Dream Fox

Eileen's reaction didn't seem fake.

In fact, Yu Sheng hadn't found her to be insincere even once since he'd started interacting with this puppet. Every word and action of hers exuded a pure honesty, as if her head were solid. This either meant her acting skills were incredibly high, or her head was genuinely solid.

Yu Sheng cautiously held onto the first assumption, but leaned more towards the second possibility.

Then, he described the appearance of the deceased puppet and the massive "shadow monster" that had seemingly perished with it to Eileen. The answer he received was still "I don't know."

Yu Sheng frowned, falling into deep thought.

Eileen, meanwhile, couldn't help but ask, "Hey, why did you suddenly come to ask me about this? Didn't you go upstairs to sleep?"

Yu Sheng hesitated for a moment, but ultimately decided to tell the puppet about the changes in the room. It didn't involve his secrets, and it might even be related to Eileen herself. Telling her might help unravel the mystery.

"The room upstairs... something happened..."

Yu Sheng recounted everything he had seen upstairs to Eileen. This time, she surprisingly didn't interrupt at all. As she listened, her eyes widened. After he finished, she remained stunned for a long time before finally snapping back to reality and exclaiming in a drawn-out voice, "Wow—"

Yu Sheng immediately felt that even if he told her, they wouldn't solve the mystery.

"It looks like you don't know what's going on either," Yu Sheng sighed. "You definitely haven't seen that mirror before, right?"

"Haven't seen it, don't know," Eileen nodded righteously, then quickly added, "But I think your house is getting weirder and weirder."

"You don't need to tell me that, I feel it too," Yu Sheng sighed upon hearing her words. "Who knows where I'll end up when I open a door, the furnishings in a room might suddenly change, a mirror might reflect scenery from who-knows-when and who-knows-where. It's a good thing I used to think this place was quite habitable, sigh..."

Eileen stared at Yu Sheng's expression with her crimson eyes unblinking. After listening to his rambling, she hesitated, "So... are you planning to move? Not live here anymore?"

Yu Sheng remained silent for a moment, but he had indeed considered the matter.

After all, he could tolerate the occasional appearance of a haunted mirror, inexplicably appearing furniture, suspicious appliances, or even a "bibi ji" sealed within an oil painting. When he himself wasn't afraid of death, he could just treat it as adding a bit of fun to life. But the characteristic of potentially falling into some otherworld just by opening a door was truly troublesome; it wasn't something he could just tolerate.

For Yu Sheng, the most dangerous aspect of entering an otherworld wasn't the threat to his life, but the uncertainty of being able to return. This alone had truly made him consider moving elsewhere.

Seeing Yu Sheng's silence, Eileen waited for a moment before continuing on her own, "Well, if you find a place you like, tell me first. You find a way to get me into their complex, and I'll bring down their housing prices for you..."

Yu Sheng was taken aback. "I was just joking... Aren't you afraid of insulting the Ancestor of Puppets and your sisters now?"

"I thought about it carefully just now, and I feel like the process you described makes a lot of sense," Eileen said earnestly. "Besides, if I help you bring down their housing prices, that should count for something towards the favor of living in your house, right?"

Yu Sheng suddenly realized that she seemed to be worried about being left behind if he suddenly moved out.

But he didn't point this out, merely shaking his head. "Let's not talk about that for now. I just have some ideas, but I haven't decided to move yet. Don't worry, if I do move, I'll bring you along. A painting doesn't take up much space."

"Oh, okay!" Eileen immediately became happy.

However, a hint of worry soon appeared on her face. "Um... that deceased puppet you saw in the mirror, did her eyes close?"

"...I don't think so," Yu Sheng recalled. "Why do you ask?"

Eileen opened her mouth, looking a little sad. "When a living puppet is broken, if her eyes close, it means her soul has returned to the garden of Alice's Cabin. We'll be reborn there. But if her eyes are still open... then she's still 'there'."

Yu Sheng froze, suddenly regretting giving his answer so thoughtlessly. He should have asked first.

"We don't know what place is actually reflected in the mirror," he said softly after a moment of silence. "But since she appeared in the mirror, perhaps she's also connected to this house. Maybe one day in the future we'll find her. For now, don't overthink it. You're still trapped here yourself."

