Chapter 519: The Secluded Clone

Pure, clear light shone, lighting every corner, eliminating all trace of darkness and leaving no shadow.

The surging darkness and shadows shrank and dissolved under the light, quickly dispelled.

But the scarlet light seeping from the dolls' crevices grew richer, carrying an almost tangible madness, tinting the surrounding pale gold light with a faint red.

A Meng leisurely walked to the corner, took a dark brown high-backed chair from his collection and sat down, conjuring a cup of deep red, fragrant wine as if by magic.

He seemed like a leisurely commentator, sipping the wine as he spoke:

"Their materials have already developed resistance to the purifying power of the solar domain; the more we purify, the more it aggravates certain pollutants within them."

"You might as well try to destroy this place outright with force."

"Then trigger the temple's stress reaction?" Lei Kedun glanced sideways at A Meng behind him with his peripheral vision, rejecting the suggestion.

He gazed deeply at the dolls whose aura was fused with the temple; that faint sense of danger lingered, though he couldn't tell its source.

When a doll lunged near him, he casually tossed a pea onto the ground.

The pea instantly sprouted into thick green vines that blanketed the area like a downpour, submerging all the dolls.

They tangled and intertwined, quickly forming a forest that rose layer upon layer with no visible top; the dolls were forcibly scattered throughout the green forest and vanished from sight along with the vines.

After briefly shaking off the dolls, Lei Kedun glanced at A Meng, still calmly sipping red wine in the high-backed chair, and said:

"You've been following me just to fish in troubled waters at that moment; do you still need something here?"

"Aren't you what I need?" A Meng chuckled, throwing the question back.

Lei Kedun's gaze paused, then he shifted it aside as if nothing, and strode toward the passage behind the prayer hall.

His movements lacked continuity; without Ke Lai En's aid from the gray mist above, the temple's negative effect on flesh-and-blood life resurfaced in him.

If he stayed long, even as a demigod, his body would suffer irreparable damage, like using ancient machinery—no amount of refurbishing could make it like new.

A Meng appeared inopportunely beside Lei Kedun and asked:

"Why not ask me for help? I can help you steal away your negative effects."

"Naturally, I worry you'll sneakily take more than just that." Lei Kedun frankly voiced his concern.

While speaking, he kept walking toward the garden beyond the passage; before even getting close, he noticed the garden had reappeared with paper, tin, and sawdust flowers and trees, though clearly much sparser than before.

As he approached, he saw a doll standing in the garden, resembling a scarecrow:

Its body was simply bound from dry straw, wearing a tattered, dark coarse rag shirt, a patched pointed hat on its head, and its face painted with an exaggerated smile in oil pigment.

It had no hands; instead, it bore a sickle and a nail rake, with a rusted hollow iron pipe where its feet should be.

"It looks like the materials here are all poor; this doll seems cobbled together from whatever scraps were available."

Lei Kedun sighed while condensing in his hand an ancient-looking spear, its tip to shaft ablaze with clusters of dark red, blood-tinged flames.

The dark red spear shot forth upon formation, leaving a fading trail of dark red light in the air, easily piercing the scarecrow-like doll's body.

The straw-bound doll's body instantly ignited in dark red flame, crumbling as it burned to ash.

During the burning, the doll's body quickly grew thin and brittle, finally scattering into fragments like red phosphorus moonlight.

On the garden's other side, a surge of crimson moonlight rose, forming a straw-bound doll within it.

Its oil-painted face turned into an angry expression; the withered yellow straw on its body became scarlet, as if soaked in blood, with a faint mist steaming off it.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! The dry straw on the doll shot out like arrows, leaving a sound of sharp objects slicing the air.

Scarlet straw rained down thick and fast, instantly piercing the bodies of Lei Kedun and A Meng.

The former's body suddenly turned translucent and illusory; upon being pierced by the straw, it became a heap of foam. These foams still reflected specks of brilliant starlight, casting dreamlike colors, drifting apart—then instantly shattered as straw pierced them.

