Chapter 411

Chapter 411: Proliferating…

What could a group of mass-produced dolls with a gate preinstalled inside their bodies actually do?

Irene couldn’t help thinking about it. Ideas popped up in her small head one after another. She could feel the potential, but nothing clicked into place right away. After a while, one hazy thought finally surfaced.

“Let me think… you can summon them over, and they can teleport away?” She looked up at Yu Sheng. “Can you send them straight to places you’ve been?”

“That’s one,” Yu Sheng said, nodding. “You know the prerequisite for door opening is a beacon—either a place I’ve been, or a place I recorded during a random opening. But I can’t use clone techniques. With these mass-produced dolls, it’s different. The gate built into their bodies is itself a complete beacon. Wherever a mass-produced doll goes, it’s like my door can open there.”

“And because they have full blood permission, they can activate the gate inside them on their own. Add that to their emergency knowledge—if they run into deadly danger while working outside, they can instantly teleport back to the valley.”

He lifted a finger. “There’s one more. In theory, mass-produced dolls can chain-summon each other. One mass-produced doll could summon other mass-produced dolls to her side. Hardware-wise it’s possible, but I don’t know if the software can keep up. It depends on their self-regulation and judgment. In the end, mass-produced types don’t really think—complex operations like that will still be difficult.”

“That’s not a big problem.” Irene planted her fists on her hips, full of confidence. “If their brains can’t handle it, I’m still here! I usually control these mass-production units in low bandwidth mode, but when it matters, I can log in myself!”

Yu Sheng rubbed his chin. “…Fair point.” Then, as his thoughts started to run, a new worry followed right behind. “If your main consciousness can transfer between a bunch of mass-produced dolls whenever you want… if you do it too much, won’t you end up with a split personality?”

He meant it as a casual joke.

Little Doll actually considered it. “Probably… not?” she said, sounding genuinely thoughtful. “I’m controlling four hosts at once and I’m not split, right? Honestly, the longer I do four-track operations, the more energized I feel. Lately I’ve been studying whether I can let only one body sleep at night while the other three pull all-nighters.”

She nodded seriously, like a researcher reporting progress. “I’m making headway. I’ve reached the stage where, when one body sleeps, the other three can sleepwalk around the room…”

Yu Sheng went still. “…So the reason you crawl all over your room in the middle of the night like it’s haunted is because of this?”

“Yeah, yeah!”

Yu Sheng could only stare at her.

Little Doll didn’t react at all. In the end, he had to wave a hand helplessly, while feeling a sincere, baffled curiosity about her mental structure. She was a doll without a brain—how could she not only think, but think in four threads?

Though, strictly speaking, her “thinking” was usually… limited.

Yu Sheng shook his head, shoved the unrelated thoughts aside, and looked back at the mass-production unit in front of him.

He knew the precast gate inside a mass-produced doll could do far more than the few uses he and Irene had just named. As long as their imagination kept up, these enhanced units could do a lot. And even if you ignored the gate entirely, a mass-production unit still had some combat ability.

Their skeletons cut costs hard, but they were still basically a youth edition of spirit-fox black iron. An Irene-ray blast could still kill. Sending one out alone on an exploration mission should be enough for basic self-defense.

Thinking of that, Yu Sheng stroked his chin and muttered, “They can scout outside, fight if needed, run if they can’t win… basically born recon material.”

Little Doll’s eyes lit up. “Search, fight, retreat?”

“Stop playing at things that are way too hard for you,” Yu Sheng said, glancing down at her. “Do you even understand what you just said?”

Irene immediately chased after him, short legs pumping as she yapped at full volume. “Hey, what do you mean by that! I’m amazing, okay! When I play, the other side can’t even kill me… Hey! Why aren’t you listening? I’m really ama—hey, what are you doing next?”

“The first test unit passed,” Yu Sheng said, turning toward the alchemy bench. “So of course we keep making them.”

He looked back at Little Doll. “Mass-production unit, mass-production unit—if the output doesn’t go up, how can it be called mass-production?”