"Okay, that's true," Eileen sighed. "Sometimes sisters lose contact after going out... We'll meet eventually, yes, we will."

Yu Sheng suddenly felt that this puppet wasn't as thoughtless as he had imagined.

After talking with Eileen for a while longer, he returned to the second floor.

He went to reconfirm the situation in the room at the end of the corridor, confirming that it was still as he had seen it. He then ignored it and turned into his own bedroom.

He drew the curtains, lay down on the bed, and tossed and turned for a long time. He was sleepy and tired, but his mind was a mess, and he couldn't sleep at all. The various thoughts and events he had experienced recently swirled through his mind like turbulent currents—Eileen's situation, the mountain valley in the night, knowledge of otherworlds, the fox girl who tried her best to stay rational until the very end and told him to run, and... his own resurrection.

After struggling for an unknown amount of time, Yu Sheng finally drifted into a drowsy sleep.

He felt his consciousness slowly immerse into a gentle and chaotic pool. Even in his sleep, those messy "currents" swirled around him in the pool. Through a layer of chaotic mist, he observed his own memories and fragments of thought, hearing many hazy voices, until his consciousness hit the bottom of the "pool," and silence gradually enveloped him.

Yu Sheng wandered in his dream, wandering in the dim daylight. He saw himself walking in a wilderness, with a small hill in the distance.

He felt as though he had been wandering around this small hill for a very, very long time, without purpose, and without knowing who he was.

But a glint of unusual color in the corner of his eye suddenly made him stop.

Between the dim, chaotic sky and earth, Yu Sheng saw a patch of brightness. He instinctively walked towards that silver-white light, and then his vision flickered, and he found himself directly in front of it.

He saw a demon fox with silver-white fur—standing as tall as two to three meters even when crouched—quietly sleeping in the wilderness.

Beautiful, elegant, serene.

A gentle breeze blew from afar, rustling the slender wild grass and the silver-white fur of the demon fox. She showed no signs of waking, merely curled up quietly. Many thick tails were wrapped around her from behind, some held in her embrace, others covering her body like a blanket.

Yu Sheng stared in astonishment at this fox that had appeared in his dream. At some point, he had clearly realized he was dreaming.

After hesitating for a moment, he took two steps forward and tentatively touched the large fox's front paw. "...Huli, is that you?"

The white fox, however, remained asleep, showing no reaction to Yu Sheng's touch or call.

Yu Sheng called out a few more times, even trying to tug on her tail, but he couldn't wake Huli.

It felt as though she wasn't just sleeping, but her senses were somehow blocked by something.

Yu Sheng frowned and took a couple of steps back.

Why would this fox appear in his dream?

He admitted that before falling asleep, his mind had been a jumble of thoughts, and he had indeed thought of this fox trapped in anotherworld. But the current situation was clearly not a normal case of "what you think about during the day appears in your dreams at night." He could feel that Huli was truly "here."

As Yu Sheng pondered, a sudden thought struck him. He felt something and immediately looked down at his right hand.

A tiny bead of blood seeped from his finger, and around it, faint teeth marks were visible.

This was from when he'd snatched the chocolate back from Huli, and she'd instinctively bitten him in a bid to protect her food.

Yu Sheng stared at the sight, suddenly recalling how he'd unexpectedly "seen" fragments of Huli's memories and perceived some of her thoughts in the valley before.

"Because of the blood?"

He had an epiphany, guessing that her appearance here might be related to her accidentally "eating" his blood.

But immediately, doubt arose in his mind—the frog in the rain and the abstract flesh-and-blood monster had also consumed his blood, so why hadn't they appeared here? The flesh-and-blood monster had even eaten several times, much more than Huli...

Just as Yu Sheng's thoughts began to drift in a bizarre direction, he suddenly felt something, and then heard a low, mocking chuckle from the grass behind him.

It sounded somewhat familiar.

Yu Sheng spun around sharply to face the direction of the sound. The next second, he heard Eileen's exasperated complaint from the grass: "I told you to stop laughing, just hold it in! See? Now we've been discovered..."

Yu Sheng looked expressionlessly at the oil painting frame sticking out of the grass, and at Eileen within the frame, clutching a plush bear and grinning foolishly at him, trying to get by with cuteness.

"Watching TV got boring, so I came to see you dream..."