After finishing writing, Father Edwin closed his notebook, put it away properly, and only then looked at Alice's bewildered expression.
"As you can see, Knight Commander, Your Majesty." He clasped his hands together, his voice calm as he pronounced, "Lady Lya has died once again."
Alice tried to comprehend everything before her and asked calmly, "So what exactly is going on?"
Father Edwin did not answer directly. Instead, he gestured for Alice to wait. He turned towards the cage again and waited quietly.
About several dozen breaths later, just as Alice thought the girl had truly died, the small "corpse" on the cage floor suddenly twitched slightly.
Then, under Chen Yu and Alice's gaze, the girl Lya's chest began to rise and fall again. Her long eyelashes fluttered a few times before she slowly opened her eyes.
Those eyes were initially somewhat vacant, as if veiled in mist, but quickly regained focus, clear with a hint of the daze one has just after waking.
She blinked, as if she had just woken from a brief nightmare, then used her hands to push herself up from the cold, rough stone floor, sitting up with some effort.
She patted the non-existent dust off her coarse cloth dress, then reached up to touch the back of her head. Her fingertips touched something wet and sticky. She looked at the dark red bloodstains on her palm with distress, tilting her head as if it wasn't something that had flowed from her body, but just a stain she had accidentally gotten on herself.
Chen Yu's gel body rippled slightly, producing a small bubble that conveyed "speechlessness."
What did she mean by accidentally dying again?
It was as if death was a trivial, commonplace little thing like sneezing, and it was coming from the mouth of such a young girl.
Only then did Father Edwin slowly begin to explain, "Lady Lya... it seems she has been gazed upon by some existence we cannot comprehend. Misfortune coils around her like a venomous snake, making her extremely prone to dying from all sorts of bizarre accidents—tripping over her own sash and breaking her neck, choking to death on water, or even having a heart attack from being startled by a water droplet that just happened to fall while looking up at the sky..."
The old man sighed, "Although this misfortune seems to only affect her personally and doesn't affect others, during the time she was dying most frequently, the cracks in the church's stone floor were almost soaked through with her blood. The worshippers coming for services once thought I had become a butcher, nearly causing a panic."
"This misfortune cannot be dispelled by any known divine magic, purification spells, or protective barriers; we can only try to weaken it."
"We tried every method and finally discovered that only by imprisoning Lady Lya deep within this ancient dungeon, which can slightly isolate her from the outside world, and dressing her in this priest's robe blessed by several bishops, could we reduce the frequency of her deaths from over a dozen times a day to... about once a day, like just now."
Alice listened with a furrowed brow and couldn't help but ask, "Then why can she... come back to life?"
Father Edwin shook his head, "We aren't entirely sure either. Lady Lya is not a follower of the Sun Church. About a year ago, she was introduced by a highly respected, now-deceased old parishioner, coming here seeking a way to lift this terrible misfortune."
"We don't know where she truly comes from. Even she herself, due to the frequent deaths, has lost a vast amount of memory and knows nothing about what exactly happened to her."
"All we know is that while bearing this terrifying misfortune, she also seems to possess an undying blessing granted by some mysterious deity, allowing her to revive after countless deaths, and she seems able to expend life without limit to cast powerful healing divine magic."
"If not for Lady Lya's divine magic, perhaps many commoners during the Winter Year would have suffered lifelong disabilities from frostbite."
He paused, lowering his voice, "This is also why those New Sun heretics covet Lady Lya. They desire to obtain the secret of this undying nature, they crave this sacred healing power."
Chen Yu found it novel.
Misfortune and undying, and it's even bugged.
That kind of misfortune curse would kill anyone else within minutes, but with her, it has instead become a kind of miracle.
Lya inside the cage listened to the priest's account, raised her head, and looked at Chen Yu with those eyes sporting dark circles, her voice carrying a hint of timid expectation, "Father Edwin said... you are the miracle envoy from the swamp, a messenger of the gods. Do you have a way to break the curse on me?"
Chen Yu was immediately at a loss for words.
