Chapter 25: The Fox in the Dream

Chapter 25: The Fox in the Dream

Irene’s reaction did not seem fake.

In fact, ever since Yu Sheng had come into contact with this doll, he had never discovered a moment of insincerity from her. Every word and action of hers carried a sort of straightforward honesty, as if her head were solid all the way through. Either her acting skills were unbelievably good, or her head really was solid all the way through.

Yu Sheng cautiously maintained the first hypothesis, but leaned more toward the second possibility.

Afterward, he described the appearance of the dead doll and the posture of the enormous “shadow monster” that had seemingly perished together with it. The answer he received was still, “I don’t know.”

Frowning, Yu Sheng sank into deep thought.

Irene, meanwhile, could not help becoming curious. “Hey, why did you suddenly come ask me all this? Weren’t you going upstairs to sleep?”

Yu Sheng hesitated for a moment, but ultimately decided to tell the doll before him about the changes in that room. It did not involve any of his secrets, and it might even be related to Irene herself. Saying it aloud might actually help unravel the mystery.

“Something happened in the room upstairs...”

Yu Sheng recounted everything he had seen upstairs in complete detail. This time, Irene was unusually quiet throughout. As she listened, her eyes gradually widened. After hearing everything, she sat stunned for a long time before finally coming back to herself and drawing out her voice:

“Wooow...”

Yu Sheng immediately felt that even after telling her, the mystery still was not going to be solved.

“Looks like you don’t know what’s going on either,” Yu Sheng sighed. “I assume you’ve never seen that mirror before, right?”

“Never seen it. No idea,” Irene nodded confidently, then added, “But I think your house is getting weirder and weirder.”

“You don’t need to tell me that, I think so too,” Yu Sheng said with a sigh. “Open a door and who knows where you’ll end up. A room suddenly changes its furnishings. A mirror reflects scenery from who-knows-when and who-knows-where. I used to think this place was pretty livable. Sigh...”

Without blinking, Irene stared at the expression on Yu Sheng’s face with her crimson eyes. After listening to his muttering, she hesitated before asking, “Then... are you planning to move? Not live here anymore?”

Yu Sheng did not answer immediately, but he had to admit he had considered it.

After all, he could tolerate the occasional haunted mirror, mysterious furniture, suspicious electrical appliances, or a chatterbox trapped inside an oil painting. Since he was not even afraid of dying, he could treat them as adding a little fun to life.

But the possibility that opening a door might drop him into some Other Domain was a genuine problem. That was not something he could simply endure.

For Yu Sheng, the most dangerous thing about the Other Domain was not that it could kill you. It was that you might not be able to come back.

That fact alone had genuinely made him consider moving somewhere else.

Seeing him remain silent, Irene stayed quiet for a while before continuing on her own.

“Then if you find a place you like, tell me first, okay? Figure out a way to get me into their residential complex. I’ll help drive their housing prices down for you...”

Yu Sheng froze. “I was joking when I said that... And now you don’t think it’s insulting to the Ancestor of Dolls and your sisters?”

“I thought carefully about it just now and felt your method made a lot of sense,” Irene said seriously. “Besides, if I help lower the housing prices for you, that should count toward repaying some of the favor of living in your house, right?”

Only then did Yu Sheng realize that she seemed to be worried that if he suddenly moved away, he would leave her behind.

But he did not point it out. He merely shook his head.

“Let’s not talk about that. I just have the idea in mind. I’m not planning to move yet. Don’t worry. If I do move, I’ll take you with me. A painting doesn’t take up much space.”

“Oh, okay then!”

Irene immediately brightened.

But before long, a trace of worry appeared on her face again.

“Um... the dead doll you saw in the mirror, were her eyes closed?”

“...I don’t think so,” Yu Sheng recalled. “Why do you ask?”

Irene opened her mouth. She looked a little sad.

“When a living doll is destroyed, if its eyes are closed, that means its soul has returned to the Garden in Alice’s Cottage. We are reborn there. But if its eyes are still open... then she is still ‘there.’”

Yu Sheng froze for a moment and suddenly regretted answering so quickly. He should have asked first.

“We don’t know what place the mirror is reflecting,” he said softly after a moment of silence. “But since she appeared in the mirror, maybe she has become connected to this house somehow. Maybe one day we’ll find her. As for now, don’t think too much about it. You’re still trapped here yourself.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Irene sighed. “Sometimes sisters go out and lose contact... We’ll meet again eventually. Yeah. We will.”

