He is the leader of the Tantric sect in Chagdu.

An attack that is almost impossible to react to.

Ai could hear a scraping sound coming from the edge of her cochlea, a piercing shriek as if the air was being torn apart by something sharp and invisible.

- Can you dodge it?

Before his body could react, the moth's skin had already covered his entire body. The mottled camouflage briefly concealed the ubiquitous gray matter. His blurred, faded figure dodged awkwardly into a narrow space, the air rushing against his cheeks howling and bursting into continuous folds.

The naked, battered girl sprawled behind Ai Yi as if teleporting, every ball joint twisting and bending in a way that defied human anatomy—she came to an abrupt stop, turned around, and then accelerated terrifyingly from zero in an instant…

Just as if it had overcome gravity and inertia, the second attack gave Ai Yi not a single second to react—

How could it be so fast?

Ai curled up in the shadow of the corner, rolling around in one direction. In this life-or-death moment, his powerful camouflage almost reproduced the traces of power he had during his experience, almost dissolving him completely into the darkness—he now looked like an irregularly shaped, drifting shadow, so the puppet's next attack also missed.

Then came another reversal, completely disregarding physics.

Even though the doll had no weapons, Ai had no doubt that with her utterly unreasonable speed, she could kill herself instantly. Every second she tried to survive was like kissing death itself—damn it, why did things turn out this way?

Stop!

These were the words he wanted to shout, but the puppet gave him no chance—the throbbing of his Adam's apple was extinguished in his throat by a blur of light close to his trachea, and a sharp crystal emerged from nothingness, shooting towards the wall behind him and leaving a traceless wound on his cheek, without even a hint of blood flowing out at first.

-She even possesses mysterious powers, which are attacks using mystical arts.

The sudden turn of events came without any warning; only four seconds had passed since the first puppet attack. Ai finally remembered to call for backup—

"Haibiya, Nirvana! Help!"

There was no time to worry about appearances now. While yelling at the top of his lungs, Ai Yi also wanted to turn off the lights in the room so that the camouflage could be fully effective. But the doll was guarding the door, so he had no choice but to crawl into a dark place like under the bed.

"Xiao Ai, turn off the lights!"

Damn it, what kind of garbage is Mr. Gray's smart home system? None of them can be controlled by voice.

For a moment, Ai had no choice but to learn from Jackie Chan and use the furniture in the gray room to dodge—calling for help didn't seem to work. Mr. Gray didn't seem to have considered the possibility of being attacked in his own room. The soundproofing was pretty good, and neither Nephew nor Gray Garden reacted.

-Wait, what am I hiding from?

In the seventh second, Ai finally woke up as if from a dream. After dodging an attack once again by using the invincible frame of roll and camouflage, she immediately retracted the thin wings on her abdomen. The next instant, the crystal blade that was flying towards her throat swept past her head, and the 1.75-meter-tall boy instantly turned back into a gray fox with a height of just over 1.5 meters.

"Stop! I am Gray, your master, Mr. Gray—"

At the same time, taking advantage of the doll's stiffened body and obvious moment of distraction, the red liquid in Ai Yi's dish surged, directly calling out to Nie in her mind: "Danger! Come quickly!"

"..."

For a moment, the entire room was deathly silent.

After Ai returned to her original form, the doll girl also stopped attacking. A fleeting rainbow light flashed in her dull, inorganic eyes, blurry and indistinct, like a murmur coming from an unknown part of her body. It lacked the previous resolute mechanical feeling, and instead carried a trace of "bewilderment" that was similar to that of a human.

"Recorded image, recorded form—unidentified red liquid, error, first verification, unidentified red liquid—error, second verification, unidentified red liquid…"

As if the program had entered some kind of infinite loop, the doll girl heard a "beep" sound from her head and quickly stopped moving in place.

At the same time, Nie's figure emerged from the fog gate, quickly approaching Ai and warily looking around.

Noticing the mess at the scene, the girl was also stunned. She quickly saw the figure standing not far away. The doll's eyes had lost their luster at some point, like a dull and worn red diamond. Something invisible seemed to have settled and accumulated in the hideous flesh and skeleton, gradually losing all vitality.

She "cooled down," and the feeling was indescribable—the desolation of something that was once vibrant falling into stillness, the inanimate object destined to be unremembered.

Suddenly, Nie grabbed Ai's hand with unprecedented force, uttering a soft, dreamlike murmur:

"elder sister……"

-really.

"Do you know her?" Ai patted Nie's head, and the girl let go of her hand and slowly walked towards the standing doll. She stopped in front of the doll. The two faces were exactly the same, only the eyes were different: one pair was cloudy, and the other pair was lively.

After staring at her quietly for a long time, Nie turned her head away, her tone devoid of any emotion: "Brother, she is the sixth one."

