Chapter 287

Chapter 287: Not Enough Power

A blinding blue beam punched through the wall, and for a heartbeat, nobody moved.

Forget Yu Sheng and Foxy— even Irene herself didn’t react in time.

ProIrene stared blankly at the clean, burned hole in the distance. She looked down at her fingertips, looked back at the wall, and did that a few more times before she finally turned to Yu Sheng, eyes wide.

“Oh my god—”

Yu Sheng snapped out of it. “Stop saying ‘oh my god’! How did you do that?”

“I don’t know!” ProIrene waved her hands in panic. “I just did what you said! I was going to let out the silk threads, I flicked like this, and then—”

Yu Sheng saw her gesture and jumped aside on reflex. “You can talk all you want, but stop waving your hands around! I’m telling you, those two hands of yours count as regulated weapons now!”

Foxy had already flown over to the damaged wall. She leaned in to inspect the cut, then rose to check it from above. After a long moment, she returned with a strange expression.

“Benefactor,” she said slowly, “it feels a little like fox fire… but it’s strange. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Yu Sheng’s mouth twitched. He looked past her—and saw ProIrene bent over, counting her fingers while muttering to herself.

“Light is a thread too… how did I do that just now…”

After a while, she seemed to piece something together. She looked up at the sky, struck a series of meaningless poses like she was charging up an ultimate attack, gathered her breath, sank her hips, and shoved both hands upward.

“Hey—!”

A blue beam even thicker than before tore through the sky with a roaring vmm, leaving a bright streak across the clouds.

Irene stared with huge eyes and bounced in place. “Wow!!”

Yu Sheng stared too, somewhere between horror and fascination. “So your ‘silk threads’ all turned into this? Or is it only like this with this body?”

“Only this body,” Irene said, still buzzing. She kept counting her fingers and studying them without even looking up. “The other bodies still do normal silk threads. This one shoots like a laser…”

As she spoke, she fired several more beams into the sky, then bounced back to Yu Sheng like a kid who’d just discovered fireworks.

“Yu Sheng, Yu Sheng, this is awesome!” she said, practically vibrating. “One swipe—biu biu—I feel super strong! This is definitely stronger than C Buckle. She can be fast, but can she be faster than light?”

Her grin turned wicked. “Next time I see her, I’ll poke holes all over her…”

Yu Sheng took one look at her giddy face and knew she’d forgotten everything she’d said five minutes ago about “the Doll Progenitor’s blessing” and “talent skills.” Her brain had already filed the details under Unimportant and moved on to Fun.

Even while marveling, he couldn’t stop himself from thinking about what was happening.

Foxy’s earlier clue surfaced again.

“…So it’s related to the skeleton we used this time,” Yu Sheng murmured.

Irene blinked. “Huh?”

“I mean the change might be tied to your skeleton,” Yu Sheng said, thinking out loud. “Foxy said your beam feels like fox fire. And the skeleton material in this body was refined by her. By her description, that stuff has ‘spirit’ to it…”

Irene listened with the face of someone forcing herself to understand without fully understanding. After a long pause, she slapped her hands together.

“Oh!”

Then she grinned like it was the only conclusion that mattered. “Anyway, this body is awesome, right?”

Yu Sheng let out a helpless breath. “…Yeah.”

Sometimes he genuinely envied Little Doll’s approach to life. Ultra-low-power thinking, a low-consumption brain (she didn’t even have the organ), and every scrap of intelligence aimed entirely at making herself happy.

He didn’t bother interrupting ProIrene as she went back to counting fingers. Instead, he walked over to Foxy and lowered his voice.

“Is this normal?”

“I don’t know,” Foxy admitted, shaking her head. “Back home, we don’t have dolls like Irene. We have automata, but I’ve never heard of one that used spirit-fox mystic iron as a skeleton and learned to shoot fox fire like a laser.”

It didn’t seem like they’d solve it anytime soon.

Yu Sheng shook his head and decided not to dwell. He already lived surrounded by things he couldn’t explain. One more laser-shooting doll wasn’t going to break reality.

At least Irene was happy, and this absurdly expensive body clearly had combat value.

