Chapter 58: Yu Sheng's Spirit of Exploration

Two Bureau agents and a spiritual detective calling herself "Little Red Riding Hood" (a seasonal worker) had left. Yu Sheng let out a soft sigh at the entrance, then turned back to the living room.

Eileen, who was watching TV, immediately turned her head. "I thought you two were going to be chatting for a long time. Didn't you have a lot of things you wanted to ask them?"

"I mainly wanted to establish a connection—since Hu Li is already out, there's no rush for anything else," Yu Sheng said casually, his gaze falling beside the coffee table.

The fox girl sitting on the floor guarding a pile of food felt his gaze. She looked up and gave Yu Sheng a happy smile. "Benefactor!"

"You need to take a bath, and more importantly, change your clothes," Yu Sheng said with concern, glancing at the pitiful Hu Li.

This unlucky fox had been trapped in a foreign realm for many years; she had even been a child when she was first trapped. It was impossible to tell whose clothes she had stripped from a corpse back then, as they were clearly ill-fitting and had now become little more than tattered rags. Her body was filthy and covered in mud. Although there was water in that realm and she should have had the chance to wash, she had lived in the wilderness far from civilization; her tails were now matted and clumped together.

Hu Li lowered her head and looked at herself.

She had likely grown accustomed to her appearance, perhaps never even considering what would happen after leaving that valley one day. Hearing Yu Sheng's words, certain distant memories and common sense slowly trickled back into her mind. She stared blankly for a long time, much like how she had been slowly relearning how to speak recently, as she finally began to mentally detach from her "beast" state.

*Right, I need to clean my body, and I need to change clothes—Benefactor's cave is so clean, I mustn't make it dirty.*

She nodded vigorously.

Yu Sheng then looked at Eileen.

The little doll's two arms were still broken, which actually looked quite miserable, but she seemed completely unbothered, still watching TV with a carefree attitude, finding even a mindless variety show incredibly entertaining.

Yu Sheng couldn't bear to watch. "Should I fix your arms first?"

"Take that fox to bathe first. She definitely won't know how to use the things in the bathroom," Eileen waved her arms dismissively. "I'm in no hurry; I can be fixed later."

"Alright then, I'll come help you as soon as possible," Yu Sheng nodded, then reached out a hand to Hu Li. "Come with me."

Hu Li stood up but looked back at the food on the floor with hesitation, as if she didn't dare leave it for even a second.

Seeing this, Yu Sheng laughed. "Don't worry, the food won't grow legs and run away. You can eat it after your bath—Eileen is here helping to watch it."

However, Hu Li was still hesitating. She looked uneasily at the doll watching TV on the sofa, then suddenly leaned down, grabbed two cans of eight-treasure porridge and two packs of biscuits from a plastic bag, and casually stuffed them into her tail before turning to face Yu Sheng.

The smile remained on Yu Sheng's lips, but he stood there dazed, unable to process what had just happened. After two or three seconds, he turned his head stiffly to look at the large tail behind Hu Li.

"...Where did you hide them?"

Hu Li pulled the biscuits and the porridge out of her tail, showed them to Yu Sheng, and immediately stuffed them back in, blinking her large eyes at him.

Yu Sheng was stunned. "You can use it like that?!"

"Mm." The fox girl nodded, maintaining that same expression of not knowing what was happening but acting as if it were perfectly natural.

Yu Sheng then remembered something. "...Didn't you launch one of your tails out before..."

"It already grew back."

Yu Sheng: "...?"

His head was filled with question marks—*So that's how fox spirits work?*

However, no one could answer his question; Eileen didn't know any other foxes like Hu Li either.

Yu Sheng shook his head with a straight face, temporarily pushing the confusion aside, and led the fox girl to the bathroom on the first floor.

"This is the water heater; you don't need to worry about it for now, but the hot water comes from here. This valve controls the temperature—turn it left for hot water and right for cold. Pull it up to let the water out... The bathtub works the same way; the valve is here. This bottle is body wash; you can use this sponge next to it to make bubbles, but don't squeeze out too much. This bottle is for hair... it should also work for washing your tails."

Yu Sheng introduced the bathroom items to Hu Li carefully and patiently, speaking very slowly and ensuring the fox girl nodded in understanding before moving to the next item. Even so, he suspected Hu Li would still be clumsy during her bath.

"As long as you know how to use the water, it's fine. You can soak in the tub for a while. The towels and bathrobes are hanging by the mirror cabinet. Remember to dry yourself before you come out so you don't catch a cold."

