Alfred was a steadfast chronicler of historical truth. He ensured that everything under his pen was genuine—though, naturally, a few omissions were unavoidable.
At times, he would deliberately create ambiguities or obscurities so that future readers studying this period of history would have puzzles to unravel, giving generation after generation of scholars something to research and verify according to the rules he laid down.
This scratched a deep itch within him; after all, it was a way of interacting with people thousands, tens of thousands of years, or even several epochs into the future.
The problem was that he had no desire for his chronicles to degenerate into some sort of laughable, lowbrow farce.
For example, this upcoming meeting was destined to become a momentous turning point of this epoch. Following standard historical convention, it would likely be labeled the "Red Leaf Street Conference" or the "Secret Talks of Red Leaf Street."
Then, untold generations of scholars would spend their entire lives searching for what kind of enigmatic, mystical realm "Red Leaf Street" was—a place whose historical standing might even eclipse Mount Anlamende, the most famous mountain of the previous epoch.
Therefore, to prevent such a ridiculous spectacle from coming to pass, Alfred decided to omit the exact location of the meeting.
"On this day, the God of Eternity manifested from the endless void, the God of Light descended from the blazing sun, and the God of Order walked forth from the mortal realm.
The three Epoch Overlords convened their first formal meeting to remake this world."
Having written this, Alfred set down the New Light of Order and his quill, taking out an ordinary notebook and a fountain pen.
Recording official history was exhausting work. Fortunately, Alfred had recently devised a new way to relax, allowing him to clear his head after tedious labor.
That was—
Writing romance stories for Tyrannus and the others.
***
Once possessed by the God of Eternity, Richard entered an "imperceptible" state, making it impossible to pinpoint his location via spiritual perception.
Even so, he was not hard to find.
Karen and Neo walked straight toward a pastry shop. Standing by the entrance was Philomena, upright and rigid as a dutiful sentry.
In the past on Red Leaf Street, it was common for men to fool around inside while their wives came to drag them out in tears and shrieks. With Philomena, the reverse was true: the man relaxed inside while she stood guard outside, and when he finished, they left together.
Although Richard never actually engaged in anything improper inside and was merely seeking a cure, few women would have tolerated such a course of treatment.
"Minister."
Karen nodded to Philomena.
Back when sparks had first flickered between her and Richard, he had been quite reluctant to play matchmaker as her superior, feeling that doing so would be unfair to Philomena.
Later, Karen had gradually come to terms with it. Looking at it from the other perspective, the Fischer girl would probably only ever feel affection for Richard in this lifetime. Richard had plenty of choices, but if she wanted to experience the life journey of an ordinary person, she had only Richard.
Karen refused to wrong the poor girl, but as for putting upon his own cousin, he felt no qualms whatsoever.
Karen asked, "How long has he been inside?"
"Quite a while. Since noon."
"Mm."
Just as Karen was about to lift the padded cotton curtain hanging over the doorway for insulation, a voice called out from within:
"Apologies, Young Master Aisen has reserved the whole place today. Please try another establishment, guest."
Prompted by another voice beside her, she quickly added:
"Ah, Young Master Aisen has reserved the entire street today! Guest, you'll have to go to another street."
Richard had always been generous with his money on this street. Exchanging just a bit of his personal stipend on the black market for riels was more than enough to splurge here—aided, of course, by the street's rather modest prices.
Neo spoke up, "We're friends of Young Master Aisen. He invited us to join him."
"Ah, is that so? Please come in, then."
The curtain was pulled back from inside, revealing a heavily powdered face. It was hard to discern her exact age at a glance, not only because of the thick makeup, but also because this line of work aged people prematurely.
The shop's interior was an inverted T-shape. Along the right side of the long central hallway stood a row of small pink doors. Inside each was an extremely cramped space that could hold only a single bed—though that hardly prevented two people from using it.
At the very end lay the living quarters, knocked through to connect with the back of two neighboring shops. It had a kitchen, a washroom, and a fairly large lightwell covered by a large pane of glass, beneath which sat eight plastic buckets catching leaks.
Normally, rain was rare once winter set in, but the aftermath of the divine battle had brought days of howling wind and driving rain across Wien, causing the roof to leak.
In addition, the divine battle had disrupted recent freighter shipping on the open sea, driving up prices considerably in York City.
And at this moment, the great God of Eternity was lounging on a worn, dark-red sofa with a torn hole in the upholstery.
His shoes were off, one leg propped up and the other bent. He lightly tapped his knee in time with the singing of a woman in her forties.
They had heard singing earlier, pleasant and melodious, not at all inferior to a famous professional vocalist. But drawing closer, they noticed something off.
It turned out that Richard's tapping was imperceptibly tuning her pitch and keeping time, magically transforming what was wildly off-key into heavenly music.
Richard pulled a few bills from a stack of riels beside him and tossed them over.
"Thank you so much, Young Master Aisen! Thank you so much!"
The singing woman took the money and immediately backed out of the room.
From the chipped coffee table in front of the sofa, Richard pulled a sheet of red toilet paper.