He hadn't expected that the boast he casually made back then to reassure Sekashi was still circulating, and these people really regarded him as an envoy of Putu.
Whether he was an envoy of Putu or not, he didn't know, but he had definitely been noticed by the Corruption Morgul, and even had a chaotic title. Causing trouble for others was one thing, but dispelling a misfortune curse was impossible.
"No wonder my divine sense couldn't penetrate the darkness surrounding the cage..." Chen Yu felt the uncomfortable, obscure aura within that layer of thick darkness.
So those were materialized streaks of bad luck.
He always felt that even if his divine sense just brushed against a little bit of it, he'd be unlucky for a whole day.
Which deity did that child offend for them to be so ruthless?
He was just about to tactfully express his inability to help when a voice tinged with some confusion sounded in his consciousness.
It was Silver Sparrow.
And her voice wasn't like traditional gel network information transmission, which would have noticeable delays with distance. It seemed the gel network connection had been optimized and enhanced with magic.
"Master, based on the information you just uploaded to the gel network, Silver Sparrow can confirm that Miss Lya visited the castle for afternoon tea during Clock Calendar year 23, which was the period when the castle was first activated and began recording visitor logs."
"The log indicates she seemed to be seeking the Former Master's help, but the Former Master was not in the castle at the time, and she ultimately left."
Chen Yu rippled his gel in surprise, "Clock Calendar year 23? Your clock calendar is almost fifteen hundred years old, isn't it?"
If Lya had appeared that early, didn't that mean she was at least over a thousand years old, just like Count Bran, another senior figure who popped up from who knows where?
Looking at it this way, this undying blessing seemed to even exempt her from aging and natural death.
He continued asking, "Silver Sparrow, can you restore her memory, or find more information about her from the castle logs?"
He suspected Lya held many secrets. If he could help her recover her memory, perhaps there might be a way to eliminate the misfortune.
"I'm very sorry, Master, Silver Sparrow is unable to do that."
"The castle logs contain only this single record about her, and it includes no further details. Memory recovery involves the soul, which is beyond my current capabilities."
Silver Sparrow answered crisply, but then added, "However, regarding weakening the influence of the misfortune on her, I might have a possible solution."
"What solution?" Chen Yu immediately asked.
"The archives contain records about the alchemical creation 'World Tree in a Bottle.' The reason the creator god inside could be born and grow within the material plane was actually because he never truly descended upon the material plane, always being isolated from the real material world by the alchemical bottle."
"The power of deities, especially this kind of curse power, often needs to anchor onto the physical laws and fate of the material plane to take effect."
"Therefore, Silver Sparrow speculates that as long as Miss Lya leaves the material plane, or is enveloped by some kind of container capable of isolating her from the real world, it could make her leap out of the river of fate, reducing or even freeing her from the influence of the misfortune."
Chen Yu listened thoughtfully.
A container that could isolate a world, like the alchemical bottle?
But that bottle shattered long ago, and the World Tree's authority was divided among the gods. Where would he find such a container that could isolate a deity's curse...
Halfway through the thought, he suddenly stopped.
A miraculous idea flashed through his consciousness like lightning.
The World Tree sapling could now grow inside his gel body. Did that mean his gel itself, to some extent, was the new container for the World Tree?
Had he eaten himself into becoming the World Tree in a Bottle?
"The Master always discovers the key to problems from unexpected angles. The acuity of his thinking is worthy of praise. According to the Master's incentive guidelines, sufficient positive feedback must be given."
"Master, you are truly brilliant." Silver Sparrow's voice sounded timely. Although it was praise, her tone was completely flat.
She continued, "This possibility cannot be ruled out. The internal structure, energy compatibility, and resistance of your gel, Master, have already exceeded Silver Sparrow's understanding. Perhaps you could give it a try."
Chen Yu returned from the exchange to find Lya and Father Edwin still waiting for him, especially Lya, who seemed to be growing more expectant due to his prolonged contemplation.
In her view, this cute... no, this great Slime Majesty was different from any priest or nun she had met before, faintly giving her a sense of reassurance.
