Irene truly possessed many miraculous abilities. Yu Sheng had realized this deeply when he followed the doll in descending into Hu Li's dream. But truth be told, this wretched doll dropped the ball so often under normal circumstances that people tended, consciously or not, to overlook that fact...
"So now there's only one thing left, the most critical part," Yu Sheng said with a serious expression as he sat on the sofa, addressing the little doll beside him. "Finding a way to recreate that doorway leading to the valley in the foreign domain."
"Are you still planning to rely on brute force?" Irene asked curiously. "Testing every single 'frequency' you think is close, one by one?"
Yu Sheng sighed. "There's no other choice. After all, when I first entered the valley, I hadn't truly mastered the technique of 'opening a door.' I overlooked far too many details back then."
Irene turned her head toward Yu Sheng. The little doll seemed to be thinking hard, and after a moment, she spoke up hesitantly. "Actually... I have an idea."
Yu Sheng leaned forward at once. "Huh? You have a way?!"
"It might not work, mind you, because I don't understand how your 'door-opening' actually works either, and I understand even less what you mean by that 'frequency' you keep talking about," Irene said, scuffing across the sofa cushion as she turned around. "Still, based on my understanding, aren't you essentially looking for a 'feature' that can help you lock onto your destination? Or some sort of navigation signal?"
"...I suppose you could put it that way?" Yu Sheng grew a little uncertain himself. "To be honest, I haven't completely figured it out either. The whole process has just been me fumbling in the dark, relying on 'feel' for most of it. But your description of a 'navigation signal' is actually pretty apt—the moment I open the door, the destination it points to is entirely random, but if I can accurately 'remember' a certain feature of the other side, the passage collapses into a single path. That's roughly how it goes."
"In other words, if we can leave a waypoint on Hu Li's side, you could recreate the passage directly?"
"Presumably," Yu Sheng nodded, but then looked puzzled. "Where on earth would we get such a waypoint, though? The whole problem right now is that we can't find a path to the valley. If we could leave a waypoint over there, we wouldn't have anything to worry about in the first place..."
"What about from inside the dream?" Irene said suddenly.
Yu Sheng froze, and then vaguely grasped what the doll meant.
Irene went on to explain in detail. "When I sank into Hu Li's dream with you last time, I already established a faint connection with her. If that connection goes a step further, maybe I could link directly to her senses. Then I pull you in, and you can come into contact with the valley's aura through Hu Li's perception. Wouldn't that be equivalent to establishing a 'waypoint'?"
Yu Sheng listened in a daze to Irene's proposal. The more he heard, the more this wild, out-of-the-box idea of hers... seemed genuinely feasible.
"There are two difficulties with this process," Irene continued. "First, it requires Hu Li's cooperation. She has to be willing to open her mind to you. That shouldn't be much of an issue, though; as long as we explain it to her clearly, she should trust you. The second difficulty, however, is a bit... dangerous."
Yu Sheng did not interrupt, only signaling with his eyes for Irene to go on.
"The second difficulty is that right now, Hu Li isn't the only one in her mind," Irene said, her expression growing slightly solemn as she looked into Yu Sheng's eyes. "Entity-Hunger has already penetrated deep into the bedrock of her consciousness. So the moment you establish a deep connection with Hu Li, it's equivalent to establishing that same connection with Entity-Hunger... I'm not sure what will happen then. Theoretically, you should be able to withstand a brief brush with it, but the danger is that the power of Hunger might take root in your heart. When you actually enter the valley and face that monster, the influence rooted inside you could erupt at any moment..."
Yu Sheng fell into deep contemplation.
Seeing him go silent, Irene's eyes darted twice as she caught on. She jumped up from the sofa and planted her hands on her hips—though she was still not as tall as the seated Yu Sheng. "Don't you go thinking you can just die once and see if that clears the corruption! I'm telling you, that tendency of yours is dangerous. If you go and die back and forth and still can't shake it off, you'll be in deep trouble..."
Yu Sheng shifted awkwardly in his seat. "I didn't say..."
"I can see right through you!"
Yu Sheng was speechless.
This doll's brain usually didn't work for beans—why did her intuition have to be so sharp right now?
"All right, all right, I get it. Under no circumstances will I jump straight to the 'dying once' idea," Yu Sheng surrendered with a wave of his hand, thoroughly unsettled by the stare of those scarlet eyes, before forcibly pulling the topic back on track. "Still, I've decided to try your plan. While the risk of direct contact with Entity-Hunger is real, I think... it's worth the gamble."
Irene continued to stare at Yu Sheng with her crimson eyes. After several long seconds, she finally spoke. "Fine. Looks like you really want to save that fox, and her condition truly can't be delayed any longer. We'll go with this plan, then."
Right then, however, another issue occurred to Yu Sheng. "Wait, there's another problem."
"Huh?"
