Chapter 32 – Blood Test

Chapter 32 – Blood Test

Not only did Eileen hurl insults, but the noise she made when she screamed loudly was enough to make one’s head buzz.

Yu Sheng couldn’t help but wonder how this creature could produce such a racket through an oil painting — could the entire canvas serve as an amplifier?

“Don’t ask me about the mechanics, I don’t know them myself,” Yu Sheng said, picking at his ear and spreading his hands helplessly toward Eileen, “What can be confirmed right now is that I can open ‘doors,’ and these doors can lead to all sorts of places — they can go to the Otherworld, or to that… distant place you just saw. Of course, we can’t yet determine whether that was another world, another planet, a parallel dimension, or something like that.”

He paused for a moment, then continued: “Perhaps I should ask the person on the other side for information? But that female elf didn’t seem to be in a very good mood just now…”

Eileen was half-dazed. It wasn’t until Yu Sheng finished his long-winded rambling that she came back to her senses, and after thinking it over, she spoke: “So… what about the conditions for it to activate? Like, under what circumstances can you open a door?”

“Still not entirely sure. I feel like I can open one at any time,” Yu Sheng thought for a moment and spoke plainly based on what he currently sensed, “As for how to open a door, it seems there are two methods. One is to directly open a real, ordinary door that already exists in reality — this kind of Door Opening is very easy, and sometimes I don’t even realize what I’ve done before the door opens and leads somewhere ‘else.’ The second method is what you just saw —”

As he spoke, Yu Sheng raised his hand and mimicked the motion of pulling open a door in the air.

“A door conjured from nothing. It’s more taxing, requiring concentrated focus to sense and imagine, and if I get distracted during the process the door might suddenly vanish. But the upside is that I won’t accidentally push open a door and end up in the Otherworld.”

Eileen stared at Yu Sheng’s actions with her crimson eyes, her gaze following his arm back and forth several times before she broke the silence after a long pause: “…Are you even human?”

Yu Sheng immediately felt a bit displeased: “What kind of thing is that to say!”

“Given the situation, do you still have the nerve to say that line — you know the one, you said it to me not long ago,” Eileen muttered while trying to recall, then mimicked Yu Sheng’s tone and mannerisms as she spoke: “— I’m not human? Then are you?”

She straightened up and stared directly into Yu Sheng’s eyes.

“Some humans can master certain supernatural abilities, but I’ve never seen anyone like you.”

“Maybe you have seen someone like me but just forgot?” Yu Sheng stubbornly held his ground, “Your brain isn’t exactly reliable, after all.”

Eileen was taken aback: “…Oh, is… is that so?”

This time it was Yu Sheng’s turn to feel a little awkward. He had only been stubborn out of habit and reflexively wanted to bicker with the puppet — he never expected that Eileen had such a clear sense of self-awareness and that her first reaction would actually be to accept his point… She accepted it…

But he quickly adjusted his expression, cleared his throat twice, and steered the conversation back on track: “So it seems now that my falling into that valley had nothing to do with this house’s strange properties — it should have been the passage I opened myself at the moment I opened a door. Therefore, as long as I can recreate what I did back then, I should be able to return to that Otherworld. In theory, at least.”

Getting down to business, Eileen’s expression turned serious as well: “Is this ability controllable?”

“…Partially controllable,” Yu Sheng said with some uncertainty, then explained, “Right now I can basically control when to open a passage leading ‘elsewhere’ and when to open a normal door, but I have absolutely no way to determine where it will lead specifically — it’s not even out of the question that I’d open a door and fall straight into a volcano. But… there’s one thing I just confirmed.”

Eileen asked eagerly: “What thing?”

“The passages can indeed be recreated. Under certain circumstances, opening a door twice can lead to the same place,” Yu Sheng said, “Just like that elf you just saw — this is the second time I’ve met her.”

Eileen: “…Oh, no wonder she reacted like that just now.”

Yu Sheng looked a little embarrassed: “I’m still not sure how it happened, but I vaguely remember that particular ‘feeling.’ I think as long as I try and train more times, I should be able to stably open those ‘doors’ that have connected once before. But the biggest problem right now is… when I fell into that valley back then I was completely unprepared, and the feeling I had when I opened the door has already mostly faded from memory. That makes recreating that passage very difficult.”

“But at least you finally have a direction now, don’t you?” Eileen immediately offered words of comfort. “I used to think your desire to hurry back and save that fox was wishful thinking, but now this has become a plan with actual feasibility, right? Right?”

Upon hearing this, Yu Sheng looked the puppet in the painting up and down with a somewhat surprised expression. Under that gaze, the latter shifted uncomfortably in the Chair: “Why are you looking at me like that? I’ve already told you that you and a paper cutout can’t…”

This time Yu Sheng didn’t wait for her to finish her nonsense before cutting in: “This is the first time I’ve ever heard anything nice from you — I always thought all you had was a mouth full of garbage, never imagined you’d know how to comfort someone.”