The quality was awful; it tore easily and left sticky residue, requiring one to carefully scrape and pinch it away with fingernails.
Upscale establishments would offer high-grade napkins or hot towels, but on this street, paper like this was standard issue. After all, the patrons who came here for pastries were hardly the type to fret over customer service.
Richard blew his nose with the paper, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it toward the wastebasket.
With a soft thud, he missed, bouncing off the wall onto the floor.
Neo smiled, fished a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, pulled one out, and offered it to Richard.
Richard took the cigarette, held it to his nose, took a sniff, and gave a faint scowl. "Hah, reeks of corpses."
After all, the main god and the divine beast printed on the front and back of the pack had both fallen.
After lighting his own, Neo made himself right at home, sitting on the arm of the sofa and slinging an arm around Richard's shoulder, giving him a playful shake.
"Hey, I say, if I'd known you liked this sort of place, you should've descended sooner. I'd have taken you on a tour of them all!"
"Which is why you are not Light."
Neo's gaze narrowed slightly. "What do you mean?"
"You have never considered yourself Light; you merely regard yourself as a vessel available for temporary use." Richard pointed a finger across at Karen. "Whereas he possesses a subjective consciousness of his role."
Neo grumbled in dissatisfaction, "Then why don't you look at yourself? Aren't you using a vessel right now too?"
"Indeed," Richard nodded. "Both Light and I can only find inheritors, but we can never find the next incarnation of ourselves."
"Finding one or not doesn't really matter. We're all consumables anyway—items to be discarded after use. What's the difference between disposable and premium quality?"
"If we lose, there is indeed no difference. But if we win, the difference is enormous."
"I couldn't care less about things that far off. Come on, let's talk about what's in front of us. So, how is it? Having fun here?"
"Not bad. The faint faith power of a minor deity can actually suppress the concentration of my bloodline."
Clearly, Eternity had come here to investigate the secrets of Goddess Mills.
Every deity possessed unique qualities, even if those qualities did not manifest on the battlefield.
Karen walked over to a chair opposite them, sat down, and said, "Thank you for your assistance."
Richard glanced at Karen with a chuckle. "I have a feeling that the fellow above usually has a temperament just like yours."
Karen shook his head. "Probably not."
That being's domineering presence and grand vision were heights Karen considered himself far from reaching.
"Looking up at the heavens from the ground distorts everything." Richard slipped on his shoes, walked to the washroom door, gripped the broken handle, and pulled the door outward.
Behind the door was not a communal washroom, but a mountaintop.
Thick mist poured in through the doorway, carrying a peculiar fragrance.
Richard stepped inside. Karen stood up, exchanged a glance with Neo, and followed him through the door.
Atop the mountain lay a magnificent plaza. At its highest point was an isolated platform where tables and chairs of colossal proportions stood, making ordinary men look like ants beside them.
Neo asked curiously, "Where is this?"
"Mount Anlamende." Pausing for a beat, Karen added, "The place where you died in your past life."
Two epochs ago, the God of Eternity became an Epoch Overlord, ending the Era of Ignorance and kindling the sacred flame atop Mount Anlamende.
One epoch ago, the Light camp defeated the Eternity camp, and the God of Light held the Banquet of the Gods at the summit.
In the middle of the last epoch, the God of Light fell, and the God of Order, brandishing the Sword of Chaos with Light's severed head impaled upon its tip, descended the mountain step by step.
It could be said that this mountain had witnessed the very core of turbulent shifts across nearly three epochs.
Yet in this epoch, the mountain had become a forbidden zone. The demonic gods and monster beasts slain by the God of Eternity had once been sealed beneath each flight of ascending steps; after the gods ceased walking the mortal realm, with no deity left to suppress and maintain the seals, the mountain from the mountainside down had degenerated into a zone of chaos.
The fundamental reason was that the mountain held only ceremonial value and offered no concrete profit, so none of the orthodox churches had any interest in clearing it.
"I met Light once," Richard said. "Before he attained godhood."
Neo remarked, "How unpredictable the world is."
"Not unpredictable," Richard replied, hands clasped behind his back. "I comprehended the taboo of time rather early on. So when I met him, I caught glimpses of the future where he overthrew the foundation I had built."
"Why didn't you strangle him in the cradle? Couldn't bring yourself to do it? Or was it mutual admiration?"
"There is no inherent taboo in time itself, much like the deities who wield the laws of prophecy—they, too, can make precise prophecies and glimpse certain fragments of the future.
The reason it is called a 'taboo' is that once you master it, not only can you see, but you can also intervene to change things.
However, depending on the circumstances, an immense price must be paid.
If there were no cost at all, I would have snuffed him out on the spot without hesitation, heh."
"You're certainly candid."
"When you walk, do you care whether the sole of your shoe crushes an ant?" Richard looked up toward the master seat above. "Yet Light, back then, recognized who I was as well. He did not kneel in worship before me; instead, he bluntly pointed out my faults and naivety, adding that if I refused to change, he would correct me in the future."
