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“The experiment was a success,” Yu Sheng thought, feeling a mix of relief and disbelief.

After observing her for a while, Yu Sheng noticed that Irene seemed fine. His confidence grew bit by bit. “See? I told you it would work,” he said with a tentative smile. “If you can use flour, why not lotus root?”

“Wait, just let me think for a moment,” Irene interrupted, raising a tiny hand to stop him. She stared at her new arms with a bewildered expression. “I just don’t get it. How did this even work? It doesn’t make sense! How did it work?”

Yu Sheng gave a half-smile. “But you agreed to let me try. Now that it worked, you don’t believe it yourself?”

“I shouldn’t have let you try! How was I supposed to know you’d actually succeed?” Irene glared at him, her cheeks puffing in frustration. “Now my arms have turned into lotus root! What are we going to do? They’re really attached! How did you do it? With the power of wishful thinking?”

Yu Sheng pondered for a moment. Maybe it really was the power of thought that made it happen.

But Irene’s intense reaction caught him off guard—he had no background in alchemy. He simply followed her instructions step by step. When infusing his blood and spirit into the two pieces of lotus root, he hadn’t thought much of it. He didn’t realize that such a haphazard method shouldn’t have worked. When the lotus root segments, after the infusion ritual, suddenly transformed into limbs attached near Irene’s elbows, he thought it was normal.

He hadn’t expected to scare the little doll like this.

“Sorry…” Yu Sheng began, feeling a bit uneasy. “How about we replace them? I can go downstairs and find an axe…”

He didn’t finish before Irene shot him a glare that made him swallow his words.

“Okay, pretend I didn’t say anything.”

“What’s done is done. What else can we do?” The tiny doll raised her new arms reluctantly, looking utterly resigned. Then she cautiously clenched her fists, wiggling each of her ten fingers one by one. Her nervous expression was like someone testing out mechanical arms for the first time, afraid they might suddenly malfunction.

But soon she discovered that the two arms Yu Sheng had attached were actually quite functional even though they were made from lotus root.

“Um… Have you finished testing?” Yu Sheng asked cautiously, making sure she wouldn’t lash out at him before breaking the silence. “They should work normally, right? They don’t hurt, do they?”

Irene sighed. “Yes, they work. No discomfort.”

“If they work, they work. Why the sigh? You gave me a fright.” Only then did Yu Sheng truly relax. His gaze shifted to Irene’s legs, which couldn’t support her. “Now it’s time to fix your legs. Let me see how badly they’re hurt.”

Irene responded with an “Oh,” but then she suddenly looked up and stared directly into Yu Sheng’s eyes. “Wait a minute. What are you planning to use to fix them? I’m telling you, if you pull out a bag of lotus root powder, you’ll get hit by a truck in your dreams tonight…”

Yu Sheng felt puzzled. “I just don’t get it. Your body is made of clay, and you don’t mind using flour as a substitute. Why are you so against other similar materials?”

Irene pointed at Yu Sheng’s nose, but because her hand was so small, the gesture lacked any real menace. “You humans keep pets, but why don’t you keep cockroaches? You eat organic matter all the time, but why don’t you eat—”

“Alright, I get it. You don’t need to say more,” Yu Sheng quickly interrupted, instantly grasping how different their perspectives were. “Don’t worry, I have normal repair materials.”

As he spoke, he opened a drawer on the other side of the table and took out a small jar of epoxy putty.

“In theory, the best way to repair a clay doll is with the same kind of clay, but we’re out of clay now. Using this as a substitute works just as well. After all, the important thing is to process it with alchemy, right?” He confirmed with Irene. “I can just smooth it out with a scraper, right?”

“This… will do,” Irene finally nodded, albeit reluctantly. Then she became a bit curious. “When did you prepare this?”

“It was a free gift when I bought the clay earlier. I had it at the bottom and didn’t notice it at first,” Yu Sheng replied casually while studying the usage instructions on the packaging. “Alright, now let me see your injury.”

Irene finally relaxed. She slowly lifted the hem of her skirt a bit and pulled down the stocking on her right leg.

On her ivory-like calf were large and small black cracks, some running through the knee and extending up to her thigh.

Yu Sheng was taken aback. “Whoa!”

“At least it didn’t break,” Irene said nonchalantly. “If it had, you’d probably have stuck a piece of lotus root on me again.”

“It’s not about whether it’s broken or not. How can you be so unconcerned… Doesn’t it hurt at all?” Yu Sheng’s voice tightened. Although he’d grown accustomed to seeing blood these past two days, even seeing himself wounded and bleeding, the fragmented state of Irene’s leg made his heart skip a beat. It was a completely different feeling from being injured himself.

