Chapter 130: Underground Ruins

Lei Kedun's paper doll followed Ke Lai En and Miss Sha Lun as they continued to inspect the remaining rooms, each room containing a humanoid statue of a righteous deity.

"There's some evil intent here."

"A Er, do you know anything?"

Ke Lai En let out a sigh, then turned his gaze toward Lei Kedun's paper doll.

He controlled the paper doll to write a word in the air.

Ke Lai En looked puzzled at Miss Sha Lun beside him.

"I know," Sha Lun explained.

Ke Lai En felt a breath stuck in his chest; he thought A Er was doing it on purpose.

Ke Lai En thought to himself, "The paper doll can't speak; can't you make a few more gestures!"

The paper doll extended its hand and gestured again in the air, and Ke Lai En looked puzzled at Sha Lun.

"Can't, too troublesome!"

"It can use divination or prophecy to discern part of your thoughts."

After a concise translation, Sha Lun also briefly explained why the other could know the sarcastic remark in his mind.

After some hassle, Ke Lai En felt considerably more relaxed; A Er still had the mind to joke with him, indicating there shouldn't be great danger here.

Unperturbed by Ke Lai En's interaction with the paper doll, Sha Lun floated a calm remark:

"There's another door."

Ke Lai En, hearing this, looked at the stone door at the very center of the ruin, a hint of dread flashing in his heart.

Being in the core area of this ancient structure also meant it was the most dangerous.

"What do you think of that?"

Ke Lai En turned his head toward Miss Sha Lun and asked.

Since divination couldn't be performed above the gray mist, he felt Sha Lun's inspiration and spiritual intuition were more reliable than his own; she could communicate with the spirit realm unimpeded, whereas he could not.

Sha Lun closed her eyes, and after a moment reopened them to answer:

"Very dangerous, but the danger is restrained."

"Is restrained danger perhaps equivalent to something being sealed inside?"

Ke Lai En speculated in his mind, his gaze subconsciously drifting toward the silent paper doll.

Under Lei Kedun's control, the paper doll shook its head, indicating it also didn't know.

Ke Lai En held a lantern in one hand, while his other hand was already in his pocket, gripping several talismans.

He hadn't gone far forward; illuminated by the lantern's light, Ke Lai En saw a passage ahead blocked by boulders and earth.

On both sides there were stone doors resembling the main hall; the right-hand door was already filled with mud and rocks.

Sha Lun floated directly onto the massive stone ahead, merged into it, and vanished.

After a few minutes, Sha Lun emerged from the earth again, speaking calmly:

"Completely collapsed."

Ke Lai En nodded and looked at the left stone door that hadn't fully closed:

"We have only one choice now."

Lei Kedun controlled the paper doll to go ahead; after all, it's just an ordinary paper doll, any problems wouldn't need to be concerned about.

Moreover, the hotpot evil spirit inside probably wouldn't bother a paper doll; it wanted to lure the one behind the paper doll into it.

The paper doll's appearance was merely a false illusion; its substance remained a thin sheet of paper, easily slipping through the narrow gap of the stone door.

The ground was littered with various items and corpses; the most striking were several extraordinary traits of sailors and scholars on the floor.

If not for the paper doll's limitation, Lei Kedun would have liked to pick up all the extraordinary traits on the ground.

Looking further ahead, there was a blood‑soaked double door. The next second, the water surface beneath Lei Kedun rippled, and the scene inside vanished.

"You destroyed my paper doll so quickly, how boring; you don't even come out to chat a bit. The evil spirit truly is an evil spirit; even with reason it can't work."

He curled his lip and muttered a few words at the water stains on the ground. Missing those scattered extraordinary traits left Lei Kedun a bit regretful.

He then waved his hand, scattering a cloud of black powder; all traces on the ground vanished, as if nothing had been there before Lei Kedun arrived.

He then turned and left the basement, already knowing Ke Lai En and Miss Sha Lun wouldn't continue exploring.

Inside the underground ruin, Ke Lai En's spiritual sight shut down immediately as the paper doll collapsed into paper scraps.

Ke Lai En looked at Sha Lun beside him and asked:

"The paper doll was destroyed; what's the situation?"

Sha Lun stared ahead, her tone uncertain, and said:

"Evil spirit."

Ke Lai En was silent for a while, withdrew his gaze from the stone door, turned, and said to Sha Lun:

"Let's go back."

When Ke Lai En returned to his house on Mingsike Jie, Lei Kedun was sitting on his living‑room sofa, shaping a lump of clay in his hands.

