Chapter 59: Repair

Chapter 59: Repair

Thirty minutes later, Yu Sheng looked somewhat nervously at the little doll lying on the alchemy workbench.

Supporting herself with her hands, Irene slowly sat up and stared blankly into space as she contemplated life.

A doll.

66.6 centimeters tall.

Emitting the fragrance of lotus root.

Experiment successful.jpg.

After watching for quite a while, Yu Sheng felt that Irene did not seem to have developed any problems. His confidence gradually returned.

“See? I told you it would work. You can even use flour, so why shouldn’t lotus root...”

“Stop talking and let me sort this out first,” Irene interrupted by raising a hand, then looked at her own hands with a strange expression. “I just don’t understand. How did this work? This makes no sense. How did it actually work...”

Yu Sheng twitched his lips.

“You were the one who let me try. Why are you the one who doesn’t believe it after it succeeded?”

“I never should have let you try! How was I supposed to know you’d actually succeed? My arms are really made of lotus root now!” Irene glared at Yu Sheng. “I only wanted to watch you make a fool of yourself. Your nonsense version of alchemy wasn’t supposed to work! I just wanted you to hit a wall and give up. But how did you succeed? Huh? How did it work?!”

“I don’t know either,” Yu Sheng replied blankly. “You agreed to let me try, so I tried. You never said you were just watching for entertainment. I thought you genuinely supported my scientific research.”

Irene instantly wanted to jump up and bite someone, but because her legs had not been repaired yet, she failed to do so. She could only sit on the table and curse loudly.

“Research my ass! What kind of research is this?! My arms got turned into lotus roots by you! What am I supposed to do now? They’ve really fused to me! How exactly did you do it? The power of thinking things into existence? Huh?!”

Yu Sheng thought about it and concluded that it probably really had been the power of thinking things into existence.

But Irene’s intense reaction genuinely surprised him.

He had absolutely no foundation in alchemy. Throughout the entire process, he had merely followed the doll’s instructions step by step. When he infused blood into the two sections of lotus root and performed the spirit infusion ritual, he had not thought about anything at all, nor had he known that the procedure was supposedly impossible.

When the two spirit-infused lotus roots had suddenly wriggled and transformed into limbs near Irene’s elbows, he had simply assumed that was normal.

He had never expected it to frighten the little doll this badly.

“Sorry...” Yu Sheng thought for a moment and genuinely began feeling a bit uneasy. “Then how about we replace them again? I’ll go downstairs and find an axe...”

He was silenced by a single glare from Irene before he could finish.

“All right. Pretend I never said that.”

“What else can I do now?” The little doll raised her arms resentfully, looking utterly exhausted as though she had accepted her fate.

Then she cautiously clenched her fists and moved each of her ten fingers one by one.

She looked so nervous that it seemed as if someone had attached Doctor Octopus tentacles to her body. Every tiny movement carried the fear that the two arms Yu Sheng had randomly attached might suddenly go out of control.

But she soon discovered that the arms Yu Sheng had cobbled together were actually quite usable.

Even if their raw material was lotus root.

“Um... finished testing?” Yu Sheng watched carefully from the side and only broke the silence after confirming the doll was not about to leap up and bite him. “They work normally, right? They don’t hurt, do they?”

Irene sighed.

“They work. There’s no discomfort.”

“If they work, then they work. Why are you sighing? You nearly scared me to death.”

Only then did Yu Sheng truly relax.

His gaze then shifted to Irene’s legs, which were still unable to support her weight.

“Now it’s time to fix your legs. Let me see how badly they’re injured.”

Irene responded with an “oh,” but suddenly raised her head and stared into Yu Sheng’s eyes.

“Wait. What are you planning to use for the repair? Let me tell you right now, if you pull out a bag of lotus root starch, then tonight you’ll definitely dream about getting hit by a cement truck.”

Yu Sheng found her reaction difficult to understand.

“I really don’t get it. Your body’s made of clay, and you don’t even mind substituting flour for it. Why are you so resistant to similar materials?”

Irene pointed at his nose with one hand. Because her hand was so small, however, the gesture carried no intimidation whatsoever.

“You humans keep pets, don’t you? Then why don’t you keep cockroaches? You eat organic matter every day, so why don’t you eat sh...”

“All right, I get it. You don’t need to continue.”

Yu Sheng hurriedly interrupted her.

At that moment, he suddenly understood just how enormous the differences in perception between different races could be.

“Don’t worry. I have proper repair materials.”

As he spoke, he opened a drawer on the other side of the table and took out a small container of epoxy putty.

“In theory, the best way to repair a clay doll is with the same kind of clay. But we’ve run out, so this can substitute for it. What’s important is treating it with alchemy, right?” he asked Irene for confirmation. “Then I just smooth it over with a scraper, right?”

“That... should work.”

Irene finally nodded reluctantly.

Then she became a little curious.

