Chapter 409

Chapter 409: The First Mass-Production Unit

On the terrace connected to the outer corridor on the second floor of the Great Pyramid in Hotel Valley, right beside the portal nexus—

Shu Ji’s eternal curtain of rain and the bustling night city beneath endless darkness were certainly an exotic sight. But staying too long in a place that was forever damp and wet inevitably pressed on the lungs. After returning to the valley under bright, clear skies, Yu Sheng felt his mood loosen at once.

He stood at the edge of the terrace outside the hub pyramid, drew a deep breath of the valley’s crisp, peculiar air, and looked around with a clear head.

Not far away, Fairy Tale Town basked in daylight. All kinds of imaginative, strange buildings seemed to have multiplied again since last time. The King’s knight patrolled between the town and the forest. Little Red Riding Hood’s wolf pack chased each other across the fields. Sleeping Beauty trimmed the flourishing rose bushes in front of her house.

A silver-gray drone suddenly flew over the rooftops and shot toward the end of the valley. A full basket of snacks and a brand-new axe dangled beneath it—obviously gifts meant for Hunter and Squirrel in the forest.

In the farmland between the town and the portal nexus, Luna led a group of dollheads in identifying crops. She still wore the nun outfit she’d gotten on Shu Ji, and she seemed to like it. The small children gathered around her were already familiar with this odd-looking “sister.” They ran circles around her, laughing as if nothing in the world could ever go wrong.

Closer to the terrace, Foxy had set up a long clothes rack. Using the bright sunlight and gentle breeze of the valley, the demon fox girl hummed an unknown tune as she happily hung her freshly washed tails in a neat row. Eight fluffy fox tails swayed lightly in the wind. Among them, inexplicably, was a small doll skirt.

Irene (Rebar), freshly bathed, sat cross-legged on top of a railing post at the edge of the terrace. She’d changed into clean clothes, and her hair was still a little damp. When the breeze passed, she tilted her face into it, squinting in contentment, a goofy grin stretching across her features.

“I still like sunny days,” Little Doll said abruptly, turning back to look at Yu Sheng with complete seriousness. “Over on Shu Ji, it never stops raining. I feel like my joints are going to grow mold sooner or later in that environment.”

Yu Sheng laughed and walked over, ruffling her hair.

“We’ve rested enough,” he said. “Time to do real work.”

“Yay!” Irene cheered instantly. Then she jumped straight from the railing post onto Yu Sheng’s shoulder and waved hard at Foxy. “Silly Fox!”

Foxy had finished hanging her tails and was standing by the rack, satisfied as she admired her own work. At Irene’s shout, she reacted immediately, running over with sparkling eyes. “I’m coming, I’m coming! Are we making Irene a new body?”

“Let’s go.” Yu Sheng nodded and beckoned. “Time to stock up some combat power for the Hotel.”

The three of them left the terrace and entered the hub pyramid through the outer corridor. A short hall later, they arrived at the alchemy lab Yu Sheng had opened inside this “wonder building.”

Of course, since Yu Sheng couldn’t do any alchemy besides sculpting dolls, it could also be called a doll workshop dedicated entirely to making Irene.

The lab sat on the second floor of the hub pyramid. Even after excluding the hallway, storage, and prep rooms, the remaining space was absurdly wide. The operating area was basically an indoor plaza. When Yu Sheng first built it, he’d regretted it, thinking it was wasteful to use such a huge place just to sculpt dolls.

Now, it seemed he’d accidentally done exactly the right thing.

The lab was brightly lit. Yu Sheng led them straight to an alchemy bench in the center, steadied himself, and began the familiar preparations for making a doll.

First, he laid out the ritual materials he’d “borrowed” from the Special Operations Bureau. Then, with a thought, he had the alchemy bench generate the array needed for spirit-infusion. At the same time, he drew rocks and soil from the ground near the portal nexus and sent them into the lab to be used as base material.

While Yu Sheng prepared all that, Foxy was already working on a new “skeleton” for Irene.

She reached into her tails and pulled out a lump of spirit fox iron. A blinding flame ignited at the tip of her tail, and she began cutting and casting the metal with argon fox welding.

Yu Sheng casually formed a groove in the floor beside the alchemy bench for the pour. Then he considered it, adjusted the groove, and reminded Foxy, “Cut less. No need to make it as sturdy as last time. This is a mass-production unit, so keep the cost down…”

Irene stared, wide-eyed. When she watched Yu Sheng shrink the casting groove three times, she finally couldn’t take it anymore.

