A Test of Loyalty to God!

The moment you pulled your gaze away from the letter, the statue's face was already right in front of you, a completely seamless transition. Almost by pure instinct born of fright, Karen began to recoil. But as he fell back, he suddenly found himself staring at his own back. Your soul had retreated, yet your body remained where it had been. It was a peculiar sensation of detachment, while an overwhelming terror and insecurity flooded into your heart. Then came the next instinct: you cannot abandon your body—get back! His backward momentum halted abruptly, and he surged forward. Suddenly, a black door materialized before Karen, wedging itself between his soul and his body. Karen was stopped in his tracks. It felt like the sudden weightlessness when falling asleep, plummeting into an abyss, followed by a violent jerk of the body. Karen jolted awake. Opening his eyes, he found himself still in his own body. Everything prior seemed like an illusion; the statue was not before him either, still resting far away against the cave wall. Yet upon closer inspection, the statue on the left—the one originally bent over scooping up the moon—had straightened upright into a posture waiting to receive an embrace. The crescent moon she had once cradled in her hands was gone. She was waiting for him to throw himself into her arms! Karen wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. This was the first time he had ever encountered such an unfathomable "tugging." It targeted neither purely the flesh nor purely the soul, but kneaded you back and forth across another dimension like Wien dough before it was dropped into hot oil to fry. "Phew..." Karen let out a long breath and looked behind him, hesitating over whether he should turn back first, draw up a battle plan with the others, and then return to resolve the situation here. But as he pulled his gaze back to face forward, that previous "tugging" sensation returned. They had their eyes on him! Karen's movements did not stall. Experience had taught him that when confronting such unknown perils, dread and evasion were the most useless responses; only by facing them head-on could one ever find a real opportunity. Just like facing Madame Molly in that dream for the very first time—if he had broken down and fled back then, there might not be a present day for him. Turning his head, there was no statue in front of him. Yet in the next moment, Karen sensed his body drifting upward. Looking down, he realized that at some point his body had floated several meters into the air, and directly beneath him, the second statue held both hands raised high, as if waiting to catch him. Karen swung the Sword of Arius and slashed straight down. *Buzz!* The statue distorted and vanished, and Karen dropped back onto the ground. Yet this was far from over. The two statues constantly shifted positions, their power stretching and contorting Karen's spatial perception of up, down, front, and back. Even though Karen repeatedly cleaved at them with his greatsword, he still could not find a way to break the deadlock. "Argh!" Karen let out an angry low roar, intentionally working himself into a frenzied state. He knew wildly swinging his greatsword was a waste of energy, but he had to do it. He needed them to see his lack of balance, to see his panic. All to lure them into stopping their scratching from the outside and stepping in for the harvest—for instance, by entering his body! However, whether they felt the moment was not ripe yet, or their behavior simply differed from what Karen had anticipated, they seemed entirely immersed in this game, treating Karen as their plaything. They even... seemed reluctant to deliver the fatal blow to Karen. Karen stopped, leaning on his greatsword and panting slightly. He even took out an energy potion, uncapped it, and poured a mouthful into his throat. He was not so exhausted that he needed replenishment; he simply wanted to settle down. The sensation while drinking the potion was bizarre: the vial clearly rested right before his eyes, yet felt tens of meters away. The distortion of his spatial senses spiked instantly! *Hm?* *Once I calmed down, they grew more aggressive instead?* Heh. Karen almost laughed. He had feigned madness earlier, reasoning that such a state would leave the widest spiritual vulnerability, making it prime for infiltration. He had thought he was angling for them. Yet he had overlooked a fact—a very simple fact: these two statues likely did not possess such high intelligence. They operated purely on instinct. This resulted in very straightforward behavior: when prey struggled violently, keep wearing it down; once the prey was worn into quiet surrender, harvest it. Playing tactics with them was utterly pointless; their "minds" were actually exceedingly simple. Realizing this, Karen simply drove the Sword of Arius into a crevice on the platform and sat down cross-legged on the ground. By his calculations, the main force would not arrive for another fifteen minutes. If he could eliminate this danger within those fifteen minutes, it would be of great benefit to their subsequent operation. As captain, this was a duty he had to shoulder. Karen stretched his arms and leaned back on his hands, looking as relaxed as someone lounging on a verdant hillside in a park on a spring day. *Buzz!* *Buzz!