"I might not even dream that dream with Hu Li in it," Yu Sheng said, spreading his hands. "Last night I didn't even dream at all—I have no idea how to control my own dreams."
Hearing this, Irene actually grinned, her smile oozing smugness and pride.
"I do!" The little doll stood proudly on the sofa with her arms crossed—all 66.6 centimeters of her. "You just go to sleep, and leave the rest to me. Let me tell you, now that I'm free from the bounds of that painting, I'm terrifically strong! I scare even my—"
Before she could finish, Yu Sheng shifted his posture on the couch. The cushion depressed under his weight, and Irene, who was standing on its edge, lost her footing. With a sudden yelp, she tumbled off the sofa—and the oil painting frame on her back got wedged right between the sofa and the coffee table, leaving her dangling underneath it.
The doll flailed her arms and legs wildly beneath the frame, as if trying to fly up and bite someone.
Her cursing was downright foul.
Yu Sheng reached down and hauled the frame up. "Seems to me your bounds are still pretty severe."
"You keep laughing... laugh one more time and I won't help you!" Irene's arms were trapped between the frame's harness ropes, leaving her hanging in the shape of a cross as Yu Sheng hoisted the frame. "Put me down! Put me... ow, ow, my arm! My arm joint is stuck! Pop it back for me..."
Yu Sheng stared speechlessly at Irene. He casually unhooked her from the frame and, while enduring her nonstop clamor, began working the jammed joint back into place.
***
Late into the night, Yu Sheng had finished all his preparations for sleep.
Yet Irene was still scurrying around on his bed like a stray little rocket.
"Hey, can't you keep quiet for a bit?" Lying in bed, Yu Sheng watched Irene hopping up and down beside him, exasperation written all over his face. "I need to sleep."
"Your bed is so huge!" Irene darted happily toward the headboard, hopped onto the nightstand, and wrapped her arms around the lamp, giving it a good shake as though she hadn't heard a single word Yu Sheng said. "Hey, hey, this lamp is shorter than me! Yu Sheng, look! This lamp is shorter than me!"
"Next time I'll buy a nightlight that's even shorter than you!" Yu Sheng rolled his eyes in annoyance, reaching out to pluck Irene off his lamp. "Did you forget what you're supposed to be doing? Keep this up and I'm locking you in the wardrobe!"
Only then did Irene finally settle down, smiling sheepishly. "I'm just a little excited, that's all... Fine, fine, you sleep, you sleep. I won't cause trouble."
Exhausted in both body and mind, Yu Sheng let out a sigh and set Irene down. "Go help turn off the light."
The doll retorted self-righteously, "Can't reach!"
"...Drag a chair over!"
"Oh."
The world finally fell quiet.
Yu Sheng breathed out a long sigh, savoring the fleeting tranquility in the darkened bedroom as he tried to steady himself and drift off to sleep.
Then he turned his head, only to see two glowing, blood-red eyes staring right at him from the edge of the bed in the dark.
Irene was hanging from the rim of the mattress, clinging to it like a koala, staring straight at Yu Sheng.
"...You doing that makes it even harder to sleep," Yu Sheng said helplessly. "For that matter, why did you have to come into my room anyway? Couldn't you enter my dream from the first floor before? Was there any need to follow me up here?"
"The signal is better when I'm closer."
The doll stated this with absolute conviction, sounding every bit as sincere as a lie could get.
Still, she at least understood what Yu Sheng meant. She finally dropped from the edge of the bed and trotted over to sit on a chair not far away.
Yu Sheng sighed once more.
He knew Irene was still watching him, and he had no idea what went on inside that doll's head—if she even had one—but by all appearances, he wasn't going to get rid of her tonight.
All he could do was try his best to ignore the scarlet gaze piercing through the darkness, empty his mind of stray thoughts as much as possible, and coax himself toward sleep.
He had no idea how long he tossed and turned in bed—perhaps an hour, perhaps longer.
Only when his exhaustion reached its absolute limit did he finally slip, groggy and dazed, into a hazy darkness.
The dream arrived. And amid the thin mist of the dreamscape, Irene's soft, delicate voice drifted over: "You're finally asleep... Come on, this way."
Yu Sheng instinctively turned toward the voice. In the next instant, the mist dissolved, and light and shadow emerged from the dark.
Once again, he truly saw that bleak wilderness. A brooding sky hung over the land, nameless knolls rose in the distance, and the silver-white demon fox still lay asleep in the open wild.
Yu Sheng walked forward, and immediately noticed the "guide" floating beside him.
It was Irene, currently navigating his dream.
Yu Sheng stopped in his tracks, looking at the oil painting hovering in midair with a bizarre expression.
Inside the oil painting, Irene was staring right back at him, wide-eyed.
"...Why do I feel like this painting is your real body?" Yu Sheng said.
Irene looked down at herself, then looked around at her surroundings, finally realizing what had happened.
"Wait, how did I end up inside the painting again?!"
Chapter 43