Chapter 188 God's Descent
The "Dead" followers of Samuel, the god of night and death, are arguably the most low-key and mysterious of the four main gods' followers. The "Dead" inherit the powerful concealment abilities of dark sorcerers, making the exact location of the Temple of Night equally secretive and difficult to find.
Even during the day, the temple's interior remained dark and chilly, permeated with the damp, mossy scent of a newly buried grave. Only by looking closely could one discern the eerie yet magnificent "Eternal Night Parade," painted on either side of the wall with moon mother-of-pearl powder and pigments. Twelve deities, each wearing a different, half-rotten, half-pristine mask of the dead, bent over tow a crescent-shaped vessel. The black robe of the god of night and death obscured his features, its edges billowing like thick fog within the painting, as if a new spirit might seep from its folds at any moment.
At the god's feet lay the dead: babies who had died barely out of their mothers' wombs, their hands still clutching their uncut umbilical cords; old men, reduced to mere skeletons, curled up in their graves, their cloudy eyes reflecting the image of crows. Soldiers, their chests cut open to reveal their ribs; prostitutes who had drowned, tied to huge rocks; a queen, pale with tuberculosis; beggars whose wounds were crawling with maggots...
Talon staggered and nearly fell to his knees. The pain that had never ceased in the depths of his soul grew more intense, and in a trance, he even thought he had turned into one of the dead in the mural.
The forbidden magic circle did not cover the Temple of Night. The warlock's strange chanting formed a low hum. The shadowy temple priests around him looked at him indifferently and silently, with no intention of stepping forward to help.
With his soul severely wounded, casting a massive magic circle covering the entire port was a real stretch. Cold sweat trickled down Talon's forehead. If it weren't for the fact that these priests might still be useful for his subsequent plans, according to the terms of the deal, he would have wanted to kill all of these cold-blooded and treacherous Silver Iris people.
...very soon.
Talon swallowed the blood in his throat, the joy of revenge suddenly overwhelming the agony of his soul. Under the power of the gods, the entire Port of Morris would be devoured by death. This would inflict a heavy blow to the Silver Iris Empire, and Alan would surely be reborn from the dead.
Slow footsteps sounded from the depths of darkness, and a slender figure slowly emerged, with golden hair flowing like molten gold, becoming the only source of light in the entire temple.
“…You’ve finally arrived.”
The terrifying pressure from the gods finally made Talon unable to bear it. He staggered to his knees, and his breathing seemed to be strangled.
"Samuel too roughly forced divine power into your essence, forcing you to become a saint." The blond god's face showed no emotion. He spoke calmly, as if chatting, "Your soul is full of cracks and will soon burst."
"...Everything is for Alan," Talon closed his eyes and repeated tremblingly, as if trying to hypnotize himself and resist the despair and fear that almost swallowed him: "Everything is for Alan."
The priests around him, who made it doubt whether they were alive, finally moved. They gathered around and tried to stop the god from approaching - but before they could touch the god's shadow, they were thrown out by a huge force. The god didn't even lower his eyes to look at them, just like treating those ants who tried to follow him in Port Morris.
Talon suddenly felt himself being lifted up by the throat by an invisible force. The intense feeling of suffocation made his face turn purple, his eyeballs bulged, and he scratched his empty neck with great effort.
The survival instinct that suddenly erupted from a saint on the verge of death caused the shadows of the entire temple to tremble violently. The souls in the murals suddenly screamed together, and the dome of the temple was immediately covered with swimming black shadows, swooping down in the direction of the golden-haired god.
At the same time, thick asphalt-like darkness was emitting from every gap between the temple's floor tiles, condensing into giant, solid tentacles, but it turned into powder in an instant when it was about to touch the edge of the god's clothes.
Talon was thrown violently, falling onto the floor tiles that had shattered into a spiderweb. He could almost hear the sound of his spine breaking inch by inch. Blood flowed from the holes in his body, and Samuel's divine power forcibly tore at this already tattered body.
——Any human who dares to offend God will never have a good end. He will definitely die here today.
"Stand up." The god stood still. "I am willing to respect a man who sacrificed everything for his country."
Talon held onto the wall and managed to stand up straight. He found himself desperately afraid to even look directly into the god's beautiful, transparent blue eyes.
"Very good, I admire your courage." The other party nodded gracefully.
Talon forced a wry smile. To be praised by a god was worth even death. But the other party's next words suddenly changed his expression.
