"Throne of Order..."
A purple flower bud blossomed. At the center of its stamen was a shifting liquid. As it gradually turned transparent, the image within revealed itself—a majestic throne suspended in midair.
Tartas wore a grave expression, his hand subconsciously rubbing his scepter. Perched on his shoulder was a sage sprite, its eyes closed, bestowing upon its host an enhancement to deduction and reasoning.
Gelihaer stood beside his elder brother, also gazing at the image in the flower's center.
The two brothers stood upon a mobile vine platform divided into several tiers. The highest level, where they stood, was the command deck, while the tiers below housed the control rooms for the legion's various divisions.
Strictly speaking, Gelihaer had no right to be standing here during wartime; he held a clerical post within the church and had merely been temporarily reassigned to escort a shipment of logistical supplies.
However, this legion was their family's private army. As a direct descendant of the family, he enjoyed a natural privilege here.
The divine churches had existed countless times longer than secular nations. The infiltration of family power into ecclesiastical hierarchies was an unavoidable problem for every church, and the Church of Order was no exception. Within Karen's direct squad, the only one without a family background was Ventura.
However, the Church of Order's countermeasures against this phenomenon were also extreme: the High Priest could not possess a prominent family background—an orphan's origin was best.
Since there was no way to eradicate the existence of family factions within the church, they reshuffled the circles of power whenever a new High Priest took office, periodically purging and resetting influence. It was in this manner that the High Priest's direct confidants, represented by figures like Foden, had risen to prominence.
Tartas spoke into the flower's center before him: "Send word to Corps Commander Nibula. Inform him that this Order legion boasts impressive combat capability and lavish equipment. If we try to preserve our strength to minimize our own casualties, the enemy might seize the opportunity to break out."
A petal detached and transformed into a butterfly, fluttering down to the lower tier. Once received by the communications room below, the message would immediately be transmitted to the Church of Earth's legion.
As reconnaissance reports from the front continuously compiled, Tartas's brow furrowed deeper and deeper. In the flower's image, following the initial Throne of Order, there appeared one figure after another bearing supreme symbolic status within the Church of Order's hierarchy:
Divine artifacts, church-guarding divine beasts... Tartas could name some, while others he didn't even recognize.
Having already ruled out the possibility that the encircled force was not the main body of the Whip of Order legion, Tartas, as commander, could only murmur in astonishment:
"Could this legion truly possess so many outstanding array masters?"
A massive array manifestation like the [Throne of Order] required a full team of array masters to sustain and maintain. With so many manifestations on par with the Throne of Order now appearing above the Order legion, it implied one, two, three... or even more array master teams working at once.
Gelihaer asked, "Could they be bluffing?"
Tartas raised a hand, decisively rejecting his younger brother's suggestion: "No, impossible. Utterly impossible."
Gelihaer did not argue further.
Tartas explained, "They have no reason to do that. Both sides have already laid all cards on the table. What purpose would such fabricated illusions serve?"
Gelihaer pursed his lips, hesitated for a moment, and asked anyway, "Could they be deliberately intimidating us to stall for time?"
"And what would be the purpose of stalling? To await reinforcements?
"They have no reinforcements left. Reports from the front are clear: those Order legions are pinned down in a stalemate, showing no signs of repositioning."
"Brother, I just can't bring myself to believe the opposing Order legion has that many array masters. Doesn't it seem absurd? Given the usual proportion of array masters in a legion, if there really are that many, just how massive would their army have to be?
"At that scale, we wouldn't be besieging them—they'd be encircling us."
"Nothing is impossible. This Whip of Order legion was assembled by the Church of Order's Whip-Wielder by requisitioning Whip of Order squads from across various regions, mostly elite squads originally from the frontier zones. For squads of that caliber, there might be more than one array master per team. Pieced together like that, and supplemented by deliberately transferring several entire array divisions from the administrative region, pulling together a spectacle like this isn't so surprising."
"All right, so that's how it is." Gelihaer pursed his lips. "So they're clearly setting up for a pure defense?"
"Yes. That's why we must make further preparations to dismantle their defensive arrays as much as possible beforehand."
Just then, a petal drifted up from below. Tartas caught it, checked the message within, and continued:
"Corps Commander Nibula shares the same view and suggests delaying the general assault. After all, breaking through defensive arrays of such density requires preparation."
Gelihaer asked, "Could that be their exact objective?"
"Whose? Corps Commander Nibula's, or..."
"Brother, I think the safest course is to send a force to test the waters with an initial attack—strike first and see how they react."
