Chapter 164 – Eileen MK-II (But Didn’t Get Taller)

Come to think of it, Hu Li’s argon-fox welding was actually quite high quality. With her Fox Fire enhanced by immortal arts (or perhaps demonic arts), the hissing fusion produced welds more beautiful than any welding machine could manage—the kind of beauty that radiated structural integrity and precision. And more importantly, she could cut and weld in one go.

So after a brief set of instructions and preparations, sparks began flying across the alchemy platform.

Several lengths of rebar were cut to proportion into pieces of varying length, then arranged and assembled into the outline of a puppet skeleton according to the reference points Yu Sheng had marked on the Alchemy Table. Hu Li directed several of her tails to float in the air, moving as nimbly as a cluster of anti-gravity mechanical arms—adjusting angles, welding with precision. The air filled with the smell of molten metal, the hissing sounds came one after another without pause, and the dazzling firelight illuminated Yu Sheng’s face.

Eileen sat expressionlessly nearby with her painting frame on her back. The flashes from the rebar welding played across her palm-sized little face, and every few seconds she couldn’t help but mutter: “This isn’t alchemy… this isn’t alchemy…”

“How is this not alchemy?” Yu Sheng’s face was full of excitement, and the moment he heard Eileen’s muttering he fired back, “Smelting isn’t refining? Metal isn’t ‘gold’? Refining metal can’t be alchemy?”

As he spoke, he sat right down next to Eileen, raised his hand to point at the flame-lit spectacle on the alchemy array, his tone leisurely: “How beautiful… A cyber Fox Spirit’s demonic arts, secretly inherited alchemy, modern industrial rebar—don’t you think having all three come together has a certain…”

“A certain abstract beauty.”

Yu Sheng thought about it and nodded: “…Fair enough.”

Just then, the dazzling firelight finally died down. Hu Li wiped the nonexistent sweat from her forehead and turned around, happily waving her hand: “Benefactor, the welding’s done!”

“Great job, Hu Li!” Yu Sheng immediately clapped his hands in delight, scooping Eileen up as he stood. “Stop musing about how abstract it is—hurry up and let’s get the next step done. First take a look and see if you’re satisfied with the skeleton we prepared for you.”

Eileen was still muttering under her breath, but the moment she saw the finished product, she fell silent.

Lying quietly at the center of the alchemy array was a puppet skeleton welded to the proportions of a normal adult.

Eileen stared at the skeleton in surprise for a long moment, then suddenly realized what it meant and looked up at Yu Sheng: “You… this size…”

“I promised you I’d make you a one-meter-sixty-seven body,” Yu Sheng set the Little Doll down on the ground, a faint smile on his face. “Now it’s time for the next step.”

“Yay!!” Eileen finally cheered, her earlier complaints evaporating in an instant. She jumped up and grabbed Yu Sheng’s arm, shaking it vigorously, then ran over to the Spirit Infusion node and urged him on: “Start, start! Let me see what you do next.”

Yu Sheng just smiled without saying anything more, then began seriously carrying out the next step of puppet construction.

This time he hadn’t prepared any clay, nor any dough or lotus root. For this specially made “Eileen shell,” he wanted to try some bold ideas.

He sprinkled those “alchemy materials” evenly over the rebar-welded skeleton and the ground surrounding it.

Then he took out a small knife, cut a wound on the back of his hand, mixed his blood with the “alchemy materials,” and scattered it across the ground as well.

Under the curious gazes of Eileen and Hu Li, Yu Sheng finally retreated to the outermost ring of the concentric circles. He took a soft breath, gradually focused his mind, then crouched down and pressed his still-bleeding palm against the ground.

The platform began to tremble faintly. A subtle grinding and squirming sound rose from deep within the rock, as if… the entire ground were slowly awakening.

Yu Sheng was going to use the soil and rock of this Otherworld valley to sculpt Eileen’s new shell.

After a few seconds of delay, the center of the “alchemy array” began to rise. Then the soil and rock started squirming rapidly as though alive—the grayish-white material transformed into a “molten slurry,” swarming over the steel-forged skeleton layer after layer, rustling and whispering as it converged and flowed.

Eileen watched from the side, her eyes growing wider and wider.

“Soil squirming like a living thing…” she murmured softly. “He actually pulled it off?”

The “living soil” took shape with astonishing speed. Not long after Eileen’s words, the puppet body lying at the center of the array had already taken on a rough form.

Yu Sheng was still carefully sculpting the final details—differentiating fingers from the shell’s palms, shaping facial features onto its face.

He simply walked into the array, sat down beside the puppet shell, and touched it directly with his hands, adjusting its appearance bit by bit.

He suddenly realized this was much easier to control than clay.

“He’s actually… pretty serious about it,” Eileen tugged at one of Hu Li’s tails and whispered. “My previous bodies were all such a mess when he sculpted them. I thought he was just winging it every time.”

“Benefactor has always been very serious,” Hu Li said solemnly, watching the puppet. “It’s just that the things he usually pays attention to seem to be a bit different from other people.”

As they spoke, Yu Sheng finally completed his last adjustments.

Faster than he’d expected, and smoother than he’d imagined.

