Capítulo 962: Chapter 962: Lost on the Path
The Brilliant Divine Court is an architectural complex ford by five temples, with the Father God Temple at the center and the temples of the Four Main Gods symtrically distributed around it. From above, it looks like a boorang—this description cos from Bingdisi herself. I greatly admire that female hooligan’s imagination. Even in her loli phase, she dared to fly alone to the air defense zone of the Father God Temple, firmly dreaming one day to throw the Brilliant Divine Court like a boorang.
Indeed, a female hooligan is worthy of the title; even when she’s innocent, it’s in a direction different from normal people.
The Supre Life Goddess Temple is located beside the Father God Temple, connected by a super bridge with uncountable lanes known as the “Life Monsoon Corridor”. I heard it was called Rainbow Bridge not long ago, and before that, it was dubbed Green Wall—a testant to the Supre Life Goddess and every Little Douding in the Divine Realm’s hobby of whimsically renaming things.
I eagerly await the historic mont when the great Jiajia renas the bridge at our doorstep to “Xizhin Overpass”, because at this ti, Dingdang might be busy telling her God Sister earthly oddities. I am confident that soon the Brilliant Divine Court will magically have a landmark building with an Earthly na.
The Supre Life Goddess Temple has a completely fitting verdant shape; its main hall is likely built from so kind of white stones, though it’s hardly visible. Dense vines have completely wrapped the temple, while abundant and ever-blooming flowers and grasses spread lavishly along the massive circular walls. Only through gaps in these plants can one glimpse a hint of the temple’s true color. At the top of the temple is a gigantic canopy, seemingly larger than the uncontrollably growing World Tree in Shadow City. I looked up, suspecting that a single falling leaf could be used as rolling logs and boulders. It’s said the Life Goddess’s temple rged with an original World Tree, which now appears to be true.
The unchecked growth of plants entwines the grand temple but doesn’t create any sense of chaos. Standing at the temple entrance, looking up at high walls conveys an overarching harmony and exuberant freedom of life—that’s true primal nature. One glance at the Life Goddess’s temple would make you cry upon returning to see the city’s rectangular trees trimd in industrial pollution and car emissions.
Nonetheless, as I admire, the first problem is… Where’s the darn door?!
There’s no visible entrance to the entire Life Goddess Temple!
I’ve been circling outside for more than ten minutes and haven’t found anything resembling an entrance on this colossal temple. At this point, I regret not asking Father God for a guide when saying goodbye. I didn’t ask, and he might have forgotten too.
Initially, my plan was simple: arrive at the Life Temple and have the temple guards lead the way in. But who knew this place doesn’t have temple guards! In hindsight, it makes sense; every temple guard is a god from the respective race. Can you imagine a tiny three-inch creature wielding a toothpick to guard a temple at least two thousand ters high? Frankly speaking, if invaders ca, those little folks might get trampled.
Returning defeated would certainly not be dignified. I examined the walls covered in vines for a door possibly concealed by flora, attracting curiosity from passing Divine Race beings nurous tis. So gods waved from afar, so stopped to chat, questioning my origins. I even t a passing two-headed Golden Giant Dragon, who halted with a grand drift beside , snorting and asking if I needed a lift. Upon inquiries, he wanted to go to the Frozen Continent—I couldn’t fathom how he concluded a person circling the Life Temple for fifteen minutes intended to hitch a ride to Ice Wind Valley.
Then I smartened up; whenever soone approached, I promptly landed, took out a cara, and pretended to photograph the temple rapidly. Occasionally, I slowed down and subtly nodded, feigning deep interest in an architectural study, trying to disguise myself as a tourist and small-ti artist instead of soone lost. After all, I represent the face of one-third of the Void Race population…
Slowing down actually seed to show the Life Temple entrance, located not at the “Life Monsoon Corridor” temple front but on the temple side where the vines looked significantly thinner. I hurried over and started searching behind a mass of vegetation without finding the entrance, only to discover sothing else: a green bud about the size of an outer-space cup hanging behind layers of leaves.
Out of curiosity, I poked this large bud; it felt soft to the touch, emitting a fresh fragrance. The most astonishing part was the bud seed to react, trembling slightly, almost as if sentient. This fascinating object sparked vigorous curiosity; I crouched beside it for serious observation, yet the bud remained motionless. After a while, impatient, I poked it again, causing the bud to quiver satisfyingly again…
Recalling this scene afterward, I insisted that it was the mystical halo of Quan’er Jiu near the Three-inch Ding Temple that affected my mind, because what I did at that mont seed so much like sothing a primary school dropout would do.
I was just there constantly teasing that quirky flower bud, with a pure smile like that of a second-grader. There’s a saying that when people are alone, they’re most likely to act foolishly. It’s said that joining the Axis Powers and declaring war was an idea Mussolini ca up with after pondering alone in a room for a night. If he had been surrounded by seventy or eighty chattering grannies and grandpas, he would have had no ti to act so recklessly. Then, Hitler would have had a much easier ti.
