Chapter 318

Chapter 318: This Yu Sheng Was Dead

The golden-haired female knight in full armor stood quietly before Yu Sheng. Beyond her stretched endless wild grass under a gray sky. Beside them was the old bonfire site, cold and extinguished.

But the knight’s gaze didn’t rest on Yu Sheng. She stood motionless, like a statue planted here long ago. Her eyes faced the distance, yet seemed unfocused, as if she wasn’t truly looking at anything at all.

After a brief moment of shock, Yu Sheng walked over and tried greeting her. “…Hello?”

No response.

He waved a hand in front of her eyes. Still nothing.

Yu Sheng frowned and studied her more closely. Only then did he notice what felt wrong.

She looked real, down to the texture of her armor, but the outline of her figure shimmered with an unreal light, as if she didn’t fully exist here.

Yu Sheng circled her twice and finally confirmed it: what stood before him was a phantom.

And yet he still had the sense that she wasn’t just a shadowspawn. Even standing there blankly, unresponsive to everything, he could somehow feel… she was alive.

It was a strange feeling.

Yu Sheng steadied his mind and tried to sense what was happening inside the ship.

The Holy Coffin was still running. The body of the artificial saintess still slept inside it, without the slightest sign of “resurrection.”

And yet her soul… had come to the Sanctuary Wasteland.

Yu Sheng instinctively worked through the possibilities.

The artificial saintess had come into contact with his blood more than once. She’d fought it the whole time, but in the end, just like the children of Fairy Tale, she’d completed the process of Blood Bestowal.

Those who had undergone Blood Bestowal had their minds sheltered. Once they faced a fatal mental attack or corruption, their minds would be moved to this mysterious wasteland. Since the artificial saintess carried a human soul, after breaking through her mental shackles, it made sense she could enter the Sanctuary Wasteland like a “human.”

And during the process of breaking those shackles, her mind had suffered massive trauma. The violent clash of memory and identity could have triggered the shelter effect.

Most of it held together.

The only thing Yu Sheng couldn’t explain was her blank, phantom-like state.

After staring at her for a moment, he decided to call an expert.

“Irene!”

He shouted in his heart. Less than two seconds later, he heard Irene’s loud response. “Hey, hey, I hear you! What are you doing, yelling all of a sudden while I’m asleep… Ah, what are you doing in the wasteland?”

As her last words fell, a ripple spread through the air. An oil painting frame popped into existence, and Irene glared at him from inside it, clearly furious at being dragged here the second she’d fallen asleep.

Yu Sheng didn’t waste time. He grabbed the frame and turned it toward the knight. “Look.”

“Hey, don’t be so rough. Can you be gentle to a lady-” Irene started, then choked mid-sentence the instant she saw the armored figure. Two seconds later, she burst out, “Wait! Who the hell is that? What souvenir did you drag back this time?!”

Yu Sheng’s expression went flat. “Does a living person like that look like a souvenir to you?”

Irene swung the frame around. “Then is this some innocent girl you kidnap-”

“That’s C Buckle,” Yu Sheng cut in.

The frame nearly slipped from Irene’s hands.

“What?!” Irene lunged forward inside the painting, eyes wide. “C Buckle? She looks like this?!”

“Didn’t I tell you? She used to be a person.” Yu Sheng pointed at the blonde knight. “This is what she looked like before. I found her standing here not long after I fell asleep, but she won’t react to anything. I called you over to see what’s going on.”

Irene usually acted like she had rocks for brains, but when it came to her own field, she was sharp. She floated toward the knight and muttered, “Got it. Looks like the brain went offline, right? Let me check.”

She circled the knight twice, then lifted both hands.

Dense black silk threads, like strands of living hair, spilled from the bottom of the frame. They churned and writhed as they poured out, tangling together in the air. Under Irene’s control, they reached toward the knight and wrapped around her phantom body.

Even though Yu Sheng had seen Irene’s abilities many times, watching those threads crawl out of the cursed oil painting still made his mouth twitch. “Seriously,” he muttered, “can’t you adjust the visual style of your skills? This looks creepy as hell.”

