Chapter 290

Chapter 290: Visit

When the morning sun streamed through the window into the bedroom, the first thing Yu Sheng saw when he opened his eyes was four Irenes sprawled all over his bed.

Half his body was practically hanging off the edge.

To be fair, a 66.6-centimeter doll didn’t take up much space. Even if she spun in a full circle in her sleep, she couldn’t destroy much. But four dolls rolling around at once was a different story. This little menace could throw down more than twenty sets of drunken boxing in a single night, and every so often she’d suddenly spring up with a flying kick or a headbutt. Who could survive that?

Yu Sheng thought about all the punches and kicks he’d eaten, sighed, and wondered if agreeing so casually to make this Little Doll a new body had been a mistake.

He sat up on the edge of the bed, sore all over, and just as he was about to go brush his teeth, he heard a few Little Dolls mumbling behind him.

“Morning… yawn…”

“I dreamed I got into a fight.”

“Why are you up so early?”

“I got wrapped up in the blanket!”

“Get me out!”

Yu Sheng sighed, turned around, and rescued the little thing squirming inside the blanket. She was still muttering as he hauled her free, “You need to sleep somewhere else. At least move a few bodies out.”

He immediately got a four-channel protest—what used to be three.

“Why? Your room is so big, and you still can’t leave me a spot…”

“Look how many bodies you have now!” Yu Sheng’s eyes widened. “This bed—plus the nightstand—still isn’t enough for you to flail around on! I wake up and I’m basically sleeping on the floor!”

Only then did the Irenes look around. The four bodies stared at each other on the bed, then all awkwardly scratched their heads.

“Come on, don’t be so picky… Let’s make do for now. When I have more bodies later, I’ll move a few to the attic…”

“Cut the crap. In the next couple days, I’m ordering some doll storage boxes online. From now on, you keep one main body on the bed, and the rest crawl into the boxes to sleep,” Yu Sheng said, waving a hand and cutting off Irene’s yapping. “Seriously—you’ve been silently eating away my sleeping space…”

As expected, he got a four-channel loop of whining.

But he was used to it. If he ignored her for three minutes, the world would go quiet again.

And sure enough—by the time he finished washing up, Irene seemed to have forgotten the whole “sleeping in a box” thing and was happily sprinting around the room again.

One Irene was noticeably slower than the others.

Yu Sheng glanced over in surprise. “Your Pro Max body still hasn’t recovered?”

“It’s mostly recovered. It just feels heavier than the other bodies,” ProIrene said, slowing to a stop and stretching her arms and legs. “Maybe I overdrew too much all at once? I guess I need a full charge before I’m completely back…”

“…Your charging speed is ridiculously slow,” Yu Sheng muttered with a frown. “You’ve been charging since yesterday and you’re still not full.”

Irene sighed too. “What can I do? I don’t understand that ‘ancient method of cultivation’ Foxy talks about, and I don’t know how to gather heaven-and-earth spiritual energy. I can’t refine spiritual power by eating like Foxy does either—should I just start chewing on power cords?”

Yu Sheng laughed. “Go on. Try it. When you blow yourself up and turn black, I’ll toss you into the washing machine.”

The Little Doll howled and pounced—but this body was sluggish. The moment she jumped, her feet slipped, and she went sliding face-first all the way to Yu Sheng’s feet.

Yu Sheng was already used to her unreliable performance. He bent down, picked her up, brushed her off, and straightened her out. Then he frowned again and stared out the window, distracted.

Irene had already forgotten she was mad. Seeing that, she tilted her head, curious. “What’re you looking at?”

“I don’t know,” Yu Sheng said slowly. “The moment I opened my eyes today, I’ve felt kind of restless.”

“Is your spiritual intuition acting up again?”

“It’s not spiritual intuition. It’s just a gut feeling—like something’s about to happen,” Yu Sheng said, checking himself over, then shaking his head. “But I don’t feel any danger. It doesn’t seem like a bad thing.”

Irene thought for a moment, then her eyes lit up. “Then let me do divination for you!”

Yu Sheng jumped. “You can do that?!”

“Duh! I’m an Alice doll! My mystic talent is maxed out!” Irene patted her chest proudly. Then all four bodies ran to the nightstand, worked together to open the drawer, pulled out a deck of cards, and sat on the floor in a solemn circle.

They started shuffling and drawing while chattering nonstop.