Just as I was fiddling with the flower bud for the fourth ti, it seed to finally be fed up. It suddenly shuddered violently, then with a plop, fell to the ground and completely broke apart. Out of the flower bud sprang a Three-inch Ding wearing a green vest and skirt, who at a glance seed to be of the sa race as Dingdang. This Little One quickly shook off the remnants of the flower bud from herself, flew over with a swoosh, and thrust a short spear, shorter than a candy stick, at my nose, all the while chattering incessantly: “What are you doing, what are you doing, what are you doing, just because I took a nap on duty doesn’t an you have to poke at soone’s house until it falls down! The Sister Goddess never said you can’t sleep while on guard duty, did she—oh gosh, who are you? Wait a minute! Are you an invader sneaking into the temple? Guards, guards! Yina caught an invader! Yina has the invader under control! Ah, the invader is reaching for Yina! Yina surrounds the invader from inside and all directions! Hey, don’t ss with Yina’s spear; it’s sharpened from Father God’s toothpick, indestructible, you know…”
By this ti, I was already staring wide-eyed in disbelief. Never in a million years did I expect to encounter a Life Goddess in such circumstances—especially one hanging on the outer wall of the temple, sneaking a nap. What a miraculous race, right? Of course, the second thing that shocked was this Little One’s fiery temperant. Before this, I had always thought Dingdang’s race took the silly-cute route. If that were true, the one in front of is definitely the odd one out among the Life Goddesses; she might have been a grounded Guo Degang in her past life.
Just as I was zoning out, a flurry of wing flapping sounds erupted nearby, a noise only heard when a swarm of Life Goddesses takes off together. Of course, if sumrti brings a ton of flies and mosquitoes, and you amplify the sound by several tis, it’s the sa noise—I turned my head in surprise and saw that I had already been surrounded by at least… well, a large number of Three-inch Dings.
And each one was holding a small twig.
This is more like it. Normal Life Goddesses follow the mage path, wielding life branches to summon ten-ter-tall divine beasts and swarms of cannibal flowers. That’s the proper use of these Little Doudings. I looked at the toothpick in my hand—declared by the little Life Goddess I had caught as an indestructible spear—and shook my head slightly. I truly had no idea how a Three-inch Ding, not even the size of a palm, decided to use it as a weapon.
Then, after a second, I rembered—oh no, this was a big deal!
Just as this thought popped up, the swarm of Three-inch Dings surrounding suddenly all raised their small twigs in unison, and a hidden Little Thing shouted the command: “Ready—release!”
With no ti to react, countless green vines suddenly appeared in the air, wrapping up in the blink of an eye like a pharaoh freshly excavated from a pyramid…
The divine power unleashed by at least hundreds of Life Goddesses was compressed into a mass of vines no more than two ters in radius. You can imagine how incredibly strong these things are. In fact, I was completely sure that these lush green plants had surpassed the concept of “biology” altogether. I tried struggling a bit and found that I couldn’t break them at all—totally different from the flower vines Dingdang would playfully conjure.
“Oh yeah! Captain Yina wins a great victory, the invader is tied up by the law! Guards! Keep surrounding the invader! Soone go and tell the Sister Goddess—hey, don’t move recklessly, space is tight, you know!”
I looked at the Little Douding Goddess nad Yina tied together with . When the temple guards released the flower vines earlier, she didn’t dodge but instead was enthusiastically shouting and screaming. Now she was tied up on my shoulder, and I suddenly found this whole affair utterly comical.
“Well, turns out there are guards here after all.”
After a mont’s silence, I realized that discussing any topic relating to the current situation would inevitably lead to sarcastic remarks about the intelligence of this group of Little Ones. So, I changed the subject instead.
“Of course! The temple must have guards!” spoke a certain naless Little Douding, waving a small twig up and down, “We usually hide under the leaves, and we were all guessing when you were going to co down after watching you hover outside for ages.”
: “…”
I was being watched by a group of Little Doudings whose intelligence barely reached above ground level; this is just too embarrassing!
“By the way, Momo saw you last ti,” another Douding Goddess suddenly ca over and poked my nose with a twig, “Do you have any candy left? The soft, bubble-blowing kind from last ti!”
I was stunned, then examined the Little One with a small white flower on her head, vaguely recalling that the last ti I ca to the Divine Realm, I happened to run into a gathering of three thousand Wild Dingdangs, and one of them seed to be her—of course, these little things are really hard to tell apart at first glance; they have faces as small as peanuts. I mainly rembered this little one because she ate bubble gum last ti and ended up inside a bubble herself…
“Yes, yes, it was , hurry up and get out.”
“Oh, where’s your candy?” Momo quickly burrowed into the vines, and soon I felt a little thing rummaging through my pockets, tears streaming down my face as I thought that these Wild Dingdangs really had the brain capacity to focus on only one thing at a ti; she imdiately chose candy over .
