Chapter 39: It Worked, But Not Quite

Irene's expression looked quite sorrowful.

Yu Sheng glanced at the "masterpiece" he had spent several hours shaping, put himself in her shoes, and thought that if one day his soul were to leave his body and be forced to squeeze into such a vessel to resurrect, he would most likely burst into tears...

However, Irene's reaction still stung Yu Sheng a little. Suppressing his awkwardness, he kept a straight face as he looked at the puppet in the oil painting, trying his best to make his expression look earnest: "I really tried my best here. Look, at least the left and right eyes are symmetrical..."

Irene actually started crying at this point: "But the head isn't symmetrical!"

Yu Sheng looked away: " Uh... It's indeed a bit lacking in practice. I'll definitely do better next time. Practice makes perfect, practice makes perfect..."

"Let's not have a next time," Irene waved her hand in utter despair. Then, perhaps remembering that today was the hard-earned day of her liberation and she should be a bit happier, she forcefully pulled at the corners of her mouth trying to crack a smile—though she failed. In the end, all her unsaid words converged into a single sigh, "Sigh, well, at least it's a body. I can indeed feel that the connection has been established. Fine, this will do."

She gently took a breath, jumped down from the chair inside the oil painting, and took two steps forward. Then, seeming to remember something, she lowered her head and looked at the plush toy bear clutched in her hand.

After standing silently for a few seconds, she gave the little bear a tight hug, turned around, and placed it on the chair, as if bidding farewell.

Yu Sheng asked, feeling a bit curious: "You're not taking the bear?"

"It can't be brought out. It... is another entity sealed within this painting, and even its consciousness has long since dissipated. I don't even know where it came from," Irene gently shook her head and reached out to pat the toy bear on the head. "It can only stay inside here, but I won't throw away this painting, which is equivalent to keeping it by my side."

"Oh."

Yu Sheng nodded, then watched Irene's next movements with a mixture of tension and curiosity.

He cared very much about how this puppet would finally "emerge" from the oil painting, and how she would "come to life" using that ugly-looking "puppet vessel" on the table as a container.

Then, he watched as Irene inside the oil painting began to... "dissolve"!

This scene was bizarre and eerie. Irene suddenly looked like a wax figurine being scorched by flames, her entire body gradually taking on a molten state, losing all colors and details almost in the blink of an eye. Within just a few seconds, she turned into a continuously softening pitch-black substance that collapsed within the frame, spilled over the lower edge of the painting frame, and began to flow toward the tabletop!

The tabletop emitted a slight hissing sound, as if rapidly corroding in some strong acid. The pitch-black substance flowing out of the painting frame looked like viscous mud at first, but then thinned like water. In the next second, it transformed into some kind of... lingering black mist that began to float and undulate around the puppet's body on the table, seeping bit by bit into the lifeless clay.

Yu Sheng stared wide-eyed at this scene. Whether it was his imagination or not, he sensed a kind of... bone-chilling coldness emanating from that floating, bizarre black mist.

If he hadn't watched with his own eyes as this mass of mist transformed from Irene, he would have definitely felt that this thing was wicked and dangerous. The whole vibe of the scene was extremely ominous. But even knowing the truth, he still felt that the black mist was exceptionally bizarre; that lingering sense of chill felt like malice seeping into this world from a distant, pitch-black abyss, which really didn't match Irene's usual carefree and harmless demeanor.

Yu Sheng shook his head, casting these distracting thoughts aside. Looking at the black mist accelerating its infiltration into the clay, some absurd thoughts suddenly popped into his mind—

What would happen if he blew a breath at the mist right now? Or what would happen if he reached out and poked the mist?

Irene would probably curse him out in a very ugly manner...

Yu Sheng finally managed to control the impulse to let his hands wander, and right at that moment, the mist's infiltration quickly reached its conclusion.

The puppet on the table began to undergo visible changes—this crude clay humanoid, so rough it could be called ugly, suddenly seemed to be endowed with the traits of a living creature. Its rough surface became smooth in the blink of an eye, and its previously crooked limbs quickly balanced and reorganized. It began to take on the texture and color of human skin; the distorted facial features melted into the skull and regenerated within the clay lump, gradually emerging on the face...

Yu Sheng thought about it and felt that out of politeness and respect, he should turn around.

Part (1/3)

Part (2/3)

Before he could turn around, however, he saw an exquisite black dress "growing" out from within the puppet's body as if it were a part of its flesh and blood, covering the surface of Irene's body.

Mimicry?

This word subconsciously floated into Yu Sheng's mind, and right at that moment, he suddenly felt a certain... connection between himself and Irene.

That feeling was fleeting; he didn't even have time to discern whether that sleep-talk-like whisper was actually Irene's voice before the connection plunged into silence.

Yu Sheng frowned, recalling the blood he had added into the clay when he was shaping the puppet body earlier, and felt that this instantaneous connection might be related to that.