-The sixth one?

"Hmm." Nemesis nodded, pointed to himself, "I am the seventh, Nemesis, the final product—a humanoid gold, a crimson philosopher's stone."

Finished product, gold, philosopher's stone —

Ai silently tried to understand the message Nie had given her, and sighed almost imperceptibly.

The doll seemed to have an inherent inability to empathize with human emotions. Just like the first time they met, she always crammed everything she knew and wanted to convey into a riddle-like sentence, without considering Ai's information processing and comprehension abilities, as if assuming he could quickly understand everything...

It seems that Nie's intelligence is not yet complete, but Ai doesn't have the ability to help her take it any further right now.

He could only try his best to decipher the information the girl gave him, while also throwing his own questions at her: "Nie, Number Six said she doesn't recognize my Red Liquid."

What is red liquid?

In a sense, it can be understood as a liquid soul.

-Even the doll of the previous model doesn't recognize its own red liquid. Obviously, it's because Number Six can't identify "Ai's" soul. This also means that Nie must know that he is not "Mr. Gray".

She probably knew long ago that "Ai" was not "Hui".

The two were just putting on an act for each other. Since Nie had been unwilling to reveal their relationship, Ai was willing to protect this tacit understanding with her.

Now that this tacit understanding has been broken today, it's time to face the truth.

Ai asked directly, "Mr. Gray, why did you bring me here?"

"For...what?" Nie repeated his words, then abruptly fell silent. After a long while, she slowly spoke, "Brother, did she ask your name?"

"?"

Ai didn't react for a moment, only to hear Nie whispering in her ear: "When my sister gets up, there will be a low-level verification protocol - she will ask for your name. This verification has a higher priority than image, body shape, and even red liquid recognition. She should have asked for my brother's name."

"She did ask, but I answered 'grey'...which was wrong."

-etc.

A strange idea suddenly popped into Ai's head.

No way...

Nie inserted her fingers into the back of the doll's neck, establishing an invisible connection. She quickly restarted Number Six, and as those bright red pupils lit up once more, a familiar voice rang out:

"Name."

"..."

Ai swallowed unconsciously, her expression a complex mix of emotions. Then, with difficulty, she managed to squeeze out two words from deep in her throat:

"Zhou Yi".

.

A deathly silence, the two seconds stretched out endlessly—

"Verification successful".

Finally, the doll-like girl nodded slightly, revealing a stiff and awkward smile: "Welcome back, Mr. Zhou."

.

.

"Damn." Ai felt weak all over. His slender limbs seemed unable to support the weight of his small body. He slid down the corner of the wall and collapsed on the floor. His wide ears on his head were almost boneless and lay flat on both sides of his hair. His tail was sticking up like a big pom-pom.

—This time he was completely enraged.

"I am... Mr. Grey?"

Ai shook her head vigorously: Impossible, I've only been in Nest City for three months—where could I have become ashes? Besides, even my soul is different, so how could I still be the same person?

But if that's the case, why would the doll use a name known only to itself, a name from before it time-traveled, as the most basic verification key...?

Therefore, I can only be gray again.

After a moment of confusion, he accepted the fact.

Damn it... I've been cursing myself as a pervert the whole way, and this feeling is absolutely awful.

.

However, after the initial confusion, Ai quickly recovered. He had actually prepared for the worst—that Gray wasn't really dead, and that he was just a disguise used by the cult leader for resurrection and possession. But things still exceeded his worst expectations. The big bad guy who had once been the Lord of the Outskirts, the Unmerciful King, and who had single-handedly fought against the entire Foundation was actually himself.

No wonder, no wonder Men chose that time to do psychological therapy for themselves.

Ai recalled what the door had told him when it went out of control: "From now on, no matter what kind of person 'Mr. Gray' was, he will only ever be a profile of you, a mask that can be replaced at any time."

Without this prior "psychological guidance," he might have really gone crazy—it turns out that back then, the door had already been giving him a heads-up.

"So aren't you going to thank me? You even tried to scare me like a ghost before you left, you bastard fox!"

The light screen was projected directly into Ai's eyes. The fox twitched its lips and could only helplessly say, "Thank you so much... for holding a grudge."

He sighed deeply, pulled his numb tail out from behind him, and then slowly stood up, leaning against the wall—Number Six was clearly agitated for a moment, as if he wanted to help him up, but was quickly beaten to it by Nephew who had gone first.

"Thanks……"

Ai leaned on Nie's shoulder. He wasn't actually that weak now. After the initial shock dissipated, the fox actually felt pretty good about himself.

Anyway, there's no turning back now—even if it's proven that he is Mr. Grey, at most it will just add two whole pages of criminal records to his criminal record when he gets caught, and each one of them is enough for a death sentence.

