Praise!

If it had a choice, Puxien wouldn’t stay here; it would flee. Even though it knew that the consequence of failing to cooperate with the selection was the activation of the restriction embedded within its body, causing it to disintegrate and dissipate on the spot. All the illusionary beasts that had appeared earlier had restrictions embedded inside them beforehand. These restrictions were linked to the formations across the square, and each squad's barrier was overseen by an individual array master. An illusionary beast that defeated the squad inside the barrier could gain its freedom. An illusionary beast that refused to cooperate with the selection would be executed immediately. Each array master could independently judge whether the squad inside their designated barrier had lost any hope of victory and terminate the test early. The illusionary beast would then be restrained by the formation to prevent further casualties. In principle, Puxien's mental domain—its soul blessing—induced a "boiling" effect on the soul, thereby raising the target's spiritual barrier with startling realism from within a "false" state. It did not transmit any soul energy itself, acting merely as a catalyst. Yet now, this catalyst was firmly locked into this reaction. Puxien would rather die now than keep going. In this world, some things were far more terrifying than death. Especially the scene unfolding before its "eyes"— Was that something it was meant to see? Damn it! I only agreed to enter the trial ground and help your Church of Order conduct this selection test for the sake of freedom; but... Do you even know who you are testing? No... Does even he need to go through your selection? *** "All of this is fake. Fake. It's all fake. This is... an illusion." Karen gradually emerged from his initial panic. He had plenty of experience dealing with illusions and more than enough reliance to withstand soul-based attacks. Only, as Karen slowly regained his clarity and his self-awareness returned, the illusion did not dissipate, nor did he wake up. Instead, the surrounding environment began to expand continuously and grow increasingly detailed. Had the intensity of the illusion increased? Karen could only guess so, because Aisli had provided very little information on Puxien. Combined with the organizers' near-shameless approach of having Puxien launch an ambush on everyone in the squad the moment it appeared, there had been no gradual process of contact and acclimatization. Thus, Karen had not yet realized that the illusion he was currently in was actually a wall he had built for himself. A noose was already looped around his neck, and the hands gripping the rope were his own. The more clearheaded he became, the tighter the rope choked him. The world before his eyes began to tilt. Karen subconsciously tried to maintain his balance, only to find it completely impossible. Under the disturbance of this tilted world, his center of gravity was lost, and he tumbled backward. *Thud!* When the back of his head slammed heavily onto the floor, Karen finally realized that the world had not tilted; rather, in his perception, everything had overturned. It had been a very, very long time since he felt so weak. Even when overdrawing his spiritual energy, he had never been this frail. "Karen? Karen?" Hm? Karen opened his eyes to find himself lying in a bed. Around the bed, many people were sitting or standing. "Oh, thank goodness! Karen, you're finally awake!" Aunt Winnie wept with joy. Aunt Mary smiled, then her face darkened, but soon she smiled again. Uncle Mason patted his chest and laughed. "My nephew is awake! Haha!" "Brother Karen?" Mina, Lunt, and Chris stared at Karen with curiosity. "Uncle... Aunt... Auntie..." Karen sat up from the bed. The expressions of the people around him were as genuine as ever, and the warmth of family was just as rich and tender, but... did something seem to be missing? What was missing? Karen couldn't help pressing a hand to his head. What on earth was missing? "Karen, don't scare me. Are you feeling unwell somewhere?" Uncle Mason asked with concern. Karen endured the tearing sensation in his head and struggled to lift his gaze, his eyes sweeping once more over the faces of everyone by his bed. They were all here. Who was missing? "Karen, you've only just recovered from your illness. Quick, lie down and get some more rest." Aunt Winnie placed a hand on Karen's shoulder, gently pressing him down. Karen's body slowly softened, leaning back down. *Yes, I've just recovered. I need to rest.* "Be good, Karen. Rest a bit more. Another sleep, and you'll feel much better," Uncle Mason said. *Yes, after a sleep, everything will be fine.* The back of his head touched the soft pillow, and comfort and ease immediately welled up. But just as Karen was about to close his eyes, his expression suddenly hardened, and his eyes snapped wide open. "Someone's missing!" Karen pressed both hands against the mattress to push himself back up. "Karen, you need to rest," Uncle Mason said. "Yes, sleep a little longer. It's good for your body," Aunt Mary said. "Be good, Karen. Listen to us, be good," Aunt Winnie coaxed. "Brother Karen, get some good rest. Once you're better, come play with us," his younger cousins urged as well. "Someone is missing!" Karen glared, forcing the words out from his throat once more. At that moment, Uncle Mason, Aunt Mary, Aunt Winnie, and the cousins all reached out, pressing their hands onto Karen's body, trying to force him back down onto the bed. "Someone is missing!" Karen let out a low roar, violently shoved away the hands on him, and rolled off the bed. Scrambling on hands and knees, he dashed toward the bedroom door. The instant he stood up, Karen slammed the door shut, pressed his back against it, hung his head, and began panting heavily. *This is fake. This is fake. This is fake...