Chapter 67: Hu Li’s New Life

Chapter 67: Hu Li’s New Life

No matter what, Yu Sheng now understood why Hu Li could launch her own tail.

He did not know how other demon foxes in this world operated, but clearly Hu Li’s lineage had followed the path of giant beast armaments during its inheritance...

At that moment, the demon fox girl was sitting across the dining table, awkwardly holding a pair of chopsticks as she rapidly shoveled the food from her bowl into her mouth.

It was only the simplest noodles, with a few vegetable leaves, sliced ham, and two fried eggs mixed in, yet Hu Li ate as though it were the most exquisite delicacy in the world. Her table manners were not elegant in the slightest, but she was enjoying it immensely.

Strictly speaking, this was the first hot meal she had eaten in all these years. The biscuits and instant noodles Yu Sheng had brought her before had been good as well, but sitting safely at a dining table and eating steaming hot food from a bowl was an entirely different experience.

“Slow down. There’s more in the pot if it isn’t enough,” Yu Sheng said, feeling a little sorry for her as he watched her nearly finish a bowl in the blink of an eye. He lightly touched her hand. “That’s not how you hold chopsticks. Watch me.”

Hu Li lifted her eyes from the edge of the bowl, glanced at Yu Sheng’s right hand, and adjusted her grip on the chopsticks while awkwardly chewing a mouthful of fried egg.

She learned very quickly.

“Benefactor, am I eating too fast...” Only after finishing an entire bowl of noodles did Hu Li raise her head somewhat embarrassedly. She saw that Yu Sheng had only eaten about half of his own noodles, while there was also a bowl in front of Irene that had not been touched at all. “I... always feel like if I don’t hurry and eat, it might suddenly be gone.”

“It’s fine. You’ll gradually adjust. Besides, with your constitution, a few rounds of overeating won’t affect your health,” Yu Sheng said with a laugh. “If it isn’t enough, I’ll get you another bowl.”

“Mhm, mhm.”

Before Yu Sheng could stand up, Irene, who was sitting on the table, spoke.

“Let her eat my bowl first.”

The little doll pushed the bowl in front of her toward Hu Li with both hands.

Hu Li thanked her. Without asking why food had been placed in front of a doll that could not eat, she lowered her head and began rapidly devouring the food.

After the meal, Yu Sheng discovered that the bowls and chopsticks Hu Li had used hardly needed washing at all.

She had licked them so clean they practically reflected faces...

After cleaning up the kitchen, Yu Sheng changed into clothes suitable for going out.

He also found a set of his own clothes, trousers, and coat for Hu Li. To be honest, they fit terribly. Yu Sheng was much, much taller than the demon fox girl, and no matter how he adjusted them, his clothes hung loosely on her.

Pajamas could be several sizes off and still work, but going-out clothes were much harder to make do with. In the end, Yu Sheng had to use numerous hidden safety pins and some emergency sewing before his clothes could stay securely on Hu Li while not looking too out of place.

Even so, a girl barely over 1.6 metres tall (~5 ft 3 in) walking around in obviously ill-fitting men’s clothes would normally look rather strange.

Fortunately, Hu Li’s appearance compensated for that problem.

The facts proved once again that being beautiful really did let people get away with almost anything, and a demon fox’s face was indeed beautiful. As a result, at most she looked like a pretty girl with somewhat bizarre fashion sense.

While Yu Sheng busied himself adjusting Hu Li’s clothes, Irene sat cross-legged atop the nearby shoe cabinet, propping up her chin with both hands and watching the spectacle. Only when Yu Sheng was nearly finished did she mutter, “Hu Li, since you can ‘put away’ your ears and tail, why can’t you change your height too? And your clothes. This outfit of mine was completely ‘transformed’ by myself. Can’t demon fox transformation abilities do that?”

“Powerful demon foxes can!” Hu Li immediately defended her race. “Father said powerful demon foxes can even become as tall as mountains in the blink of an eye! They run through mountains and forests while several thousand security immortals chase after them. If they’re caught, they can be sentenced to more than five hundred years. But I can’t! I only learned how to refine my ears and tail...”

Irene listened with a strange expression. “Uh... well... that doesn’t really sound like something to be proud of... Hey, your speech is getting more and more fluent now.”

Hu Li immediately narrowed her eyes and looked delighted.

“You just get used to it after speaking for a while.”

Irene’s gaze shifted to Yu Sheng. Nobody knew what was going through her head when she suddenly spoke again.

“You two are going out together...”

“Of course,” Yu Sheng nodded. “She doesn’t have any clothes, shoes, or socks. There’s no way she could go shopping by herself. Naturally I have to go with her.”

Resting her chin on her hands, Irene said, “I want to go out too.”

Yu Sheng was startled. He finally realized what this doll had been plotting ever since she got up that morning and periodically fell into deep thought.