* As though receiving the signal that their prey had "surrendered," the two statues moved in unison for the first time. In an instant, Karen was "pushed" out over the abyss. Below was a suffocating weightlessness, as if freezing you precisely at the split second before waking from a nightmare. Oh... This thrilling, agonizing sensation had escalated from a single musical note into a full tenor aria. At the same time, the scenery around Karen shifted rapidly. Clearly the surroundings were moving while he stayed still, yet the swirling vertigo soon stripped him of that orientation, churning up severe nausea from deep within. After prolonged torment, two pure white arms reached toward Karen from opposite directions. The two hands did not belong to the same person: the fingers of one were bare of polish, while the fingers of the other bore a smoky hue—though it looked natural rather than cosmetic. The two hands grasped Karen's arms, one on each side. In that instant, Karen sensed the figures of two young women manifesting beside him, clutching him left and right. Paired with his current posture, it almost felt like they were accompanying him to a park to enjoy the scenery; purely in terms of physical gesture, there was even a touch of intimacy. Yet Karen knew full well this was merely the prelude before the true tempest struck. He figured others would not have had to go through such extensive buildup as he had—they would likely have been seized by the statues right from the start. The reason he had spent so long, even resorting to pretending to give up just to advance the process, was probably because of the Gate of Samsara that had appeared at the very beginning. Did the appearance of the Gate of Samsara elevate the statues' assessment of the threat he posed? Holding Karen's arms on either side, the two girls exerted a sudden pull and threw themselves backward! *Splash!* It felt as if water lay behind him, and his whole body plunged in. Yet submerging beneath the surface was like passing through a cycle of reincarnation—he sat up once more, only this time he found himself sitting in a small stream, surrounded entirely by pitch darkness. All right, he was in. This was not his own consciousness space, but now that his consciousness had entered, it meant he had passed the initial disorientation. From here on out, it was half his home turf. *Wooooo—!* Horns blared, and the surrounding gloom began to dissolve. Karen saw a monster beast crouched on the earthen slope ahead of the stream. The beast was entirely red with a single horn, towering yet far from clumsy, exuding a sharp, predatory grace. In the mythic accounts of *Whispers of the Moon*, this was the mount of Artemis, Goddess of the Moon. However, descriptions of it existed only in early myths, detailing how it accompanied the Goddess through her early growth; once she attained godhood, it never appeared again, nor was it recorded in church murals or official histories. Ordinarily, such circumstances meant that the mount had fallen before the Goddess ascended to divinity. Along both flanks, silhouettes emerged, chanting hymns with solemn expressions. Karen looked down and found that the water in the stream was actually golden. Yet this golden hue carried no divine power—it resembled swarms of golden leeches, already beginning to cling to his body. Almost by instinct, Karen tried to stand and pull himself out of this wretched environment, while simultaneously attempting to summon Thousand Phantoms into his consciousness. Yet just as Karen moved to stand, an invisible shackle snapped into place, forcing his body back down onto his knees in the stream. On a rack not far away, three children were playing, while a bonfire burned beneath them. A surge of fury welled in Karen's chest, followed immediately by heartbreak and sorrow. These emotions... belonged to those two girls? Karen recalled the tears he had shed earlier and how he had wondered what kind of empathy could cause such an effect. Well, now he knew. They did not just want empathy; they wanted him to undergo a "true," visceral reenactment of what they had felt. Karen saw a man bound there, with an armored warrior standing behind him. Stamped on the warrior's armor was a crescent moon emblem, very similar to that of Dark Moon Island, except it was yellow, whereas Dark Moon Island's crescent was red. This commonality proved little. Although the Church of the Goddess of the Moon had long sought to assimilate the Dark Moon worshiped by Dark Moon Island into its branch pantheon, looking for connections based merely on emblem design was insulting everyone's intelligence—after all, to most people in the world looking up, the moon looked the same. The man was shouting. Karen could not understand the language, but combined with the man's expression, his meaning was clear: run, run! The ache of heartbreak surfaced again. Thus, this man was probably her husband. Yet soon, turning his gaze, Karen saw another man, weeping as he held a little girl. The heartbreak intensified once more. This man was also her husband. No, strictly speaking, it would have been far more fitting if two or more people were experiencing this together. The worst case was being alone, forced to bear the experiences of two people simultaneously. Like right now, having two husbands thrust upon him. Moreover, the two men had completely different styles: the former looked ordinary, with heavy ethnic attire, while the latter was impeccably dressed, resembling a high nobleman. So they were their respective men; this was unlikely the product of polyandry. Especially the little girl cradled in the noble husband's arms. The moment Karen's eyes met hers, a fiery agony flared in his eyes—a tingling, numbing ache he had not anticipated. In a flash, Karen's vision blurred. At one moment, he seemed to remain in the stream gazing up at the girl in her father's embrace, but the perspective quickly flipped—he became the one held by a man from up high, looking down at himself sitting in the stream. Unfortunately, outside, his