Chapter 66: Morning at Yu Sheng’s House

Chapter 66: Morning at Yu Sheng’s House

When Yu Sheng woke up, the first thing he saw was Irene sprawled out in a corner at the foot of the bed. Her picture frame had been placed on the bedside cabinet nearby, leaning against the wall.

Yu Sheng let out a sigh. Last night, he ultimately hadn’t succeeded in throwing the doll out. The main reason was that every time he picked her up and tried to carry her toward the door, she would start making an enormous fuss. It was enough to make his head ache.

After another deep sigh, noticing that Irene showed no signs of waking up, Yu Sheng stretched out a foot and kicked her twice.

“Get up. If you don’t get up now, I’m taking your frame away and making you go back to sleeping inside the painting.”

The sprawled-out Irene finally moved. Slowly sitting up, she looked at Yu Sheng with sleepy eyes beneath a tangled mess of hair.

“Good morning... heh...”

“Morning my foot! It’s almost noon!” Yu Sheng resisted the urge to kick the unlucky doll off the bed. “Do you have any idea how many times you rolled around on the bed last night?! You’re already weird enough for a doll that needs sleep, how is your sleeping posture this restless too?!”

“I don’t know. Yawn...” Irene rubbed her eyes and stretched lazily while muttering, “Don’t be so unhappy about it. I’m this pretty, and you still don’t want to share a room with me...”

Cold sweat immediately appeared on Yu Sheng’s forehead as he stared at the tiny figure who was only 66.6 centimetres tall. He felt his temples throbbing.

“You’re tiny, but your ego is enormous. Do you even know what you’re saying?”

Irene paid no attention whatsoever. With her hair hanging loose, she crawled right in front of Yu Sheng, lowered her head, and declared with complete confidence:

“Comb my hair.”

A vein twitched on Yu Sheng’s forehead. He jumped off the bed, ran to the bathroom, grabbed a comb, and tossed it onto the bed.

“Not my problem. Comb it yourself.”

Holding the comb, which was about the same size as her head, with both hands, Irene rolled her eyes dramatically.

“Do I look like I can comb it myself? I can barely hold this thing with one hand. Why don’t you get me a comb made specifically for dolls...”

What followed was an uninterrupted stream of complaints about how she could only use her fingers when her hair got messy, how she had been forced to sleep in a chair on the first day, and how nobody cared about a doll’s feelings.

The endless chatter came without pause. Listening to it made it feel as though sparks were shooting out of one’s ears.

“...I must have owed you a debt in a previous life.”

At last unable to endure it any longer, Yu Sheng walked over, snatched the comb from Irene’s hands, picked her up, and placed her on the bedside cabinet.

“Sit here properly. Don’t move.”

Irene immediately smiled in triumph. Sitting on the cabinet, she continued muttering:

“You made this body, so providing after-sales service is perfectly normal...”

While combing the doll lady’s hair with obvious annoyance, Yu Sheng replied,

“Is that really how ‘after-sales service’ is supposed to be used?”

“Close enough. Hey, be gentle! Don’t pull any out. A doll’s hair is very precious.”

Yu Sheng let out another long sigh. Somehow, he managed to smooth out the hair that had become a complete mess from her rolling around in her sleep. Then he hung the picture frame back onto the doll and headed off to wash up.

“Hey, Yu Sheng! What’s for breakfast?”

Before long, Irene’s voice drifted in from outside the bathroom.

At that moment, Yu Sheng’s mouth was full of toothpaste foam, and his answer came out indistinctly.

“I’ll cook some dried noodles later. We’ll just make do with that, then head out.”

An “oh” came from outside the door.

At last, the doll fell quiet.

But Yu Sheng had a strong feeling that Irene’s temporary silence meant she was planning something even more troublesome.

He could feel his spiritual intuition bouncing wildly.

Although spiritual intuition bouncing wildly under these circumstances sounded rather strange.

After finishing his washing, Yu Sheng wiped his face and looked up at himself in the mirror above the sink.

He looked energetic.

His complexion was good.

There was even a faint smile on his face that he had not consciously noticed.

It seemed he had not seen himself looking this lively in a mirror for a very long time, and for a moment he felt almost dazed.

He still remembered that not long ago, he had been living a nervous and uneasy life in this vast city, a city so immense that it filled people with anxiety.

During those two-plus months, he had fallen asleep every night under tension and pressure, spent restless nights filled with dreams, then awakened exhausted. Sometimes several days would pass before he even washed his face. The person he saw in the mirror had always looked dispirited and lifeless.

Yet now, all he saw was a vigorous young man, his eyes carrying a trace of anticipation for the future.

He certainly did not look like someone who had spent the entire night being kicked by a doll with terrible sleeping habits.

“...My state of mind really is different now...”

Yu Sheng could not help smiling as he muttered quietly to himself.

Then Irene’s ghostly wailing suddenly erupted from outside the door.

“Yu Sheng! Did you fall in there?! I’ll get Hu Li to fish you out!”

The smile on Yu Sheng’s face instantly froze.