"But I'm also curious," those calm blue eyes pinned him to the spot, "Do you honestly believe that by stalling for time and diverting all my attention to you, your plan will proceed as normal?
Through Talon's drastically constricted pupils, he saw the ordinary black-haired man he had seen before, and a red-haired woman walking out from behind the god. The latter was holding Hadi, the little prince of the Alan tribe, like a hen, in her hands. He should never be here and must never be here.
The other person looked alive, but was dying.
"This guy is quite good at hiding." The red-haired woman threw the little prince to the ground and said complainingly: "Fortunately, the 'Ghost' helped me, otherwise I would have to waste more time looking for him."
The god smiled softly, seemingly unperturbed by the red-haired woman's slightly disrespectful attitude. It seemed she must be a favored servant of the gods—but that woman, it seemed, was... a follower of the God of the Sea?!
Even Talon, whose face turned pale, couldn't help but roar inwardly. One was an ordinary person, an atheist, and the other was a believer in the God of the Sea. Why did the gods these days have such strange tastes in selecting their servants?!
Talon wanted to step forward and snatch the little prince away, but he didn't dare to act rashly, even though the god was talking to the ordinary person with his head lowered, standing in a relaxed manner. He finally decided to ask the question he should have asked from the beginning: "Excuse me, what is your divine name?"
"You will know my name." The other party finally gave him another look: "The prerequisite is that your master appears in person to talk to me."
"You care about this person?" Perhaps Talon's anxiety was too obvious, as he suddenly heard the ordinary person ask without warning, "You must know the price the carrier has to pay when a god descends forcibly—they could very well be drained of their essence and die."
The little prince lay soundlessly on the ground, groaning weakly, his fingers still struggling to climb in his direction. Talon forced himself to calm down and was about to speak when he heard the guy ask with a disgusting sharpness and ruthlessness: "So, do you care about his identity as a carrier, or do you care about him personally?"
Talon opened his mouth tremblingly, but could not utter a single word.
"Aren't you going to call him out yet?" The god standing next to the black-haired young man crossed his arms, his blue eyes cold as he gazed at his increasingly pale face. "Or does he still expect you, a bunch of incompetent believers, to slaughter everyone in Port Morris for him and complete a ridiculous sacrifice?"
After combining all the clues he had collected, the professor put forward a view that seemed extremely terrifying, but was quite credible after careful consideration: the essence of the massacre in the city of Barando in the previous life was actually a sacrificial ritual in an attempt to summon the gods.
A divine descent requires the deity itself to pay a price. This "price" can only be mitigated when the ideals desired by the living present—usually devout believers—align with those represented by the deity. Unfortunately, one of the ideals represented by the God of Night and Death is particularly unique. Upon death, anyone resonates strongly with the concept of "death," even if it stems from fear and resistance. This resonance is profound and profound.
What if tens of thousands of people in a city died? Would the intense resonance that erupted in that instant weaken the resistance to a god's arrival to the mortal realm, perhaps even allowing him to remain in the real world?
After the Balando Massacre in his previous life, Azuka didn't remember hearing any rumors about the God of Night and Death coming to the world. Perhaps this method was simply too simple and impractical, or perhaps the tyrant had done something.
In this life, the Barandu Massacre was prevented. A saint forcibly born by Samuel's divine power and a "God-sent carrier" bearing the seal of the God of Night and Death traveled thousands of miles to Port Morris to cooperate with the Temple of Night to set up a magic ban circle throughout the port. This was definitely not because the other party was kind-hearted and decided to help the poor slaves of the Silver Iris Empire. They just wanted the situation to be as chaotic as possible and tried to take advantage of the chaos to recreate the "Barandu Massacre" in Port Morris.
"Useless servant."
A hoarse and low voice, which was unclear whether it was male or female, young or old, came from the mouth of the little prince who was lying on the ground.
Under the gaze of everyone, he stood up, and a very incongruous and cold expression appeared on his young face with an exotic style.
The professor narrowed his eyes, and once again saw those familiar, distorted, ghostly figures—but this time it seemed different from the past. The figure seemed so solid that he could even see a face floating above the little prince's. Half of it belonged to an old man, with cloudy, pale irises and wrinkles that rose and fell like a living thing; the other half belonged to a young boy, with nothing in the depths of his dark eyes and skin as smooth as a newborn, and even tiny hairs visible.
...Is this really just a fragment of the soul?
——Or is this the deity itself?
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