Ke Lai En wasn't surprised to see him in his own living room; his ability to traverse the spirit realm had been used more than once. After moving to the adjacent sofa and sitting down, he asked directly:

"Do you know what's going on with that ruin?"

Hearing this, Lei Kedun looked up at Ke Lai En and at Sha Lun, whose silhouette appeared on the glass window beside them.

He adopted a thoughtful pose, pondered for a while, then said:

"I know a bit. Are you asking why I only threw a paper doll in? Or about those statues? Or perhaps that evil spirit?"

Ke Lai En stared at Lei Kedun for a long moment before speaking:

"I want to ask about all of them!"

"One question costs 300 pounds! Or you can trade it for future extraordinary abilities."

Lei Kèdùn's face broke into a brilliant smile, and he quoted a price.

"How do we exchange extraordinary abilities?"

"And why do you always have to put a price in front?"

Ke Lai'en asked curiously.

"What if you want to become a spendthrift boy, letting me profit!"

"Readers, this Path's Sequence 6 is called the Scholar; its hallmark is that, due to extensive learning, it is versatile, able to discern, see clearly, remember, and imitate abilities it has witnessed."

Lei Kèdùn gave a brief explanation.

The Faceless One's ability is the one Lei Kèdùn is most eager to analyze, but with this power to alter one's physical appearance, Lei Kèdùn is unsure whether he could use it after analysis, since he hasn't undergone the corresponding demon‑elixir body modification.

"I already owe you over ten thousand pounds!"

Ke Lai'en said flatly, feeling that the other party seemed intent on emptying his already modest wallet.

"Being able to utter a term like 'spendthrift boy'—that guy must be a time‑traveler!" Ke Lai'en affirmed his suspicion about Lei Kèdùn's identity in his mind.

Lei Kèdùn set down the clay in his hand, turned his body, and said in a slightly more serious tone:

"The statue in that underground ruin was the form the Six Gods used previously, but later the church replaced the statues with more abstract holy seals."

"As for why there is no steam statue, it's because He ascended to godhood later; steam is the only one among the Seven Gods who became a True God only in the last era."

Lei Kèdùn finished explaining the underground ruin's statue, without giving Ke Lai'en a chance to question, and continued:

"You should know that the apex of a sequence is the True God, so it's not unusual for the Seven Gods to have humanoid forms, right?"

"So the Seven Gods also ascended by ingesting demon elixirs?"

Ke Lai'en asked curiously, noting that this differed from what the major churches' scriptures recorded.

"Of course, we can't truly believe the doctrine the church propagates!"

Lei Kèdùn nodded without taking a stance.

Uh. Ke Lai'en, who had indeed once believed the church's records, nodded awkwardly, then changed the subject:

"What's the situation with that evil spirit?"

"Red Angel Medici, as well as the amalgam of Suo Lun and Ai Yin Huo En—do not provoke Him, and do not trust Him; He is the evil spirit of the Hunter Path."

"Him?"

Ke Lai'en seized the point in Lei Kèdùn's words.

"They were once Sequence‑1 angels, but later were slain by Blood Emperor Yali Si Ta Tu Duo, becoming stepping stones for the Blood Emperor's ascent to Sequence 0."

"Hiss! All three Sequence‑1 angels were killed together! Is the Blood Emperor really that powerful?"

"Accurately speaking, Medici is essentially the Angel King, stronger than ordinary Sequence‑1 angels; as for the Blood Emperor, He achieved it with others' help—otherwise even Medici alone might not have been able to defeat Him."

"We'll discuss the remaining questions later; you haven't encountered these yet."

Lei Kèdùn waved his hand, cutting off the question Ke Lai'en was about to ask.

Ke Lai'en's expression turned odd; he thought the other meant he would encounter these later.

Without caring what Ke Lai'en was thinking, Lei Kèdùn reminded him that he was tainted with an evil spirit's aura:

"You'd better purify the evil spirit aura on you, or you'll have nightmares at night."

"When did I become tainted with the evil spirit's aura?"

Ke Lai'en looked puzzled; he hadn't even seen the evil spirit's face.

"When you used spiritual sight to follow my paper figure into that stone gate!"

Lei Kèdùn replied.

Realizing the aura came from the Red Angel evil spirit and would be hard to dispel, Lei Kèdùn tossed a purification talisman to Ke Lai'en.

"This talisman has a purification effect, its strength roughly equivalent to Sequence 6 to Sequence 5; you only have a trace of aura, so this talisman should suffice to cleanse it."

"Activating the script is the same for all."

Ke Lai'en took the talisman, examined it closely, seeing no difference from the previous one. Looking up again, the other's figure had already vanished from the living room.

(End of Chapter)