absurd deduction game.

The manor gate shattered under the combined attack of several priests.

The heavy oak planks mixed with wrought iron decorations exploded inwards, sending fragments flying like cannonballs, pinning several living plants behind the door that hadn't yet had a chance to pounce on them to the ground.

Herbert took the lead, his warhammer sweeping across the doorway and shattering the still-pulsating dark green runes on either side, completely erasing the remaining restrictions on the entrance.

"rush!"

The team shot into the manor like arrows.

But, the moment they stepped over the threshold—

Fennell's summoning ritual had passed a stage; her voice paused temporarily as she held her breath, awaiting the outcome.

The next second, the color of the sky changed, the cloud vortex spun faster, bringing about a more fundamental spatial alienation.

The originally low-hanging dark red sky seemed to be torn open from the center by an invisible hand. The crack was initially just a thin line, but it quickly expanded to both sides, revealing a deep, dizzying blackness of the universe behind it.

Upon closer inspection, one can discover countless tiny, twinkling galaxies, spiraling nebulae, swirling star clusters, asteroid belts, and even the faint outlines of some colossal, incomprehensible creatures swimming within. The scene is breathtakingly magnificent, as if the entire universe has been compressed into it.

Above the darkness, something is opening its eyes.

A dark red dot resembled a congealed blood bead. Then, the dot began to expand and deform, elongating into an oval outline, with fine, capillary-like patterns emerging at its edges.

Its patterns spread and intertwine, eventually outlining the complete shape of an eye—a huge eye that almost covers a third of the sky in people's field of vision.

The pupils are blood red, with no focal point in the center, only constantly rotating, vortex-like patterns. Looking at them for just one second makes you feel like your soul is being sucked in.

The instant your eyes are fully open—

"clang--"

The death knell tolled from the direction of the eye, its sound dull, long, and metallic, yet also possessing an intangible emptiness.

He is tolling the death knell for this world.

The sound of the bells quickly spread to every corner of the town.

Inside the church, the people hiding in the golden light shield covered their ears and curled up in pain. The remaining monsters on the street stopped moving, looked up at the sky, and let out awe-inspiring howls.

Even the living plants and flesh-and-blood creatures within the manor fell into a brief silence as the bells rang, as if in worship.

Herbert's expression changed drastically.

He almost instinctively screamed, "Don't look at the sky!!!"

But it's still too late.

The guards and combat priests at the forefront instinctively raised their heads the moment they opened their eyes.

Their movements froze.

His eyes widened, his pupils dilated, his mouth slightly open, and a complex expression appeared on his face, a mixture of shock, fear, and a kind of morbid fascination.

Their gazes met those of the giant eye, and so the pollution poured in directly through the channel formed by their gazes.

It felt like an invisible stirring rod was stabbing into the skull, churning it wildly inside, turning brain tissue, nerves, blood vessels, and all the delicate structures into a paste in a fraction of a second.

Thick, blood-tinged fluid mixed with brain matter gushed from their eye sockets, nostrils, ear canals, and mouths, flowing like melting candles.

Their bodies were still standing, not even fallen, yet their lives had already ended completely. Their pupils dilated, their breathing stopped, their heartbeats ceased, and their skin rapidly lost its color, turning ashen.

A few seconds later, the corpse began to soften, like a rag doll that had lost its skeletal support, slumped on the ground, merging with the dark green slime and the warm bed of flesh and blood.

The whole process took less than five seconds.

Several lives were lost just like that, before even the paper doll could be activated—His level of corruption was too high.

"Close your eyes! Don't look up!!!"

Herbert's voice was almost tearing his throat.

The survivors then realized what was happening and lowered their heads in terror, but even so, the presence of the eye above their heads was still too strong to ignore—it was like the Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads, and they could feel its gaze even without looking at it.

A pure, emotionless gaze, like a child observing an ant nest with childlike curiosity.

Qu Xianqing also lowered his head.

But she wasn't acting out of fear, but out of caution.

The blood sword trembled slightly in his hand, and the black mist on the sword became active, as if resisting some kind of invisible pressure.

She could sense that the concentration of pollution contained in that eye's gaze far exceeded anything she had encountered before. If she looked directly into it, even her physical body might not be completely immune.

Behind the main building window.

Yu Xing and the musician looked away almost simultaneously the moment they opened their eyes.

