The call ended, but Yu Sheng stared at his phone in a daze. A couple seconds passed before he lowered his gaze to look at Irene, the Host, sitting by his feet. “How co I can’t tell if she’s angry or not…”
“She didn’t go off on you this ti, but I think that’s just because she’s used to it now,” Irene analyzed with a serious face. “Look on the bright side. At least this ti you didn’t get a midnight itch to do sothing weird.”
Yu Sheng coughed dryly, pressing down the guilt rising in his chest and turning his attention back to the Door before him.
A tiworn, mottled wooden Door leaned askew against the white wall of the basent. Strange and intricate lines and symbols sprawled across the fra and the ground around it. A few Ritual Candles flickered nearby, releasing a faint scent of spice into the air (still the batch he got for five yuan at the discount store).
Whether the Spirit Imbuent Rite would work was still uncertain—but at least the atmosphere felt right.
Yu Sheng inhaled deeply, steadying the nervous flutter in his heart, then began the process he’d previously modified: slicing open his palm and channeling his blood into the Door.
Spirit Imbuent—infusing one’s “Spirituality” into lifeless matter. If clay could beco the flesh of a Doll, and rebar could serve as its bones, then a Door, too, could beco a vessel for this rite.
The candles crackled, their flas rising higher. Blood seeped silently into the ancient wood, and the once-inked lines on the floor began to darken with a reddish hue, as though the blood was replacing every structure of the Alchemy Formation. Yu Sheng could even hear faint corrosive sounds, like sothing being etched away.
His eyes widened in surprise.
“What is it?” Irene caught his reaction imdiately. “Sothing feel wrong?”
“No… it feels too smooth,” Yu Sheng said, astonished. He could clearly sense his Spirituality reshaping the Door, sothing he’d never experienced even while molding your body, Irene. “Could it be your Augntation Node Technique at work?”
“Maybe it’s because you’re forging a bond with a ‘Door’ itself—sothing that’s inherently part of your power?” Irene pondered, then puffed up with pride. “But obviously the main reason is my perfectly configured nodes!”
Yu Sheng ignored the little doll’s smugness, focusing more intently on controlling the rite. He placed his hand on the Door handle, continuing the transformation.
Just as he had reshaped clay and lotus roots into a Doll’s body, the Door’s structure began to shift.
A faint creaking echoed as the fra softened and twisted like living flesh. The wooden surface started to rge into the wall behind it, forming an organic-seeming adhesion. Vein-like patterns appeared, then smoothed into tallic, thorn-like lines with a faint sheen.
Yu Sheng slowly turned the handle—and in that mont, the link to the Valley was forged.
But unlike before, he didn’t open the Door right away. Instead, he held it on the brink, carefully sensing what lay on the other side.
He needed to shape the corresponding “connection point” in the Valley as well.
This part was difficult. He had to split his focus, forming a tangible, stable Door Device on the Valley’s side, even while only controlling it remotely. Although he could mold the dirt and stone in the Valley into any shape, maintaining accuracy, placent, and a stable connection all at once was a formidable challenge.
He failed three tis in a row.
By the fourth attempt, the flas of the Ritual Candles were already flickering with instability.
But this ti, he succeeded.
He felt the bond take root. A real Door now stood in the Valley at the matching spot—one that didn’t require him to maintain it for it to stay open.
A few minutes later, after confirming the connection’s stability, Yu Sheng exhaled and finally let go of the handle.
Foxy, who had been anxiously watching the whole ti, blinked and asked, “Benefactor, did you succeed?”
“Looks like I did,” Yu Sheng smiled and nodded. He glanced at the Door, now seamlessly fused into the wall. “Irene, try it out. In theory, this Door should function just like the one at Wutong Road No. 66. Anyone like you and Foxy who has received my blood can open it directly, and it should lead stably to the Valley.”
Irene was still a bit wary of the thing, but trusting Yu Sheng, she nodded and stepped forward.
The Doll Lady stood silently at the threshold.
And in that silence resounded a roar asured at precisely 66.6 centiters.
Yu Sheng: “…Should I leave a spot down here for you to step on—”
“Shut up! No need! I can reach it!”
Irene whipped her head around, raised her hand, and shouted at Yu Sheng in a rapid-fire tirade, flipping him off in the process. Then, the other two versions of Irene strolled over. Right in front of Yu Sheng, the three little dolls agilely stacked themselves into a pyramid. At last, they managed to grab the Door handle. With a forceful twist, the Door creaked open.
A broad, pleasant view of the Valley spread before everyone.