"Bilion is already dead. While the legion Bilion led didn't belong to our family's direct lineage, the family expended considerable resources cultivating and infiltrating him.
"Right now, what we command is the family's true core foundation.
"Gelihaer, warfare isn't like you trying to seduce women—flirting first just to see how they react whether you succeed or not. Doing that costs you nothing beyond a bit of embarrassment, but if I do that here, I might throw away one of our family's military assets for nothing.
"Just stay by my side, watch more, learn more, and speak less."
"Understood, Brother."
Tartas had an exceptionally good relationship with his younger brother because there was no conflict of interest between them. Ever since his brother married that woman, he had been destined to be shut out of the family's core succession.
Furthermore, Tartas actually felt a twinge of pity for this brother with his dissolute personal life. Though Gelihaer never admitted it and styled himself as a libertine womanizer, in truth he had likely been enduring the backlash of the Blessing of Life all along.
Reproduction was fundamentally an indispensable facet of the profound mysteries of Life. His younger brother simply could not suppress this instinct, yet due to the suppression of his arranged-marriage spouse, he was forced to constantly place seals upon his own bloodline and power.
Time slipped by.
The general assault had already been delayed by nearly three hours past its originally scheduled time.
Having exchanged messages, the two corps commanders finally reached their decision.
Tartas ordered, "Pass the command: Life Forbidden Net!"
Across the northern sky of the battlefield, colossal vines soared upward, gradually blanketing the firmament like the knitting of a sweater.
Upon closer inspection, one could see vivid red blood flowing through these vines. Attracting and blending with one another, guided by the priests below, they wove this dreadful tapestry.
In the previous era, a single tribe was tasked with nurturing just one vine, and the tribe's population was strictly capped; exceeding it meant extermination.
Consequently, at regular intervals, elderly people past a certain age would willingly come before the blood pit where the vine was cultivated and throw themselves in, sacrificing their flesh and blood as fertilizer. Newborn infants exceeding the population quota would likewise be brought here and abandoned by their parents.
Blood vines cultivated through such sacrificial rituals were exceptionally valuable, serving as superior crafting materials or sacred artifacts capable of producing a variety of effects.
In this era, constrained by the Code of Order, such sacrificial cultivation had dwindled on the surface. Yet in secret, within their missionary territories and privately carved-out mini-worlds, this method had never truly ceased.
The appearance of the Life Forbidden Net completely sealed off the northern front.
Tartas issued another command: "Pass the command: Monster Beast Stampede!"
Giant monster beasts summoned beforehand began roaring, thundering toward the position of the Order legion.
The mighty ancestors of these monster beasts had all been absorbed and imprinted by the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life was a "grand" existence, capable of storing the imprints of living beings. Once an imprint was complete, Priests of Life could use the Tree of Life as a conduit to summon avatars of these formidable monster beasts—at the cost of using their descendants as sacrificial offerings.
The advantage of this method was that once a powerful monster beast was imprinted, even if its descendants' bloodlines degraded, summoning an avatar merely required a sufficient quantity of sacrifices. Thus, sub-species could be used, drastically reducing the cost.
Among these monster beasts were even dragons. Seven giant dragons soared through the air, projecting waves of draconic might toward the Order legion.
To cut costs even further, the Church of Life didn't even bother breeding sub-species themselves; instead, they chose to "purchase" them from the Church of the Crypt. Draconic sub-species or even lowly lizardmen bought from them would be slaughtered upon arrival and preserved using special storage techniques until needed.
This was partly why the Church of Order had cracked down on the Church of the Crypt earlier; the "coup" and "purge" targeting the dragon race hadn't merely been a show of authority.
Nowadays, dragons could rarely support many fully formed higher dragons on their own clan resources. Yet their ancestors had once been magnificent, and the dragons of the Church of the Crypt had secretly engaged in "dragon-trafficking" with factions like the Church of Life.
This had long since crossed Order's red line.
Tartas nodded in satisfaction at the military might displayed in the image, continuing to order the battle formation to advance steadily while maintaining a set distance behind the monster beasts.
Gelihaer glanced at the sage sprite on his elder brother's shoulder. For some reason, he felt that this sprite's utility was exceedingly limited—a far cry from how they were described in myth.
Suddenly, the sage sprite turned its head toward Gelihaer and flashed an eerie smile.
Gelihaer recoiled in fright. When he looked again closely, the sprite was back to its ordinary state.
"Phew..."
Exhaling deeply, Gelihaer produced a medicine vial, tipped out two pills, and popped them into his mouth.
