Chapter 39

Erin's expression looked quite sorrowful.

Yu Sheng glanced at his "masterpiece" he had spent several hours molding, then put himself in her shoes and thought that if one day his soul left his body and had to revive inside a shell like this, he would probably really cry...

But Erin's reaction still hurt Yu Sheng a little; he suppressed his embarrassment, kept his expression taut, and stared at the doll in the oil painting, trying hard to make himself look serious: "I've already tried very hard. Look, at least the left and right eyes are symmetrical..."

This time, Erin really started crying: "But the head isn't symmetrical..."

Yu Sheng turned his face away: "Uh... indeed, I'm a bit unskilled. Next time I'll definitely do better. Practice makes perfect, practice makes perfect..."

"Let's not have a next time," Erin said hopelessly, waving her hand. Then, realizing that today was the day she had finally managed to break free, she thought she should be happier, so she pulled hard at the corners of her mouth trying to force a smile—but failed. Thus, a thousand words finally condensed into a single sigh: "Sigh, at least it's a body. I can indeed feel the connection has been established. Fine, I'll take it."

She took a light breath, jumped down from the chair in the oil painting, took two steps forward, then seemed to remember something, looked down, and glanced at the plush teddy bear she was holding.

After standing silently for a few seconds, she hugged the little bear tightly, turned around, and placed it back on the chair, as if saying goodbye.

Yu Sheng was somewhat curious: "You're not taking the bear?"

"I can't bring it out. It... is another individual sealed within this painting. Its consciousness has long since dissipated. I don't even know where it came from," Erin shook her head gently, reached out, and patted the teddy bear's head. "It can only stay here. But I won't throw away this painting, so that's equivalent to keeping it by my side."

"Oh."

Yu Sheng nodded, then watched Erin's next actions with a mix of tension and curiosity.

He cared deeply about how this doll would finally "come out" of the oil painting, and how she would "come to life" using that ugly-looking "doll shell" on the table as a vessel.

Then, he saw Erin in the oil painting begin to... "dissolve"!

The scene was bizarre and terrifying. Erin seemed to suddenly become a wax statue being roasted by flames; her entire body gradually took on a molten state, and in almost the blink of an eye, she lost all color and detail. Within a few short seconds, she turned into a constantly softening black substance that collapsed within the frame and began to overflow from the bottom edge of the frame, starting to flow onto the table!

The table emitted a faint hissing sound, as if undergoing rapid corrosion in some strong acid. The black substance flowing out of the frame initially looked like thick mud, then immediately became thin as water, and in the next second, it transformed into some kind of... dense, non-dispersing black mist. It began to float and undulate around the doll shell on the table, slowly seeping into the lifeless clay.

Yu Sheng stared wide-eyed at the scene. Whether it was an illusion or not, he felt a kind of... chill emanating from that floating, eerie black mist.

If he hadn't seen with his own eyes that this mist had transformed from Erin, he would absolutely have felt that this thing was sinister and dangerous; the entire scene's style was extremely weird. But even knowing that, he still felt the black mist was exceptionally eerie. That lingering chill felt like malice seeping into this world from a distant, pitch-black abyss, which really didn't match Erin's usual carefree and harmless appearance.

Yu Sheng shook his head, brushed aside all sorts of stray thoughts, and watching the black mist accelerating its seepage into the clay, a ridiculous idea suddenly popped into his head—

What would happen if he blew on the mist right now? Or what if he poked his hand into the mist?

Erin would probably scold him very harshly...

Yu Sheng finally controlled the urge to be mischievous, and just then, the seepage of the mist rapidly reached its end.

The doll on the table began to change visibly to the naked eye—this rough clay figure, which could be described as ugly, seemed to suddenly be endowed with the characteristics of a living creature. Its crude surface became smooth in the blink of an eye, and its originally crooked limbs quickly balanced and reorganized. It began to take on the texture and color of skin; distorted facial features melted into the skull, then regenerated within the clay mass, gradually emerging on the face...

Yu Sheng thought for a moment and felt that out of politeness and respect, he should turn his back.

But before he could turn around, he saw an exquisite black dress "grow" out of the doll's body as if it were part of flesh and blood, covering the surface of Erin's body.

Mimicry?

The word unconsciously floated into Yu Sheng's mind, and just then, he suddenly felt some kind of... connection between himself and Erin.

That feeling vanished in an instant. He didn't even have time to distinguish whether that dreamlike whisper was truly Erin's voice before the connection fell silent.

Yu Sheng frowned, recalling the blood he had added into the clay while shaping the doll shell just now, and felt that the connection in that instant might be related to that.