squad had not yet arrived. Had they appeared on the platform right now, they would have seen blood trickling from the corners of their seated captain's eyes. This shift in perspective brought Karen pain many times more excruciating than the earlier stretching and kneading of space. Before, he could still rationalize it as external influence, but now it felt as though someone were physically chiseling into his skull right behind his eyes. "Ah..." Karen let out ragged low growls. There was something wrong with this girl! No, there was something wrong with him, too! Who was she? Just who was she? Karen's thoughts raced. His Dark Moon Eye was losing control because of this girl. Every time their eyes met, it felt like blades slashing into his eyes. Was she of the Dark Moon clan? Did she worship the Dark Moon as well? No—widen the scope, be bolder! What era was depicted in this scene? The previous era, before the Goddess of the Moon had attained godhood. So, theoretically speaking, this little girl might very well be... the Goddess of the Dark Moon! The manifestation of the Dark Moon Blade's power that had once appeared in his consciousness space in the form of a woman. The Dark Moon Eye he now possessed... was very likely hers. When the same pair of eyes "met," that tearing agony was like a clash across space and time. Pain was practically inevitable. After all, how could you look into your own eyes without any medium in between? Many more scenes unfolded afterward: parents, friends, companions, subjects... all manner of threats, all manner of oppression, compelling you to submit to their demands and fulfill your destined fate. A frantic, savage fury surged within Karen's heart. "He" began to curse and revile them. Though Karen could not understand what he was shouting, it must have been venomous, yet only teasing laughter echoed around him. After cursing for who knew how long, Karen bent down and scooped up a cluster of golden leeches from the stream. Clustered together, the leeches formed an orb that looked, from a distance, like a full moon, utterly sacred and pure. Yet up close, one could see the leeches voraciously devouring his blood, his vitality draining at terrifying speed. Scooping them out had already drained away all life force. Lifting them high would drain the life force of the second person. Of these two women, one was almost certainly the mother of the Goddess of the Dark Moon, and the other was surely no ordinary person either. This had been a meticulously chosen sacrificial ritual! This sacred moon—the embodiment of Artemis, Goddess of the Moon, orthodox head deity of the Moon lineage—had undergone its metamorphosis in such a manner. In his mind, Karen suddenly pictured Kevin in the study frantically tearing at a dog bed with his paws; Raniedal had used that method to reenact how the God of Order had once looked upon the Goddess of the Moon with "tender affection" and "gentle care." With the vitality of both people drained, Karen's vision plunged into darkness, and the sound of wind whistled around him. Reason dictated that this was the end. Their ordeal was over, so Karen's should have ended as well. Yet Karen was an anomaly. He did not end. A phenomenon that was half-illusion, half-projection, coupled with cognitive distortion, still lacked the power to drag Karen's soul into annihilation alongside them. An ordinary person or another priest would likely have perished right here. In Karen's squad, no more than four could have survived this first trial. Yet Karen had far too many anchors in the depths of his soul; he had even played cat-and-mouse on a conscious level with Linda, who represented Rielsa. However, perhaps precisely for this reason, Karen triggered the statues' second phase. *Buzz!* Suddenly, the surrounding darkness dissipated. Ahead lay a sea of molten lava. He stood at the edge of the flames, surrounded by the silhouettes of Order Knights. A heavy religious aura of Order washed over him. The altar ahead was his destination; only by stepping onto it could he offer absolute loyalty to the God of Order! *A change of scenery? A scenario tailored to me?* No, this was tailored for any priest or follower of a familial faith system who came here. If you could endure the first phase of another's past, what awaited you was a second phase belonging entirely to you. Karen looked around and saw Purr, Eunice, Alfred, and others bound on distant racks... On another rack were Uncle Mason, Aunt Mary, Aunt Winnie, Mina... It seemed everyone he knew and held affection for in his heart had appeared here as hostages. The same pattern, a different setting, with far stronger immersion. Indeed, far stronger immersion—or so it should have been. The problem was that Karen was an anomaly. If this was a ritual compelling one to sacrifice oneself out of devotion to God, where greater loyalty brought greater pressure and suffering, then Karen felt zero pressure—because toward God, he harbored no loyalty whatsoever. Turning around, Karen saw an old man bound to a crucifix behind him—it was none other than Diss. Seeing Diss bound here, Karen finally could not hold it in... and laughed. "Hehehe... Hahaha..." On the crucifix, Diss laughed as well: "Hehehe..." This was a torture designed to test loyalty to God, yet the one enduring it and his most important hostage were both anything but devout. Karen raised his hand, intending to shatter this place directly. As he opened his mouth, Diss spoke at the exact same moment. Grandfather and grandson uttered in unison: "The God of Order, raised by a whore!" *Boom!* In reality, the two statues fractured, crumbling into falling debris. Yet their smiles, at this moment, turned radiant.