Yu Xing leaned against the inside of the window frame, her gaze fixed on the floor inside. The musician lowered his head slightly, picked up a cup of tea that he had somehow acquired, and slowly took a sip, as if the devastating scene outside the window was less important than the temperature of the tea.

Only Evan stood by the window, head tilted back, his face unprotected, staring straight at the giant eye in the sky.

There was no fear in his eyes, only fanaticism.

Pure, almost frenzied devotion.

His pupils reflected the outline of that eye, and fine, dark green blood vessels began to appear on the whites of his eyes. The corners of his mouth involuntarily turned up, revealing a twisted smile.

Reason slipped away as quickly as sand in an hourglass, but he didn't care and even enjoyed the process.

“It’s here…it’s here…” Evan murmured, his voice trembling with excitement, “My Lord…is watching…this is a blessing…it is the response to the call…”

He opened his arms as if to embrace the sky.

"Look at me a little longer... look at this world a little longer... and then... descend..."

Up in the attic, Fernail also looked up.

She wasn't as frenzied as Evan, but her eyes burned with the same intense light. The dark green compound eye structure resonated with the pupil of the giant eye in the sky, with countless tiny hexagonal lattices spinning rapidly within it, analyzing the incomprehensible flow of information transmitted from that eye.

She raised her ceremonial staff, fingers spread, towards the sky, and began to recite the final invocation.

Thousands of dark green butterflies fluttered their wings together, and the sound was no longer gentle, but became a grand, hollow, and blasphemous echo.

"I offer up countless filthy souls as a sacrifice—"

"It uses rotten flesh and blood as its breeding ground—"

"Using the despair of this world as an anchor—"

"Calling your name—"

She paused, then her voice suddenly rose, each syllable seeming to tear apart the fabric of space:
"A traveler from afar!"

"An ancient being slumbering beyond the stars!"

Please turn your gaze—

"Permanently—"

"Gaze upon this!!!"

The moment the last three words were uttered, the pupil of the giant eye in the sky contracted slightly.

It's like it's in focus.

Then, the intensity of the gaze suddenly increased tenfold. If before it was just a curious glance, now it was a serious observation.

Invisible pollution poured down from the sky like a waterfall. Even without looking directly at it, one could feel the terrifying oppression. The air almost solidified, making it extremely difficult for the priests to breathe. They felt a stinging pain on their skin, and heard increasingly clear, incomprehensible murmurs in their ears.

In the middle of the garden, the church procession was caught in a fierce battle.

They dared not look up, and could only move forward with their heads down. But the ground beneath their feet began to churn.

The soil was pushed aside by an invisible force, and bony hands reached out from the ground.

These are fragmented, forcibly pieced-together skeletons. They grab the ankles of living people, trying to drag them into the ground. More undead crawl out of the soil—some still retaining human form, others completely mutated, growing extra limbs or mouthparts.

"Holy Light Shield! Activate the shield!"

The battle priests chanted hoarsely, and semi-transparent golden light shields unfolded around the group. The shields dispelled the darkness and some of the corruption; when undead touched the surface of the shields, they emitted a sizzling sound and were temporarily blocked.

But the problem is that the shield doesn't block the view.

Even if everyone keeps their heads down and refuses to look at the sky, the presence of that giant eye overhead is still all-pervasive. Its gaze itself is constantly polluting, like an invisible, viscous film covering everyone's skin, trying to penetrate it.

The shield can weaken this contamination, but it cannot completely isolate it.

More signs of mutation began to appear in the group.

The skin on one guard's arm began to harden, revealing a texture resembling an insect's carapace. Another combat priest emitted a strange "gurgling" sound from his throat, as if something was hatching inside. More people felt dizzy, nauseous, and began to experience distorted hallucinations at the edges of their vision.

"At this rate, we won't be able to hold out until the main building!" Herbert roared, smashing a bone spirit that lunged at him with his warhammer, but more undead surged out from underground.

Despair began to spread.

however--

"Click, click, click..."

The sound of mechanical gears turning suddenly came from outside the western wall of the manor.

The sounds were dense and rhythmic, carrying a cold sense of order that seemed out of place in the current filthy environment.

The next second, dozens of silver, umbrella-shaped mechanical constructs flew in from outside the wall.

They vary in size, from as small as a palm to over two meters in diameter. The canopy is made up of intricately pieced-together metal blades, the edges of which shimmer with a pale blue energy halo. The ribs are slender mechanical arms, each end equipped with a miniature thruster, allowing them to levitate flexibly in the air.