He suddenly felt a bit worried: His blood seemed to be somewhat special. Would this affect Erin's "regeneration"?

But very quickly, this worry of his was dispelled.

The fully reshaped doll lay quietly on the table, its skin like a human's, its hair like ink, its exquisite face resembling a work of art.

Under Yu Sheng's somewhat nervous gaze, the doll's eyelashes suddenly trembled slightly.

And then, those eyes finally slowly opened.

The scarlet pupils looked somewhat lifeless at the ceiling, but in the next second, they regained their sparkle. Erin clumsily raised both hands, looking at them with an incredulous gaze. She slowly clenched her hands into fists and then relaxed them, as if feeling the texture of the air.

After being stunned for several seconds, the doll slowly smiled, yet the smile seemed to suppress intense emotions as if she were about to cry.

Yu Sheng's voice sounded from the side: "Congratulations, Erin."

"Mm," Erin placed her hand on the table, forcefully pushed herself up, and stood unsteadily on the table. Then, with a brilliant smile, she looked at Yu Sheng standing nearby. She opened her arms wide, as if offering a hug. "I'm alive! Yu Sheng! Th—!" The Young Lady suddenly stopped, as if belatedly realizing something. She kept her arms open and stared blankly at Yu Sheng beside the table.

Yu Sheng: "...?"

Erin slowly tilted her head up: "Why do you look... so tall?"

Yu Sheng thought for a moment: "Could it be because you're shorter?"

Erin was stunned, then suddenly looked down at her own body, then looked up at the desk lamp placed not far away. She suddenly gasped, ran over with a pitter-patter, held her hand between her head and the lamp to measure her height, then stiffly turned her neck.

Yu Sheng began to feel something was wrong.

"Why..." Erin's gaze was dull as she murmured to herself, "Why am I so short..."

"Uh... the doll's size, the large kind," Yu Sheng was actually starting to panic at this point, but his face remained very taut. "I mean that kind of one-third doll... Wait, I got it wrong?!"

"... One-third your grandpa! Human, standard size! A living doll is the same as a human! I'm 1.67 meters tall!" The tiny doll Erin, only as tall as the lamp, jumped up and down on the table shouting, "Where are my long legs? Huh? Huh?! Why am I now the same height as this lamp! I... I can't even reach the chair next to me!"

Yu Sheng was completely stunned, but immediately felt something was off: "That doesn't make sense. When I was molding the body just now, you were watching too, right? You could see the size yourself. Why didn't you say anything then?"

!.

Hearing this, the tiny doll jumping up and down on the table froze, seeming to realize belatedly once again: "Ah, right, I was watching..."

She pitter-pattered over to the concentric circles where she had previously made the doll shell, looked back at the oil painting where she had resided before, thought hard in her head, and then some vague memories bubbled up from her heart.

"Right... right, your operation was fine. The clay shell was just a medium, used to temporarily contain the soul... Even if the size was a bit off, my soul should have adjusted itself when reshaping the body..."

Erin stood on the table talking to herself, sometimes looking down to think, sometimes looking up at the ritual setup around her, and occasionally pinching her current body, muttering nonstop.

"Because the size difference was too great? So the adjustment was limited? But that doesn't make sense either... Even if limited, there should still be some change... There's no way I could be only as tall as a lamp..."

Erin held her hand up to her head, then jumped hard in place twice, as if trying to use this futile method to make herself grow taller.

One could easily imagine that it definitely didn't succeed.

"So... the ritual still went wrong?" Yu Sheng watched anxiously from the side and finally asked carefully, "The body reshaping didn't adjust properly? Then this shouldn't be my fault, right..."

Erin tilted her head up, and her expression of grief and indignation, on the verge of tears, startled Yu Sheng.

"Ruler."

The doll, only as tall as the lamp, reached her hand out to Yu Sheng, her voice gnashing with teeth.

"What for?"

"Measuring height!"

Yu Sheng made an "oh" sound, then hurried to the second floor to fetch a tape measure.

Actually, he had initially wanted to grab a ruler—but he feared that if Erin saw a ruler, she would fly into a rage and bite someone, so he didn't dare.

Moments later, Erin stood straight on the table with an old book balanced on her head, while Yu Sheng beside her extended the tape measure to measure the little doll's height.

Erin secretly tilted the book a bit, but Yu Sheng immediately pressed it down with one hand.

"H-How... how tall?" the little doll asked cautiously.

"... Sixty-six point six centimeters," Yu Sheng glanced at the ruler, his tone filled with sympathy, "I tried to calculate it as high as possible; I even counted the zero point six centimeters after the decimal point for you."

Erin finally burst into real tears.

(End of this chapter)