Chapter 68

Chapter 68: Foxy’s Hometown Memories

A black-haired young lady with clear eyes, wearing ill-fitting men’s clothes, walked down the street and looked around with open curiosity. In her arms, she held a gothic doll with a dead-eyed stare and a creepy aura.

The combination was hard to ignore.

Yu Sheng had underestimated how difficult it would be to go out with both Foxy and Irene.

He couldn’t even count how many curious looks swept over them along the way. Some of those stares were obviously drawn to Foxy’s beauty and her wide-eyed fascination with everything around her. The rest landed squarely on him.

And Yu Sheng had to grit his teeth and stay close. Foxy really didn’t understand anything.

She didn’t even know what money looked like in this world. Honestly, the fact that she knew you had to pay to buy things was already impressive—and that was only because she’d lived in a civilized society a very, very long time ago.

Even worse, the differences between the social order in Foxy’s memories and Boundary City’s reality created trouble in the strangest places.

When they passed a parking lot, Foxy stared at it with genuine confusion. She couldn’t understand why so many “celestial vehicles” were gathered in one place and yet everything was so quiet. Why were those vehicles so patient?

To be honest, when she first asked, Yu Sheng didn’t even understand what she meant.

“In my hometown, carriages and boats all had artifact spirit,” Foxy explained softly. “Artifact spirit for vehicles usually love to run and jump. Most won’t stay obediently outside the mountain gate. So when immortal or demon go out and need to stop somewhere, they hand their carts and boats to a manager. The manager has to lead them to ‘run around’ nearby. There’s also a big field with its own small world inside. You can put carts and boats in there and let them run and play by themselves. That’s called a ‘self-service parking lot’…”

As she spoke, she pointed at a car by the roadside that was clearly being driven by a rookie—still failing to park after far too long. “That one is so stiff. Where I’m from, it would get laughed at by a child’s bamboo hobbyhorse.”

Yu Sheng immediately pressed her hand down. “This isn’t your hometown. Don’t point.”

Foxy nodded, confused. “Oh.”

Yu Sheng wiped cold sweat off his forehead. The more she talked, the more curious he became about what Foxy’s hometown was actually like. When he’d first met her, he’d assumed she came from a classic immortal-cultivation civilization.

Then a tour guide immortal had appeared.

Then there was “hundreds of security immortal hunting down a great fox demon for ruining protected forests and sentencing them for five hundred years.”

Now even a child’s toy—a bamboo hobbyhorse—apparently had artificial intelligence in the form of an artifact spirit.

Yu Sheng’s brain felt a little numb. He couldn’t help thinking: the vibe of this young lady’s hometown was impossible to picture.

Could something like that really exist in a normal universe?

Sadly, Foxy couldn’t clearly describe it. Not only because she’d been young when she left, but also because the long torment in the otherworld had made her forget many things.

“I can’t remember a lot,” Foxy said, digging through the blurred, yellowed scraps in her mind. “I only remember the elders saying my hometown wasn’t like that at first. A powerful ‘skyfolk’ suddenly arrived and enlightened the beings on the ground who used to fight nonstop. Then, much later, we lived days where we ‘crossed the stars in an instant for billions of miles’ together with skyfolk.”

Her eyes grew distant. “The elders said the stars in the sky would change position every few years. That was skyfolk adjusting some kind of route… My dad worked on the route too. His job was to push anything that wandered into the route out, then write them a ticket…”

As she spoke, she became excited again. “My dad could drive a huge ‘celestial shuttle,’ bigger than a whole building! He said it was called a ‘star ark.'”

Foxy’s hands lifted as if she could shape the memory in the air. “The artifact spirit of star ark was even stronger. You only needed one person to lie in a pool inside star ark and give the artifact spirit commands, and it would fly. It could grab things faster than light, using some kind of treasure called… something like ‘loop the moon and cut the breath’…”

Yu Sheng listened, stunned. He glanced down at Irene in Foxy’s arms. Irene was still pretending to be an ordinary doll, eyes dead and body limp.

