Hu Li's New Life

In any case, Yu Sheng now understood why Hu Li could launch her own tails out. He didn't know how the other fox spirits in this world operated, but clearly, when Hu Li's lineage was passed down, it had taken the path of Super-Beast Armament... Right now, the fox spirit girl was sitting across the dining table, clumsily gripping a pair of chopsticks and rapidly scooping the food from her bowl into her mouth. It was just the simplest dried noodles, with a few vegetable leaves, some sliced ham, and two fried eggs added in, yet Hu Li ate them as though they were the finest delicacies in the world. Her table manners were anything but pretty—but she was enjoying it to the fullest. Strictly speaking, this was the first hot meal she had eaten in years. The biscuits and instant noodles Yu Sheng had brought her before were good enough, but sitting here at a safe table, eating steaming food from a bowl, was a completely different feeling. "Eat slowly. If it's not enough, there's more in the pot," Yu Sheng said, watching Hu Li, who had nearly finished a bowl in the blink of an eye, with a touch of tender concern. He lightly touched her hand. "That's not how you hold chopsticks. Watch me." Hu Li raised her eyes from the rim of her bowl, glanced at Yu Sheng's right hand, and then, still chewing the fried egg in her mouth, awkwardly adjusted the way she held her chopsticks. She learned quickly. "Benefactor, did I eat too fast...?" Only after the whole bowl of noodles was down did Hu Li lift her head a little sheepishly. She saw that the noodles in Yu Sheng's bowl were only half gone, and that there was also a bowl set before Irene nearby, its contents completely untouched. "I... always feel that if I don't eat quickly, it might just disappear at any moment." "It's fine. You'll get used to it in time. Anyway, with your constitution, a few big meals won't hurt your health," Yu Sheng couldn't help laughing. "If it's still not enough, I'll go dish you up some more." "Mm-hm." Before Yu Sheng could even get up, Irene, sitting on the table, spoke up. "Let her eat my bowl first." The little doll used both hands to push the bowl set before her over to Hu Li. Hu Li said thank you, and without asking why a portion of food should be set before a doll who couldn't eat either, she just lowered her head and began rapidly wolfing it down. After the meal, Yu Sheng found that Hu Li's used bowl and chopsticks hardly needed washing—she had licked them so clean you could see your reflection in them... Once the kitchen was tidied up, Yu Sheng changed into the clothes he would wear out. He then found Hu Li a set of his own clothes—trousers, shirt, and coat. Honestly, they didn't fit well at all; Yu Sheng was far, far taller than the fox spirit girl, and no matter how he adjusted them, his clothes hung loose and baggy on her. Pajamas could be a few sizes off and still be made do with, but making outdoor clothes work wasn't so easy. In the end, Yu Sheng had to resort to a lot of hidden safety pins and some makeshift needlework before his clothes would stay put on Hu Li and not look too out of place. Even so, a girl of around 160 centimeters wandering about in a set of men's clothing that was so obviously ill-fitting would still look rather odd—but luckily, Hu Li's good looks made up for that. Time had proven that a pretty face really can get away with anything, and a fox spirit's face was indeed beautiful, which meant that when she went out, at worst she looked like a pretty girl with slightly bizarre taste in clothes. While Yu Sheng was busy adjusting Hu Li's clothes, Irene sat cross-legged on top of the shoe cabinet nearby, propping her chin in both hands as she watched the show. Only when Yu Sheng was almost done did she finally mutter, unable to hold back, "Hey, Hu Li, since you can 'retract' your ears and tail, why can't you change your height? And your clothes too—these clothes of mine, I 'conjured' all by myself. Can't you fox spirits do 'transformation'?" "Powerful fox spirits can!" Hu Li immediately rushed to defend her kind. "Papa said powerful fox spirits can even become as tall as a mountain in the blink of an eye! They run through the mountains and forests, with several thousand peacekeeping immortals chasing behind them—get caught, and you can be sentenced to over five hundred years! But—I can't! I only learned to refine my ears and tail..." Irene listened, blinking in bewilderment, her expression rather strange. "Uh, well, that... that doesn't sound like anything to be proud of... Hey, your speech is getting more and more fluent, isn't it?" Hu Li instantly narrowed her eyes, looking quite pleased. "You get used to it as you go." Irene's gaze shifted back to Yu Sheng. Who knew what was going through her head, but she suddenly spoke up again. "So you two are going out together..." "Obviously," Yu Sheng nodded. "She has no clothes, shoes, or socks at all, and she can't possibly go out shopping alone, so of course I have to go with her." Irene propped her chin in both hands. "I want to go out too." Yu Sheng was startled to hear this. He finally understood what this doll had been plotting every time she sank into thought since getting up that morning, and it caught him completely off guard. "You? How would you go out? A living doll over sixty centimeters tall strolling boldly about town? You'd scare how many people!" "You carry me," Irene declared, as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world. "I'll disguise myself." Yu Sheng didn't catch on at first. "How would you disguise yourself?" Irene simply went limp, her arms and legs drooping from their joints, her eyes wide open in the pose of one who died unresigned. Even the highlights had vanished from her eyes. But her voice rang out in the minds of Yu Sheng and Hu Li. "See, isn't this a lot more ordinary?