Warm, soft, as if with his arrival, the misfortune permeating the surroundings had been slightly driven away.
Perhaps he really had a way.
After all, having to trouble Father Edwin every day to clean the bloodstains off the floor and comb her hair clumped together with blood, she always felt a bit embarrassed.
Although not every death was painful, and she wasn't afraid of pain, because of this misfortune, even when she managed to go outside occasionally, she couldn't see the sun when she looked up, only the dark, ominous cloud of misfortune overhead.
Chen Yu bounced once and said to Lya and Father Edwin, "I can give it a try, but I can't guarantee it will definitely work."
Lya's eyes immediately lit up, and she quickly nodded, "Th-that's okay, thank you for being willing to help me!"
Chen Yu's round, gel-like body wriggled slightly, separating out a clump of crystal-clear gel doppelganger.
Under the curious gazes of everyone, this gel doppelganger grew bat wings and struggled to fly towards the cage, passing through the gaps in the iron bars, landing lightly on Lya's outstretched palm.
Immediately, the gel doppelganger, like living quicksilver, rapidly spread upwards along Lya's arm.
It spread over the girl's thin shoulders, neck, torso, limbs... finally forming a layer of gel film clinging tightly to her skin, enveloping Lya's entire body. Then it mimicked and faded away, becoming almost visually undetectable, leaving only a sensation of slight coolness.
Lya looked down at herself somewhat puzzled, touched her arm, didn't feel any particular change, and was just about to ask.
"Incredible, the misfortune is receding..." Father Edwin suddenly murmured.
The flame of the oil lamp in his hand, which had been flickering unsteadily in the dungeon as if about to be swallowed by darkness at any moment, suddenly stabilized considerably, and the light seemed to have brightened a bit.
Hearing this, Alice and Lya immediately looked around.
Sure enough, the thick, impenetrable darkness that had previously permeated the area around the cage was now visibly thinning at a rate perceptible to the naked eye. That heavy sense of foreboding that had been lingering in everyone's hearts was rapidly weakening.
Although the dungeon was still cold, that feeling of being constantly watched by an invisible malice had disappeared.
"It's working." Alice's heart stirred.
Father Edwin was so excited his beard trembled. He bowed deeply towards Chen Yu, "Thank you, great Majesty. Th-this is simply a miracle!"
Lya also felt the difference.
She couldn't clearly articulate what it was specifically, but she just felt much lighter, as if heavy shackles had been removed.
Happily, she touched her own arms and cheeks, then clumsily bowed towards Chen Yu, "Thank you, Slime Majesty."
Chen Yu rippled pleasantly, but he still cautioned, "I've only used the gel to temporarily isolate most of the misfortune's influence on you; it's not a complete eradication. You still need to be careful, avoid intense emotional fluctuations and obvious dangerous behavior."
Father Edwin nodded, took an ancient key from his robe, and slowly walked to the cage door, inserting it into the lock. "Lady Lya, you can try coming out to see now. Perhaps today you can go outside, see the sunlight, see the changes in Eagle's Nest Fortress."
Lya made an "Mhm" sound, a mix of nervousness and excitement appearing on her small face.
Under everyone's gaze, she carefully dragged the priest's robe that was far too large for her, tentatively taking her first step towards the opened cage door.
Her foot stepped onto the cold, rough stone floor outside the cage.
Nothing happened.
No suddenly collapsing floor, no boulder falling from the sky, no inexplicable slip.
Lya's eyes grew even brighter. She took a deep breath, trying to take a second step, but suddenly accidentally tripped over the overly long hem of her robe.
"Oops!" she exclaimed, losing her balance and falling forward, landing solidly on the stone floor.
Alice instinctively moved to help her up, and Father Edwin also held his breath nervously.
But the next second, Lya used her hands to push herself up from the ground, getting up somewhat awkwardly.
She patted the dust off herself, rubbed her bumped knee, looked up at everyone's tense expressions, and suddenly let out a silly "hehe" laugh, her smile filled with pure joy.
Because this time, she actually hadn't died from the fall.