He turned and yanked the door open, only to see Irene standing energetically on the floor outside with her frame strapped to her back, grinning foolishly at him.

“You’ve been in there for over half an hour!” the doll said, craning her head upward.

Yu Sheng walked straight past her and opened the bedroom door, intending to see whether the fox had woken up.

The moment he opened the door, he jumped.

Hu Li was standing right outside, leaning forward sneakily like a thief, apparently debating whether she should come in.

Hu Li was equally startled by the sudden opening of the door.

Genuinely startled.

Behind her, that enormous cluster of tails exploded outward with a sudden Bang!, spreading through the hallway like a screen. Even the two large ears atop her head snapped upright instantly.

Two or three seconds later, the puffed-up demon fox gradually relaxed and looked at Yu Sheng somewhat helplessly.

“Benefactor...”

Yu Sheng was curious.

“What are you doing?”

“I woke up, but I didn’t know what to do, so... I came to wait. But I didn’t know whether you’d woken up yet, so... I didn’t dare knock.”

Hu Li immediately began explaining nervously. Then she looked at Yu Sheng with concern.

“Benefactor, are you alright? Where did you fall into?”

“I didn’t fall anywhere! Don’t listen to Irene’s nonsense all the time.”

Yu Sheng immediately glared, then frowned as he looked Hu Li up and down.

“You’ve just been standing outside the door waiting this whole time?”

“Mm.”

“...This is your home now. You don’t need to be so nervous all the time. If you have nothing to do, you can watch television or something. Oh, and when I have time, I’ll teach you how to use the appliances around the house.”

As he spoke casually, Yu Sheng turned toward the staircase.

“Let’s go downstairs and eat first. I’ll cook some noodles to get us through a meal. Today I’ll take you shopping.”

The moment she heard the words “eat” and “meal,” Hu Li’s eyes visibly lit up.

Almost skipping with excitement, she hurried after Yu Sheng.

But after only two steps, Yu Sheng stopped again and turned back toward the demon fox. He seemed hesitant to speak.

Hu Li tilted her head.

“Benefactor?”

“I suddenly thought of something...”

His gaze settled on the top of her head.

“You can hide your tails, but what about your ears? If you go outside looking like this... you might attract a lot of attention.”

Hearing this, Hu Li looked somewhat confused.

Ever since arriving here, she had never stepped outside the house. She had no idea what the outside world looked like, much less why her appearance might be unusual there.

But if her benefactor said so, she believed him.

The demon fox girl rubbed her hands together, then reached up, removed the ears from the top of her head, and stuffed them into her tail.

After that, she hid the tail as well.

Silence descended.

Yu Sheng remained frozen in the exact posture he had been in a second earlier, standing in the hallway as though turned to stone.

Then Irene’s scream abruptly shattered the silence.

“AAAAAH! Fox, fox, fox girl, what did you just pull off your head?!”

Hu Li produced the tail she normally used to store things, took out the fluffy pair of ears, and showed them to Irene.

“My ears.”

Yu Sheng’s eyes nearly popped out.

“They’re detachable?! Those are fake?!”

“They’re real.”

While putting the ears away again, Hu Li spoke as though it were perfectly obvious.

“Demon foxes are skilled at transformation.”

Yu Sheng said, “The demon foxes I know don’t seem to transform that way...”

Hu Li immediately looked astonished.

“Benefactor, you’ve seen other demon foxes before?”

Yu Sheng froze for a moment, then instantly regained his composure.

“...No.”

“Demon foxes must learn the art of refinement. The first step is refining oneself. Once you’ve mastered it, that is transformation.”

Hu Li seriously began explaining what she considered common knowledge to Yu Sheng and Irene.

“But my father and mother didn’t have time to teach me very much. I only learned... the basics. I heard from an immortal that powerful demon foxes can even transform themselves into stories from books or shadows from history. Relying only on what people pass along by word of mouth, they can cross past and present in an instant and traverse seas of stars. But I can’t do that!”

Yu Sheng listened in complete astonishment.

Only by pushing his imagination to its limits could he barely keep up with the fox girl’s description.

His ears understood the words, but his brain refused to believe them.

He could not shake the feeling that she was making things up.

Yet Hu Li’s harmless-looking face simply did not resemble that of someone capable of telling outrageous lies.

“I feel like something about this is wrong,” Irene muttered while stroking her chin. “My memory isn’t great right now, so don’t fool me. Where exactly did this common knowledge come from? Are you sure that immortal wasn’t tricking you? I’m telling you, tour guides will say anything...”

Hu Li shook her head vigorously.

“I don’t know. But my transformation art really was taught to me by my father and mother. It truly works this way.”

As she spoke, she carefully observed Yu Sheng for a moment.

Then the colour of her hair and eyes changed instantly, becoming black hair and black eyes like his.

Now she looked completely like an ordinary beautiful young woman.

At a glance, she appeared to be a native of Boundary City.

“How about now?” the demon fox girl asked expectantly.

Yu Sheng stared blankly for a moment before finally nodding, still somewhat dazed.

At the very least, this transformation process looked much more normal than the previous one.