Chapter 25: The Fox in the Dream

Irene's reaction didn't seem fake.

In fact, from the moment Yu Sheng first came into contact with this doll, he hadn't noticed her being insincere once. Every word and action she uttered radiated a certain kind of pure honesty, as if her head were solid all the way through—either her acting skills were incredibly high, or her head truly was solid.

Yu Sheng cautiously maintained the first assumption, but leaned more toward the second possibility.

Afterward, he described to Irene the appearance of that dead doll, as well as the posture of the massive "shadow monster" that had seemingly perished along with it. The answer he received was still, "I don't know."

Yu Sheng frowned, sinking into deep thought.

Irene couldn't help but grow curious: "Hey, why did you suddenly come to ask me about this? Weren't you going upstairs to sleep?"

Yu Sheng hesitated, but ultimately decided to tell the doll before him about the changes in that room—it didn't involve his secrets, and it might even be related to Irene herself; speaking of it might actually help unravel the mystery.

"Something happened in that room upstairs..."

Yu Sheng recounted everything he had seen upon going upstairs to Irene in detail. This time, the latter rarely interrupted, merely listening with widening eyes. After he finished, she sat stunned for a long time before finally snapping out of it, drawing out her voice: "Wooooow—"

Yu Sheng immediately felt that even if he told this fellow, the mystery wouldn't be solved.

"It looks like you don't know what's going on either," Yu Sheng sighed. "You definitely haven't seen that mirror before, right?"

"Never seen it, don't know," Irene nodded righteously, then immediately added, "But I think your house is getting weirder and weirder."

"You don't have to tell me, I feel it too," Yu Sheng sighed upon hearing this. "Opening a door might lead anywhere, furniture in a certain room might suddenly change, and a mirror might reflect scenery from God-knows-where and God-knows-when. To think I used to find this place quite livable, sigh..."

Irene stared unblinkingly at the expression on Yu Sheng's face with her crimson eyes. After listening to his grumbling, she hesitated: "Then... are you planning to move? Not living here anymore?"

Yu Sheng remained silent for a moment, but it had to be said, he had indeed considered it.

After all, he could tolerate the occasional haunted mirror, mysterious furniture, suspicious appliances, or even a Bilibili-chan sealed inside an oil painting; since he wasn't even afraid of death, he could treat them as mere additions to the excitement of life. But the characteristic of potentially stepping through a door and falling into some foreign realm was a real hassle—that wasn't something one could just endure.

For Yu Sheng, the most fatal thing about an Otherworld wasn't death itself, but the fact that one might not be able to return. It was this single point that truly gave him the idea of moving elsewhere.

Seeing that Yu Sheng remained silent, Irene continued on her own after a moment of quiet: "Well, if you take a fancy to any house, tell me first, okay? You find a way to get me into their residential complex, and I'll drive their property prices down for you..."

Yu Sheng was stunned: "I was just joking... don't you think that's an insult to the ancestor of dolls and your sisters at a time like this?"

"I thought about it carefully just now, and I feel like the process you described makes a lot of sense," Irene said earnestly. "Besides, if I drive the prices down for you, that counts as some payback for the favor of staying at your place, right?"

Yu Sheng suddenly realized that this fellow seemed only to be worried that if he suddenly moved, he would leave her behind.

But he didn't call her out on it, merely shaking his head: "Let's not talk about that. I have some thoughts, but I don't plan on moving for now—don't worry, if I really do move, I'll take you with me. A painting doesn't take up much space."

"Oh, alright then!" Irene instantly brightened up.

However, a hint of sorrow soon appeared on her face again: "Um... that dead doll you saw in the mirror, were her eyes closed?"

"...It didn't seem so," Yu Sheng recalled. "Why do you ask?"

Irene opened her mouth, looking somewhat sad: "When a living doll is broken, if their eyes are closed, it means their soul has returned to the garden of Alice's Cottage, and we will be reborn there. But if their eyes are still open... then she is still 'there'."

Yu Sheng froze, suddenly regretting that he had answered without thinking; he should have asked first.

"We don't know exactly what place is being reflected in the mirror," he said softly after a moment of silence. "But since she appeared in the mirror, perhaps she has become connected to this house. Maybe one day we will find her. As for now, don't think too much about it; you're still stuck here yourself."

"Well, true," Irene sighed. "Occasionally, some sisters lose contact after going out... we'll encounter it eventually, yes, we will."

