Chapter 39: Success, But Not Quite Success

Elin looked genuinely upset.

Yu Sheng glanced at his "masterpiece," which he had spent hours sculpting, and put himself in her shoes. He figured that if one day his soul were to leave his body and have to crawl into a vessel like this to revive, he would probably cry too…

Still, Elin’s reaction stung a little. He held back his embarrassment, kept his expression serious, and looked at the puppet in the painting, trying to appear earnest. "I really put in the effort here. Look, at least the left and right eyes are symmetrical…"

Elin really started crying now. "But the head isn’t symmetrical…"

Yu Sheng turned his face away. "Uh… I guess I’m still a bit inexperienced. Next time, I’ll do better. Practice makes perfect, practice makes perfect…"

"Let’s not have a next time," Elin said, waving her hand with a dead look. Then, probably thinking that today was supposed to be the day she finally broke free, she tried hard to force a smile—but failed. In the end, all her emotions condensed into a single sigh. "Well, at least it’s a body. I can feel the connection has been established. Fine, this one it is."

She took a light breath, jumped down from the chair in the painting, and took two steps forward. Then, as if remembering something, she looked down at the plush teddy bear clutched in her hand.

After standing silently for a few seconds, she gave the bear a tight hug, then turned and placed it on the chair, as if saying goodbye.

Yu Sheng was curious. "Not taking the bear?"

"I can’t take it out. It’s… another individual sealed inside this painting. Its consciousness has long since dissipated. I don’t even know where it came from," Elin said, shaking her head gently. She reached out and patted the teddy bear’s head. "It has to stay in here. But I won’t throw away this painting, so it’s like I’ll keep it with me."

"Oh."

Yu Sheng nodded, then watched Elin’s next move with a mixture of nervousness and curiosity.

He was very interested in how the puppet would eventually "come out" of the painting, and how she would "live" again using the ugly, lumpy "puppet vessel" that now sat on the table.

Then, he saw Elin in the painting begin to… "dissolve"!

It was a disturbing and eerie sight. Elin seemed to suddenly turn into a wax figure being roasted by flames. Her entire body gradually became molten, losing all color and detail in the blink of an eye. Within seconds, she transformed into a flowing black substance that softened and collapsed within the frame, then began to seep out from the lower edge and drip onto the table!

The table let out a faint hissing sound, as if it were rapidly corroding under some strong acid. The black substance that flowed from the frame started as thick mud, then quickly thinned to something like water. An instant later, it turned into a kind of… cohesive black mist that began to drift and swirl around the puppet body on the table, slowly seeping into the lifeless clay.

Yu Sheng stared wide-eyed at the scene. If it wasn’t an illusion, he could feel a kind of… chill emanating from the eerie black mist.

If he hadn’t seen with his own eyes that this mist came from Elin, he would definitely have thought it was sinister and dangerous. The whole scene had a very evil vibe. But even knowing that, he still found the black mist extremely strange. The lingering coldness felt like malice seeping into this world from a distant, dark abyss—a far cry from Elin’s usual carefree and harmless demeanor.

Yu Sheng shook his head, pushing aside the random thoughts, and watched the mist accelerate its infiltration into the clay. Suddenly, some absurd ideas popped into his head—

What if he blew on the mist? Or poked it with his finger?

Elin would probably curse him out…

In the end, Yu Sheng restrained the urge to mess around. Just then, the mist’s infiltration quickly came to an end.

The puppet on the table began to visibly change—this crude, almost ugly clay figure suddenly seemed to gain the qualities of a living thing. The rough surface smoothed over in an instant, the crooked limbs quickly balanced and reformed. It began to take on the texture and color of skin. The distorted facial features melted back into the head, then re-formed inside the clay ball, gradually emerging on the face…

Yu Sheng thought 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 from inside the puppet like part of its flesh, covering Elin’s body.

Mimicry?

The word came to Yu Sheng’s mind instinctively, and at that moment, he suddenly felt some kind of… connection with Elin.

The feeling was fleeting; he didn’t even have time to make out whether the whisper-like murmur was Elin’s voice before the connection fell silent.

Yu Sheng frowned, recalling the blood he had mixed into the clay while shaping the puppet. He felt that this momentary connection might be related to that.

He suddenly grew worried: his blood seemed to be special—would it affect Elin’s "regeneration"?

But his concern was quickly dispelled.