Still clinging to the Door handle, the little doll trio instantly forgot the annoyance from a mont ago. Their three voices exclaid in unison, eyes wide in wonder: “Waa—Yu Sheng, you actually pulled it off! Not bad!”
The topmost Irene sprang down in excitent and darted across to the other side: “I’ll scout ahead!”
But Yu Sheng suddenly frowned. Sothing seed off on the far side of the view. “Wait—hold on! I think I ssed up the orientation—”
But he was a second too late. The little doll had already leapt through the Door.
A beat later, a cry rang out: “Waaah—!”
Then ca a solid splat.
Yu Sheng and Foxy rushed to the threshold and peered out. They saw the Doll Lady sprawled in a tangle just beyond the edge of the Valley platform, lying flat among broken stones.
The two Irenes who stayed behind in the basent were hopping mad, cursing: “Yu Sheng, you bastard! Did you seriously open the Door at the edge of a cliff!? Why not just hang it in midair while you’re at it!?”
Yu Sheng hastily manipulated the ground on the other side of the Door, lifting the terrain to align with the fra and bringing the fallen Irene back up to level. Then he and Foxy hurried over to retrieve the dazed little doll, smoothing her clothes and offering an explanation:
“Okay, okay, look—the plan was to have the Door open inward onto the platform. That way we could eventually build a circle of Doors around the high platform, turn the whole space into a grand hall. We’d call it the ‘Hall of Ten Thousand Doors,’ leading to every corner of the universe. The platform edge would serve as the outer wall of the hall…”
Irene shot upright and yanked at Yu Sheng’s hair: “Then why the hell did I fall off!?”
“…I opened it backwards.”
“Yu Sheng, you son of a—! I &*%…”
The next two minutes were filled with a barrage of unfiltered profanity from Irene.
By the third minute, the Doll had cooled down.
She sat on the platform, watching Yu Sheng fuss around with the giant Door, mumbling to herself: “Honestly, your ‘Hall of Ten Thousand Doors’ idea is kind of cool. Feels like so secret organization thing—like one of those that doesn’t show up for forty episodes in the main storyline, then appears just when the protagonist is finally making progress, only to show a silhouette at the end of the episode. Then, when the writers run out of plot, they blow up the whole Hall. Or they get blown up right at the start.”
“You really need to stop watching dumb shows,” Yu Sheng muttered while wiping sweat. “And could you pick a better example? Does it have to get blown up?”
“That’s just what’s popular now. Without a backstory soaked in blood and vengeance, the protagonist has no drive,” Irene said, propping her chin on her hands, watching Yu Sheng. “Can you fix it? You’ve been at it a while. If it really doesn’t work, just leave the Door reversed. Could be a trap to keep intruders out. First step through, boom, faceplant.”
“Anyone who can open the Door has clearance. Who are we even trapping?” Yu Sheng grumbled. “Alright, done. Co take a look.”
Under his adjustnts, the faulty Teleportation Door was finally corrected.
Now standing solemnly on the platform was a grand Door with a flat top, frad in gray-white stone with a rocky texture. Simple and unadorned, it held an austere kind of majesty. At its center, instead of a conventional handle, was a triangular “stone block” embedded directly into the surface—its rough edges and lack of decoration made it seem out of place, yet oddly fitting.
Now, anyone who had undergone the Blood Bestowal Ceremony could twist that central triangle to open a path back to the basent at Wutong Road No. 66.
Irene and Foxy stepped up with interest, inspecting the Door. The little doll nodded with her hand on her chin: “Not bad. Honestly, it’s got way more design than that toilet you built.”
Yu Sheng sighed, exasperated: “How many tis do I have to tell you? That wasn’t a toilet!”
“Yeah yeah, your ‘Phase One Construction,’ got it,” Irene waved dismissively, then pointed at the triangle. “Why’s the handle in the center?”
“Aesthetics. Adds mystery—plus it throws off newbies so they can’t instantly tell which side the Door opens from.”
Irene stared at him: “…You’re insane. Why a triangle?”
Yu Sheng scratched his nose: “Oh, that was symbolic. It represents the three founders of the Hotel—us.”
Irene gave him a long, skeptical look: “…Really?”
Yu Sheng sighed: “Honestly, I was trying to sculpt a tiger head. Botched it. Tried switching to a dog head. Botched that too…”
“…”
A mont later, the little doll took a step back, putting on a solemn expression as she gazed at the Door and its central triangle.
“A symbol of the three great founders of the Hotel. Truly magnificent,” she intoned with a deadpan voice.
Yu Sheng nodded earnestly: “Truly magnificent.”
Foxy looked between Irene and Yu Sheng, utterly confused, then clapped along with them anyway: “Mm-hmm. Truly magnificent…”
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