* That voice rose in his heart, and Karen began to repeat it in a whisper. The bedroom behind him had fallen completely silent. Staring at the floorboards beneath his feet, Karen gritted his teeth, confusion in his eyes. *Is this illusion really this powerful?* All his past experience and composure when facing soul-based attacks had failed completely this time. He was clearly still resolute, yet why did he feel more and more like a white rat scurrying frantically inside a glass jar? Karen looked up toward the windowsill on the third floor ahead of him. There lay a person—a person identical to himself. His face was gaunt, his expression numb, just lying there. The sunlight spilling in from outside brought him not the slightest trace of vitality; instead, it seemed to drape him in a layer of ghastly pallor. His eyes stared vacantly upward. On the ceiling above lay two figures, a man and a woman, darkness continuously flowing from them as if they were still bleeding. "Why am I seeing you?" Karen pressed a hand to his forehead. The dizzy, groggy feeling he had just dispelled surged back once again. The person lying on the windowsill turned his head toward Karen. He smiled, baring white teeth. At the same time, a gruesome wound appeared on his chest where the heart should be, but that spot was completely empty. "I'm useless. I'm a waste. I'm useless. I'm a waste..." He kept repeating these words. Karen took a deep breath, fighting to keep his balance. *An illusion. It's still an illusion!* The best way to break an illusion was to look straight at it, confront it, and conquer it! Karen walked toward the windowsill. The version of himself lying there stopped his incessant muttering and shouted: "So he killed me, emptied out this body to make room for you, so you could move in!" Karen froze in his tracks. "That is how I died! That's why I died! Because he wanted you to come, I died! He got me killed, and your arrival got me killed!" "No... that's not true." A jolt of alarm ran through Karen's heart. He couldn't let himself be drawn into this rhythm. "He loved you. He loved your parents. He..." Karen continued, somewhat dazed: "Who is he?" The figure on the windowsill began laughing again, a laughter that grated on Karen's nerves. Just then, the window on the sill swung open. He stood on the sill, facing the open window with his back to Karen, and spoke: "Push me down. Push me out of this home, and this home will be yours." Karen reached out with both hands and walked toward the windowsill. Yet just as his hands were about to touch the person's back, Karen stopped. He drew a deep breath and slapped his forehead hard. Then he turned around and walked in another direction. Reaching the study door, Karen paused. This study gave him a peculiar feeling, as if all his problems would be resolved the moment he pushed this door open. Karen placed his hand on the doorknob, turned it, and pushed the door open. Behind the desk inside the room sat an elderly man. The old man sat upright, looking at Karen. "Grandpa..." At that moment, Karen finally realized who had been missing from his bedside earlier. It was Diss! Diss hadn't been by the bed! "I'm tired," Diss spoke. "I will find an excuse to sleep for a while. When you are truly mature, I will wake up and take what I want from your hands." Hearing these words, Karen inhaled sharply. The heavy, dizzy feeling in his head returned once more, several times more intense than before. "Don't worry, I will always be watching you. Every move you make is under my gaze. If you don't believe me, look behind you." Karen turned his head and saw Diss's phantom silhouette behind him—this was his family faith system. Diss continued, "See? To keep an eye on you, I performed the blood sacrifice ritual." "That's not how it is..." Karen clenched his fists and began pounding on his head, desperate to regain clarity. He utterly loathed this illusion. "How could love without reason exist in this world? You know very well who you are. Why would I show you love and kindness just because you occupied my grandson's body? "Heh, turns out you're that naive and childish?" Karen continued beating his head as he growled, "You made this illusion for me. I will kill you! I'll kill you! Puxien, I will kill you!" "You should confront your heart. Have you never doubted certain things? Have you never pondered them?" Karen looked up, his expression twisted with anguish, yet his eyes had grown clear once more. "Do you know? If Diss truly wanted it, I would gladly offer it to him myself. Even if this is just a dream, I am willing to keep dreaming it." "See? You *have* doubted, haven't you? It's just that your emotion overpowered your reason." Diss stood up, looking at Karen. "You should confront your own heart." "Heh..." Karen let out a laugh. He backed out of the study and slammed the door shut with a loud bang. Staggering toward the stairs, he saw a black cat sitting on the banister. The black cat spoke: "Karen, do you know? The Allen family's plan never actually failed. I, Purr, am the one truly executing it. "How could those fools know how to use this finger? "I will find the most suitable master for this finger—or rather, what could be more suitable than its original master? "When the time comes, I can find an excuse to form a symbiotic bond with you, and I will transcend the limits of the Ancestor Allen family faith system—that damned family faith system that entraps a genius like me! "I will choose the one with the best bloodline talent among my clan to marry you, so she may bear your bloodline. "That way, "my Allen family will receive your gift in both body and soul. "What does a brief period of obscurity matter? "Under my arrangements, the Allen family will ultimately usher in true glory! In the future, the Allen family will earn the stature that forces even the divine church to treat us as equals!" Karen began to flee; that dizzy, heavy feeling returned once more. Yet right at that moment, a cat tail thrust toward him, followed immediately by a pristine white finger tapping onto his forehead. "Order... come forth and face me!" *Bang!