These mechanical umbrellas flew over the church procession, and then—

"Crack!"

All the umbrellas closed at the same time.

The clips on the umbrella edges aligned precisely, and the energy halos along the edges of the blades connected to form a continuous mass. In just three seconds, dozens of mechanical umbrellas were assembled above the team's heads into a massive, complete metal dome.

It also blocked the view of that giant eye.

The intensity of the pollution decreased by 70% instantly.

“This is…” A combat priest was stunned.

"The Church of the Mechanical Father's 'Umbrella'!" Herbert's eyes blazed with hope. "Reinforcements! They've really come!"

As soon as he finished speaking, things began to fall from inside the mechanical umbrellas that were pieced together to form a dome.

It's a spider.

The spiders were about the size of a palm, with eight mechanical legs and spherical bodies covered with fine sensors and energy conduits. They fell from the umbrella array like rain, landing on the periphery of the crowd. The moment they landed, they began to move, crawling at an extremely fast speed, specifically targeting the undead and animated monsters that crawled out from underground.

As it approaches its target, the mechanical spider's spherical body cracks open, revealing its energy core compressed to the extreme.

Then--

"boom!!!!"

explosion.

The pale blue shockwave spread out in a spherical shape, instantly tearing the undead and monsters within its range to shreds, completely annihilating even their remains. The explosion's power was controlled with extreme precision, clearing just one area without harming any living beings nearby.

One mechanical spider after another fell, and explosions echoed one after another.

A passage was blasted open in the middle of the garden by the horde of undead.

A figure appeared outside the wall.

Several people, dressed in uniform dark gray robes, similar in style to the work clothes of mechanical craftsmen, but more concise and neat, with silver gear and lever patterns embroidered on the collar, cuffs and hem of the robes—symbols of the mechanical father god.

They wielded no traditional weapons, but rather various strange mechanical contraptions: scepters capable of emitting high-voltage electric arcs, handheld devices that could deploy energy shields, controllers that could summon swarms of small drones…

The leader was a middle-aged man around forty years old, with short hair, a square face, and glasses that gleamed like a stream of data.

He was holding a book with a metal cover; the pages were actually folding screens displaying real-time battlefield data and the status of mechanical units.

He looked up at the mechanical umbrella dome overhead, then at the flesh altar atop the main building in the distance, and frowned slightly.

“The pollution concentration exceeds the estimate by 37%.” His voice was flat, as if he were reading a report. “The ‘sky-shading umbrella’ is expected to last for another eight minutes. After the umbrella array is dismantled, the pollution will return to its peak. It is recommended that the core of the ceremony be destroyed within six minutes and thirty seconds.”

After he finished speaking, he looked at Herbert and nodded.

"Church of the Mechanical Father God, Murphy," he introduced himself. "By order of the Archbishop, I am assisting the Harvest Church in eradicating heresy. Time is limited, please act swiftly."

Herbert took a deep breath and nodded emphatically.

"Thank you for your help! Everyone—follow the friends of the Mechanical Church! Charge into the main building!"

The team's morale was greatly boosted.

With the mechanical spiders clearing the way and the mechanical umbrella array providing protection, the advance accelerated dramatically. Undead and monsters were cleared away in droves, the pollution was temporarily contained, and they finally had a chance to catch their breath.

Behind the main building window.

Evan withdrew his gaze from the sky.

The fervent flush still lingered on his face, and the bloodshot in the whites of his eyes hadn't completely faded, but his reason had returned somewhat.

He turned to look at Yu Xing, a twisted smile playing on his lips.

“The actor was absolutely right,” Evan said in a low voice, his voice hoarse from his earlier madness. “Those church lackeys… are indeed troublesome. Even the scum of the Mechanical Father has come.”

He stared into Yu Xing's eyes, his smile deepening.

"Now... it's your turn to stir up trouble. Remember to play the 'great hero of the church' well."

Evan leaned closer, lowering his voice even further, with a malicious pleasure in it:

"The more reverent and trusting those priests look at you, the more delicious the despair and anger in their eyes will be when you 'betray' them."

"That will be the best appetizer when my Lord comes."

Yu Xing: "..." Never mind, he had already expected Evan to say something like that, so he was too lazy to argue.

As planned, he took two steps back and waved.

By the window, the performer put down his teacup, which had gone cold.

He glanced in the direction Yu Xing had left, then at Ai Wen, who was still lost in his own world.

A meaningful smile curved slightly at the corners of his lips. (End of Chapter)