The completely reconstructed puppet lay quietly on the table, skin like a real person’s, hair like ink, a delicate face like a work of art.

Under Yu Sheng’s nervous gaze, the puppet’s eyelashes suddenly trembled slightly.

Then, the eyes slowly opened.

Scarlet pupils stared blankly at the ceiling, but in the next second, they regained their luster. Elin raised her hands clumsily, looking at them with disbelief. She slowly clenched and unclenched her fists, as if feeling the texture of the air.

After a few seconds of being stunned, the puppet slowly smiled, but the smile seemed to hold back emotions that were about to burst into tears.

Yu Sheng’s voice came from the side. "Congratulations, Elin."

"Mm," Elin pressed her hand on the table, pushed herself up with effort, and wobbled to her feet on the tabletop. Then, with a bright smile, she looked at Yu Sheng standing nearby. She spread her arms wide, as if about to give a hug. "I’m alive! Yu Sheng! Thank—"

The puppet girl suddenly stopped, as if she had belatedly noticed something. She remained in that pose with her arms outstretched, staring blankly at Yu Sheng beside the table.

Yu Sheng: "…?"

Elin slowly tilted her head back. "Why do you look… so tall?"

Yu Sheng thought for a moment. "Maybe because you’re short?"

Elin froze, then abruptly looked down at her own body, and then up at the desk lamp not far away. She drew in a sharp breath, pattered over, and measured her height against the lamp with her hand. Then, she turned her neck stiffly.

Yu Sheng began to sense something was wrong.

"Why…" Elin stared blankly, murmuring to herself, "why am I so short…"

"Uh… it’s a small puppet size. A large one," Yu Sheng said, though he was already starting to panic, but he kept a straight face. "I mean, a third-scale puppet… Wait, did I get it wrong?!"

"Third-scale my ass! A standard-sized person! A living puppet is supposed to be the same size as a human! I’m 1.67 meters!" The miniature puppet girl Elin, who was only as tall as the desk lamp, jumped up and down on the table, yelling. "Where are my long legs, huh? Huh?! Now I’m as tall as this lamp! I… I can’t even reach that chair over there!"

Yu Sheng was completely stunned, but then felt that something didn’t add up. "But that’s not right. When I was shaping the body, you watched the whole time. You could see the size yourself. Why didn’t you say anything then?"

The little puppet hopping around on the table was taken aback, as if she had just realized something. "Hey, you’re right. I did watch…"

She pattered over to the concentric circles where the puppet vessel had been made, then looked back at the painting she had inhabited earlier. She racked her brain, and some vague memories surfaced in her mind.

"Right… Yeah, your operation was fine. The clay vessel was just a medium, used to temporarily hold the soul… Even if the size was a bit off, my soul should have adjusted during the reconstruction…"

Standing on the table, Elin muttered to herself, alternating between looking down in thought and looking up at the ritual arrangement around her. She occasionally pinched her new body, grumbling incessantly.

"Because the size difference is too great? So the adjustment was limited? That’s not right either… No matter how limited, it should have changed at least a little… There’s no way it would only be as tall as a lamp…"

Elin measured her head with her hand, then jumped up and down on the spot a couple of times, as if trying to grow taller through this futile effort.

Needless to say, it didn’t work.

"So… did the ritual still go wrong?" Yu Sheng watched nervously from the side and finally asked cautiously, "Did it not adjust properly during the body reconstruction? Then this shouldn’t be my fault, right…"

Elin looked up, and the mix of grief and indignation on her face, on the verge of tears, startled Yu Sheng.

"Ruler."

The lamp-tall puppet held out her hand to Yu Sheng, her voice gritting through her teeth.

"What for?"

"Measure my height!"

Yu Sheng said oh, then hurried upstairs and brought back a measuring tape.

He had initially considered bringing a ruler—but he thought that if Elin saw a ruler, she might jump up and bite him, so he didn’t dare.

A moment later, Elin stood straight on the table with an old book balanced on her head, while Yu Sheng pulled out the measuring tape to check the little puppet’s height.

Elin secretly tilted the book a little, but Yu Sheng immediately pressed it back down.

"How… how tall?" the little puppet asked timidly.

"…66.6 centimeters," Yu Sheng said, looking at the tape. He tried to be generous. "I rounded up as much as I could, and even added the extra 0.6 centimeters from the decimal."

Elin finally burst into real tears.

(End of chapter)