He suddenly grew a bit worried: His blood seemed somewhat special; would this affect Irene's "regeneration"?

That worry, however, was soon dispelled.

The completely reshaped puppet lay quietly on the table, her skin like that of a human, her hair like ink, and her delicate face resembling a work of art.

Under Yu Sheng's nervous gaze, the puppet's eyelashes suddenly trembled slightly.

Then, those eyes finally slowly opened.

The scarlet pupils stared blankly at the ceiling for a moment, but in the next second, they regained their luster. Irene clumsily raised both hands, looking at them with an expression of disbelief. She slowly clenched her hands into fists and then relaxed them, as if sensing the texture of the air.

After being stunned for several good seconds, the puppet slowly began to smile, though her smile seemed to suppress the intense emotion of someone about to burst into tears.

Yu Sheng's voice sounded from the side: "Congratulations, Irene."

"Yeah," Irene reached out to press against the tabletop, forcefully propping up her body, and stood up wobbling on the table. Only then did she look at Yu Sheng standing to the side with a brilliant smile, opening her arms wide as if offering an embrace: "I'm alive! Yu Sheng! Tha—"

Miss Puppet suddenly stopped, as if she had belatedly realized something, and remained in that posture with her arms open, staring blankly at Yu Sheng beside the table.

Yu Sheng: "……?"

Irene slowly raised her head: "Why do you look... so tall?"

Yu Sheng thought about it: "Could it be because you're quite short?"

Irene froze for a moment, abruptly lowered her head to look at her own body, and then raised her head to look at the desk lamp placed not far away—she suddenly gasped, pattered over, and held her hand up between her head and the desk lamp to compare their heights, then stiffly turned her neck.

Yu Sheng began to sense that something was wrong.

"Why..." Irene muttered, her gaze dull, "Why am I so short..."

"Uh... the size of a doll, a large one," Yu Sheng was actually starting to panic by this point, but his face remained taut, "I mean those 1/3 scale dolls... wait, did I mess up?!"

"Mess up your grandfather's 1/3 scale! A human, a standard-sized human! Living puppets are just like humans! I am one meter sixty-seven!" The tiny puppet Irene, who was only as tall as a desk lamp, stomped her feet and shouted on the table, "Where are my long legs?! Huh? Huh?! Why am I as tall as this desk lamp now?! I... I can't even reach that chair over there!"

Yu Sheng was completely dumbfounded, but then felt something still wasn't right: "That's not right though. You watched me shape the body just now, and you could see the size yourself. Why didn't you say anything back then?"

Part (2/3)

Part (3/3)

The little puppet, who was jumping up and down on the table, froze upon hearing this, seeming to belatedly realize once again: "Hey, right, I was watching..."

She pattered over to the concentric circles where she had just been crafted into a puppet vessel, turned around to glance back at the oil painting she had previously inhabited, and racked her brain hard, causing some hazy memories to surface in her mind again.

"That's right... yes, your operation was fine. The clay vessel is just a medium used to temporarily house the soul... even if the size was a bit off, my soul should have adjusted it when reshaping the body..."

Irene stood on the table muttering to herself, periodically lowering her head to think, then raising her head to look at the ritual setup around her, occasionally pinching her own current body, chattering away nonstop.

"Because the size difference was too huge? So the adjustment was limited? That shouldn't be right either... No matter how limited, there should have been some change... There's no way she'd only be as tall as a desk lamp..."

Irene reached out to measure her own head, then jumped hard in place, seemingly trying to make herself grow taller through this futile method.

Needless to say, it didn't work.

"So... the ritual still went wrong?" Yu Sheng watched nervously from the side, finally asking cautiously, "The body didn't adjust properly during reshaping? Well, this shouldn't be my fault, right..."

Irene raised her head, and the grief-stricken, on-the-verge-of-tears expression on her face startled Yu Sheng.

"Ruler."

The puppet, who was only as tall as a desk lamp, reached out a hand toward Yu Sheng, her voice grinding with teeth.

"What for?"

"Measure my height!"

Yu Sheng uttered an "oh," and hurriedly ran up to the second floor to fetch a tape measure.

He had actually thought of bringing a straightedge at first—but he figured Irene might fly up and bite someone if she saw a straightedge, so he didn't dare.

A moment later, Irene stood straight on the table with an old book balanced on her head, while Yu Sheng beside her pulled out the tape measure to measure the little puppet's height.

Irene secretly tilted the book a little, only to have Yu Sheng press it right back down.

"How... how tall?" the little puppet asked cautiously.

"……66.6 centimeters," Yu Sheng glanced at the ruler, a look of sympathy in his tone, "I tried my best to round it up, too; I even gave you the 0.6 centimeters past the decimal point."

Irene finally burst into tears.

Part (3/3)