Yu Sheng suddenly felt that this doll wasn't as thoughtless as he had imagined.

After chatting with Irene for a while longer, he returned to the second floor.

He went to check the condition of the room at the end of the hallway again. Confirming it was still as he had seen it before, he paid it no more mind and turned into his bedroom.

Pulling the curtains shut and lying on the bed, Yu Sheng tossed and turned for a long time. He was exhausted and sleepy, but his mind was so cluttered that he couldn't sleep at all. Various thoughts and recent experiences raced through his mind like turbulent currents—Irene's situation, that valley in the night, knowledge of the Otherworld, the fox girl who struggled to remain rational until the very last moment to tell him to run, and... his own resurrection.

After tossing and turning for an unknown amount of time, Yu Sheng finally drifted into a heavy slumber.

He felt his consciousness slowly submerging into a gentle, chaotic pool of water. Even in sleep, those messy "currents" swirled around him. Through a layer of chaotic mist, he observed the fragments of his own memories and thoughts, hearing many hazy voices in his ears, until his consciousness hit the bottom of the "pool" and the surroundings gradually fell into silence.

Yu Sheng wandered in his dream, wandering through a dim, twilight sky. He saw himself walking across a vast wilderness, with a small hill appearing in the distance.

He felt as though he had been wandering around this small hill for a very, very long time, without purpose, and without knowing who he was.

But a flash of color in the corner of his eye suddenly made him stop.

Between the dim, chaotic sky and earth, Yu Sheng saw a patch of brightness. He instinctively walked toward that silvery-white light, and with a flash before his eyes, he arrived directly in front of it.

He saw a silver-furred demon fox—standing two or three meters tall even while lying down—sleeping peacefully on the wilderness.

Beautiful, elegant, and tranquil.

A breeze blew from afar, stirring the slender wild grass and the silver fur on the demon fox's body. She showed no sign of waking, merely curled up quietly, with many thick tails sweeping around from behind—some held in her arms, others covering her body like a blanket.

Yu Sheng stared in astonishment at this fox appearing in his dream—at some point, he had become consciously aware that he was dreaming.

After hesitating for a moment, he took two steps forward and tentatively touched the great fox's front paw: "...Hu Li, is that you?"

But the white fox remained asleep, showing no reaction to Yu Sheng's touch or call.

Yu Sheng called out several more times and even tried to tug at her tail, but he could not wake Hu Li.

It felt as if she wasn't just sleeping, but that her senses were being shielded by something.

Yu Sheng frowned and stepped back a few paces.

Why was this fox appearing in his dream?

He admitted that before falling asleep, his mind had been racing through various things, and he had indeed thought of this fox trapped in the Otherworld. But the current situation was clearly not a simple case of "thinking of something by day and dreaming of it by night"; he could feel that Hu Li was truly "here."

In his contemplation, Yu Sheng's heart suddenly stirred. He felt something and immediately looked down at his right hand.

A tiny bead of blood was seeping from his finger, surrounded by a faint indentation of teeth.

That was from when he had snatched the chocolate back from Hu Li earlier; her instinct to protect her food had kicked in, and she had bitten him.

Yu Sheng stared fixedly at this sight, suddenly recalling the memory fragments from the valley where he had suddenly "seen" Hu Li and perceived parts of her thoughts.

"Because of blood?"

He had an epiphany, guessing that her appearance here might be related to her accidentally "eating" his blood.

But immediately, a doubt arose in his mind—that frog in the rain and that abstract flesh monster had also eaten his blood, so why hadn't they appeared here? That flesh monster had even eaten several meals, far more than Hu Li...

Just as Yu Sheng's thoughts began to drift toward a bizarre direction, he suddenly felt something. Immediately after, he heard a low, mocking chuckle coming from the grass behind him.

It sounded somewhat familiar.

Yu Sheng whipped his head around toward the source of the sound, and in the next second, he heard Irene's exasperated grumbling from the bushes: "I told you, don't laugh, don't laugh! Can't you just endure it! Look, we got caught..."

Yu Sheng stared expressionlessly at the oil painting frame poking out of the bushes, and at Irene inside the frame, who was hugging a teddy bear and grinning foolishly at him in an attempt to act cute and get away with it.

"Watching TV got boring, so I came to see you dream..."

(End of Chapter)