Chapter 37

Chapter 37: The First Step in Preparing a Body

Hearing Irene’s request, Yu Sheng was genuinely surprised. The way she said it—so solemn, so absolute—made it hard to treat as one of her usual moods.

They’d talked about making a body for the portrait doll before, more than once, but it had never been settled. Part of it was that Yu Sheng and Irene still didn’t fully trust each other. Part of it was that everything had been chaos lately, one problem stacked on the next, leaving no room for anything else.

But the seriousness on Miss Doll’s face now was unmistakable. This wasn’t sudden stubbornness. This was a decision.

Yu Sheng looked at her, silent, waiting for the reason.

“I’m going with you,” Irene said simply. “Consider it extra backup.”

“You’re sure?” Yu Sheng’s expression went a little strange. “I’m not doubting your strength or anything, but—”

“Listen.” Irene cut him off. She leaned toward the edge of the frame until her face filled most of it, her tone sharp and steady. “I’m not joking. I don’t know how you plan to deal with that entity, but the fact that you can bring back local specialties from it means you’ve got something. What kind of something, I won’t ask. But you need to understand—when you’re dealing with the Otherworld, being able to fight isn’t enough. Not against something as nasty as Hunger.”

She leaned back again. “Make me a body so I can move around freely. Rough is fine. As long as I can break free of this damn painting, there’s a lot more I can do. I won’t recover all my strength, but I’ll still be far stronger than ordinary investigators, Spirit Realm Detectives, or Otherworld Hunters. Even if I’ve forgotten a lot, the instincts of a living doll are still in me.”

Yu Sheng held her gaze. Irene’s crimson eyes stared right back, unblinking.

“I can help you, Yu Sheng,” she said quietly. “We already worked together once when we went into Foxy’s dream.”

This time, Yu Sheng thought longer than he ever had before. In the end, he couldn’t deny she had a point.

His mind was full of returning to the Valley and dealing with Entity-Hunger, but he also knew the odds of barging in alone and killing that monster weren’t high. He wasn’t afraid of death. He’d been growing stronger by devouring Entity-Hunger, but that strengthening clearly had limits—and Hunger wasn’t easy to destroy.

Maybe he could brute-force it by dying again and again until he wore the monster down, but that was a nightmare of a last resort. If he could have a capable helper who understood supernatural forces, that was obviously better.

All it would take was trust. Trust enough to let Irene out of the painting.

And that trust had already started forming back when they fell into Foxy’s dream together, then woke up, met face to face, and tried to gross each other out.

“Looks like I need to go downtown,” Yu Sheng said at last, exhaling as he leaned back in his chair. “Clay, wigs, materials like that. I’ll need a specialty craft shop. This old quarter doesn’t have those.”

Inside the frame, Irene blinked. Then, as the meaning landed, joy flooded her face. “You… you agreed?”

“If your standards for body quality aren’t high, and you trust my skills,” Yu Sheng said, waving a hand, “I can try.”

“My standards are low. As long as it looks human, that’s fine. I can reshape it myself—just don’t mess up the alchemy part.” Irene spoke so fast it was like she was afraid he’d change his mind if she paused. Then she hesitated, glancing away. “And… and if you really can’t buy proper materials…”

Yu Sheng raised an eyebrow. “If I can’t buy proper materials, then what?”

“Dough works too.”

Yu Sheng stared at her for a full two seconds, then made the most shocked face he’d worn since meeting Irene. “Huh?”

“The material is only a medium,” Irene said in a small voice. “What makes it work is the alchemy—your blood and my soul…”

“No, wait.” Yu Sheng held up both hands. “I understand settling for second best, but this is too second best, isn’t it?”

Irene put on her most innocent, harmless smile, as if she could charm her way out of it.

Somehow, it worked.

But Yu Sheng still decided to buy the right stuff.

“I’m getting proper clay,” he said, standing. “You’ll need a lot for a body. Better not waste food. I also have other things to buy.”

He turned on the TV for her with the remote. “You stay home and watch. If something happens, call me remotely. And if the TV freezes again, just wait for me to come back.”

In the frame, Irene nodded obediently. “Okay… then come back quickly.”

Yu Sheng pulled on his coat and headed for the door.