Eileen: “…”

Eileen really could hurl some horrible insults.

But Yu Sheng’s mood was now greatly lifted, to the point where even the noise Eileen made while cursing could serve as background music to his life.

He looked at his own hands, waved them in the air, rose from the dining table, and began pacing in circles around the Restaurant, looking full of energy.

Seeing this, Eileen stopped her stream of colorful language and followed Yu Sheng with her gaze as he moved back and forth: “You’re not about to start… um, ‘training’ right now, are you?”

“Sooner is better than later. Besides, I slept the whole day, so I’m wide awake now,” Yu Sheng said matter-of-factly, “This kind of practice doesn’t take up much space either.”

“Well, take it easy — if you open another door and see that elf again, she might just lob a giant fireball through — and splatter blood all over me again.”

Now that was the kind of trash talk he recognized.

Yu Sheng dismissed it with a wave of his hand and let his gaze fall on the kitchen door nearby.

Conjuring a door from nothing required extra expenditure of effort, so for practice purposes, using a physical door that produced little to no drain was naturally more suitable.

But before that, Yu Sheng suddenly thought of something.

“What did you just say?” He turned his head and looked at the Puppet in the Painting on the dining table.

Eileen thought for a moment: “…That you should take it easy? In case that elf throws a big fireball through?”

“I mean the part that deserved more of a beating.”

The corner of Eileen’s mouth twitched: “Don’t splatter blood all over me!”

“Right, that’s the one. I want to test something first,” Yu Sheng said with a grin, walking up to the dining table and picking up the small fruit knife resting on it, “My blood.”

Eileen visibly startled, and leapt straight up from the Chair hugging the Toy Bear: “Hey, what are you doing! I just said that offhand — do you really need to bring out a knife for that?! I’m warning you, I’m very easy to provoke, alright! You don’t need a knife, put that thing down — if you slash the canvas I might crack…”

The puppet rattled on endlessly once she panicked, and Yu Sheng couldn’t help but furrow his brow: “What are you nervous about? I didn’t say I was going to cut you.”

Before his words had even finished, he had already pressed the small knife against his finger — but after a moment’s hesitation he moved it to the back of his hand instead, then gritted his teeth and closed his eyes as he made a quick slash.

It didn’t even hurt that much.

Eileen stared at the scene in disbelief, and as Yu Sheng brought his bleeding hand toward her she kept backing away, crying out in alarm: “What are you doing! Wait… don’t tell me you actually believed that thing from novels about blood recognition? I told you to read fewer of those…”

“First, I’m a novelist myself — granted, not a very successful one — but I take great issue with the fact that you take issue with novels,” Yu Sheng glanced at the horrified Puppet in the Painting, “Second, this has nothing to do with blood recognition. I’m just trying to test a certain hypothesis — back in that valley, Hu Li came into contact with my blood, and afterward both she and I underwent certain changes. I want to see if something similar will happen with you.”

What Yu Sheng was referring to was how Hu Li, after coming into contact with his blood, had suddenly become able to detect his ‘Death,’ and how he was able to sense parts of Hu Li’s Thoughts and memories. He also suspected that the projection of the Silvery Foxgirl appearing in his Dream World was related to this ‘blood bond.’

Upon hearing Yu Sheng’s words, Eileen was briefly stunned. Then, sensing his serious attitude, though she wasn’t sure exactly what he was talking about, she gradually quieted down. Even though she still looked reluctant — mainly because she didn’t quite trust the suspicious nature of Yu Sheng’s Process — she adopted a cooperative attitude.

Of course, the main reason for her cooperation was that she couldn’t escape. After all, she was sealed inside an Oil Painting, and ordinarily all she could do was yell nonstop — and by now Yu Sheng had basically adapted to her yelling…

But truth be told, Eileen was not a suitable “test partner.”

Her “constitution” was somewhat special, after all.

Yu Sheng had a hard time determining whether his blood was being applied to Eileen herself, or to the Oil Painting that served as the sealing medium — he smeared his blood on the frame, and while the wound had not yet closed, he squeezed a few drops of blood onto the canvas. But regardless of which method he used, he had no way of doing what had happened with Hu Li — letting his blood directly contact the puppet’s actual body inside the painting.

Eileen looked up watching, and it was hard to say exactly what her field of vision was like inside the Oil Painting — but she had clearly sensed the contact of the blood.

And yet that was all.

The Oil Painting did not absorb Yu Sheng’s blood the way Hu Li had licked and absorbed it back then.

“Do you feel anything?” Yu Sheng waited for quite a while before finally asking uncertainly.

Eileen thought about it: “…Warm? But it’s cooled down now.”

Yu Sheng: “…Looks like it didn’t work then.”

(End of Chapter)