As he spoke, more than a dozen sets of casting molds formed across the nearby floor. Rows of work platforms rose throughout the spacious lab, and he began transporting endless mud from the valley onto them. It looked like he was about to expand production immediately.

Only then did Irene seem to remember the whole mass-production part. She watched him work, frowning as something about it bothered her. “…So you’re going to stay here and hand-make dolls the whole time? That’s not what I pictured…”

“Who said I’m hand-making them?” Yu Sheng laughed. He finished the setup, then pointed at the mass-produced doll standing on standby, eyes blank. “Next, she learns.”

Irene blinked—and then her expression snapped into place as she understood. “…Sick.”

The mass-produced doll received the order and walked over. She scrambled up onto the platform and stared straight at Yu Sheng.

Yu Sheng demonstrated how to carve the spirit-infusion arrays, how to arrange ritual materials, and how to shape the clay, while directing Foxy to prepare the “youth-edition skeletons.” As he worked, he explained to Irene, “Mass-produced types can’t control the mud and rock in the valley the way I can. They can’t instantly shape things, so we still have to prepare materials for them. The later shaping process will be slower too. But once the numbers go up, individual inefficiency gets swallowed by scale.”

On Foxy’s side, flames were already roaring as she melted black iron and cast skeletons. Yu Sheng finished the first ritual array and passed the carving knife to the mass-produced doll, ordering her to replicate the process on the other platforms.

The tiny doll hugged the knife like it was a baton too big for her and dashed to the nearest platform. Her first attempts were clumsy, but the improvement was visible—faster, cleaner, steadier with every repetition.

Watching her work—busy, focused, increasingly nimble—Yu Sheng briefly wondered if Irene was secretly logging in.

But he dismissed it almost immediately.

Even if Irene logged in, she couldn’t do it this well. She didn’t have the patience to repeat something that boring over and over.

“This could count as machine-spirit bliss,” Yu Sheng said, genuinely moved.

Then he picked up a cup and started bleeding into it—another key material needed to make living dolls.

Possibly the most important one of all.

Foxy’s freshly refined, cooled skeletons were placed onto the platforms. Yu Sheng showed the mass-produced doll how to mix a tiny amount of blood into the clay and wrap it around the skeleton, forming a rough humanoid shape.

For a doll only 66.6 centimeters tall, that step was no joke.

“Once there are more of them, we can have them work in teams of three or four,” Yu Sheng said, watching her carefully knead the clay. After a moment’s thought, he turned to Irene and Foxy. “We can also switch materials to lightweight clay. Easier to work than mud, and it’s cheap in bulk.”

Foxy set down a new batch of skeleton parts and considered it. “At this point, these mass-produced dolls can handle the spirit-infusion ritual and shaping process themselves. Smelting and casting skeletons… later we can build a furnace and a simple foundry and let them do it too. We’ll just need to adjust everything for their height.” Her ears flicked. “Right now, the only thing limiting output is two key materials.”

“Key materials…” Yu Sheng echoed, arms folding as he thought.

One was Foxy’s spirit-fox black iron, which gave mass-produced dolls spirituality.

The other was his blood, which gave mass-produced dolls life.

“Honestly, Silly Fox’s iron output is pretty high,” Irene said casually. “Every so often I see her pull out a huge chunk and sell it to the Special Operations Bureau, and she still has leftovers. And one skeleton doesn’t take much anyway—your cost-cutting is so extreme you almost turned the whole thing into wire.”

As she spoke, her gaze slid toward Yu Sheng.

She stared a moment.

Then she said, with alarming seriousness, “Hey, your blood output seems high too. If you bled yourself to death once, I feel like you could make at least a few hundred dolls. If you were careful, maybe over a thousand…”

Yu Sheng stared at her rolling eyes and knew she was up to something. Sure enough, she continued, “Listen to yourself. Is that even human?”

“Oh, right.” Irene nodded, still in analysis mode. “If you actually die, your blood would disappear after a while. If we don’t use it in time, it’s gone.”

She looked back up, perfectly sincere. “Then we can only bleed you half to death.”

Yu Sheng’s eye twitched. “…Is that the point?!”