Chapter 405: Yu Sheng’s Stratagem |
After returning to the “Huixian Isle,” the first thing Yu Sheng did was run to the bathroom and draw hot water for the little doll.
A clockwork girl will not catch a chill, but a clockwork girl will run everywhere scratching at things and leaving muddy prints all over.
Hot water gushed and bubbled. The tub, big enough to serve as a pool for Irene, rippled as circles spread across its surface. Rising steam dispelled the chill of the rainy night, and the sound of water gradually calmed Yu Sheng’s messy thoughts.
Arms folded, he leaned against the tub, staring at the churning water a little absentmindedly. Irene (Rebar), filthy from head to toe, lay sprawled over the tub’s rim, straining on tiptoe to watch the water level rise. Heat flushed the little doll’s cheeks. She grinned and reached to scoop some hot water, but could not quite reach.
She turned her head and looked up at Yu Sheng: “Is it ready yet? You’ve been filling it forever.”
He answered distractedly as he glanced at the trail of muddy footprints she had left across the bathroom: “A few more minutes. More hot water makes cleaning easier. Maybe I should hose you down in the shower first.”
Irene’s eyes rolled, a mischievous smile sprang to her face, and she suddenly pounced while Yu Sheng was off guard. Her two little paws snatched at his trousers with a triumphant bark.
In an instant, his pants had two small handprints on them.
“Oh, come on,” Yu Sheng yelped, hopping back as he grabbed Irene by her belt and hoisted her into the air. “What got into you!”
Yu Sheng glanced at the tub, now full, then casually tossed the little doll into it.
Irene thrashed and sputtered, cursing between bubbles: “Glub! Glu… glub?glub?glub!”
He did not understand a word.
But his mood improved.
Dusting off his hands and ignoring the little doll dog?paddling circles in the tub, Yu Sheng turned toward the door. Just then, Foxy pushed it open and came in.
The fox?demon girl was cradling an armful of tails.
Yu Sheng blinked: “What are you…”
“If you’ve been rained on you need to wash with hot water, or the fur turns coarse and you feel off the next day,” Foxy said earnestly, then noticed the pair of handprints on his pants. “Did Irene make trouble again?”
Yu Sheng waved it off with a grin: “It’s fine. These pants needed a wash anyway.”
“Leave them by the bathroom door when you change. I’ll wash them,” Foxy said with a smile. “I have lots to wash anyway.”
“Deal.”
Yu Sheng slipped out, went straight to No. 66 Wutong Road to change into something clean and comfortable at home, then returned to the living room of their suite at the Huixian Isle hotel.
Zheng Zhi sat behind the coffee table, hunched over his phone writing a work report. Immortal Yuan Hao was using the Lingxi Mirror to contact Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain, apparently updating them on the situation in Sentinel Silence. Luna, as usual, stood motionless by the window like a sculpture, though in truth she was deep in the spiritual wilds overseeing her order of knights as they polished the details of that cathedral.
Besides these three, the most open space in the living room held one more little doll. Irene (Pika) was still wreathed in crawling arcs of electricity. No one dared touch her, so she sat cross?legged in an unobtrusive spot. When Yu Sheng emerged in fresh clothes, the little thing was brooding. Seeing him, she burst into crackling complaint: “Yu Sheng, go do something about that silly fox! She washed her tails in my bathtub! And she scrubbed me too… all because I zapped her a few times earlier…”
“You do realize it was your itchy hands that caused it?” Yu Sheng arched a brow. He started to reach out to ruffle her hair perfunctorily, but froze at the sight of the crackling arcs around her. Keeping a safe distance, he frowned slightly. “Tell me you won’t keep sparking like this. You cannot go on discharging forever, can you?”
“I’m discharging, I’m discharging. Overcharge like this will not hold anyway. It’s just a bit slow,” Irene said as she raised a hand to show the steel cable she was gripping. The cable ran from the living room to the windowsill and drooped along the outer wall of the building. “I even hooked up a ground line… but for some reason it’s still slow.”
Yu Sheng frowned: “So this is basically leakage, isn’t it?”
“Uh, is there a difference?” The little doll blinked, then rubbed her fingers together in the air as if testing the residual charge in her body. She snapped once, and a nearly two?meter arc burst from her fingertips. Everyone in the room felt their hair stand on end. Zheng Zhi flung himself behind Immortal Yuan Hao in a flash: “Borrow your shield, just a sec…”
“Stop, stop!” Yu Sheng raised both hands at once. “You’re going to fry the hotel’s stuff. If nothing else works I can open a door to outer space. Go up to orbit where no one’s around and ‘dump’ the excess energy. Constant crackling is not a solution.”
Irene actually considered his suggestion, eyes lighting with interest: “That does sound kind of fun…”
But then she shook her head: “Better not. Feels like it would make too big a scene, and if I slip up this body might overload and burn out. I’ll just leak like this. It’s slow, but steady.”
She looked down at herself and lifted her arms, gesturing at Yu Sheng: “And look, the stray sparks around me are already much less than before.”
He had noticed the same. As she said, overcharge will not hold.
[All things considered, a four?hundred?percent charge to fire a world?shattering beam cannon is cool, but the side effect is that she has to keep leaking electricity for a while.] Judging from the current rate, Yu Sheng estimated she would be crackling like this for at least two more days.
“Seen this way, your body still has room for improvement,” he murmured, chin in hand as ideas sparked. “You can charge by taking lightning, even overcharge multiple times without damage, and convert short?term stored energy into a massive beam. But overcharge will not store and keeps leaking. Neither the strengths nor the weaknesses were part of the original design.”
Irene rolled her eyes: “From a conscience check, did you ever ‘design’ this body? You just pinched it together as you thought of things.”
“Thinking is designing,” Yu Sheng said with sudden gravity, then rubbed his chin again. “I’m serious. This incident is an inspiration. I feel like your body’s ‘traits’ can be exploited. If we set up the right mechanisms, we might develop formidable techniques.”
Irene tilted her head: “We can’t make every fight depend on someone blasting me with lightning. Normal charging methods do not reach this effect. At home, with the ‘charging dock’ you made, once I’m full no more charge goes in.”
Yu Sheng fell silent, looking at the little doll with a contemplative gaze that made her uneasy.
“Yu Sheng, your eyes look dangerous. What are you planning?”
“I just had an idea,” he said as the notion took shape. “So far, every body I’ve built for you has been one?of?a?kind, like different models with non?interoperable abilities. But what if I build you some ‘mass?production’ bodies to a unified standard? Same materials, same craft, standardized shells. Would those bodies… generate some kind of ‘synergy’ among themselves?
“Pushing this further, your current shell has a charge?and?discharge ‘trait.’ If multiple such shells stood together, all fully charged—”
He stopped there, watching the little doll’s blankness turn to dawning thought and then widen?eyed realization. He smiled.
“How about we try building an Irene Matrix?” he said, rubbing his chin and already itching to begin. “Foxy can mass?produce the core material. The other materials can be the soil from the valley. The biggest cost is the ritual essential oils and incense, and we can get those from the Special Service Bureau. All told, pretty cheap.”
Irene listened, dumbfounded, then clapped once: “Although it feels like something is off, your idea sounds pretty thrilling!”
This novel is translated and hosted on bcatranslation
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