Tartas heard the chewing sound, turned to his brother, and asked, "Has it worsened?"
"No, it's fine, nothing serious. I'm just afraid I might get too stimulated once the battle begins, so it's a precaution."
Tartas said, "Don't worry. There are plenty of priestesses on the tier below. When the time comes, pick one or two. Bilion is dead, so father another child for me. Even if your wife finds out, she won't say anything."
"Ah, all right, Big Brother."
"Thank you."
"No, it's only what I should do as your brother."
In truth, there was something Gelihaer hadn't told his brother: he wasn't taking medicine as a precaution. Deep within his soul, an inexplicable nervousness and dread had taken root, which was the real reason he had questioned his brother's tactical orders earlier.
Had it not been for the multiple constraints imposed by his family and his wife's clan, Gelihaer would have been much like a broodmother in an insect hive—procreation was his most primal instinct and duty.
He had no divinatory powers, yet in some mystical way, this "racial talent" allowed him to sense impending danger in advance.
His unease stemmed from a terrifying premonition that his species was facing annihilation.
Gelihaer swallowed two more pills, finally suppressing the negative emotion completely.
Little did he know that directly across from him, in the location where he believed the Order legion to be, a young bald man was also swallowing sedatives he had obtained from Vice Commander Neo.
Yet no matter how many he took, the red hue deep within Daliwenluo's eyes never faded, and the sapling before him grew an ever deeper crimson.
Count Recar walked up beside Daliwenluo, glanced at him, and gave a start. "Why are you crying?"
Daliwenluo sniffled hard, wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, and said:
"Ah, it's just that I'm going home. I'm happy."
...
Nibula stood atop the head of an earth giant. The giant's head had been sliced horizontally down the middle to form a flat surface, where his command platform was set up.
Almost at the exact moment Tartas issued his orders, Nibula also commanded:
"Wall of Weeping!"
From the south, a colossal wall rose up. The Church of Earth cast humans into their divine realm, tearing apart intimate bonds—husbands and wives, parents and children—and placing them on opposite sides of the wall. They could touch the stone and hear each other's voices, but could never meet for all eternity. Over years and decades, the wall soaked in these tears, turned into a specialized array material... the Wall of Weeping.
Segmented and distributed, individuals were allotted small amounts while legions received large quantities. When needed, these materials acted as catalysts to summon the defensive walls to blockade an area.
The defenders atop the wall were already arrayed in strict vigilance, utilizing these fortifications to prevent the Order legion from breaking out in this direction.
"Earth's Bellow!"
Mud giants rose from the earth one after another. Initially bare-bodied, as they marched forward, under the continuous blessings bestowed by the Priests of Earth behind them, armor and weaponry began to materialize upon them.
By the time they entered the final charge phase, these giants had transformed into a formidable giant corps, surging forward at top speed with roaring fury.
Nibula continued his commands: "All units, coordinate the follow-up! Once the giants breach the line, press forward immediately. No holding back strength!"
The Earth battle formation began to advance. As they marched, an earthen terrace gradually formed beneath the legion, its soil flowing like a mobile liquid, lifting and carrying the formation forward.
While other churches' battle formations were merely formations, the Church of Earth's formation could transform at any moment into a mobile, colossal fortress.
Nibula smiled and said to his two adjutants beside him:
"Heh, in the Divine War of the last era, the Church of Life was mainly responsible for battlefield aid, while our Church of Earth handled defense. This time, it's our turn to take the offensive, whereas Order, who spearheaded the offensive charges throughout the last era, has ended up on the defense.
"Times change after all."
...
Meanwhile, faced with the earth-shattering momentum closing in from every direction, everyone in the communications squad encampment, led by their commander Purr, began to pray.
Purr led them first in prayer to the God of Order, then to the Four Retainers, then to the Twelve Knights of Order, followed by other notable figures in the church's history, including the church-guarding divine beasts...
When they ran out of figures to pray to, no matter—they started over from the beginning, just in case someone hadn't heard.
Paired with the "projections" above, it looked like an open-air movie screening with a crowd of devout believers prostrating in utmost piety.
The atmosphere was almost bubbling over with sheer absurdity.
Yet this was literally all they could do. Organizing a defense was completely meaningless; with so few personnel and so little time, projecting this "movie" was already a rushed miracle.
As for organizing a breakout or counterattack, that was no different from rushing to commit suicide.
Purr felt that she had carried out her mission to perfection. In terms of deception, misdirection, and information suppression, it was not only airtight, but an overachievement. From here on, everything depended on Karen.
