Chapter 581: Two Mysteries, Two Conjectures

It seemed Erin’s new body had quite a few secrets, but the little doll herself didn’t seem to dwell on them—she was just cheerfully studying her own ball joints that could be freely disassembled and recombined, popping one off with a "boop," then snapping it back on with a click, or scattering her limbs in four directions and crawling all over the floor, or installing both arms backward and making Yu Sheng guess which one she was raising—the left or the right...

Yu Sheng watched this eerie scene and felt deeply disturbed. While washing Erin’s head in a basin of water, he muttered, "Good thing you’ve shrunk now, or you’d really scare someone to death, I swear..."

Erin: "Gurgle gurgle..."

Yu Sheng: "Use your other body to talk!"

So a freshly washed black-haired mini-doll (clay) climbed onto a nearby shelf, hands on her hips and head raised: "Why aren’t you done washing yet?!"

"Almost done, almost done. There’s a black spot on the chin that’s hard to rub off." As he spoke, Yu Sheng lifted Erin’s head out of the basin and instinctively gave it a good shake to dry it, but after only the second shake, he got a fierce bite. He had to apologize quickly, then casually added, "If you keep dismantling those joints, they’ll get looser over time. If you sneeze and fall apart, just wait for Luna to laugh at you."

"No way. The looseness of us Alice dolls’ joints is fixed from the day we’re born," Erin said confidently. "Besides, I can reinforce them with those golden threads. I can hold them tight so they won't fall off."

"...With threads like those, you could be doing something useful." Yu Sheng clicked his tongue, wrapped the mini-doll’s head in a towel and gave it a quick rub, then snapped it back onto her neck with a "click." "Okay, let’s go downstairs and see what Hu Li and Luna are up to."

Yu Sheng led a string of Erins downstairs, but as soon as they reached the living room, he saw two figures in front of the electrical panel—Luna was opening the panel cover to reset the main breaker, while Hu Li stood beside her, holding a baked flatbread and munching as she offered advice: "I think it’s definitely wiring degradation. Listen to me, draw a Ten Directions Lightning Invocation Spell under the air switch—that thing’s got some kick..."

Luna lowered her head: "You’re kind of, unreliable too."

Hu Li pursed her lips, then her ears twitched and she turned to see Yu Sheng coming down the stairs. She immediately pounced on him happily: "Benefactor, you’re awake! I don’t know what happened, but the house tripped the breaker again. I was going to heat up the leftovers I brought back from the cafeteria yesterday, but the microwave won’t work..."

"I know about the trip. Erin tried to charge her body and messed it up," Yu Sheng waved his hand. "Since we’re all here, come over and let’s study Erin’s current condition together."

A moment later, Yu Sheng and the others sat around the living room sofa, watching Erin (blond) perform a one-woman four-way split on the coffee table, crawling darkly all over the surface.

When Hu Li saw this, her bunch of tails exploded with a "poof," standing up bristling like a forest of swords behind her: "That’s ridiculous, Erin. Isn’t that a bit grotesque?"

"You, who shoots your tails off all the time, are calling me grotesque?" Erin made a face at Hu Li as she recombined herself. "Do you know how much I freaked out the first time you launched that thing... Hey, wait, I’ve got another trick..."

"Let’s stop the talent show for now," Yu Sheng saw the girl about to demonstrate her backward hand connection and knee reversal technique, so he quickly reached out to stop the mini-doll. "Let’s talk business first... Mainly two things. One is the anomaly of your current body, and the other is the situation in your 'mind.'"

Erin looked up, blinking. Then all five mouths spoke in unison: "What?!"

"Don’t panic yet. You’re running and jumping fine, so it’s not a big problem," Yu Sheng wasn’t surprised by Erin’s reaction. He first comforted the seemingly startled mini-doll, then carefully chose his words as he looked into her eyes. "Let’s start with the mental aspect. Marlis found it during your examination earlier. I mentioned it to you then.

"Erin, have you ever felt... some kind of 'foreign object' in your 'mind'? I mean on the level of thought—like vague, unclear memories that don’t belong to you, or thoughts you can’t control that block your thinking or even influence it? Or maybe your mind goes blank—do you understand what I’m saying?"

Yu Sheng struggled to find the right words, trying to convey his meaning clearly. He didn’t know if this often-confused mini-doll could understand, but Erin listened seriously, and after thinking hard for nearly half a minute, she shook her head firmly.