Then several other Wild Dingdangs recognized ; they were the ones who attended the gathering last ti and scavenged a lot of novel candy from . These experienced Little Ones happily burrowed over and started searching every pocket on my body, during which a few quick-mouthed Doudings shouted that they had recognized from the start—if you recognized early on, why didn’t you say sothing instead of joining in with the others causing a fuss!
“The Captain said we should tie you up first.”
A Wild Dingdang with a face full of candy crumbs pointed righteously at the Guard Captain nad Yina.
“I really don’t know how you all normally survive,” I said, perspiring as I moved my limbs. I could actually break free by transforming into my Void Form; that’s the bug of being a Void Creature—once I revert to my original form, anything below the Void becos ineffective on . No matter how capable you are of changing the world, in a Void environnt, you can only throw aningless punches at , and it was clear that this large group of Wild Dingdangs was no match for my punches, but I really couldn’t do that here. I even worried that releasing Void Energy might harm these three-inch-high Little Ones; the strongest among them was barely bigger than a mouse, making them too fragile to touch, “Hey, once you’re full, let go. I need to find Dingdang.”
At this point, the Guard Captain Yina suddenly shouted, “Wow! So you know my soldiers?”
…How slow is this guy’s reaction? In a past life, was she not only a crippled Guo Degang but also a crippled Silvia?
The excitable Douding Sentry Captain hurriedly instructed the removal of the vine coils around , each imbued with unknown layers of divinity, and happily tugged at my ear, inquiring about my background. Upon hearing that this “suspicious, passerby, slow-witted, good-natured, sugar-loaded intruder” in front of her was the recently fad Xyrin Emperor, the little one instantly started flying around excitedly, shouting “big shot, big shot at the top of her lungs, then triumphantly waving the just-retrieved toothpick spear: “Big shot, Yina tells you that Yina is also an aweso warrior—the only Life Goddess in the Divine Realm who ever applied to the War God Series, though I didn’t get in…”
: “…” In fact, what I wanted to say is that the world is really small; Wild Dingdang with misplaced talents, hello, do you need to go back and beat that culprit Bingdisi for you?
“By the way, how do you get into this temple? I couldn’t find an entrance after searching around for ages.”
“Entrance? The Life Temple doesn’t have an entrance because we couldn’t find soone big enough to watch over it. If we opened a door the sa size as us, it wouldn’t work—other gods can’t get in. We guard the walls, not a gate, oh, and not out of loneliness either. If you want to go in, you need to go to the reception first; the reception will register you on the visitor list, then you can just walk through the walls.”
I was shocked: there’s a reception in such an advanced place? But thinking about it later, the Shadow City also has several old n nad Uncle Wang watching the gate, I felt reassured, and just asked: “Where’s the reception?”
Yina thought for a long while, raised a hand, and said: “I am! Oh right, you knocked down the reception earlier, and by the rules—you should by the rules—what was it again?” This Douding asked another passing Wild Dingdang, who replied without turning: “I don’t know! The Goddess Sister said if you can’t rember the rules, just ask for candy, after all, we lack nothing else!”
So I atoned for the colossal cri of destroying the Life Temple’s reception with two Alpine candies.
“Count your steps as you go,” the Guard Captain nad Yina was still chirping about behind, explaining the precautions, “based on your stride, around twenty steps should lead you to the garden where Dingdang and the Goddess Sister are. If you don’t see it, take two steps sideways, you might have walked into another wall; there are several load-bearing walls running through the whole temple. Last ti, a poor guy finally got permission to enter the temple and walked into those walls, spending two hours to co out from the other end of the temple…”
I bid farewell to this exceedingly talkative Wild Dingdang with heartfelt tears; she might be one of the most gabby creatures I’ve ever t of the sa size, alongside a parrot raised by my neighbor Uncle Zhao when I was a child, who eventually died of dehydration.
Following Yina’s directions, I walked into the outer wall of the Life Temple, finding the interior, apart from dark spots, indeed as if devoid of anything tangible; and though dark, it wasn’t a completely black void—many tiny green specks could be seen flitting around in my vision; I guessed these were the legendary Life Essences, though they could also be temple navigation lights. As I walked forward, silently counting my steps, despite the chatter of the Wild Dingdang, she made a valuable point. Considering I always seed to attract trouble, I just might walk into a load-bearing wall.
After about twenty steps, I found a sudden openness, seemingly having passed through the outer wall.
But what appeared in front of was not the expected Temple Garden.
This was an alley reminiscent of pre-expansion urban life from over a decade ago, lined with sowhat aged but lively houses; the not-so-spacious cobblestone path was uneven, with moss climbing up along the mottled walls. Blackened wooden electric poles had scraps of paper graffitied by unknown naughty kids sticking to them; a row of words, etched on a pocked concrete wall with a chalk tip, looked quite fresh:
Ah Jun is a big dummy! — written by Xu Qianqian.
Fifteen years ago, a tender yet comforting call resonated from the depths of the alley: “Ah Jun! Co ho for dinner!” (To be continued. If you like this story, please visit Qidian (qidian) to cast your recomndation votes and monthly votes. Your support is my greatest motivation.)
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