“Listen, I’m amazing at divination. Card divination and crystal divination are just the basics. I can even do divination by divine wine—you get a gold cup, gold-plated is fine, pour in witch wine, cooking wine is fine, light some incense next to it, mosquito coils are fine, and then you watch the visions in the wine…”

Yu Sheng listened to her ramble. After watching for a bit, he said doubtfully, “…But the way I see it, you’re just playing Dou Dizhu with yourself.”

“You don’t get it!” Irene—no clue which one—threw her cards onto the floor. “Card divination isn’t about the cards. It’s about the diviner’s understanding of fate—like how I can already tell from this game that you’ll have a bloody disaster today…”

Yu Sheng immediately felt relieved.

Because Irene said he’d have a bloody disaster every single day.

At the same time, near the intersection by Wu Tong Road 66, a tall, handsome young man in casual clothes walked out of an alley at an unhurried pace.

He went a little farther and saw the road was almost at the end. Ahead was only a stretch of empty open ground, with no other buildings in sight.

“This should be it…” He paused, observed for a moment, then pulled a note from his pocket and checked the address. “Yeah, this is the place…”

He put the note away, looked around to make sure no one was watching, then stood at the intersection and clasped his hands toward the open ground in the distance. He swept one hand over his eyes, formed a few hand seals with the other, and his aura shifted in an instant.

Wisps of hazy spiritual light appeared in his eyes. He opened them and slowly swept his gaze across the open ground.

The next second, before he saw anything appear out there, he saw two people burst out of a small shack marked “Courier Pickup” and charge at him like the wind, shouting as they ran.

“Hey, hey, hey! Who are you? What’re you doing? Stand right there, don’t move!”

“Restricted area! Restricted area! Do you have a permit?!”

The handsome young man froze.

After a brief exchange, he and the two Special Operations Bureau agents temporarily assigned here to guard the outpost stared at each other.

“You’re saying you reported to the Special Operations Bureau and came to visit the master of Wu Tong Road 66?” the younger agent asked sternly.

The handsome young man quickly produced his documents. “Yes. This is my pass, and this one was personally signed by your director…”

The two agents took the papers, checked them carefully, then pulled out a phone to confirm the details. Only then did they return the documents, still looking baffled.

“You just came over like this? By yourself?”

“Yeah,” the handsome young man said calmly, then added, “I came to Boundary City years ago, so I roughly know my way around the Old Quarter. Besides, this was a private matter my master arranged. I didn’t want to trouble your bureau too much, so I handled the paperwork and came alone.”

He paused and sighed. “I just didn’t expect the expert’s method of seclusion to be this subtle—and that there would be taboos around here. I was reckless…”

“You were absolutely reckless!” the other agent said, exasperated. “You should’ve asked around before coming! Within a hundred meters of Wu Tong Road 66, it’s strictly forbidden to use supernatural powers. You’re also not allowed to use any unconventional methods to scry on or probe this place. There are warning marks at the nearby intersection—didn’t you see them?”

The handsome young man looked awkward. “…I came using World Condensing Step.”

The two agents exchanged a look and started whispering.

“I told you we should hang those warning signs farther out. A hundred meters isn’t enough.”

“Moving the signs won’t help. We should ask the higher-ups for an interference generator.”

“Sure… but aren’t we rotating posts in a couple days?”

“File the report first. We need a record.”

“Gentlemen,” the young man said after waiting beside them for a while, unable to hold back, “could you please help me report in first? I’m here on my master’s orders…”

“Oh, right, right—sorry,” one agent said, snapping back. He nodded quickly. “Wait a moment. I’ll call the people inside.”

A moment later, the handsome young man—still confused—arrived at the end of the open ground. He stopped in front of a patch of floor tiles and looked down.

In front of the tile, someone had painted a striking red line. Below it were the words: DOOR OPENING—PLEASE WATCH YOUR STEP. The paint was clearly fresh, and in one corner you could even see a small tuft of silver-white fluff stuck in it, like some dog named Kitty had brushed its tail there before it dried.

And even now, he still couldn’t sense any hidden cave-dwelling aura at all.

No wonder he was the expert—

That thought had barely crossed his mind when, the very next second, a door suddenly appeared right in front of him.

With no warning and no aura, a plain door opened before his eyes, and an equally plain figure appeared in the doorway.

Xuan Che stared at the expert.

Yu Sheng stared at the ridiculously handsome guy in front of him.

They both stayed silent for a few seconds.

“It’s you?!”

“Holy crap, a bloody disaster!”