Walnut used me to boost her sales performance.

Therefore, he also wanted to have a sincere and kind heart.

Later, he met someone.

That was the first person he ever met, and someone he considered a friend and family member.

This man named Katsura took him back to Tatsumara, where he met Niwa and Nagamasa.

He became family with everyone in Ta-ba-sa.

Because of his unusual clothing and the seams on his body that resembled those of a doll, he was known as the Kabuki-za (a type of doll).

At that time, he longed for all the good things in humanity.

Like a blank sheet of paper, polite, gentle, and kind.

Honestly, Jiang Bai found it hard to connect the scrawny soldier who looked like that with the scrawny soldier he was now.

The difference between the two is like heaven and earth.

He turned his head to look at the stragglers, whose faces were expressionless.

He simply watched all of this in silence, quietly waiting for the unexpected to happen.

Chapter 734 The Doll Splashed with Ink

The puppet lived a peaceful and happy life in Tasha. His friends taught him to read and write, to start a fire and cook, to forge iron, and to do many things he had never done before.

If this kind of life continues, he will surely grow into an upright and kind person.

Just as life can't always be smooth sailing, just as beautiful stories are always meant to be ruined.

An unexpected event occurred.

A scientist from Fontaine, Escher, came to Tabusha and brought with him more advanced smelting technology.

Emerging technologies from abroad greatly improved the efficiency and quality of crystallized bone marrow smelting, but this did not last long.

The large furnace at the center of the Tabusha began to release black gas, which seriously affected the health of the craftsmen, greatly increasing the casualty rate, to the point that smelting and forging could no longer be carried out.

His friend, Danwa, was in charge of the Fusashisa. He sent someone to the castle tower to ask for help, but the person who went out never returned.

After waiting in vain, he requested to go to Narukami Island with a doll bearing golden feathers to see the general.

The doll then temporarily left Tasha Sand.

The soldier didn't follow the puppet's movements; he was eager to know what had happened here after he left Tasha.

Did his friend, Niwa, really flee to avoid punishment?

Was that heart really sent after he killed someone?

Why did the rest of them all die in the end?

The clock ticked rapidly, and the closer they got to the truth, the more tense the soldiers became.

He could feel very clearly that he was afraid.

He feared that the truth he was seeing was not as he understood it to be.

He was afraid that everything he resented would become a joke.

But at the same time, he was also looking forward to it.

They long for the real truth, and for the friends he considers traitors to be restored to their former happiness.

Looking forward to all the good things he once recognized.

Jiang Bai noticed something amiss with the stragglers, and his intuition told him that what was about to happen was extremely important.

He did want to say a few words of inspirational advice to the stragglers, but he didn't know what would happen, nor did he know which inspirational quote to choose.

After the doll left, Dan Yu did not sit idly by and wait for his fate.

He carefully investigated the cause of the casualties and discovered that all these changes stemmed from the scientist who came from Fontaine.

The technology he brought could maximize the extraction of the corrupting forces from the crystallized bone marrow. These corrupting forces contaminated the workers, causing them to die one by one.

One night, he confronted a scientist from Fontainebleau, and ultimately died that same night.

The scientist named Escher was none other than a disguised "Doctor".

He received orders from the Clown to destabilize Inazuma, thus giving the Fools an opportunity to enter.

The doctor naturally used his expertise, and even when he discovered the special existence of the doll, he very naturally changed the course of events.

He kept Danyu's heart and announced to the public that Danyu had fled to avoid punishment.

When the doll returned to Tatsuna after failing to get help, it heard the news that Danwa had fled to escape punishment.

Seeing this, the stragglers were already very agitated. His eyes burned with raging fire, and his chest was filled with anger.

It turns out, it was all a scheme.

Niwa did not flee out of fear of punishment; he simply discovered the truth and was then killed.

The upright and kind-hearted Danwa was falsely accused of fleeing to escape punishment after his death, a belief he himself even held.

"Hahahaha... I see, I see!"

The stragglers trembled, as if a torrent of emotions was about to burst forth from their eyes.

He had already guessed what would happen next.

The doctor used Niwa's heart as a purification device, and he carried the purification device into the core of the Desire Shadow Furnace to shut it down.

The purification device protected him, allowing him to leave the Mikage Furnace Core safely.

After they came out, Escher told him that Niwa knew he wanted a heart, so before leaving, he killed someone and took a heart to give to him.

Escher opened the box containing the purification device, and inside lay a withered heart.