Irene turned the frame slightly, controlling the threads with one hand while giving Yu Sheng a sharp side-eye. “When you spray blood in people’s faces, did I say anything?”

Yu Sheng shut up.

A few minutes passed. Then the threads withdrew, slithering back into the frame.

Yu Sheng stepped forward immediately. “Well? What is it?”

“Her mind isn’t complete. The tearing is really bad.” Irene wiped her hands inside the painting, like she was finishing surgery, even though there was no visible mess. “Strictly speaking, what’s standing here is only a fragment. There are a lot of other parts… and I couldn’t find them.”

Yu Sheng’s brows snapped together.

He wasn’t an expert, but he understood how serious that sounded.

Still, he clung to hope. “…Can it be fixed?”

Irene’s eye twitched. She looked at him awkwardly. “If your car breaks and it’s missing a windshield, you send it to the shop and they can fix it. But if all you have left is the windshield, and you bring that to the shop and ask them to try their best, I’d recommend a psychiatrist. The car won’t be fixed, but your condition might still be covered by insurance.”

“If you can’t, just say you can’t,” Yu Sheng said. “Do you have to put it like-”

A streak of golden light flashed at the edge of his vision.

The knight moved.

She raised her sword at a speed too fast to track. Then she laid the blade flat and snapped it down cleanly.

Clang!

The blade-which should have passed through everything like smoke-hit the frame solidly. Irene yelped, and the next thing she knew, she was slammed straight into the ground.

Yu Sheng froze. So did the world.

Then, just as suddenly, the knight returned to her blank stance, as if she hadn’t moved at all.

Only Irene, embedded in the earth, proved what had happened wasn’t an illusion.

The next second, Irene popped out of the ground with a little “boop,” shaking the frame and flicking off dirt while bouncing in fury. “Who?! Who hit me with a sledgehammer?! Who sucker-punched me?!”

Yu Sheng finally snapped out of it. With a disbelieving look, he pointed at the knight. “Her.”

Irene went rigid. She turned to stare at the blonde phantom, then twisted back to stare at Yu Sheng. “…Are you messing with me?”

“It was her. I saw it clearly.” Yu Sheng’s voice was dead serious. “And she held back. She didn’t use the edge-she smacked you with the flat.”

“I… she…” Irene stared, then rushed over and circled the knight again, face full of disbelief. “How is that possible?! That can’t be… I already checked her. Look at her-she’s standing there blankly again!”

Yu Sheng was just as confused. Even after seeing it, he couldn’t make it make sense. He tried talking to the knight again, but just like before, he got nothing.

“No.” Irene muttered beside him, thinking fast. “My check wasn’t wrong. Her mind is definitely torn. At the very least, what’s standing here is only a small part. But if she moved just now… that means she can still think and act. Which isn’t reasonable.”

She hesitated, then her eyes narrowed. “Wait. Could it be related to the part that stayed in reality?”

Yu Sheng frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Isn’t she still dying in the real world?” Irene said. “Strictly speaking, she already died once. You even used Conversation with the Dead with her. But her life form is special, and she touched your blood, and you gave her life by doll standards… maybe she died but didn’t quite die. She lived but doesn’t quite count as living.”

Irene spoke faster, the idea taking shape as she said it. “Her body is stuck in a state between alive and dead, so her mind split. One half came here for near-death shelter. The other half-the half that isn’t fully dead-is still over in the Holy Coffin.”

Yu Sheng stared at her, surprise creeping across his face.

Irene bristled. “Why are you staring at me? I’m just guessing…”

Yu Sheng said honestly, “I just didn’t expect you to suddenly get smart sometimes.”

Irene exploded. “Yu Sheng, you bastard!”

But Yu Sheng didn’t pay attention to her tantrum. He reached out, grabbed the drifting frame, and tucked it under his arm. Then he looked at the golden-haired phantom standing in the wilderness and fell silent.

Alive and dead at the same time…

A state like that?