“All right,” Yu Sheng said, returning to ProIrene and rubbing her head. “Stop researching, and stop wrecking my wall. I’ll take down these temporary walls first, then plan a proper roof for the platform.”

He pointed toward the valley. “Later, when I have time, I’ll set up a practice range for you with targets, so you can biu to your heart’s content.”

Irene nodded so hard she almost toppled over. “Yes! Yes!”

Yu Sheng waved his hand, dismissing the ring of temporary walls he’d raised.

The solid gray-white “rock” wriggled and sank in an instant, softening and shrinking as if melting back into the earth. Before long, the one-time “alchemy lab” had merged back into the portal platform itself.

And just as the walls finished sinking, Yu Sheng saw several familiar figures standing outside.

Princess Rapunzel had the King slung over her shoulder. Princess Snow White was leading several dollheads, and Cinderella and Mermaid were there too. A whole crowd stood on the platform, staring at Yu Sheng and Foxy with wide eyes.

Yu Sheng’s eyes widened right back. “Why are you here?!”

“We saw movement over here,” Princess Rapunzel said. “Laser beams were shooting into the sky. Then a wall ring popped up out of nowhere, so I figured maybe you were inventing something again, brother…”

Before she could finish, Princess Snow White pointed at the four dolls behind Yu Sheng. “How did… you get another one?”

Yu Sheng knew that question was inevitable. He laughed and said casually, “It just grew out of the ground.”

He meant it as a joke.

Mermaid’s eyes went bright with wonder. “Really?!”

Yu Sheng replied with a straight face. “Our Hotel is like this. If you leave it alone, it grows dolls.”

“Don’t listen to his nonsense!” Irene panicked. All four voices shouted at once. “I made a new body! It’s for fighting!”

ProIrene hopped out from behind Yu Sheng and strutted up to the fairy-tale crowd. “Listen, I’ve got a special-ops model now too. What you’re looking at is my super form.”

She narrowed her eyes. “What’s with that look? Do you think I’m short? I’ll show you—”

She started doing little steps and twists and poses. She didn’t need any wind-up to fire lasers, but she still added a full set of flashy moves for style. By the time she finished, she’d basically thrown an entire military boxing routine.

Only then did she raise both hands and strike a dramatic energy-blast pose toward an empty stretch of ground.

“Hah—!”

A tiny blue flame, about the size of Little Match Girl’s head, flickered on her fingertip for an instant, then went out.

Irene froze.

She stared at her hands, blankly tried again, and got nothing—not even a spark.

“What the…”

She muttered under her breath and turned toward Yu Sheng. But her neck felt like it had rusted solid. Then every joint in her body grew sluggish and heavy, and in the blink of an eye she couldn’t even move a finger.

Only her mouth still worked.

“Hey, hey, hey! Yu Sheng!”

“Save, save, save—help!”

“Something happened!”

“I broke this body, aaah!”

“I can’t move!!”

Yu Sheng had been watching from the back, assuming she was just showing off. Only then did he realize something was truly wrong. He lunged forward, and when he picked her up, her whole body felt as stiff and hard as plaster.

Little Doll was almost in tears. Her other bodies swarmed over at once—one tugged Yu Sheng’s sleeve, one grabbed his pant leg, one tried to climb up his leg—and they all babbled at once.

“What do we do, what do we do? I didn’t do anything!”

“No! I finally got a body that’s actually strong!”

“Don’t tell me it’s one-time use after all those expensive materials!”

Yu Sheng’s head was about to explode from the chorus when the stiff ProIrene in his arms suddenly twitched.

Irene clearly felt it too. “Hey! Yu Sheng! This body can move again! My hand just moved!”

Yu Sheng stared at the bizarre situation, completely lost, and his gaze finally landed on Foxy.

The demon fox girl had been watching ProIrene with a thoughtful look for a while. Now her ears twitched, and she turned to Yu Sheng.

“Maybe her spiritual power ran out,” she said seriously.

Yu Sheng blinked. “…Huh?”

“There’s no way around it,” Foxy said helplessly. “She burned through too much just now. And she’s already this small—it’s normal for her battery life to be short.”

Yu Sheng looked down at the Irene Pro Max in his arms.

Sure enough, the little thing was already on the verge of tears again.