"Come on, let's do it one more time! Everyone be devout, no trembling in your voices, meow!"
Purr raised a fleshy paw like an orchestra conductor, signaling everyone to watch her cues and follow her rhythm.
In her heart, however, she began praying silently to Karen: *Karen, you have to hurry! Kitty has done everything she can, meow!*
"O great Order Karen..."
*Huh?*
Purr prayed again in her mind: *O great God Karen...*
*Huh?!*
Purr readjusted her state and thought: *O Karen's God of Order...*
*What the devil, meow?!*
Purr opened her eyes, looked around, and closed them again:
*O great God of Order, please hear my...*
Purr snapped her eyes open once more. She was certain now: something had gone wrong, and the problem wasn't with her. It had to be stemming from the symbiosis contract, which meant something had gone wrong with Karen!
And it wasn't just a physical issue—his mental consciousness was disordered to the point that it was bleeding over and affecting her!
Purr's tail stood straight up in terror:
"Good heavens, meow!"
This was horrific. She had done everything perfectly on her end, waiting for rescue, only for the corps commander on the other side to lose his mind?
"Oh dear, oh dear, my precious little God of Order, don't scare me like this... wait, what?
"My little Order...
"My little Order...
"My big brother God of Order... Bah!"
...
Karen's condition had grown even worse.
At first, it had merely been auditory hallucinations. But when the hurried horn signaling battle preparations sounded in the army, it felt as though a heavy hammer had smashed into the back of his head. By the time he lifted his head and forced himself to focus, he discovered that strange colors had surfaced in his vision.
The interior of the military tent hadn't physically changed, yet he could vividly perceive that everything had shifted, like film reels from different eras displaying distinct color tones and grain.
Now, the world before his eyes felt coated in an oily, smoky yellow, as though the glow of the setting sun and twilight clouds had been dumped entirely onto the ground.
Karen pulled out a Church of Thunder cigarette. Knowing it was useless now, he still popped it into his mouth without lighting it, chewing on it dry.
A bitter, pungent burn burst across his mouth, but the distortion in his vision didn't improve in the slightest. Instead, the hunger addiction within his body surged once more, far more violent than before.
"Damn it!"
Karen staggered up from his seat. The legion had already reached its operational positions, and tactical deployments were fully laid out. Next would be removing the shielding array above the legion—which meant the true battle was about to begin.
Even if he wasn't personally directing this fight, as the figurehead mascot, he had to take his place where a mascot belonged, so every soldier in the legion could see him.
Karen pushed aside the tent flap and stepped out. Right at that moment, a giant weng carrying a massive payload of magic crystal cannon shells walked past him. Karen nearly lost his footing and tumbled to the ground.
The physique of this giant weng was more than ten times larger than he remembered, clad in rune-gleaming scales, with magma and frost mist weaving and oozing from its pores.
How could something like this be in his army?
If they really possessed such a creature, why would it be assigned to logistics? It could easily charge as the frontline vanguard.
Karen shook his head forcefully. Looking again, he saw that the giant weng had returned to its normal appearance.
As expected, following the auditory hallucinations, visual hallucinations had arrived.
Thank goodness Neo was here. Otherwise, with both his hearing and sight completely detached from reality, what could he possibly command?
"Order, shall we head up?"
An unfamiliar voice came from beside him. Karen turned his head to see a young man clad in white armor standing at his side. Looking closer, he realized it wasn't armor, but scales.
The youth emanated thick, terrifying auras of frost, molten fire, storm, darkness, space... all harmoniously coexisting within his form. He reached out and took Karen's arm; from his fingertips, one could discern the exquisite, pure whiteness characteristic of a bone dragon.
In the past, Karen had once been carried by the shoulders by Augie, flying across nations and straits to capture the assassin who murdered Wolflen's entire family. Back then, Augie's formidable, terrifying draconic physique had left a profound impression on him.
Yet the "dragon" before him gave Karen a sense of intertwined divinity and mystery. Standing next to him produced a suffocating pressure that made one feel like a mere ant.
Undoubtedly... this had to be Little Kanna.
Karen had grown somewhat accustomed to his auditory and visual hallucinations, even deducing a few patterns from them.
"All right," Karen nodded.
Little Kanna looked at Karen curiously, sensing that the way he looked at her right now was a bit different.
Still, obediently, she stepped in front of Karen and transformed into a bone dragon.