“Stop shrinking it, damn it!” she snapped. “You shrank the femur into a wire, okay?! It’s supposed to be combat power. Keep the basic strength!”

Foxy chimed in from the side, sounding almost worried. “Benefactor, if we use too little spirit fox iron, it might affect the energy storage effect. In a fight, it might run out after only a dozen beams…”

Yu Sheng thought about it. He’d originally figured that if it was mass-produced, why would it need to fight for long? If it could fire a few rounds to support the host—or act as a power bank—that would be enough.

But then he looked at Irene’s aggrieved expression and decided firepower was better when it was saturated. With a sigh, he reluctantly adjusted the groove back up a little.

“Let’s make one sample first,” Yu Sheng said as he watched Foxy pour the skeleton, stroking his chin. “Then Irene can control it in her low-bandwidth mode and test how well this mass-produced body can operate independently with only simple commands. If it works, we’ll start producing them in batches.”

Irene had already climbed onto a nearby alchemy bench. She propped her chin in both hands and watched them work, eyes darting in quiet calculation. Nobody knew what was going through her little head.

After a few minutes, her gaze sharpened. “Should we add a self-destruct function…?”

Yu Sheng was still thinking about where else he could shave costs. At first, the words didn’t even register. When they did, he froze.

“…You’re serious?”

“It’s a mass-production unit,” Irene said, still propping up her chin, analyzing with earnest gravity. “If we send them out and they get destroyed, we won’t feel bad. And considering their limited performance, if one is doing an exploration mission alone and gets captured, it probably can’t escape. So adding self-destruct could surprise the enemy. And I think it’d feel pretty awesome…”

Yu Sheng stared at her imagination, stunned.

Then—almost immediately—his own interest ignited. The faint sense of wrongness in his head vanished like it had never existed. He leaned in and whispered, “Then how do we blow it up? Stuff two bombs in its belly? We can ask Dorothy. She has a pile of weapons… Or borrow some incendiaries from Little Match Girl. Make it self-destruct and start a fire too?”

“That doesn’t feel right,” Irene said, frowning. “How much could you even fit? The power would feel too low…”

“How about asking Immortal Yuan Hao? He does artifact forging. Those immortals have a bunch of black tech, and when they hit, they hit insanely hard.”

“I’m not stuffing spirit brick into my belly!”

“Then we have to innovate the body structure itself,” Yu Sheng said, rubbing his chin. “See if we can integrate an overload mechanism inside the shell—one that can dump all the stored energy in the spirit fox iron at once…”

“I have an idea!” Irene’s eyes lit up. “Based on my experience these days making lightning orb, if you mess it up, it really does explode…”

Their train of thought took off. The two of them started chattering excitedly, batting possibilities back and forth, analyzing all the ways to hide a huge boom inside an Irene shell. Neither of them seemed to find anything wrong with this conversation.

They went on for quite a while before stopping at the same time.

Yu Sheng was the first to break the silence, suddenly thoughtful. “This topic feels kind of… too messed up.”

Irene copied him, rubbing her chin with exaggerated seriousness. “Yeah… kind of.”

“No, it still feels unreliable.” Yu Sheng frowned, weighing it again. In the end, he shook his head. “These mass-production units are going to be active in the valley most of the time. This place is our base. If a bunch of mass-produced dolls with bellies full of bombs run around here and one blows up from a bump, the chaos would be unreal. And there are a bunch of children here too.”

“Yeah…”

“But you did remind me of something,” Yu Sheng said, shifting gears. His tone turned very serious. “We really can add some functions to these mass-production units. Before, I only made bodies for you as shells. I never thought in this direction. But now I have an idea.”

Irene narrowed her eyes at him. “What idea?”

“Do you remember my portable Wu Tong Road 66?” Yu Sheng asked.

Irene blinked. “…?”

“This thing might be built into mass-production units.”

—

A moment later, the adjusted skeleton was moved onto the alchemic platform.

The next steps were second nature to Yu Sheng.

In his hands, rock and soil were given a brief, false life. They writhed and flowed, wrapping the skeleton and forming a doll shell around it. A drop of blood mixed into the new body, becoming the key medium that carried spirituality. The incense for the spirit-infusion ritual fed into the candle flame, and with a sudden flare, true vitality slowly emerged.

The body shaped from rock and soil gained a faint blush. False life became real breath and a mimic heartbeat.

And then, at just the right moment, Yu Sheng gave the blank shell a name.

“Irene—”

The spirit-infusion ritual finished in the blink of an eye.

On the alchemic platform, Irene (mass-produced) opened her eyes sluggishly.