face. This is probably the highest-grade material we can find. According to the Special Operations Bureau, this stuff’s mystic rating is basically maxed out. It holds and conducts spirituality better than a living person—the Bureau can’t even find anything better in their own warehouse. Think about it. They even have to buy it from us.”

Irene was half-dazed by the rapid-fire pitch and was almost convinced—until a memory hit her. “Wait!”

“This stuff can spawn machine spirits!”

“Even a damn hammer can spawn machine spirits!”

“If you use it to make my skeleton, won’t it come alive on its own? Then what—am I supposed to check with my own bones before I do anything?!”

“It won’t,” Foxy said before Yu Sheng could answer. She shook her head and explained patiently. “Spirit-fox mystic iron isn’t some evil thing that steals minds. When you make ordinary tools, it can show a hint of spirit, but if you forge it into bones and shape a body, it only syncs with the master’s will. Back home, merchants from other worlds buy our mystic iron all the time. They can’t craft artifact spirits, so they make implants meant to go inside a human body, and there’s never been a problem.”

“…How does your hometown have everything?” Irene muttered.

In the end, she let the worry go, though she still eyed the massive iron lump with suspicion. “But how are you going to turn something like that into a skeleton? Don’t you need a forge? Melt it down first?”

Yu Sheng looked smug. “Easy. I’ll make a skeleton-shaped mold in the ground, and then Foxy will melt this into liquid and pour it in.”

As he spoke, he walked to open ground a safe distance from the alchemy dais. After a moment of guiding, the earth wriggled and formed a skeleton-shaped groove, scaled to adult proportions. Then Foxy stepped up beside it, flicked her fingers in an incantation gesture, and the mystic iron floated into the air.

Wrapped in rings of fox fire, it began to melt.

Yu Sheng even added, as if it made everything more reasonable, “I learned this technique from those online videos where people cast iron railings by pouring molten metal straight into grooves in the ground…”

Irene stared at him.

Little Doll’s not-too-sharp brain kept insisting the scene in front of her was deeply weird.

On one side, two bodies bent over an ancient array, tracing runes and nodes inherited from old doll traditions.

On the other side, Foxy smelted mystic iron with flame filled with spiritual power—arts from a distant otherworld.

And the “bridge” between them was Yu Sheng carving a groove into the ground, a technique he’d mostly learned from village workshops that made iron railings.

Somehow, though, it worked. His groove was even. The proportions were clean.

A moment later, the fox fire faded. Foxy set the remaining ingot aside, then pulled out several large buckets of water from her tail and splashed them onto the ground. After a brief cooling, she pried the freshly cast skeleton out of the earth—still steaming—and placed it in the center of the array Irene had just finished drawing.

“For the ‘flesh,’ we’re still using the mud and rock from the valley,” Yu Sheng said. “For now, it’s the best match for what you want—‘like living soil.’ We don’t have anything more advanced than that.”

“Fine,” Irene sighed. “At least it’s not lotus root powder. You handle the basic shaping. I’ll refine the details.”

Ritual oils and spices fed the flame. Mud and rock writhed as they wrapped over the skeleton loaded with spiritual power, and the doll’s body began to take shape at high speed.

Yu Sheng used the blade of Artificial Saintess to cut his palm and let his blood seep into the shifting mud and stone, completing the most crucial step of the ritual.

Irene guided and refined the details as it formed, ensuring the new body could receive a soul in the most perfect state possible.

The spirit steel began to wake.

Life stirred in the soulless rock and mud.

The surface of the gray-white blank cast took on the texture of skin.

Yu Sheng, Foxy, and Irene gathered around the alchemy dais, tense and excited as they watched.

Its chest rose and fell.

It was learning how to breathe.

Its hands and feet finished forming, trembling slightly.

It was waiting for someone to call its name…

“Irene—” Yu Sheng said softly.

And so she was granted life.

A gorgeous, elegant black gothic dress covered the newborn doll’s body. Its stiff, rough face turned lively in an instant as Irene’s mind slipped into the new shell—and in the next second, Yu Sheng saw it start to shrink.

Very quickly.

With a sharp whoosh, it went from 1.67 meters to 1.2 meters, and then from 1.2 meters down to 66.6 centimeters.

He and Foxy stared, stunned.

On the alchemy dais, the newborn Irene Pro Max (66.6 cm) sat up in a daze and stared at her other three bodies.

Two seconds later, she let out a wail and burst into tears.