In his heart, Yu Sheng muttered, [Can you understand any of that?]

[I can’t understand it,] Irene’s voice replied from deep in his mind. [You’re really taking it seriously? She might just be talking nonsense. I suggest you wait a couple months, let Foxy stabilize, then ask again. By then the “version” might change again.]

Yu Sheng frowned. He doubted the truth of the wild, impossible things Foxy described—but if her mind was still muddled, could she really invent something this imaginative and oddly consistent?

Either way, what Foxy told him left a deep impression.

[Enough. Stop thinking,] Irene cut in. [Hurry up and get Foxy some normal clothes. Your challenge has arrived.]

Yu Sheng’s face went sour.

So many things sounded easy when you were only planning. The moment you got down to details, the trouble hit.

How was he supposed to pick clothes for a girl?

He had never even walked into a women’s clothing store.

But he’d said he would take Foxy in. It was too late to regret it now.

Just as Yu Sheng led Foxy into the mall with the grim determination of someone marching to execution, a familiar figure flashed past the corner of his eye.

A short-haired girl, petite, about seventeen or eighteen. Her lips were pressed together, and her expression carried a quiet, mature focus that didn’t quite match her age.

At first Yu Sheng didn’t recognize her. She just looked familiar. Two or three seconds later, he remembered.

Little Red Riding Hood.

Today she wasn’t wearing that dark red outfit. She’d changed into a bright jacket, which made her harder to recognize at a glance.

Yu Sheng immediately knew he’d found a savior.

Almost at the same time, Little Red Riding Hood noticed his gaze. She looked up sharply—her eyes alert as a wolf’s.

The wolfish look vanished as quickly as it appeared. After she recognized Yu Sheng, faint surprise crossed her face.

She crossed through traffic and came over, studying him for a few seconds before blurting out, “…You’re buying things too?”

“…Is it weird that I’m out buying things?” Yu Sheng said.

“Ah—sorry. I just thought it was a coincidence.” Little Red Riding Hood lowered her head in a quick, direct apology, but the doubt in her eyes didn’t fade.

Because she already knew Yu Sheng lived in an otherworld called wu tong road No. 66.

The moment she left that otherworld, she’d guessed this “Yu Sheng” who called himself “human” probably had a questionable level of human-ness. His extremely realistic human behavior likely belonged to some kind of mimicry.

She truly hadn’t expected to see this person—someone who lived long-term inside an otherworld—standing on the street…

Buying things.

Could this guy even eat human food?

The ridiculous thought rose in Little Red Riding Hood’s mind.

Then she noticed Foxy beside him, and the doll in Foxy’s arms.

Little Red Riding Hood frowned slightly. After a moment, she recognized Foxy’s face. Then she raised a hand and pointed at Irene—who was motionless, even the sparkle in her eyes gone.

“This one… dead?”

Yu Sheng saw Irene almost twitch. In the next instant, Irene’s furious cursing exploded in his mind: [She’s the one who’s dead! She can explode on the spot eight hundred times! That %#@—Yu Sheng! Curse her! Curse her back for me!]

“She’s cursing you,” Yu Sheng told Little Red Riding Hood calmly, pointing at Irene’s stiff little body. “It’s really nasty. I’m a civilized person. I can’t even say it out loud.”

Irene cursed even worse.

Little Red Riding Hood couldn’t hear it.

But she could imagine it.

“You lot are… pretty creative,” she said, looking Irene up and down a few more times. “You can actually bring her out in public like this.” Her gaze swept over Foxy’s obviously ill-fitting outfit, and her smile finally appeared. “So with this whole setup, you’re buying clothes for her?”

“I think I can guess what kind of help you need,” she added. “It’s no trouble—but later you have to help me with something too.”

Yu Sheng’s eyes lit up. “You’ll do it?”

“Sure.” Little Red Riding Hood looked unconcerned. “It’s something I’ve never done before.”