The doll never imagined that what it longed for would appear before it in such a cruel form.

He longed for a beautiful, kind, and sincere heart, but Dan Yu gave him a heart full of selfishness, hypocrisy, and cunning.

He felt betrayed by Dan Yu, a betrayal that had allowed him to survive. Filled with anger and sorrow, he slammed his heart to the ground and resolutely left Futashisa.

Jiang Bai grasped his shoulder, and a warm force seemed to flow through his arm.

Tears streamed down the soldier's face as he reached out to grab the heart that had been thrown to the ground. But it was as if he had touched a phantom surface of water; his fingers passed right through it and could no longer reach the heart.

"Am I stupid, being manipulated like this...?"

The skirmisher squatted on the ground, hugging his knees, his wide-brimmed hat obscuring all his expressions.

The video continued, but he had no interest in watching it anymore.

"Sincere feelings and blessings were discarded like trash, while I believed in false truths without a doubt..."

"I even killed the successor of the Five Masters of Lightning Bladesmithing in revenge..."

Jiang Bai shoved the soldier's hat off and reached out to rub his head.

"Those things are in the past; now it's important to face them."

He had not forgotten the main purpose of this trip.

This trip is to help him transform.

Only by facing the past and making peace with oneself can an old heart shine again.

The soldier didn't speak; he looked up and quietly watched his past continue playing.

After leaving Tasha, he met a little boy.

The little boy's parents were sand-working laborers. After his parents passed away, he contracted a strange disease and became weak and sickly.

He and the little boy began to depend on each other for survival and made a promise to live together from then on.

One night, when he returned with food, the little boy had already stopped breathing.

This was the third time he had been abandoned, and this time it was his own kind who abandoned him.

He couldn't describe how he felt at that moment.

His "mother" saw him as useless and abandoned him.

He suffered betrayal from friends and family, and left his hometown with deep resentment.

Now, he has no power to protect even such a weak child.

His heart was completely closed off, and the beautiful things he once loved began to change.

Kindness and sincerity are useless things; he becomes eccentric, using arrogance and ego to mask his vulnerability and confusion.

He began his solitary wanderings in Inazuma, and one day he was invited by the Fools to become one of them.

Chapter 735 My Own Heart

Jiang Bai looked at all this with some emotion.

Experience shapes character.

A newly born skirmisher is like a blank sheet of paper; he comes into contact with the world like an infant.

His value was denied, and he was abandoned by his "mother".

He yearned for a better life, but reality slammed him with filth, shattering his aspirations.

He tried to protect his fellow human beings, but was deeply aware of his own weakness and powerlessness.

He was like a kitten that had fallen into the water, and a piece of driftwood lifted him up, but the driftwood was then shattered by the waves.

He experienced the ebb and flow of life, navigating through seas of varying colors.

Finally, the pure doll was stained with other colors, and these colors mixed together to become a black mess.

That's just life.

Jiang Bai patted the stragglers' heads again. "What's past is past and can't be changed, but we can still look forward."

The stragglers didn't move; he seemed to have become a silent stone statue.

Jiang Bai grabbed his shoulder and forced him to stand up.

He looked steadily into the unfocused eyes of the stragglers and said:

"I think even Niwa and the others wouldn't want to see you so depressed."

"You should be happy. Your friends have never betrayed you; their hearts are so sincere..."

The soldier's usually dull eyes finally showed a flicker of emotion.

"But I threw it away..."

That heart, that heart of Danyu.

"That is someone else's heart, not your heart. Whether it is the heart of God or someone else's heart, it should not be your heart."

"Your heart belongs only to yourself. It should be born from your soul, nourished by experience, withstand the erosion of wind and rain, grow by absorbing knowledge and learning, be tempered in the world, and take root in your body."

"Whether it's past regrets or pain, they are all experiences. There's no use in running away from them. You can only truly grow by facing them head-on."

Jiang Bai's words, like a series of resounding bells, awakened him from his confusion.

He didn't want to run away; he just couldn't accept it for the time being.

His hatred has become a baseless judgment.

Five hundred years—it's like a joke.

Oh well, let it be a joke.

One after another, figures appeared before his eyes, smiling at him and saying one sentence after another.

"You are never meaningless."

"You are a human being, and you should have your own life."

"Whether it's Katsuragi or Nagamasa, we consider you one of us..."

"My heart will always protect you..."

"Brother, if I'm gone one day, you must take good care of yourself..."