When his hand closed around the doorknob, he paused and steadied himself. Only after confirming there wouldn’t be a volcano crater, a meteor shower, a sulfur lake, a little green alien with a lightsaber, or a fully mechanized elf big sister on the other side did he take a deep breath, open the door, and step out onto Wu Tong Road.

He couldn’t help it—he found it interesting.

Going to World’s End was easy for him now. Whether he could come back, or how many times he’d die out there, was another story. But simply opening his front door and stepping onto the street felt harder than ever.

On the way to the bus stop, he looked around casually.

Somewhere along the line, his mindset had shifted. Walking through this huge, unfamiliar city, the oppressive unease of the past few days had quietly eased. Moving along a street that didn’t really feel like his hometown, he felt not just calm, but a faint excitement—an anticipation that startled him with its brightness.

Even the sky, bright enough to sting his eyes, looked like a cheerful blue.

A vendor set up at the corner. A few pedestrians passed by. A kid who’d clearly done something wrong shrieked and tore down the street, with a furious man chasing after them, cursing all the way.

Yu Sheng found himself wondering if the “professionals” Irene mentioned were hidden among them.

The people in the shadows, protecting the city, fighting the Otherworld—had anyone noticed the small wrongness lurking inside this peaceful old quarter?

His thoughts drifted as he tried to guess. Who looked unfamiliar? Who looked like plainclothes? Who might be a Spirit Realm Detective or an investigator?

The uncle making jianbing at the stall kind of looked like one. He’d switched to a new cook today, and the guy was terrible at it. The aunt hanging clothes from the balcony across the street might be one too—Yu Sheng hadn’t seen her before. What about the screaming brat who’d just sprinted past?

Irene said Spirit Realm Detectives even had tricks to change their appearance. Pretty amazing.

Anyway, the guy in a tank top with dyed blond hair—squatting on the curb, blasting music on his phone speaker—definitely wasn’t. He looked way too obvious.

Yu Sheng hummed a little tune as he walked past him, brushing shoulders with Li Lin, who was squatting there in a tank top with dyed blond wig hair, his phone blasting music on speaker.

A while later, the nearly two-meter-tall Xu Jiali wandered out onto the street. He lowered his head, took one look at Li Lin’s stakeout, then squatted down beside him and lit a cigarette, settling in like a punk along the curb.

“Is this outfit of yours really reliable?” Xu Jiali asked.

“Reliable as hell,” Li Lin said easily. “Back when I ran field stakeouts, I dressed like this all the time. Even when my colleagues at the jianbing stall got exposed, I didn’t. I’ve even got a whole anime outfit. That one’s even better for hiding. Once I pinned down a guy doing border smuggling and he still couldn’t believe an anime nerd was a Special Operations Bureau scout.”

Xu Jiali stared at him, stunned. “What’s an anime outfit? Sounds like some kind of force-field powered armor. Aren’t you not allowed to use that in the Borderland?”

“I can’t explain it to you.” Li Lin edged away with a look of disgust. “Move farther. You’re too big. Don’t get me exposed.”

“No way.” Xu Jiali curled his lip. “My vibe screams unemployed even harder than yours.”

Then he glanced down the street and blew out a thin stream of smoke. “But you haven’t found anything all morning, right? Honestly, even if this place really hides something, I doubt it’s a person. More likely some creepy entity or an Otherworld contamination point. That fits your clues so far. Damn it, the commotion in Boundary City last night was huge. Who knows what the bureau looks like now. And we still have to squat here like idiots, wasting time staring at some unknown crap…”

Li Lin couldn’t be bothered to respond. He pulled out a huge power bank, slapped it onto his phone, and turned the speaker volume even higher.

A couple of hours later, Yu Sheng had already bought everything he wanted at a downtown mall.

He dragged his bags to a secluded spot and fell into thought.

He’d bought a lot. The weight wasn’t a problem anymore, but hauling all of it back on a crowded bus would be annoying.

So a bold idea surfaced.

And it felt worth testing.

Yu Sheng lifted his head, checked again to make sure no one was watching, then reached toward the air beside him.

A door formed in his hand.

Three seconds later, deep inside some concealed depth of Boundary City, countless Special Operations Bureau agents and clerks—so overworked their thoughts had gone fuzzy—along with their captains and Director Bai Li Qing, all sprang up from their chairs as alarms blared…

Yu Sheng carried several big plastic bags home.