A beautiful black-haired girl with clear eyes, wearing ill-fitting men's clothes, walked down the street and looked around curiously. In her arms she held a gothic doll that seemed to have died with its eyes open and gave off an eerie aura. Such a combination in a crowded place was indeed somewhat eye-catching. To be honest, Yu Sheng felt he had probably underestimated the “difficulty” of taking both Hu Li and Irene out at the same time.
He could no longer remember how many curious glances had swept over them along the way. Some of those gazes were naturally on Hu Li, who was looking around, but the other half were on him.
But Yu Sheng still had to steel himself and stay with the fox girl beside him, because she truly knew nothing.
She did not even know what money in this world looked like. In fact, it was already pretty good that she knew buying things cost money, and that was only because many, many years ago she had lived in some civilized society.
On the other hand, the difference between the social order in Hu Li's memories and Jiecheng always brought unexpected trouble.
For example, when they passed a parking lot, she was especially curious why so many “celestial carriages” were parked inside and could still be so quiet, and why those vehicles were so patient. Honestly, when this question first came up, Yu Sheng could not even figure out what she meant.
“In my hometown, vehicles, boats, and ships all have artifact spirits. The artifact spirits of transportation are mostly restless and lively; most of them are not willing to stay quietly outside the mountain gate,” Hu Li explained to Yu Sheng in a low voice. “So over there, when immortals, demons, and spirits go out and need to stay in one place, they hand their vehicles and boats to an attendant. The attendant is responsible for taking them around nearby to ‘run about.’ There is also a kind of large venue with its own small world inside; you can put vehicles and boats in there and let them run and play freely. That is called a ‘self-service parking lot’...”
As she spoke, she raised her hand and pointed at a car by the roadside that looked like it was being driven by a novice driver and could not get into a parking space for ages. “This one is very dull. In our place, it would be mocked by children's hobbyhorses.”
Yu Sheng quickly pushed the fox girl's hand down. “Things are different here from your hometown. Do not point at random.”
Hu Li nodded in confusion. “Oh.”
Yu Sheng silently wiped cold sweat from his forehead and suddenly became very curious about what the fox girl's hometown was actually like. When he first met Hu Li, he had thought her hometown was that classic immortal-demon cultivation civilization, but then came the tour guide immortal, and then “several hundred peacekeeping immortals surrounded and captured a great fox spirit that had violated the mountain forest protection law and sentenced her to five hundred years” also came up. Now even children's toys, hobbyhorses, came equipped with artifact spirits—artificial intelligence. He felt his brain become a little muddled and kept feeling... The whole vibe of this fox girl's hometown was a little hard to imagine.
Could something like this really come from a normal universe?
Unfortunately, Hu Li herself could not say clearly what her hometown was like. Not only was she still young when she left home, but the long torment in foreign domains had long ago made her forget many things.
“Many things I cannot remember anymore. I only remember the elders saying my hometown was not originally like that,” Hu Li recalled the hometown in her mind, long yellowed and blurred, and told Yu Sheng as best she could. “There were ‘Heavenly People’ of great power who suddenly arrived, enlightened the beings on the ground who had been fighting endlessly, and then after a long time, we began living days alongside the Heavenly People, ‘riding the stars a moment across hundreds of millions of miles.’ I still remember the elders saying the stars in the sky changed position every few years, and that was the Heavenly People adjusting some route... My father worked on a route too. His task was to push out anything that intruded into the route and issue tickets to the offenders...”
At this point, the fox girl became a little excited. “My father could pilot an especially, especially large ‘celestial shuttle’ bigger than a building! He said that was called a ‘star ship.’ The artifact spirit of a star ship is even more formidable. Only one person needs to lie in a pool on the star ship and give the artifact spirit commands, and that thing can fly. It can catch things faster than light, using a magic treasure called... the ‘Before-the-Moon-Cutting-Breath’...”
Yu Sheng listened in a daze. He turned his head and glanced at Irene, who was held in Hu Li's arms, motionless and pretending to be an ordinary doll. He asked silently, “Can you understand this?”
“I cannot understand it,” Irene's voice sounded in Yu Sheng's mind. “Are you actually taking that seriously? She might be making it all up... I suggest you wait a couple of months until Hu Li's mind is stable, then ask her about these things. By then, maybe the version will have changed again.”
Yu Sheng frowned. He was somewhat skeptical of the truth of those wild things Hu Li described, but he also felt that if the girl's mind were still muddled, she would not be able to fabricate such an imaginative and “intricately constructed” story.
