Chapter 70#

His Holiness the Pope Who Bestows the Light of Sanctity#

Kukkewi placed the steel puppet on the tabletop, said “Just a moment,” and then dashed into the workshop.

Lu Heng heard the sound of rummaging through drawers and cabinets coming from inside. Soon after, Kukkewi came running out with a peculiar little device cupped in his hands.

“Two outside friends, do you happen to have any magic beast crystal cores? They don’t need to be of too high a grade,” Kukkewi said. “My stock has been completely used up in experiments.”

Lu Heng naturally had no shortage of magic beast crystal cores. He took one out of his storage ring and handed it to Kukkewi.

Kukkewi received the crystal core and placed it into the peculiar little device. Then he opened up the steel puppet’s abdominal cavity and inserted the small device inside.

“Ai ya, where’s the controller?” Kukkewi slapped his own forehead. “Don’t tell me the controller is lost — that would be a big problem.”

The green-skinned goblin paced anxiously in circles on the ground, muttering something about gathering all the engineers from his clan to study the controller.

Lu Heng stared at the empty black little box on the table, feeling that the height of the opening inside seemed different from what it looked like from the outside. He picked it up and knocked on the bottom of the box — the sound was crisp; there was indeed a false bottom. He then held the box up to his ear and shook it gently, confirming that something was hidden inside.

“Kukkewi, the controller might be hidden in this false bottom, but there doesn’t seem to be any seam to open it,” Lu Heng said.

Kukkewi took the box and turned it over and over, studying it for a long while, then said dejectedly: “It can’t be taken out. The emblem on the bottom of the box is the switch, but the corresponding emblem ring fell into the depths of the earth’s core during that uprising.”

“Can’t this box be forcibly opened?” Lu Heng took the box back for a look. He found that in his memories he had never seen this emblem ring — it seemed it truly was, as Kukkewi had said, lost during the goblin clan’s uprising.

“This is a creation of Master Rokok! Forged from ultra-sturdy alloy — it absolutely cannot be destroyed by external force…?” Kukkewi’s words caught in his throat. He simply could not believe his own eyes.

What am I seeing? Kukkewi nearly shrieked. He watched as that human named Aionas, who had not spoken a single word the whole time, took the box from the white-robed priest’s hands, gave it a light twist, and then a pull. The goblin clan’s pride and joy — the ultra-sturdy alloy box — was opened just like a can of sardines.

“Thank you very much.” Lu Heng took the opened box, pulled out a device about half a palm in size, and handed it to Kukkewi.

Kukkewi received the controller in a dazed manner. This was probably the moment in this extraordinarily intelligent goblin engineer’s entire life when he looked the most stupid.

Red light glowed in the steel puppet’s eye sockets. Perhaps because it had been dormant for too long in the past, its joints let out a teeth-grating creaking sound. But it still moved under Kukkewi’s control. The steel puppet laboriously performed a bowing motion, and then the red glow in its eyes went out.

“By the God of Forging, what have I seen!” Brian rubbed his eyes in disbelief.

“This is nuclear-power technology that will change the era!” Kukkewi said.

“Nuclear-power technology? Is that like your nuclear-power vehicles?”

“No, no, that’s a completely different thing. A nuclear-power vehicle is just a simple machine that moves. This nuclear-power puppet is a world-changing creation!” Once Kukkewi got excited, his speech only sped up further.

Kukkewi’s hands didn’t stop, and he pried the small device back out of the puppet: “The energy device’s endurance is lacking — a low-grade magic beast crystal core can only sustain…”

Well then, this goblin engineer had fallen into his frenzy of research again.

“The energy device needs continued improvement. With this experimental prototype puppet, Unit Zero, many of the theoretical data left behind by Master Rokok can finally begin to be verified… Oh, damn it, the workload is enormous. Time is precious, time is precious.” Kukkewi suddenly stopped. “Dear human friends, the goblin clan needs your assistance.”

“Please, speak.” Lu Heng nodded.

“We need to spread nuclear-power technology! We must develop it as quickly as possible — especially combat-type nuclear-power puppets.” As if feeling his words lacked enough persuasiveness, Kukkewi paused briefly. “This concerns the life and death of every living being on the continent!”

What do the goblins know?

“What do you know?” Lu Heng asked.

Kukkewi was a smart man. Seeing that Lu Heng’s expression was calm and composed, he knew the white-robed priest before him was also one of the informed.

“Brian, please wait outside for the rest of this conversation. No eavesdropping,” Kukkewi said to the dwarf.

“Kukkewi, you can’t treat your friend like this! I’ll absolutely keep the secret — can’t you trust me?” Brian shouted indignantly.

“I don’t trust that big mouth of yours or your simple-minded thinking the same as a dragon’s,” Kukkewi mocked without mercy.

“That is an insult to the Bronzebeard Dwarves! Bronzebeard Dwarves will never betray their friends!” Brian’s booming voice was so loud it toppled the stack of parchment Kukkewi had piled up in the corner.

“What exactly is your problem with the dragon race!” Aionas, who had been silently serving as background scenery the entire time, finally couldn’t hold back anymore.

The situation was getting a bit chaotic.