* Karen instantly spun into vertigo, his entire body tumbling down the stairs. Before he could even scramble to his feet, a golden retriever leaned in and licked his hand: "I have waited for you so long according to our promise. This time, you absolutely must not abandon me again. I still need you to help me bring my Miers back. You won't deceive me again, right?" Karen subconsciously raised his foot, wanting to kick the dog away, but stopped midway. He scrambled up, clutched the stair railing with both hands, and continued struggling downward. He had to get out of here. Get out of here! This place was filled with absurdity and oppression. Yet what tortured Karen most was that although he could regain clarity again and again, he could never exert any influence on his surroundings, whereas his surroundings could always inflict the most direct impact upon him. When Karen reached the foot of the stairs on the ground floor, he saw an old man sitting by the coffee table, sipping tea. "Mr. Hoff... Grandpa Hoffen?" Mr. Hoffen looked at Karen, smiled, and said: "My good friend Diss, what an extraordinary man he is. He should not have lived such a plain, frustrated life. In my eyes, he belongs in the most dazzling heights. "So, I helped him summon you. "You must work hard. Mature quickly and become the stepping stone for him to become a god, heh heh heh..." The dizzy, heavy feeling struck yet again. Karen could only clutch the banister desperately to preserve the last shred of his balance, but he failed nonetheless. His body slid down uncontrollably. Once his back hit the carpet, he turned his head with difficulty and saw that upon the mortuary slab in the Inmerlais house's first-floor mourning hall, there was no coffin; instead rested a Throne of Order. "Come here. Come here. This is where you should sit. This has always belonged to you, Karen. "You are me, and I am you. "I will return before they return. I will bar their path of return. I will create a world where only I exist as the sole god. I will make Order the only standard by which this world is measured! "Forget those memories of yours. Abandon your struggles. "Those are merely specks of dust accumulated on this gemstone left sitting too long. A gentle blow, and it will be clean. "Perhaps, because of my slumber, I had some dreams—dreamed many stories, dreamed many identities. And the identity you remember is nothing more than the last simple little dream after I woke up. Yet you, laughably, took that dream for reality. "Karen, "you are me. "You are Order. "You are the one worshipped by the Church of Order... the God of Order!" Karen clutched his head in his hands, an overwhelming desire to give up welling up inside him. This damned illusion was filled with vulgar tricks! Yet it was precisely this vulgarity that rolled over him again and again, crushing him until he had no strength to fight back, crushing him into despair, crushing him until he wanted to bow his head and surrender. This carpet was so soft. He wanted so badly to just lie here forever. Karen knew with crystal clarity that Uncle Mason and the others he had met earlier, "Karen," Diss, Purr, Kevin, Mr. Hoffen, and that throne were all fake! Yet the more clearheaded he was, the sharper it became, and the more agonizing the pain grew. This was not simple pain; it was as if he were throttling his own neck with all his might, and the more clearheaded he became, the harder he choked himself. This paradoxical tearing and distortion dragged Karen into a bottomless abyss of despair. *Just sleep.* *Stop resisting.* Just then, a faint sound came drifting up from the basement. Karen slowly opened his eyes. He tried to pretend he hadn't heard it, but the sound continued—still faint, still indistinct, yet buzzing in his consciousness so loudly that he could not sleep. Slowly, Karen rolled his body over. He wanted to stand up, but found himself entirely incapable of doing so. Out of necessity, he could only crawl—crawl toward the basement. He had to go turn off that sound, just like switching off a light in the basement. Finally, Karen reached the corner. Tilting to the side, he tumbled down the ramp leading to the basement. Stumbling and tumbling, after who knew how long of struggling, Karen finally arrived in the basement hallway. The sound came from Aunt Mary's workshop, and the workshop door was shut. "Stop it... I'm tired. Stop, stop it! Don't disturb me anymore! You're not allowed to disturb me..." Karen rasped hoarsely as he crawled toward the door. "Stop it, just stop. Your voice makes me uncomfortable." Karen slowly managed to crouch up. "I don't want to hear your voice! I want quiet, I need quiet!" Karen slowly rose to his feet. "What... are you saying?" Finally, Karen reached the workshop door. From inside came the sound of prayer: "You are the great God, the incarnation of the supreme truth in this world; "Allow me to praise You, for You have lit the lamp in the dark for me; "Allow me to sing of You, for You have washed clean all dust upon me; "Allow me to follow You, for You intentionally left footprints behind for me; "I shall forever bathe in Your radiance, I shall forever carry Your will, I shall forever uphold Your oath; "Praise You, my God, my Lord, my heaven and earth, my... Young Master." The door was pushed open by Karen. "Alfred..."