Perhaps the sight was too bizarre and unsettling, even more so than the doll’s broken arms earlier.

He reached out and gently touched the cracks on Irene’s leg, feeling that the area around the cracks was as hard as wood—Irene’s normal limbs were soft and no different from human flesh. This hardened texture indicated that the structure near the cracks had begun to lose “soul synchronization.” If delayed further, the next step would be like her previous arms, directly breaking and shattering.

Irene herself, however, just laughed. “Hey, don’t touch, it’s ticklish… Doesn’t hurt at all, not even a bit… Well, maybe just a little, very slightly.”

She gestured with her hands, bringing her tiny index fingers very close together, as if emphasizing how slight the pain was.

Yu Sheng sighed, took a small knife to make a cut on his hand, and began mixing his blood into the repair material. Using a scraper, he mixed while muttering, “You’re too careless. I don’t know how you living dolls are physiologically structured, but can you not be so nonchalant when you’re injured? If it’s serious, can you tell me earlier? After all, I’m the one who has to repair you…”

Irene rolled her eyes. “You looked scary when you died with your eyes open, and I didn’t say anything about you.”

Yu Sheng pursed his lips, proceeding with the next steps of material preparation. He carefully used the scraper to apply the putty to Irene’s wounds.

“Hey, that tickles…”

“Bear with it. Don’t move.”

“Okay.”

Irene was quiet for a while, but probably feeling bored during the repair process, she couldn’t help but start chatting again. “Those two agents from the Special Affairs Bureau we met today—I actually wanted to talk to them, see if they could help me get in touch with the sisters at Alice’s Little House. Although I can’t recall the specifics of this Special Affairs Bureau, I think it’s an ‘official organization’ in the Boundary City. They should have interactions with Alice’s Little House…”

“Then why didn’t you say anything?” Yu Sheng asked, still focused on carefully applying the repair material.

Irene hesitated for a moment. “I don’t know, I just suddenly felt uneasy. Some kind of intuition warning me, felt unsettled… Maybe because we just met them, and I’m not ready to trust them yet? Or maybe I’ve been out of touch with the outside world for too long. I’m not sure about the current situation of various forces in the Borderlands…”

Yu Sheng paused his work and looked up at her. “So next time we meet them, should I mention you to them? They saw you today; they’ll probably report back…”

“Reporting is fine. There’s no such thing as a fifteen-centimeter-tall living doll in this world. If they report, they’ll probably just think I’m some kind of alchemical creature similar to a living doll, which isn’t uncommon in their eyes. As for next time…” Irene hesitated again, looking into Yu Sheng’s eyes. “We’ll see. If their identities are genuine and it’s confirmed they’re from an official organization, then we can ask them about Alice’s Little House. If they can help connect me to other living doll sisters in this city, that would be even better. Seeing my own kind… I think I’d feel much more at ease.”

Yu Sheng rarely saw the doll show such hesitation and anxiety.

But he felt he could understand this kind of uncertainty.

If he had been sealed away for half a century or even longer, then suddenly released into a completely unfamiliar world—not knowing what had become of the things he once knew, or the current world order and power structures—then seeking help from other forces would indeed be something to approach cautiously.

Yu Sheng took a soft breath, set down the scraper, and gently adjusted Irene’s knee joint.

“Try standing up now,” he said softly.

Irene looked at him, then down at her legs. Slowly, she swung her legs over the edge of the table and placed her tiny feet on its surface. She pushed herself up tentatively.

At first, she wobbled, and Yu Sheng instinctively reached out his hand to steady her, but she waved him off. “I can do it,” she insisted.

Gradually, strength returned to her legs. She took a hesitant step, then another. A small smile appeared on her face. “It works,” she said, a hint of amazement in her voice.

Yu Sheng grinned. “That’s great.”

Irene took a few more steps, her confidence growing with each one. She turned to face him. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

“You’re welcome,” he replied. “Just be more careful next time.”

She nodded, then her expression turned serious. “About the Special Affairs Bureau… I think we should proceed cautiously. I’ll need time to consider our next move.”

“Of course,” Yu Sheng agreed. “We’ll take it one step at a time.”

Irene gazed out the window, lost in thought. The world had changed so much while she’d been sealed away. There were so many unknowns, so many uncertainties. But at least she wasn’t facing them alone.

Turning back to Yu Sheng, she gave a determined nod. “Alright then. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.”

He smiled reassuringly. “Together.”