Hu Li nodded emphatically. "Mm-hmm."

"Before you bathe, remember to take out the things you hid in your tail... Never mind, just handle it yourself; they're all in packaging anyway."

"Mm-hmm."

"I don't have any women's clothes here. I'll bring you a set of mine to make do with for now, and I'll buy you new ones at the mall tomorrow."

"Mm-hmm."

It seemed Hu Li could only nod continuously; she nodded at everything Yu Sheng said.

Yu Sheng was quite worried; at this moment, he suddenly felt a bit envious of Eileen's carefree nature.

After giving a few more instructions and letting Hu Li try to turn on the showerhead herself, he finally felt somewhat relieved. He brought a set of his own loose pajamas and shorts to the door, then turned and left the bathroom to return to the living room.

Eileen was struggling to crawl back onto the sofa using her broken arms.

Yu Sheng: "...What are you doing?"

"I laughed too hard just now and fell off the sofa," Eileen explained awkwardly as she crawled. "Hey, don't just stand there watching, come help me get up."

Yu Sheng took two steps forward and casually lifted Eileen, along with her picture frame, up. "Alright, stop watching TV. I'm going to repair your body."

Eileen froze. "What about that fox?"

"She's bathing in the bathroom by herself," Yu Sheng said casually. "I taught her how to use everything."

"Will she be okay? She just escaped starvation; her brain probably hasn't recovered yet, right?" Eileen hung onto Yu Sheng's arm, glancing toward the bathroom with suspicion. "She won't blow up the bathroom, will she..."

Hearing this, Yu Sheng's footsteps faltered. He looked toward the bathroom with unease—the sound of rushing water could already be heard from in there. "She... shouldn't, right? Unless she suddenly launches her tail mid-wash."

"Forget it, don't overthink it," Eileen waved her arms, quickly returning to her carefree self. "She's not stupid; she's survived in the wild for so long, she'll adapt to the environment quickly. Upstairs, upstairs! Get my arms fixed first. This is so inconvenient; I can't even change the channel."

Yu Sheng gave an "oh" and led Eileen up the stairs.

Reaching the attic and turning on the light, Yu Sheng unfastened the picture frame from Eileen's back and carefully placed the little doll on the large table.

"You don't have to be so cautious; I'm not made of porcelain," Eileen was amused by Yu Sheng's careful movements. "You won't accidentally crush me."

Yu Sheng gave a strange look to the white, porcelain-like break on Eileen's arm. "It's not that I'm being too careful, it's just that the break looks too terrifying—does it really not hurt?"

"It doesn't. It only hurt a little when it first broke," Eileen lifted her arm to look at it. "But looking at it now, it is indeed a bit scary... Hurry up and fix it."

At this point, she paused and began to guide him. "The process is similar to when you manufactured the body, but you don't need to make a torso, just the arms. The soul-infusion process is the same as last time; I will guide it to completion. After the arms are repaired, it's the legs. I have a few cracks on my legs, but they haven't broken off completely. You need to activate the alchemically treated clay to make the repairs. This part requires precision; you'd better use a spatula to smooth it out properly, which will also save me some effort..."

Yu Sheng listened to the little doll's explanation, and only after she finished did he speak up somewhat hesitantly. "By the way, there's something I wanted to tell you just now..."

Eileen: "Huh?"

"The clay we bought last time is actually all gone," Yu Sheng spread his hands. "It's probably too late to go out and buy more at this hour."

Eileen blanked. "...Why didn't you say so earlier! Then why did you bring me up here to mess around?"

Yu Sheng then pulled out the lotus root they had bought last time from a nearby drawer...

The little doll's eyes widened instantly, and she almost jumped (but couldn't, because her legs were broken). "Hey! You're just obsessed with this lotus root, aren't you! I thought I said... Wait, why did you put lotus root in the alchemy table drawer! You've been planning this all along, haven't you?"

"I was just curious if this thing would actually work," Yu Sheng admitted there was a tiny bit of planning involved, but he categorized it as a spirit of scientific exploration—just like when he researched how to stew the meat of the "Hunger Entity" to make it taste best, it was all for research. "Let's just try it; this lotus root was quite expensive."

"Try my ass!" Eileen glared with crimson eyes. "Setting aside everything else, before the soul infusion, you have to add your blood to the material. Even if it were a ball of dough, you could knead it in, but with a lotus root, how are you going to..."

Halfway through her sentence, the little doll saw Yu Sheng pull a syringe out of the drawer.

Eileen: "...Hey, are you insane?!"

(End of Chapter)