I hadn't known the Doctor had such a willful side.
Tom, Conan, and Luffy.
He had actually given his mechanical beasts names like that.
I jokingly asked Zhang Jing, "Don't tell me there's a Shin-chan too?"
Zhang Jing gave a bitter smile. "There is. There's also a Xiao Wanzi!"
Good heavens, the Doctor's still-unfaded childlike heart had completely thrown me for a loop.
"Shin-chan is a little elephant, and Xiao Wanzi is a ladybug."
My eyes widened. A little elephant? A ladybug? Just how many mechanical beasts had the Doctor created?
I couldn't help thinking of Crayon Shin-chan's amusing "Elephant Dance." That was probably where the Doctor had gotten his inspiration.
Zhang Jing said, "The little elephant actually isn't very big, about the size of an ordinary dog, at most a medium-sized dog. But it has the most powerful information-gathering and data-processing capabilities. Unfortunately, it has already lost contact. The ladybugs are similar to unmanned reconnaissance drones. They can ignore the senses of any mechanical beast; even the radar scans of the strongest mechanical beasts can't detect their existence. The little elephant's sources of information mainly depend on the ladybugs. If we can contact them, you'll be able to grasp the entire situation in Damp Land. Oh, right, there isn't just one ladybug. I heard the Doctor say there are at least several hundred of them."
I was stunned. Several hundred? Thinking about it, that was normal. The ladybugs were tools the Doctor used for surveillance and information gathering. Those several hundred were probably only in Damp Land. If it were the entire Void Realm, there were likely even more than that.
"The Doctor said that with these several hundred ladybugs, he could take in the entire Void Realm at a glance. But not every ladybug is called Xiao Wanzi.