Richard turned around, walked up to Karen, and looked at him.
"And likewise, Order corrected Light."
Karen replied, "Things develop dynamically. As long as the general direction is sound, the trajectory spirals upward."
"And who found that direction?" Richard asked.
Karen answered, "You."
"To be honest, I didn't think that far ahead. Yet I could sense that from the day I first descended, you've deliberately forced me into your system, insisting on placing me in the role of the foundation layer."
"That is your true place in history."
"And so..." Richard tapped his head. "I read through the memories of Order's doctrines stored in this body. It is simple, not complicated, yet remarkably clear. It's truly fascinating—a church that speaks not of an afterlife nor preaches of a heavenly paradise after death, yet manages to map out plans for past and future clearly from top to bottom, all while compelling most of its faithful to conscientiously do their part."
"Because only by conscientiously focusing on this life do the past and future have any meaning."
"How domineering," Richard remarked, spreading his hands. "My intervention that day has already aligned me with your camp, and there's no turning back. Yet even now, you aren't satisfied and still seek to persuade me further in my heart."
Karen smiled faintly. "My apologies. Force of habit."
"Very well. Since both of you are here, let us talk business."
Richard sat down directly on the floor.
Seeing this, Karen and Neo sat down as well.
Compared to the towering tables and chairs around them, the three figures sitting on the stone tiles looked remarkably like three tiny bugs huddling together for a chat.
"I don't have much power left. However, with so many gods having fallen, those entities are gathering the nutrients left in their wake, and I can forcibly siphon off a share when the time comes. After all, every bite I take is one less bite for their total.
What about you two? Light is weak, and Order is decaying. Have you found a way? Don't let your strength fall too drastically short when the time comes to actually fight, or it'll be no fun at all."
Karen answered, "I have the Church of Order."
Neo raised an eyebrow. "The Church of Light will soon announce its re-establishment. Interested in attending the opening ceremony?"
Richard's fingers brushed against the floor tiles, revealing a colossal ghostly shadow beneath them. The phantom was about to howl and roar, but the moment it saw the three figures above, it let out a shriek of terror and instantly scurried back into hiding.
Perhaps in the eyes of this phantom, the three above were the true terrifying demons.
"You and I..." Richard pointed at Neo, "once our power descends completely, can fight only one great battle."
Then Richard pointed at Karen. "You are different. You are the new Order. But until the final moment, He cannot fall, meaning He cannot bestow the godhead upon you; before that happens, you can never attain godhood.
Therefore, until that final grand battle arrives, none of us three can truly take the field.
Through this net, the main gods slipped through first, only to be dragged down into mutual destruction by Order's branch gods. But next, a massive swarm of small fry will sift through."
Karen replied, "The Church of Order and the alliance of churches currently being formed will join hands to resist the deities returning in the second phase."
Richard asked, "The main gods are gone, but aren't there still branch gods? What, they'll resist them just the same?"
Karen answered, "For orthodox churches, the main lineage typically belongs to the main god's faction, while branch gods, though possessing inheritances, belong to collateral branches. If the main god cannot return and only branch gods do, it often leads to internal power struggles and purges within the church.
Therefore, considering their own development and current vested interests, the orthodox churches do not wish for branch gods to return on their own."
This was clearly evident from the Church of Order's attitude toward Children of God.
Richard nodded. "It seems the churches have grown accustomed to treating gods as totems on murals—worshiping and praising them daily, yet never truly wanting the gods to step down from the paintings.
Then all we have to do is wait until the final moment."
Neo asked curiously, "Just how formidable were those Epoch Overlords of the past?"
"I don't know," Richard replied. "Never fought them. Never even met them."
Neo asked, "Then why did they fall? Surely they didn't all self-exile out of boredom like you?"
"A god's lifespan is nearly endless compared to mortals—no, compared to all things—yet even gods decay. Either they die in battle to make way for a new epoch, or they fall silent ahead of time, transitioning their epochal standing.
Yet every Epoch Overlord left an imprint upon this world profound enough to sustain them, allowing them to return even after who knows how many epochs.
They are the history of the gods. If Order wishes to wipe it clean and sweep this world bare, He must endure history's vengeful reckoning."
Neo suddenly asked, "Say, can you see our ending? You have that ability, don't you? In the epoch before last, you spoke with the God of Order from the epoch that followed, didn't you?"
Though he knew looking up the answers in advance was improper, who could resist?
Richard fell silent.
After quite a while, he smiled.
"Actually, that is one of the main reasons I couldn't resist entering the field myself."
Neo asked, "Did we win, so you rushed down to pick a side and take part?"
Richard shook his head.
Neo frowned and countered, "So you came down deliberately to experience defeat?"
Richard shook his head again.
Puzzled, Neo pressed, "Then what does that mean? What is the ending, exactly?"
Richard stood up, gazing at the magnificent and bizarre vista beyond the mountain. Lush, verdant life and desolate, uninhabited silence formed a sharp, undisturbed dividing line here—the handiwork of his past.
"The new epoch... I cannot see it at all."
Chapter 943