—doll shops are full of one-third-scale dolls. If you toss me in like this, I could sit in a display window for a whole day and no one would notice..." Yu Sheng was left dumbstruck, instantly regarding Irene's idea as nothing short of genius. But he actually felt more awkward about it. "Then wouldn't it look a bit perverted for a grown man like me to walk around outside carrying a one-third-scale doll...?" The highlights instantly returned to Irene's eyes, and the very next second she leaped right off the shoe cabinet and pounced onto Yu Sheng's head. "So it wasn't perverted when you carried me on your shoulder to fight monsters in the foreign domain, huh! We've finished the fighting, and now you won't even deign to take me out for a stroll! Believe me, I'll bite a headful of tooth marks into you—I'll leave you so chewed up you won't be able to cover them all with band-aids!" Yu Sheng scrambled to deal with the doll flailing and clawing on his head, and after finally prying the little creature off, he tossed her straight to the dazed Hu Li standing nearby. "Fine, fine, I'll take you out, but she has to be the one carrying you." Irene was immediately satisfied—she just wanted to go out, and as long as she could go out, it didn't matter who carried her. In fact, she wouldn't even mind being packed into a suitcase and dragged out; she could pull open the zipper and peek outside on the sly. It had been a very, very long time since she had looked at the world outside. "The only trouble is that painting of yours—it's a bit of a hassle," Yu Sheng said with a frown, looking at the picture frame Irene had strapped to her back. Because of the frame, Hu Li had to hold the doll's body in a very awkward posture and also avoid letting it block her line of sight. "It draws the eye, sure, but more importantly, it gets in the way." "Then take it off and carry it separately?" Irene reached back and unhooked the picture frame from her back. "As long as it's not too far away, it's fine." Hu Li nodded, and without waiting for Yu Sheng to speak, she took the doll's picture frame. Then, with a bang, a whole mass of tails suddenly appeared behind her, and she stuffed the frame into one of them. This time Yu Sheng finally couldn't hold back. He realized that the way Hu Li stashed things in her tail seemed different from what he had first imagined. "...How on earth do you stuff it in there?! Is it some kind of dedicated storage space?!" Hu Li blinked, and only then did she belatedly turn around and spread out her tails, giving Yu Sheng a detailed introduction for the first time. "This one is for storage. These two are for hugging for warmth when I sleep. These few can be used as a quilt, or can grab things quite nimbly. Except for the storage one, the rest can all be used in a fight..." Yu Sheng's face went blank. "...You mean, launch them out?" "Right." "And these are all the results of 'refining'?" "Right." Yu Sheng thought about it for a moment, and could only marvel that fox spirits really were amazing. Far more amazing than the human body. ... At the Special Affairs Bureau's Second Action Brigade, Song Cheng walked into the office more than twenty minutes later than usual that day. And almost the very second he had settled into his chair at his desk, the monitor on the desk lit up, and the seemingly ever-unchanging cold, aloof face of Special Affairs Bureau Director Baili Qing appeared on the screen. "Looks like you've already been to the 'Train,'" came Baili Qing's calm voice from the speaker beside him. "It didn't go smoothly?" "Yes, but it's not that anything went really wrong," Song Cheng said, unsurprised by the Director's sudden contact, only shaking his head a little awkwardly. "Today's 'Train' had a more complex carriage structure than usual. When I retreated back to the real world, I found I had already ridden past my stop." "How did the exchange with Passenger No. 22 go?" Baili Qing asked directly. "...Director, something seems off," Song Cheng said, immediately adjusting his posture and leaning slightly forward. "About No. 66 Wutong Road, the passenger's answer was 'there is no such station'—that's unusual, but not outrageous. The most off thing was when I asked about 'Nightfall Valley'..." He paused, his expression turning unusually grave. "Passenger No. 22 answered that that station has already been canceled." It was the first time he had ever seen such obvious astonishment on Baili Qing's face. He had always thought this Director's face was frozen. "This answer has never come up before," Song Cheng said, cautiously watching the changes in Baili Qing's expression. "What do you think..." "Immediately arrange for a deep diver to carry out a deep dive." Baili Qing spoke swiftly.