Arrow-like straw easily pierced A Meng's body, making a puffing sound, yet drew no trace of blood; A Meng bore no wound, directly stealing the harm the scarlet straw would have inflicted on him.

A Meng lifted his monocle at the right eye, strolling through the straw arrows like raindrops, approaching Lei Kedun who had appeared at the garden's edge.

Lei Kedun simply glanced at the sign hanging on the front door, which bore a few words resembling ancient Frasak: 'Doll Workshop'.

A flicker of depth passed through his eyes; he roughly understood what lay beyond this door.

He estimated he had about twenty minutes left before the accumulating negative effects would impair his actions and judgment.

The door creaked open under his push; unlike the darkness elsewhere, the doll workshop was fully lit, its illumination coming from crystal fixtures shaped like lampposts.

They emitted a bright yellow light like the sun, bathing the entire workshop in clarity, leaving no darkness or shadow.

Lei Kedun reached out and lightly grasped the air, drawing a veil of tranquil night from the void to shroud himself, cleverly masking his presence and vanishing from sight.

After securing his concealment, he then stepped into the doll workshop.

Upon entering the workshop, Lei Kedun felt that layer of concealment greatly weakened; the sluggishness like old machinery faded quickly, replaced by a bubbling restlessness from his heart, as all repressed emotions surged and chaotic thoughts flooded his mind.

Under the solar domain's influence here, some emotions were suppressed to the extreme, others became blazingly hot, and still others felt as if winter had suddenly turned to midsummer.

As the sluggishness faded completely, Lei Kedun faintly felt sweat beading on his forehead; the restlessness spread from emotion to body.

Taking a deep breath, the deep blue silently flowing in his eyes grew purer and richer, giving an unusually sacred, wise impression, yet appearing rather cold, devoid of warmth.

In this state, his resistance to surrounding abnormalities noticeably increased.

Now he had the energy to survey the scene: the place resembled a large workshop, with neat arrays of wood-and-metal hybrid machines, each bearing at least two half-bodied dolls, like workers fixed in place, endlessly repeating the same task.

On the workbench, a large tree made of sawdust, metal sheets, and colored paper was repeatedly disassembled and reassembled.

Lei Kedon quickly spotted among the dolls a particularly striking one: it wore a grayish-white stone mask on its head, with a crystal-cut monocle set in the right eye socket.

Apparently noticing Lei Kedon's gaze, it halted its hand movements, looked up at him somewhat bewildered, then lowered its head again, dazed.

"Not A Meng?" a doubt flickered in Lei Kedon's mind; the workshop's light was a bit glaring, affecting his probing vision, making things unclear.

A Meng's silhouette suddenly appeared in the workshop; he familiarly paced around twice, approached the doll with the monocle-equipped mask, reached out to pluck the monocle from its face, tossed it twice in his hand, and said:

"A monotonous life drove this clone into self‑seclusion; in short, he shut himself off."

As A Meng spoke, Lei Kedon faintly saw several pale light points detach from the doll and merge into A Meng's body.

Seeing this, he curiously asked: "You don't want this clone anymore?"

After pocketing the monocle, A Meng calmly said:

"He simply no longer wished to be a doll, choosing instead to return directly to his true body."

"The dolls here only have a shell and mad instinct left, controlled by this temple; their consciousness lingers in the Sistine woven from pure information, or rather, they are sealed there."

"Do you want to go there and have a look? The information there has been heavily polluted, and it could collapse at any moment."

Leikeddun did not answer immediately, his eyes flowing with clear radiant light instantly became extremely deep, like the sea before a storm, his eyes obviously lost focus, a vast blank.

In this situation, he could glimpse the river representing fate and discern some future trends.

After a brief loss of focus, his eyes became clear again; he did not 'prophesy' much useful information, but he roughly understood the danger therein and his gain.

After a brief silence, he nodded and said: 'You can go.'

(End of chapter)