Suddenly, Yu Sheng felt that this doll might not be quite as carefree as he had imagined.

After chatting with Irene for a while longer, he returned to the second floor.

He checked the room at the end of the corridor again, confirmed that it still looked exactly as it had earlier, and left it alone. Turning around, he entered his bedroom.

Drawing the curtains and lying on the bed, Yu Sheng tossed and turned for a long time.

He was sleepy and exhausted, yet his mind was such a mess that he could not fall asleep. All sorts of thoughts and recent experiences swirled chaotically through his head.

Irene’s situation.

That valley beneath the night sky.

Knowledge of the Other Domain.

That fox girl who had struggled to remain rational until the very last moment and told him to run.

And...

His own death and resurrection.

Only after struggling for who knew how long did Yu Sheng finally drift into sleep.

He felt as though his consciousness were slowly sinking into a gentle, chaotic pool of water. Even after falling asleep, those disorderly currents continued circling around him. Through a layer of hazy confusion, he observed fragments of his memories and thoughts. Countless indistinct voices drifted past his ears.

Then his consciousness reached the bottom of the “pool,” and silence gradually settled around him.

Yu Sheng wandered through his dream.

He wandered beneath dim light and saw himself walking across a wilderness. In the distance stood what appeared to be a small hill.

He felt as though he had been wandering around that hill for a very, very long time, without purpose and without knowing who he was.

But a flash of unusual color at the edge of his vision suddenly made him stop.

Between the dim, chaotic sky and earth, Yu Sheng saw a patch of brightness.

Instinctively, he walked toward that silver-white glow.

The scene before him blurred, and in the next instant he was standing directly before it.

He saw a silver-furred demon fox.

Even lying down, it stood two or three meters tall.

Beautiful.

Elegant.

Peaceful.

A breeze blew in from afar, stirring the slender wild grass and the silver fur covering the demon fox’s body. She showed no sign of waking, merely remaining curled up quietly.

Many thick tails curled around from behind her. Some were held in her embrace, while others covered her body like blankets.

Yu Sheng stared in astonishment at the fox that had appeared in his dream.

At some point, he had already become fully aware that he was dreaming.

After hesitating for a moment, he stepped forward and cautiously touched one of the giant fox’s forepaws.

“...Hu Li, is that you?”

The white fox remained asleep.

She showed no reaction whatsoever to Yu Sheng’s touch or his voice.

Yu Sheng called to her several more times and even tried tugging at her tail, but he still could not wake her.

The feeling was not merely that she was asleep.

It was more as if something had blocked off her senses entirely.

Frowning, Yu Sheng stepped back slightly.

Why had this fox appeared in his dream?

He admitted that before falling asleep, his thoughts had been all over the place, and he had indeed thought about the fox trapped in the Other Domain.

But this clearly was not an ordinary case of dreaming about what occupied one’s thoughts during the day.

He could feel it.

Hu Li was truly “here.”

As he pondered, Yu Sheng suddenly felt something stir in his heart.

He sensed something and immediately looked down at his right hand.

A tiny bead of blood seeped from one of his fingers.

Around it was a faint ring of tooth marks.

It was the very bite Hu Li had left when he snatched the chocolate back from her and her food-protecting instincts had kicked in.

Yu Sheng stared fixedly at the sight.

Suddenly, he recalled how, back in the valley, he had unexpectedly “seen” fragments of Hu Li’s memories and sensed part of her thoughts.

“Because of the blood?”

A realization dawned on him.

Perhaps her appearance here was related to the fact that she had accidentally “eaten” some of his blood.

But immediately afterward another question arose.

That frog in the rain and that abstract flesh-and-blood monster had also eaten his blood.

Why had neither of them appeared here?

That flesh monster had even eaten several meals’ worth, far more than Hu Li had...

Just as Yu Sheng’s train of thought began drifting in an increasingly bizarre direction, he suddenly sensed something.

Then he heard a low chuckle from the grass behind him.

It sounded strangely familiar.

Yu Sheng abruptly turned toward the source of the sound.

The next second, an exasperated complaint rang out from the grass.

“I told you not to laugh, not to laugh! Couldn’t you just hold it in? See? We got discovered!”

Expressionless, Yu Sheng stared at the oil painting frame sticking out of the grass, as well as Irene inside the painting, who was clutching a teddy bear and grinning foolishly at him in a transparent attempt to act cute and escape blame.

“Watching TV got boring, so I came to see what you dream about...”