"No, I feel fine," the mini-doll said confidently, then grew a bit anxious. "Wait, what did you guys find out?"

"A 'data packet,' very large, existing deep in your memory," Yu Sheng said seriously. "Not only does it take up a lot of storage space, but it also consumes a considerable amount of your underlying computational power. We suspect it might be something left behind by the 'Doom' part of you."

Then, Yu Sheng told the doll in front of him everything that had been found during the examination, just as he had told Malin, holding nothing back.

Erin didn’t usually like to use her brain, but this time, she seemed to understand what Yu Sheng was saying.

"Oh my..." the mini-doll exclaimed softly.

"Don't say 'oh my' yet. This might be hard to deal with. Anyway, Marlis and Malin have no idea what to do. They’re going to ask for help on the Garden Network," Yu Sheng shook his head. "Do you really have no feeling at all? No impression in your memory? Didn’t you already merge with part of the Doom Goddess’s memory? What about that part..."

"No," Erin shook her head hard again. "I only remember a few fragmented pieces, all from before the destruction of my home planet. Starting from that... 'Sanctuary' project, or rather from when the scholars started calculating the Creator Equation, that part of my memory is blank."

As she spoke, Erin frowned hard, seriously searching through her messy, mixed memories. There were a few flashback fragments where she seemed to return to the perspective of the Doom Goddess, but just a moment later, those memories faded away like water.

"It seems... from the start of the 'Sanctuary' project, the personality part of 'Doom' was consciously compressing itself," the mini-doll muttered. "All computing power and memory were making way for the later 'Sanctuary'... Though in the end, the Sanctuary was never built. Sigh."

Yu Sheng looked up and exchanged glances with Hu Li and Luna beside him.

Hu Li’s ears twitched.

"...You didn’t pack the entire blueprint of the Sanctuary into your memory, did you?!" the fox-girl’s eyes widened.

Erin was stunned: "R-Really?"

"How would I know? I’m just guessing," Hu Li shook her tail vigorously. "But you just said that from the Sanctuary project onward, your memory of the 'Doom' part went blank. That’s a pretty obvious clue."

The mini-doll sat cross-legged on the coffee table, arranging her five bodies in a ring of thinkers, but after a few minutes, nothing came of the meditation.

"Let’s note that problem for now," Yu Sheng looked around and temporarily stored the conclusion "the anomalous data structure in Erin’s memory might be related to the Doom mother civilization’s 'Sanctuary' project" in his mind, then continued, "The second issue is Erin’s current body."

The blond mini-doll immediately straightened up, her gaze sharpening.

"I still think it’s suspicious that this body suddenly 'shrunk' after two hours of normal activity," Yu Sheng rubbed his chin. "Since these changes happened after the 'spirit infusion' was complete and even after Marlis’s inspection, it means that during those two hours at least, some kind of 'power' or 'factor' was maintaining Erin’s original shell in its 'normal' form."

"Right, right! That was my normal form. This body shrinking like this is definitely not right!" Erin perked up at that. "Something was definitely wrong then. When I jumped off the platform and walked toward you, there was clearly a state switch..."

Yu Sheng seemed not to hear the mini-doll’s muttering and continued rubbing his chin thoughtfully, his gaze still on blond Erin: "When 'Erin' is in control, it’s the normal form. When the 'Doom Goddess' is in control, it’s the three-part doll? Or... maybe this body really needs regular recharging?"

"Who knows? It’s definitely not charging," Erin propped her head up with both hands. "The thing is, I don’t feel any drop in stamina either. It’s not like I ran out of energy."

Yu Sheng fell into thought, but before he could come to any conclusion, his phone vibrated, snapping him out of his reverie.

He pulled out his phone and saw a message from Baili Qing: "You there? Come to the Special Affairs Bureau if you have time."

A pair of furry big ears appeared from the side: "Benefactor, benefactor, who is it?"

Yu Sheng openly showed his phone screen to Hu Li: "Baili Qing went back to work. She wants me to come over. Actually, I also have something I want to discuss with her."

As he spoke, his mind recalled the strange 'vision' he had seen while synchronizing with the Astral Crystal Tree, through the cracks in time and space.

The distant phantom of starlight at the edge of the universe, the giant ship, and the curtain of flames.

What did those images mean? Did the Special Affairs Bureau have intelligence on this?

Yu Sheng wasn’t sure, but other than the Special Affairs Bureau, he couldn’t think of anywhere else in the world that might have answers.

(End of chapter)