A crime punishable by death a hundred times is no different from a crime punishable by death once.

Ai finally understood what Wei Sir was thinking. At times like this, all she could think about was, "Damn it, I'm totally out of touch with reality!"

This is a real explosion, a massive explosion.

But once you accept the absurdity of life, what follows is the much-anticipated moment: I'm giving myself a gold coin bonus.

Ai rubbed her hands together: "Nie, what about the legacy I left for myself?"

Don't tell me I'm starting with nothing after two playthroughs. Ash must have left me with a lot of good stuff...

Before Nirvana could react, the door beeped in front of him: "Good stuff? You're overflowing with good stuff now—two complete Paths of Glory, a set of three horizontal principles accumulated in just two days of awakening, the friendship of the Silent Raven, a primordial tome leading straight to the pinnacle. What more could you want?"

Faced with the door's mocking tone, Ai waved her hand: "These are all internal things... what about the external parts?"

Where are my secret transmission walls, my treasury of ritual implements, and my credits? I don't ask for much; a lord of a remote suburb shouldn't be too much trouble having a net worth of several hundred million or tens of millions...

"None of what you mentioned...is true!"

Ai: "?"

"As you can see, the Mirror of Radiance is shattered, the disciples have all left, and the secret teachings and ritual artifacts have been sold off by ordinary people as if they were pornographic books and scrap metal. It's unknown whether they can be found again. As for the money, your previous identity has been directly deleted by the think tank, and all the money has been confiscated."

Ai Yi was a little unconvinced: "How is that possible? I can understand the secret teachings and ritual artifacts going missing, but how could a cult leader keep all the money in his own account? He must have a secret stash, right?"

He stopped pretending to install a door: "Okay, actually, Gray is a poor guy too. The number in his account has never exceeded five figures. Running a secret cult is expensive, you know that."

Ai: "..."

So, after all this time, does the plan to make a comeback really have to start from laying bricks?

"Do I still have to go to work to support my family?"

What kind of "corporate slave" guru is this?

"Brother..." Nie tugged at his sleeve and slowly spoke under Ai's expectant gaze, "In Gray Court, there is a basement. That was where you used to spend the most time. Three months ago, you said that if you ever returned home penniless, you should go there. You left all the promises you made in that place."

basement……

I knew it! How could I leave no way out?

Gray, you did a great job!

Feeling there was still a chance, Ai quickly regained his arrogance. Ignoring the noise at the door, he patted Nie's head and said softly, "Take me there. It's time for me to find what I lost—"

He had just turned around when he heard cautious footsteps behind him.

It's that doll.

Number Six stood there timidly, her right foot taking a half-step forward stealthily. When she saw Ai turn around, the girl froze on the spot, looking somewhat helpless, but more so restrained and afraid.

—Like an eldest son who has done something wrong and is afraid of being blamed, seeing his younger sister getting closer to his parents, he instinctively keeps his distance from them, afraid of taking away the attention that belongs to others, yet secretly longing for love and attention.

She's been staying in Gray Courtyard for the past three months...

Ai tilted her head.

Nie possesses a complete personality and can run out of Gray Court to find Ai, but she can only stay here because of this incomplete body and her incomplete mind.

In order to make itself useful, the doll has been making silent contributions.

-The gray garden outside may be able to clean itself, but the fact that Mr. Gray's room is so clean can only mean that she is cleaning it secretly.

Therefore, number six is ​​a good child.

He smiled apologetically at the doll girl: "I'm sorry, there might have been some misunderstandings before, but you actually did a great job—you protected my property and my territory... Thank you."

I seem to be a rather unqualified creator.

"Let's go together, to find what I've lost." He reached out to the doll, grasping its small hand, which was covered in blood and bone fragments. "Go get dressed. Don't bring the suitcase; that's your bed. You'll live here from now on..."

After hesitating for a moment, Ai twitched her ears and continued, "Although I'm not very confident, at least you can have some hope..."

"I will try to help you."

The doll stood there stunned for several seconds, her thought processes seemingly unable to comprehend this emotion. But soon, under Nie Youyou's gaze, she caught Ai Yi's outstretched hand: "Unrecognized command—"

A heart built of machinery, flowing with electronic blood, can cover soft skin and utter a voice similar to a human's: "But I look forward to it..."

.

.

"Tsk, you damn fox..."

The door seemed to be shaking its head and sighing, "Sweet talk, even fooling a doll..."

In an inconspicuous corner, subtle changes were taking place that Ai couldn't perceive. Only the door noticed that the solidified crystalline flesh and blood were spreading and growing like new shoots—

Mysterious things can only be repaired with intangible substances.

Things that are loved will grow flesh and blood like crazy.