*Roar!*
A pressure as vast as the stars cascaded down. What appeared before Karen was not the hundred-meter-long, still-growing Little Kanna, but a boundless entity whose form rivaled the galaxy itself.
Upon its body rested every trait and element of the dragon race, coupled with the true, deep-seated pride woven into draconic bone!
Even in an era dominated by humanoid deities, its head had never once bowed.
Karen stood upon its back as it soared into the sky, as if a colossal realm of space had been torn violently from below and shifted upward.
Karen looked down. What met his gaze was an endless expanse of knights clad in black armor. Disciplined and silent, they possessed the power to trample any obstacle before them in an instant.
And that giant priest phantom in the sky—no, she was no phantom. They were Yamila, one of the Twelve Knights of Order, along with several priest branch deities. Though the Church of Order did not recognize branch god pantheons, had they joined other churches, they would have held the status of branch deities, or even founded minor churches of their own.
Karen's head began to throb as if tearing apart. He dared not keep looking down, terrified that the sights filling his vision would blow his consciousness apart.
In truth, he was already in agony; the sensation of his brains boiling and evaporating was far too intense.
Suddenly, a gentle radiance cascaded down, easing Karen's torment. He saw a halo of light, like a sun descending from the heavens to the mortal world, hovering directly before him.
It brought hope to the world; it bestowed light upon creation.
Neo leaped from a falcon knight onto Little Kanna's back and waved a hand in front of Karen's face, thinking to himself:
*Crap, it's gotten even worse.*
Even so, Neo asked, "Everything is in position. Can we launch the attack?"
This was merely a polite formality. Neo turned and walked toward the other side, preparing to issue the order himself.
Karen skirted past Neo, stepped through that layer of light, and gazed ahead.
There lay a basin—the enemy's battlefield.
Karen saw a towering, sprawling wall and heard countless despairing wails. Every brick and every handful of earth along that wall was drenched in profound grief.
Across the heavens, Karen saw a grid woven of blood and tears. Helpless and numb, they interwove endlessly across the sky, just as in life when they had walked by habit to the edge of the pit and leaped into the abyss.
In this world, alongside goodness and beauty, there was never a shortage of ugliness, nor of extreme distortion and rupture. Yet the reason such ugliness evoked revulsion and disgust was because a standard of measurement existed.
And once that standard was lost, everything would plummet into a bottomless abyss.
Suddenly, the image before Karen's eyes distorted once more.
A colossal Tree of Life appeared, its branches connecting to the heavens and its roots driving deep into the earth.
On either side of the great tree stood two deities, engaged in a cycle with the Tree of Life: they watered the tree, and the tree nourished them in return.
Both tree and deities radiated a pure, divine glow—yet where did that radiance, that nourishment, come from?
A towering citadel stood ahead, and upon the highest steps of the dais sat a deity.
He sat high above, having constructed countless wonders of the world. Yet looking closely, one realized this castle was no physical construct; rather, it was built from countless, teeming humans, crushing, climbing, and trampling over one another.
Humans squirmed over his divine body like a swarm of maggots, contributing to his towering grandeur and myth.
The already surging hunger addiction boiled over with even greater violence. Karen uncontrollably reached out both hands, attempting to grasp that tree, that citadel, those gods. Both his body and soul radiated a ferocious craving!
Just as Neo was about to give the attack order, he noticed something amiss beside him and immediately looked back. He saw Karen's eyes completely crimson. Always the epitome of propriety, Karen now displayed an extreme brutality and ravenous, grotesque greed reminiscent of a ravenous demon.
Karen's hands clawed forward, gesturing toward the basin battlefield ahead.
In an instant, Chains of Order snaked out from beneath Karen's feet, rapidly wrapping around the little bone dragon's body. Little Kanna felt a bone-chilling cold wash over her. The person on her back felt entirely foreign, yet she dared not raise her head to look.
The Chains of Order kept spreading, whipping wildly above the legion and drawing the soldiers below to look up involuntarily. They knew that was where their corps commander stood.
The chains brushed against the concealment array above the legion. Below, the array masters took this as their commander's signal and immediately deactivated the shielding array.
All at once, the commanders of the Life and Earth legions recoiled in shock, for an entire legion had instantaneously "appeared" upon the battlefield without any warning!
A raspy, smothered roar tore from Karen's throat. The Chains of Order began whipping to his will, and the little bone dragon, wrapped entirely in chains, became like a puppet under their control.
As Karen's roar sounded, the little bone dragon opened its jaws in unison, releasing a majestic draconic roar that shook the surroundings:
"Devour them... for me!"
Chapter 795