But in any case, everything Hu Li described to Yu Sheng had left a deep impression in his heart.
“Enough. Stop thinking,” Irene's voice came again in his mind, interrupting Yu Sheng's wild thoughts. “You had better hurry up and get Hu Li some normal clothes. Your challenge is at hand.”
Hearing this, Yu Sheng's face immediately turned bitter.
Many things always seem like they will go smoothly when you start making a plan, but once you get to the point where you have to think about the details, the troublesome part arrives.
How would he know how to pick out clothes for girls! He had never even entered a women's clothing store!
But he could only steel himself and go through with it. He was the one who had said he would adopt Hu Li in the first place, and it was no use regretting it now.
But just as Yu Sheng led Hu Li into the mall with the resolute air of someone marching to his execution, a familiar figure suddenly flashed at the edge of their vision.
It was a slightly petite short-haired girl, seventeen or eighteen, her lips pressed together. Her face carried a silence and maturity that seemed a little out of step with her age.
At first, Yu Sheng did not recognize her. He only felt a sense of familiarity. After two or three seconds, he finally realized where that familiarity came from.
It was the girl who called herself “Little Red Riding Hood.” Today she was not wearing that dark red outfit, but a brightly colored coat, so she had not been recognized at a glance.
Yu Sheng immediately knew he had met his savior.
At almost the same time, “Little Red Riding Hood,” who was walking on the opposite side of the street, also sensed the gaze that had fallen on her. She immediately raised her head. For a brief moment, her eyes were like those of a wary wolf.
But that wolf-like look flickered and vanished in an instant, so brief that no one could have noticed it. She saw Yu Sheng clearly, and a mildly surprised expression appeared on her face.
Little Red Riding Hood soon crossed through the traffic and came over. Looking at Yu Sheng with a trace of surprise, she sized him up for several seconds before blurting out, “...You're shopping too?”
“...Is it strange that I am out shopping?”
“Ah, sorry. I just felt it was a coincidence.” Little Red Riding Hood sensed that her words were a little inappropriate, immediately lowered her head in apology, but the puzzlement in her eyes did not diminish at all.
This was because she already knew that Yu Sheng lived in a foreign domain called No. 66 Wutong Road.
The moment she left that foreign domain, she had guessed that this “human” calling himself “Yu Sheng” likely had dubious humanity. His extremely real human behavior was very likely a form of “mimicry.”
She truly had not expected that she could see on a busy street... this “person” who had long lived in a foreign domain come out to buy things.
...Could it be that this guy could also eat human food?
An absurd idea, she thought, unconsciously popped into Little Red Riding Hood's mind.
Then she noticed Hu Li standing beside him, and the doll held in Hu Li's arms.
Little Red Riding Hood frowned slightly. It took her a moment to recognize Hu Li's face. Then she raised her hand and pointed at Irene, who was motionless and whose eyes had lost their highlight.
“This one... dead?”
Yu Sheng saw that Irene's eyes almost regained their highlight. The little doll twitched slightly in Hu Li's arms, and immediately a furious string of curses came into his mind: “She's the one who's dead! May she ascend and explode eight hundred times on the spot! She f***ing— Yu Sheng! Curse her! Curse her back for me!”
“She's cursing you,” Yu Sheng raised his hand and pointed at Irene, who still did not dare to move, and said calmly to Little Red Riding Hood. “It's really nasty. I'm a cultured man; I cannot even bring myself to say it.”
Irene immediately cursed even more foully.
Little Red Riding Hood could not hear it.
But she could imagine it.
“You people are... pretty creative,” she could not help sizing Irene up several times. “You can actually bring her out openly this way...” Her gaze flicked to Hu Li. “By the way, judging by this whole setup, are you buying clothes for her?”
“You guessed right,” Yu Sheng spread his hands, directly blocking out Irene's ongoing beeping noise. “I was just worrying about it, and then I saw you. Do me a favor?”
“I can probably guess what favor you need,” Little Red Riding Hood caught on in less than two seconds. Her gaze swept over Hu Li's obviously ill-fitting outfit, and a hint of a smile appeared on her face. “This... really is something I have never experienced before.”
Yu Sheng's eyes brightened. “You agree?”
Little Red Riding Hood looked indifferent. “Of course. It's a small effort, but in a while, you'll have to do me a favor too.”
Chapter 68