Chapter 59 – Repair

Thirty minutes later, Yu Sheng watched nervously as the little doll lay on the “alchemy table.”

Eileen propped herself up with her hands and slowly sat upright, staring blankly into space as she contemplated her existence.

Doll, 66.6 centimeters, emitting the fragrance of lotus root.

Experiment successful.jpg.

After watching for a long while, Yu Sheng decided that Eileen seemed to be fine, and his confidence gradually built up. “See, I told you it would work. You can even use flour, so why wouldn’t lotus root—”

“Stop talking and let me process this,” Eileen raised a hand to cut him off, then stared at her own hands with a peculiar expression. “I just don’t understand—how could this possibly work? This doesn’t make any sense, you know that? How on earth did this actually work…”

Yu Sheng’s mouth twitched. “You’re the one who told me to give it a try. How is it that after we tried it, you’re the one who can’t believe it?”

“I never should have let you try! How was I supposed to know you’d actually succeed?! Now my arms are literally made of lotus root!” Eileen glared at Yu Sheng, cheeks puffed with indignation. “I just wanted to watch you make a fool of yourself! There’s no way your slapdash ‘alchemy’ should have worked! I just wanted you to realize it was impossible and give up… but how did you actually pull it off, huh? How?!”

“I have no idea,” Yu Sheng said, equally dumbfounded. “You agreed to let me try so I tried. You never said you just wanted to watch me fail. I thought you genuinely supported my scientific research…”

Eileen instantly wanted to leap up and bite him, but since her legs weren’t repaired yet, the leap was unsuccessful. She could only sit on the table and let loose a torrent of curses: “Scientific research my ass! What kind of scientific research is this?! You turned my arms into lotus root—what am I supposed to do! They’ve actually fused together now! How did you even manage this? Was it the power of pondering? Huh?!”

Yu Sheng pondered for a moment, and concluded that it really was the power of pondering that had pondered this into existence.

But Eileen’s intense reaction was genuinely unexpected—he had absolutely no foundation in alchemy. Every step he’d taken was simply following the doll’s instructions one at a time. When he’d infused the two segments of lotus root with blood and performed Spirit Infusion, his mind had been completely blank. He had no idea that what he was doing was a haphazard operation that should have been impossible. When the two lotus root segments that had undergone the Spirit Infusion ritual suddenly squirmed and transformed into limbs near Eileen’s elbows, he’d thought that was perfectly normal.

He hadn’t expected to scare the little doll this badly.

“Sorry about that…” Yu Sheng thought for a moment, genuinely starting to feel uneasy. “How about we swap them out? I’ll go downstairs and find an axe—”

He didn’t finish before Eileen’s glare shut him up.

“Alright, forget I said anything.”

“It is what it is.” The little doll raised her arms with a resigned, physically-and-mentally-exhausted look, then cautiously clenched her fists, wiggling each of her ten fingers one by one. She looked as nervous as someone who’d had Doctor Octopus’s tentacles grafted onto their body—every little movement made with the fear that these two arms Yu Sheng had haphazardly attached might suddenly go out of control.

But she quickly discovered that the two hands Yu Sheng had cobbled together actually worked quite well.

Even though the raw material was lotus root.

“Um… done testing?” Yu Sheng watched carefully from the side, and only broke the silence after confirming the doll wouldn’t lunge at him. “They work normally, right? No pain?”

Eileen sighed. “Yeah, they work. No discomfort.”

“If they work, they work. What’s with the sigh? You scared me,” Yu Sheng finally relaxed for real. His gaze then fell on Eileen’s two legs, which couldn’t support her weight. “Time to fix the legs. Let me see how bad the damage is.”

Eileen gave a small “oh,” but then suddenly looked up and fixed her eyes on Yu Sheng. “Hold on—what are you planning to use for repairs? I’m telling you, if you pull out a bag of lotus root starch, tonight you will dream of getting hit by a dump truck—”

Yu Sheng found this genuinely baffling. “I don’t understand. Your whole body is made of clay, and you don’t even mind using flour as a substitute, so why are you so opposed to other similar materials?”

Eileen raised a finger and pointed it at Yu Sheng’s nose, but because her hand was so tiny, the gesture carried absolutely zero intimidation or provocation. “You humans keep pets all the time—so why don’t you keep cockroaches? You normally eat organic matter—so why don’t you eat sh—”

“Okay, I get it, you don’t need to finish that,” Yu Sheng hurriedly cut the doll off, instantly understanding just how vast the gap in perception between different species could be. “Don’t worry, I have proper repair materials.”

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

“Ideally, you’d repair a clay doll with the same type of clay, but we’re out of clay now. This substitute will work just as well—what matters is the alchemical treatment, right?” he confirmed with Eileen. “I just need to smooth it on with a palette knife, correct?”