Aionas had a temper even worse than the dwarf’s, but he was far easier to soothe — because Lu Heng was there.

Lu Heng simply squeezed his hand. While the dwarf and the goblin were tangled up on the other side with no attention to spare, he said softly: “The goblin friend was praising your straightforward nature. I admire that about you as well.”

Aionas couldn’t care less about the first half of the sentence, but upon hearing the second half, the corners of his mouth curled up in a way he couldn’t hide: “You have good taste. Just as good as mine.”

The dwarf on the other side, however, was not so easily placated. Once his stubbornness flared up, he was shouting at the goblin engineer until the man’s head felt ready to explode. The situation looked about to spiral out of control.

“Brian, I have a method that can guarantee you’ll never accidentally reveal this secret — I just don’t know if you’re willing?” Lu Heng said.

“No problem, I trust you!” The dwarf thumped his chest so hard it echoed, not even asking Lu Heng what the method was.

“I can plant a suggestion inside your mind. It’s a divine art related to mental control. It won’t cause you any harm whatsoever. Its only effect is that if you are ever forced or unconsciously about to reveal the secret, you will completely forget about this matter for a brief period.”

“Well then what are we waiting for — this is absolutely perfect!” Brian had not considered the dangers of this divine art even for a moment. In his mind, friends would never harm one another.

Afterward.

Lu Heng said to Kukkewi: “It’s taken care of.”

“Time is precious, so I won’t waste words. The undead army is going to once again pass through the Gate of Death to reach this continent. This was the last message Master Rokok sent back to the goblin clan,” Kukkewi said.

“This is a prophecy left by the gods — how could Master Rokok have known? Is Master Rokok the goblin clan’s chief god?” Lu Heng asked.

Kukkewi shook his head: “We goblins do not worship gods. The only thing we believe in is knowledge. To you, gods are eternal and incapable of error. But from the goblin perspective, Master Rokok’s theories still have vast room for improvement, and there are many errors that need correction. So Master Rokok is the most creative engineer, a great inventor — but he is not the goblin clan’s god.”

“Thunderbolt’s Fury was forged using a new type of alloy that Master Rokok had researched. During that battle, Master Rokok participated as a technician accompanying the God of Forging. He naturally could have learned of this prophecy from the mouths of the gods. Moreover, the prophecy’s outcome is also connected to the goblin clan,” Kukkewi continued.

Lu Heng found this somewhat strange: “Why is it that in all the history books, or even in the mouths of the bards, there is no mention of the goblin clan’s participation?”

“Because only Master Rokok of the goblin clan fought in the battle,” Kukkewi said without any reservation. “We goblins, apart from the brains we take pride in, possess no combat ability whatsoever. We assisted the living beings on the front lines using our knowledge.”

Brian corroborated Kukkewi’s words: “At the time, the dwarf craftsmen and goblin engineers who stayed behind the front lines jointly forged a massive quantity of weapons for the army of living beings. The related techniques for improving weapon materials, as well as some of the new types of weapons that appeared later in the war — all of them came from the incredible brains of the goblin engineers.”

Through the mutual supplementation of Kukkewi and Brian’s accounts, Lu Heng gradually pieced together that passage of history buried deep in the river of time.

In the Age of the Gods, the goblin clan was an anomaly. They did not worship gods and had no chief god. Only the simple-minded dwarves were willing to accept a heretical race with no faith. Thus, for a very long time, the goblins lived intermingled with the dwarves. The goblins possessed soaring creativity; the dwarves possessed exquisite craftsmanship that could turn the goblins’ ideas into reality. These two mutually complementary races had always been each other’s most suitable and most loyal partners.

Until the undead army invaded, and the most powerful clans of the dwarves all sent every strong warrior to the battlefield. Only the Blackbeard Dwarves were left to guard the dwarf craftsmen and goblin engineers who remained behind. However, what the dwarves did not realize was that the Blackbeard clan at that time harbored one of the rare ambitious schemers among the dwarven race.

He plotted to bring the entire goblin clan under his control, to seize all of the goblins’ technology, and through this, to rule over the entire dwarven race. The goblins and the dwarf craftsmen friendly with them stood utterly powerless before the formidable Blackbeard dwarven warriors. Panicked and desperate, the goblins refused to become slaves from that point on. With the help of the dwarf craftsmen, the goblins fled back to their homeland — the underground kingdom — and sealed off every entrance leading into it.

The dwarf craftsmen who were left behind never imagined that this ambitious schemer, to conceal what he had done, would turn his blade against his own people. Those dwarf craftsmen who remained behind did not die at the hands of the undead army — they perished tragically under the blades of their own kin.

The irony was that after the schemer committed these acts, before he could even continue his conquest to rule the dwarven race or even the entire continent, a lich that suddenly appeared led the undead army and buried the entire Blackbeard clan, along with himself, in the Boulder Mountains.

By the time the undead army was driven off the continent, the goblins reopened the passage to the underground kingdom — only to discover that all their dwarf craftsman friends had been slaughtered. The dwarven warriors who returned from the Boulder Mountains viewed them all with hostility. Unable to clear their name, the goblins had no choice but to retreat back into the underground kingdom, never daring to set foot on the surface again.