The puppet, sculpted from steel, soil, and rock, lay quietly on the ground. Though it had not yet awakened, it already displayed a girlish figure and… a certain atmosphere, as if it might come alive at any moment—as if “vitality” already resided within it.

“Let me think about how I did it last time…” Yu Sheng muttered to himself while recalling his experience from when he’d made Eileen’s “second body.” “Guide the Spirit Infusion, right, guide the Spirit Infusion first, bring it to life…” He reached out and gently pressed his hand against the puppet’s forehead—

“Wake up.”

The rock began to pulse.

“Time to come alive.”

The soil rose and fell gently.

“Ready to open your eyes—”

The steel skeleton shifted slowly, and the soulless shell emitted a faint sound of breathing—vitality had appeared.

“Eileen.” Yu Sheng called softly.

“Huh?” The Little Doll standing nearby answered instinctively, and the very next second, she felt her consciousness rapidly pulled away from her body… partially pulled away. A brand-new “link” appeared in her perception. The brief, unavoidable disorientation of her senses left her momentarily confused. She couldn’t see her surroundings clearly—she only heard Yu Sheng let out a surprised “Hm?”, and Hu Li seemed to exclaim something nearby, and then everything went blank.

But after just those two seconds of disconnection, Eileen successfully entered and took control of her new “shell.” She tried opening her eyes and confirmed the existence of a third perspective.

“It worked!” The Little Doll stood dazed for a moment, then shouted happily at the center of the array. She pushed herself up with her hands, stood with arms akimbo, and looked up at Yu Sheng and Hu Li. “Even something this ridiculous actually worked! Yu Sheng, you’ve actually got some talent for alchemy! Look at my gorgeous one-sixty-seven tall—”

The Little Doll suddenly froze, sensing something was off.

Yu Sheng looked so tall. Hu Li also still looked so tall.

She stiffly lowered her head, glanced at the ground right beneath her feet, then looked at her new body through the eyes of her other shell outside the array. A moment later, she finally understood what was wrong.

“Why am I still this short?! Huh?!”

“I have no idea,” Yu Sheng looked even more bewildered than she did. “One second before you opened your eyes, the body was still one-sixty-seven. Then it just started shrinking right before our eyes. Before I could even react, it was down to just over half a meter… Hu Li can back me up—I didn’t do anything.”

The Fox-Spirit Girl beside him nodded vigorously: “I can vouch for him! Benefactor didn’t do anything! You shrunk on your own!”

Eileen stood frozen in place, silent for a long time. Just when Yu Sheng was starting to worry that the blow had been too much for the puppet, she suddenly erupted into a frenzied outburst: “No, why… WHY?! Wasn’t the shell already sculpted to one-sixty-seven? Wasn’t it already coming to life?! How is it that the moment I get inside, it shrinks to just over half a meter?! How is that fair?!”

Yu Sheng silently retreated several steps until he was beside Hu Li and whispered: “I think for now we’d better not provoke—”

But before he could finish, the other Eileen, who had been standing at the outer edge of the array, had already turned her head toward him, drawing a deep breath: “—WHY. THOUGH. AHHH!”

Yu Sheng turned to Hu Li and sighed: “I forgot there was another one over here.”

Then the two Eileens circled the array round after round, and circled Yu Sheng round after round, yammering nonstop—one moment lamenting the injustice of fate, the next bemoaning the hardships of puppet life, bouncing up and down one second and shrieking the next, sometimes accusing Yu Sheng of sloppy craftsmanship, sometimes even suspecting there was something wrong with her own soul. After six or seven laps, Yu Sheng’s head was buzzing—he reckoned even an investigator listening to an Outer God ramble on probably had roughly this experience…

By the Little Doll’s tenth lap, Hu Li finally couldn’t take it anymore. The Fox-Spirit Girl used her tails to scoop up both small puppets at once: “Eileen, you two are so loud…”

The two 66.6-centimeter-tall puppets, pinned motionless by the fox tails, could only mutter and grumble a few more lines before staring at Yu Sheng together with the look of someone who had lost all will to live.

“Am I just going to be stuck at this height for the rest of my life?” said the Eileen with the painting frame, her face a picture of misery.

“Why on earth is this happening…” the rebar Eileen looked on the verge of tears.

“A temporary setback, just a temporary…” Yu Sheng had no idea how to console this unfortunate puppet and could only make things up on the fly. “Look, I’ve already stumbled onto all these weird and wonderful alchemy methods—who knows, maybe one of these days I’ll manage to build you a properly proportioned shell. This time the shrinking might have something to do with the materials, or maybe it’s because that rose oil stuff was unreliable… Next time I won’t buy it from the five-yuan store.”

Eileen (rebar edition) froze for a moment, and when the words registered, she shot out of Hu Li’s tail grip and launched herself straight at Yu Sheng’s arm: “The FIVE-yuan store?! Last time you said you bought it from the TEN-yuan store!”

The very next second, Yu Sheng experienced exactly what made this furious little puppet different from before—

Rebar really packed some serious strength.

Those two little claws twisted his skin like a freaking bench vise!

(End of Chapter)