“That’s… acceptable,” Eileen finally gave a reluctant nod, then grew a bit curious. “When did you get this?”

“It was a free gift that came with the clay I bought. I’d shoved it to the very bottom and didn’t notice it at the time,” Yu Sheng said absently while studying the instructions on the packaging. “Alright, now let me see your wounds.”

Only then did Eileen relax. She slowly lifted the skirt with its elaborate lace trim a little, then rolled down the stocking on her right leg. Her ivory-like calf was covered with black cracks of all sizes. Some of the cracks even ran through her knee, extending all the way up toward her thigh.

Yu Sheng was instantly startled. “…Holy shit!”

“At least they’re not broken off,” Eileen said with her usual nonchalance. “If they’d broken, you’d just end up grafting another piece of lotus root onto me.”

“It’s not about whether they’re broken or not—how can you be so cavalier about this… It really doesn’t hurt at all?” Yu Sheng’s voice had gone a bit tight. Even though he’d grown accustomed to blood these past two days—even accustomed to seeing himself battered and mangled—when he saw the shattered state of Eileen’s legs, his heart still lurched for reasons he couldn’t explain. It was a completely different kind of impact from having a monster punch a hole through his own body.

Perhaps it was because the sight was so eerily grotesque—even more frightening than Miss Doll’s severed arms had been.

He reached out and touched the cracked areas on Eileen’s leg. The edges of the fissures felt hard as wood—Eileen’s normal limbs were soft and indistinguishable from human flesh, so this hardened texture meant the structures around the cracks were gradually losing their “soul synchronization.” With any further delay, the next step would be the same as what had happened to her arms—they’d simply fracture and shatter.

Eileen herself, however, actually laughed. “Haha, stop brushing against them, that tickles… It doesn’t hurt, not at all… Okay fine, it hurts just the tiniest bit. Really, really faintly.”

Eileen held up her hands, bringing her two index fingers close together as if to emphasize just how minuscule the pain was.

Yu Sheng sighed, took a small knife and sliced open the back of his hand, then began mixing his blood into the repair material. He stirred with the palette knife while muttering, “This is way too alarming. I don’t know how your living-doll physiology works, but could you please not act so calm when you’re injured next time? If it’s serious, say so early—after all, I’m the one who ends up doing the repairs…”

Eileen rolled her eyes. “You looked pretty terrifying yourself when you were dying with your eyes wide open, and I didn’t say a word about it.”

Yu Sheng pursed his lips, completed the rest of the material preparation process, and carefully applied the putty to Eileen’s wounds with the palette knife.

“Hey, that tickles…”

“Deal with it. Stop squirming.”

“Okay.”

Eileen was quiet for a while, but apparently finding the wait during repairs too boring, she couldn’t help but start chattering again. “Those two Special Operations Bureau agents we met today—I actually wanted to talk to them and see if they had a way to contact my sisters at Alice’s Cottage. I can’t remember the specifics about this Bureau, but it should be Boundary City’s ‘official organization.’ They ought to have contact with Alice’s Cottage…”

“Then why didn’t you say so?” Yu Sheng said without looking up, his hands still carefully working on the repair.

The palette knife spread the putty, filling in the fissures on the doll’s leg. The moment the blood-mixed repair material was applied, it emitted a faint hissing sound, then melted into black sludge and mist, gradually merging with the doll’s skin and restoring a texture and elasticity like that of living flesh.

“I don’t know. I just suddenly felt uneasy,” Eileen said. “A spiritual warning—something felt off… Maybe it’s because I just met those two and I don’t quite trust them yet? Or maybe it’s because I’ve been disconnected from the outside world for too long. I’m not sure what the current situation is between the various factions in the Borderland…”

Yu Sheng paused his work and looked up at the doll. “So next time we meet with them, should I still bring up your situation? They already saw you today—they’ll almost certainly include you in their report…”

“I’m not worried about the report. There aren’t any 66.6-centimeter-tall living dolls in this world. Even if they report it, they’d probably just assume I’m some kind of alchemical creature similar to a living doll—that wouldn’t be unusual in their eyes. As for next time…” Eileen paused and hesitated, looking into Yu Sheng’s eyes. “Let’s play it by ear. If their identities check out and they’re confirmed to be from the official organization, then ask them about Alice’s Cottage. If they can help make connections and find my other living doll sisters in this city, that would be even better. Once I see people I know… I’d probably feel a lot more at ease.”

Yu Sheng rarely saw the doll wear such an anxious, uncertain expression.

But he felt he could understand the hesitation and indecision.

If he had been sealed away for half a century or longer, then suddenly released into a world that had become completely unfamiliar—not knowing what had become of the things he once knew, not knowing the current world order or power structure—then reaching out to other factions for help… would indeed become something that required great caution.

Yu Sheng let out a soft breath, set down the palette knife, and gently repositioned Eileen’s knee joint.

“Try standing up.”