“When did you prepare that?”

“It was a free gift that came with the clay. I’d shoved it all the way to the bottom and didn’t notice it before.” While speaking casually, Yu Sheng studied the instructions on the packaging. “All right, let me see your injuries.”

Only then did Irene relax.

She slowly lifted the ornate hem of her dress and removed the long stocking from her right leg.

The ivory-like calf beneath was covered in black cracks of various sizes.

Some of the cracks even passed through the knee and extended all the way toward her thigh.

Yu Sheng was instantly startled.

“...Holy shit!”

“It’s not broken off, at least.” Irene remained completely unconcerned. “If it had broken, you’d probably attach another section of lotus root.”

“That’s not the point. How can you be so unconcerned? Doesn’t it hurt at all?”

Yu Sheng’s voice tightened slightly.

Over the past two days, he had grown accustomed to seeing blood. He had even become used to seeing himself covered in wounds and gore.

Yet when he saw the shattered state of Irene’s leg, something inside him still jolted violently.

It was a completely different sort of impact from seeing a monster punch a hole through him.

Perhaps it was because the sight was simply too bizarre and horrifying.

It looked even more frightening than the doll’s severed arms.

He reached out and touched the cracked areas of Irene’s leg.

The regions around the fractures felt as hard as wood.

Under normal circumstances, Irene’s limbs were soft and no different from those of a human.

This hardened texture indicated that the structure around the cracks was gradually losing synchronization with her soul.

If left untreated for much longer, the next step would be complete fracture and disintegration, just like her arms earlier.

Yet Irene merely laughed.

“Haha, stop rubbing it. It tickles... It doesn’t hurt. Not at all... Well, okay, it hurts a tiny bit. Just a tiny, tiny bit.”

As she spoke, Irene raised both hands and brought her index fingers very close together, emphasizing just how slight the pain supposedly was.

Yu Sheng sighed.

Taking a small knife, he cut open the back of his hand and began mixing his blood into the repair material.

As he worked the mixture with a scraper, he muttered continuously.

“This is way too scary. I don’t know how the physiology of living dolls works, but next time you’re injured, could you stop acting so calm? If something serious happens, tell me sooner. In the end, I’m the one repairing you anyway...”

Irene rolled her eyes.

“When you’re lying there dead with your eyes open, that’s pretty scary too. I never complained.”

Yu Sheng curled his lips.

He completed the remaining processing steps and carefully applied the putty to Irene’s injuries with the scraper.

“Hey, that tickles...”

“Bear with it. Don’t move around.”

“Okay.”

Irene stayed quiet for a while.

Then, perhaps because waiting through the repair process was boring, she started talking again.

“I actually wanted to talk to those two Special Operations Bureau agents today. I wanted to see if they had any way of contacting the sisters at Alice’s Cottage.”

“Even though I can’t remember the specifics of the Special Operations Bureau anymore, it’s probably an official organization of Boundary City. They should have some contact with Alice’s Cottage...”

“Then why didn’t you say anything?” Yu Sheng asked without looking up, his hands still carefully carrying out the repair work.

The scraper spread the putty and filled the cracks in the doll’s leg.

The moment the blood-mixed repair material touched the fractures, a faint hissing sound arose.

Then it melted into black mud and mist, gradually merging with the doll’s skin and restoring the texture and elasticity of living flesh.

“I don’t know. I just suddenly felt uneasy,” Irene said. “My spiritual nature gave me a warning. Something didn’t feel right. Maybe it was because I’d just met those two people and didn’t fully trust them yet. Or maybe I’ve been disconnected from the outside world for too long. I honestly don’t know what the current relationships between the various factions in the Boundary Zone are anymore.”

Yu Sheng paused and looked up at the doll.

“Then if we meet them again, should I tell them about you? They’ve already seen you today. They’ll probably include you in their report.”

“I’m not worried about the report. There aren’t any living dolls in the world that are exactly 66.6 centimeters tall. They’ll probably just assume I’m some kind of alchemical creature similar to a living doll. That’s nothing unusual in their eyes.”

“As for the next meeting...”

At this point, Irene hesitated and looked directly into Yu Sheng’s eyes.

“Let’s wait and see. If their identities are real and they truly belong to an official organization, then ask them about Alice’s Cottage. If they can help make introductions and help me find the other living doll sisters in this city, that would be even better.”

“If I can meet my own kind... I think I’d feel much more at ease.”

Yu Sheng rarely saw the doll display such uncertainty and hesitation.

But he felt he could understand it.

If he had been sealed away for half a century or even longer, then suddenly released into a completely unfamiliar world, with no idea what had become of the things he once knew, nor any understanding of the current order of the world or its power structures, then seeking help from other factions would indeed become something requiring great caution.

Yu Sheng let out a quiet breath.

He set down the scraper and gently reset Irene’s knee joint.

“Try standing up.”