"Wow. For a mere angel, this is quite the grand spectacle."
At the end of the passage was a resplendent underground palace. Sweeping murals flashed past, depicting myths of an unknown era, while the gleaming dome, upon closer inspection, was composed of colossal golden bones—the remains of some mythical creature.
In the center of the palace rested an enormous stone coffin large enough to fit a giant, so tall that the two could not even reach its lid.
"I remember the Burdettes were all shorties," Yaxiu remarked with a sigh. "Even though I know the Gospel abolished reproductive isolation long ago, can giants really have children with humans? Even if the software allows it, the hardware shouldn't, right?"
The cloaked figure paid Yaxiu no heed. He stared at the stone coffin, making obscure gestures with his hands. Soon, a massive curtain of dark green phantom shadow rose from the coffin, with ethereal chains extending from all over its body, tightly binding it to the palace—as though it were imprisoned within, or perhaps relying on the palace for protection.
Phantom: "Are you the sorcerers who passed the trials I set, worthy of inheriting my path of evil souls?"
Yaxiu: "Just him. Compared to corpses, I still prefer them warm."
Cloaked figure: "Great pioneer, Evil Soul Angel Burdette, I shall inherit your glory and carry it forward. Entrust everything you have to me."
Phantom: "To confirm your qualifications, my inheritance will invade your soul in an exceedingly brutal manner, possibly even causing your soul to collapse. Are you certain you still wish to inherit this path?"
Cloaked figure: "I've never experienced a soul collapse. Bring it on."
The phantom laughed aloud and plunged into the cloaked figure's body. The cloaked figure jolted, black smoke billowing from his body. The smoke seemed almost tangible, swiftly transforming into abominable beasts that bared hideous, fanged maws and savagely tore at his soul.
Phantom: "My path of evil souls is based on the hundreds of millions of evil spirits in hell, creating supremely vicious evil souls. Being bitten by evil souls is equivalent to experiencing hell firsthand. As the evil souls devour you, you can also directly absorb the knowledge within them. Open your mind and do not resist."
Cloaked figure: "So, is this what death feels like?"
Phantom: "Exactly. Just as falling into hell after death washes away all emotions, the evil souls will devour the target's soul until only pure knowledge and memories remain, allowing me to inherit it with ease. By relying on the combat strength of my evil souls, I slew countless otherworldly angels and plundered their life's wealth."
Cloaked figure: "In other words, my emotions have been eaten as well?"
Phantom: "Yes. You should be feeling it by now, shouldn't you? Your soul tearing thread by thread, your emotions peeling away bit by bit. When immense agony drowns out your reason, you become more and more of a stranger to yourself... If you cannot endure to the end, your soul will be completely torn to shreds!"
The cloaked figure's body trembled, and he abruptly fell to his knees as if unable to bear it any longer. The black-mist beasts devoured his body bit by bit—first his fingers, then his arms, torso, internal organs, neck... In the end, the black-mist monsters had completely enveloped the cloaked figure, leaving only a human silhouette.
Yet right at that moment, the cloaked figure burst into arrogant, maniacal laughter.
"Hahaha! What a fool! To actually obediently endure until the very end, never knowing that this isn't an inheritance ritual at all, but a corruption ritual! All my previous arrangements were merely to filter out a soul resilient enough to endure the corruption! Now, I have thoroughly corrupted his soul and succeeded in rebirth! At long last, I have broken free from hell completely!"
"And you," the black-mist-cloaked figure said, pointing at Yaxiu, "shall become the first evil soul after my rebirth!"
"Whoa, terrifying," Yaxiu said, shrugging. "Harvey, save me."
The figure paused slightly. The next second, another voice came out of his mouth: "As expected. The moment I saw your remnant soul emerge from the stone coffin, I knew there was definitely something wrong with your inheritance, Burdette.
"How could a necromancer like you, who struggles desperately just to drag out an ignoble existence, possibly leave behind a genuine inheritance? If you cannot even face death, you are no true necromancer at all."
"Impudent!" the black mist ground out. "Why are you still alive?! Your emotions should have been completely consumed by the evil souls, and your consciousness should have vanished like smoke! How can you still resist?!"
Harvey: "Because I am a necromancer, and you are an undead.
"Much as I respect you, Evil Soul Angel, you are a relic from nine hundred years ago. To think you tried to use a nine-hundred-year-old necromantic miracle against me—I honestly don't know whether you look down on time, or on the necromancy faction.
"Your necromantic miracle may have reigned supreme in its era, but by now, it has become obsolete junk. The moment you said you would invade my soul, I began transforming my flesh and blood into a corpse cage—yet you failed to notice even that.
"You thought you could corrupt my soul, completely unaware that you were walking straight into the coffin I prepared for you.
"The dead should serve the living, not the other way around. Angel who should have fallen into hell nine hundred years ago, please rest in peace within my body."
The black mist abruptly pulled back into the cloak, and then erupted into dark green flames. The green fire burned nothing, finally converging into a pair of handcuffs that bound the cloaked figure's wrists.
"How's the haul?"
"Everything." Harvey pressed a hand against the stone coffin. "And the most precious treasure of all is this."
The massive, heavy stone coffin suddenly dispersed into a wisp of light smoke, then coalesced behind Harvey into a gray-haired elderly butler dressed in a black formal suit. It appeared ethereal and illusory, with a gaunt face, lusterless eyes, and skin covered in cracks.