Unfortunately, it caught him completely off guard.

“You? How are you going out? A living doll over sixty centimetres tall (~2 ft) strolling openly down the street? How many people are you going to scare?”

“You carry me,” Irene replied righteously. “I’ll disguise myself.”

Yu Sheng did not immediately understand.

“How?”

Irene instantly collapsed limp. Her arms and leg joints drooped down, and she stared ahead with the expression of a corpse whose eyes refused to close.

Even the highlights vanished from her eyes.

Her voice echoed directly in Yu Sheng’s and Hu Li’s minds.

“See? Doesn’t this look much more ordinary? There are tons of one-third-scale dolls in doll shops. If you tossed me in among them like this, nobody would notice even if I sat in a display window all day...”

Yu Sheng was dumbfounded and immediately regarded Irene’s creativity with newfound awe.

Yet the idea made him feel even more awkward.

“Wouldn’t it look a little perverted for a grown man to walk around carrying a one-third-scale doll?”

The highlights instantly returned to Irene’s eyes. The next second she leapt off the shoe cabinet and pounced onto Yu Sheng’s head.

“So carrying me into the Other Domain to fight monsters isn’t perverted, but taking me outside is too much for you! After all that fighting, now you’re unwilling to take me out? Believe it or not, I’ll bite a whole set of teeth marks into you! I’ll make it impossible for even bandages to stick!”

Yu Sheng immediately found himself frantically dealing with the doll flailing about on top of his head. After finally prying her off, he tossed her directly to the bewildered Hu Li standing nearby.

“Fine, fine, fine. I’ll take you out. But she’ll be the one carrying you.”

Irene was instantly satisfied.

She only wanted to go outside. As long as she could go, it did not matter who carried her.

In fact, she would not even have minded being dragged around inside a suitcase. She could simply unzip it a little and secretly peek outside.

It had been a very, very long time since she had seen the outside world.

“The problem is this painting of yours,” Yu Sheng said with a frown, looking at the picture frame strapped to Irene’s back. Because of it, Hu Li had to hold the doll in a very awkward position while also making sure the frame did not block her vision. “It’s eye-catching, but more importantly, it’s inconvenient.”

“Then just take it off and carry it separately.” Irene removed the frame from her back. “As long as it doesn’t get too far away, it’s fine.”

Hu Li nodded. Without waiting for Yu Sheng to speak, she accepted the frame. Then, with a sudden Bang!, a large cluster of tails appeared behind her, and she stuffed the frame into one of them.

This time Yu Sheng finally could not hold back.

He realized that Hu Li’s method of storing things in her tails was not quite what he had originally imagined.

“...How exactly did you put that in there?! Don’t tell me that’s a dedicated storage space?!”

Hu Li blinked. Only then did she seem to realize she had never properly explained it before. She turned around, spread out her tails, and began introducing them in detail for the first time.

“This one is specifically for storage. These two are for hugging while sleeping to keep warm. These ones can be used as blankets, and they’re also very good at grabbing things. Aside from the storage tail, all the others can be used during fights...”

Yu Sheng stared blankly.

“...You mean launched?”

“Yes.”

“And all this is the result of refinement?”

“Yes.”

After thinking about it, Yu Sheng could only conclude that demon foxes were amazing.

Far more amazing than human bodies.

At the Special Operations Bureau Second Team, Song Cheng entered his office more than twenty minutes later than usual today.

Almost the moment he settled into his chair, the monitor on his desk lit up. The perpetually cool and detached face of Baili Qing, Director of the Special Operations Bureau, appeared on the screen.

“It seems you’ve already visited the Train,” Baili Qing’s calm voice came through the speaker beside him. “Did it not go smoothly?”

“It did, but nothing actually went wrong,” Song Cheng replied, completely unsurprised by the director’s sudden contact. He merely shook his head awkwardly. “Today’s carriage layout on the Train was more complicated than usual. When I returned to the real world, I realized I had gone past my stop.”

“How did the exchange with Passenger 22 go?” Baili Qing asked directly.

“...Director, something seems wrong,” Song Cheng immediately adjusted his posture and leaned slightly forward. “Regarding Wutong Road 66, the passenger’s answer was ‘No such station exists.’ That’s unusual, but not completely outrageous. The truly strange part came when I asked about Nightfall Valley...”

He paused, his expression becoming extremely grave.

“Passenger 22 answered that the station has been cancelled.”

For the first time, he saw such obvious surprise appear on Baili Qing’s face.

He had always thought the director’s face was frozen.

“This answer has never appeared before,” Song Cheng said cautiously while observing the changes in Baili Qing’s expression. “What do you think...”

“Arrange for a Deep Diver to conduct a deep dive immediately,” Baili Qing said without hesitation.