Capítulo 962: Chapter 962: Lost on the Path
The Brilliant Divine Court is an architectural complex formed by five temples, with the Father God Temple at the center and the temples of the Four Main Gods symmetrically distributed around it. From above, it looks like a boomerang—this description comes 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 boomerang.
Indeed, a female hooligan is worthy of the title; even when she’s innocent, it’s in a direction different from normal people.
The Supreme 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 testament to the Supreme Life Goddess and every Little Douding in the Divine Realm’s hobby of whimsically renaming things.
I eagerly await the historic moment when the great Jiajia renames the bridge at our doorstep to “Xizhimen Overpass”, because at this time, 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 name.
The Supreme Life Goddess Temple has a completely fitting verdant shape; its main hall is likely built from some 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 merged 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 trimmed 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 meters high? Frankly speaking, if invaders came, 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 numerous times. Some gods waved from afar, some stopped to chat, questioning my origins. I even met a passing two-headed Golden Giant Dragon, who halted with a grand drift beside me, 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 someone approached, I promptly landed, took out a camera, 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-time artist instead of someone lost. After all, I represent the face of one-third of the Void Race population…
Slowing down actually seemed 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 something 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 seemed 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 moment seemed so much like something 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 came 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 time to act so recklessly. Then, Hitler would have had a much easier time.
Just as I was fiddling with the flower bud for the fourth time, it seemed 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 seemed to be of the same 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 mean you have to poke at someone’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 mess with Yina’s spear; it’s sharpened from Father God’s toothpick, indestructible, you know…”
By this time, 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 me was this Little One’s fiery temperament. Before this, I had always thought Dingdang’s race took the silly-cute route. If that were true, the one in front of me 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 summertime brings a ton of flies and mosquitoes, and you amplify the sound by several times, it’s the same 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-meter-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 remembered—oh no, this was a big deal!
Just as this thought popped up, the swarm of Three-inch Dings surrounding me suddenly all raised their small twigs in unison, and a hidden Little Thing shouted the command: “Ready—release!”
With no time to react, countless green vines suddenly appeared in the air, wrapping me 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 meters 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! Someone go and tell the Sister Goddess—hey, don’t move recklessly, space is tight, you know!”
I looked at the Little Douding Goddess named Yina tied together with me. 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 moment’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 nameless 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 come down after watching you hover outside for ages.”
Me: “…”
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 time,” another Douding Goddess suddenly came over and poked my nose with a twig, “Do you have any candy left? The soft, bubble-blowing kind from last time!”
I was stunned, then examined the Little One with a small white flower on her head, vaguely recalling that the last time I came to the Divine Realm, I happened to run into a gathering of three thousand Wild Dingdangs, and one of them seemed 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 remembered this little one because she ate bubble gum last time and ended up inside a bubble herself…
“Yes, yes, it was me, hurry up and get me 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 time; she immediately chose candy over me.
Then several other Wild Dingdangs recognized me; they were the ones who attended the gathering last time and scavenged a lot of novel candy from me. 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 me from the start—if you recognized me early on, why didn’t you say something 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 named 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 becomes ineffective on me. No matter how capable you are of changing the world, in a Void environment, you can only throw meaningless punches at me, 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 me, 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 famed 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 awesome warrior—the only Life Goddess in the Divine Realm who ever applied to the War God Series, though I didn’t get in…”
Me: “…” In fact, what I wanted to say is that the world is really small; Wild Dingdang with misplaced talents, hello, do you need me 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 someone big enough to watch over it. If we opened a door the same 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 men named 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 remember the rules, just ask for candy, after all, we lack nothing else!”
So I atoned for the colossal crime of destroying the Life Temple’s reception with two Alpine candies.
“Count your steps as you go,” the Guard Captain named 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 time, a poor guy finally got permission to enter the temple and walked into those walls, spending two hours to come 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 met of the same 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 seemed 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 me was not the expected Temple Garden.
This was an alley reminiscent of pre-expansion urban life from over a decade ago, lined with somewhat 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! Come home for dinner!” (To be continued. If you like this story, please visit Qidian () to cast your recommendation votes and monthly votes. Your support is my greatest motivation.)