Yaxiu exclaimed in wonder, "Dead for so many years, and Burdette was actually able to preserve a god?"
"Only this one remained, though," Harvey said. "Still, if there were more, I wouldn't be able to bear the burden anyway. Even this single god is an enormous trial for me. Wielding a god with a mortal body is no simple matter.
"With this god and the path of evil souls, we can finally advance our plan."
Yaxiu raised an eyebrow. "Is it really okay? It's not too late for you to back out now."
Harvey countered, "If I back out now, would you let me off? You invested so much in me and helped me through Burdette's trials. Taking back everything with principal and interest is your style, after all."
Yaxiu: "Haha, now that you possess the angel-inherited path of evil souls, I might not be able to beat you anymore."
"Stop this pointless probing, Yaxiu Heath." Harvey strode back along the passage as the palace fractured and collapsed inch by inch behind him. "As for you, don't try to stop me at the final moment. I don't want to fight you. You're troublesome, and... I truly don't want to."
Yaxiu: "According to our plan, you need to mass-produce half-dead undead legions. If I recall, that's your most loathed line of work. Are you ready to cross your own bottom line and compromise your principles?"
Harvey shook his head. "No, I won't cross my bottom line, nor do I need to compromise my principles. The dead should serve the living—I have never wavered in that belief.
"It is precisely because I deeply love life that I joined your plan. But to take revenge on this half-dead world, we can only turn ourselves into half-dead corpses.
"I will not provide you with an unfeeling undead legion. The necromancy faction does not exist to create death, but to welcome new life. Therefore, I will provide you with a host of undead who fight for survival, including myself—I will be their banner."
Harvey stepped up beside Yaxiu and said, "Let's go. It is time to burn the Gospel Country to ashes."
The video footage ended here.
For a long time, no one could recover their senses.
Countless questions surfaced like bubbles in their minds, leaving them unsure of which to ask first. In the end, Lisi took the lead: "What is a god? Is it like the Lady of the Lake in fairy tales?"
"Don't ask me, I don't know either!"
Annan touched her amethyst earring to calm herself down, equally overwhelmed by the flood of information. "How could I possibly know the details of an inheritance treasure valued even by angels—"
"Oh, a god is an evolution of a sorcery spirit."
Everyone turned to look at Yaxiu. Yaxiu pointed at the Book of Gospel. "I just asked the Book of Gospel, and it answered with: 'Four-Wing sorcery spirits are countless; Five-Winged gods are unique.' It seems that when a sorcery spirit condenses five wings, it grows into a sentient god. Just like how the god in the projection willingly ran off with Harvey."
The Book of Gospel actually answered a question like that?
The others were one thing, but Annan was deeply astonished—after all, successive generations of the Doran family had tried to dig out more knowledge from the Book of Gospel, yet had never managed to unearth secrets above Five-Winged... Could it be that the Doran family's phrasing had been wrong all along? Or was Yaxiu just that lucky?
Nevertheless, everyone immediately believed the explanation.
Not only because of the Gospel's endorsement, but also because they recalled numerous pieces of corroborating information!
"Speaking of which, the Supreme Love Church once mentioned that under the Blood Moon Sovereign, there are countless gods..." Igola murmured. "Back then, I was wondering whether the Blood Moon Sovereign would fear the gods conspiring in rebellion, or if there were factional struggles between them... But if a god is the sublimation and evolution of a sorcery spirit, then it makes sense."
"'A God Sovereign does not mean the Lord of Gods, but the Master of gods!'" Annan clapped lightly in sudden realization. "So that's what that sentence in our ancestral records meant! I used to think it was just redundant nonsense!"
Lisi looked down at the hand mirror, whispering absentmindedly, "Incarnation of a god..."
Yaxiu also looked down at Lisi. "Hmm? Did you also notice some foreshadowing you missed before? Let's hear it."
"No." Lisi shook her head, pointing at the Book of Gospel. "Daddy, you and Uncle Harvey seemed to make a pretty terrible criminal declaration in there. You won't drag me down with you, will you?"
Yaxiu was silent for a moment, then said, "Lisi, I'm going to teach you a secret trick."
"Hmm? What trick?" Lisi blinked.
"Listen carefully. Based on my experience, the first thing to do upon entering prison is to find someone like your Aunt Bogin and beat them up. Then you can blend right into prison life."
Lisi listened, completely bewildered. "Pre-prison education?!"
Igola gave a soft harrumph. "If I hadn't struck up a conversation with you back then..."
"Then right now you'd still be staying in Shattered Lake Prison, comfortably eating meals at the state's expense."
Igola chuckled softly. "Mm, you're right. How could safely eating Lalafell in Shattered Lake ever compare to following you around in exile, making enemies of the entire world, and chewing on emergency biscuits?"
Yaxiu nodded repeatedly with a look that said 'You got a great deal,' but Igola paid his banter no heed. The Swindler lowered his head to eat his biscuit, staring at the Book of Gospel's display, his brow weighed down by an inexplicable melancholy, his thoughts unknown.
Banjie suddenly spoke up: "However, although this video footage will cause our reputation in the Gospel Country to plummet to rock bottom, it might not be an entirely bad thing."
Annan's eyes lit up. "You mean..."
"The Future Board hasn't announced Harvey's reward yet," Igola said calmly. "Harvey's reward will inevitably come from this footage. In other words..."
Everyone looked at the Book of Gospel, their eyes burning with eager anticipation.
Could the Gospel be about to reward Harvey with a god?!
Chapter 368