Chapter 390: Holy City (XV) The Chronicler

Two hours ago, Zis and Fu Jue made a deal.

Zis was responsible for mobilizing NPCs in the cemetery area to help Fu Jue eliminate Julie, and incidentally leave a hint that Giles had been controlled by the Puppeteer, and that confronting Fu Jue was a conspiracy of the Xila Guild.

Fu Jue had long ago coerced the fence-sitter Sigmund through uncivilized and impolite means. After Zis succeeded, Fu Jue remotely eliminated Giles and freed up the puppet threads to parasitize Fujiwara Shinya.

Thus, all investigators in this instance who opposed him were brought under his control.

As for the forces behind these people—the Sakura Estate and Maple County—since they had already revealed themselves, taking them down in reality would not be difficult.

The chips placed on Zis’s side of the deal were now fulfilled, and the weights Fu Jue placed on the other side of the scale included helping to gather the Authority of Time and Space, cooperating to deal with the final instance, and more.

The phrase “There will be no more gods in the world” was not a simple threat; rather, it defined the scope of their future cooperation. Before the conclusion arrived, the man and the god could completely cooperate in hunting down other gods.

Yes, besides the well-known gods competing in the final instance, there was also a lingering Ancestral God, “Huo,” who was the nightmare of the gods participating in the Bloody Feast, and the root of the fear felt by Qi and Li at their birth.

As the end of the first generation of gods and the origin of the second generation, “Huo” traversed billions of years. Even after being devoured, a sliver of His existence remained, and He showed signs of resurrection in the Frog Hospital instance. Zis couldn’t help but suspect that He was favored by the Rules, perhaps intentionally left behind as a means for the Rules to reclaim the gods.

If the world were destined to be destroyed one day, and He and Li were fated to be devoured by the Rules, Zis would rather conspire with Fu Jue to kill the Ancestral God one more time than watch that long-dead Ancestral God reclaim the divine throne over the wreckage of other gods.

Even if all gods perished and billions of creatures were annihilated, it would be more acceptable than having a single survivor who wasn’t Him.

Zis tapped the table twice with his index finger, his smile slightly receding: “I think I can tell you some secrets about the identity cards now.”

“You should know that identity cards are extensions of fragments of a god’s Authority. Have you heard that holders of identity cards corresponding to the same god are mutually hostile?”

Fu Jue conjured a black and white card between his fingers, his tone flat: “The divine throne of the same path is unique, and competitors are mutually exclusive. That is not a new secret to me.”

“Then—arrogant Puppeteer, are you certain you know everything about the Gods’ Gambit?” Zis’s voice was laced with barely suppressed laughter as he suddenly raised his hand and snapped his fingers.

Bloody light spots seeped into the void, diffusing into thick and thin mists of blood, and then, in a certain instant, converged from all directions above the long table in the center of the temple, surging into a crimson sea of light.

Thread-like lines of blood grew windingly from the bottom of the sea. After surfacing, they outlined the shapes of cards: 【Plague Doctor】, 【Undead Shepherd】, 【Immortal Shaman】, 【Fanciful Orator】, 【Fallen Savior】, 【Master of Death】… Bloody fine lines extended from the tops of these six identity cards, converging into a final card that, once its color was diluted, burst forth with blinding golden light.

The face of this card was fluid, and vibrant vitality gushed forth from its lines. A woman with arms spread like a towering tree knelt calmly and kindly by the riverbank. Her milk irrigated raging rivers and seas, and her spilled blood transformed into schools of fish, frogs, and birds.

A gigantic spider appeared as a phantom behind her, its two extra pairs of segmented legs embracing a massive golden fruit. Countless tiny figures jumped out of the fruit, holding hands and singing and dancing around her.

“The 【Lord of Life and Breath】, also called the ‘Ancestral God,’ divine name ‘Huo.'” Fu Jue murmured the name of the card and the corresponding deity.

In that instant, silver-white eyes opened in the high heavens. The gaze descended, piercing the dome of the temple and falling upon the two men, sweeping over them without emotion.

Zis acted oblivious and continued on his own: “I might as well tell you the method for becoming a god through identity cards. You only need to reclaim all identity cards of this path to be promoted to 【Master of Death】 and grasp the corresponding Authority behind it.”

“Afterward, either you kill ‘Huo’ and become the new Lord of Life and Breath, or ‘Huo’ resurrects using your body and returns to the divine throne. The latter possibility is certainly not what you wish to see, so—our interests are currently aligned.”

“However, there is a serious problem now: a certain idiot whom you and I jointly sealed in reality left a portion of his Authority in the instance, and a certain NPC who worships that idiot did an even stupider thing by creating a body for that animated Authority, giving It instinct and consciousness.”

“And as everyone knows, all Authority ultimately originates from the Ancestral God, so Its parasitism of a body is theoretically not restricted by the path.”

Fu Jue nodded slightly, his glasses reflecting silver-white light spots: “I left the temple last night and have preliminary knowledge of the existence of the Authority of Time and Space and the new god’s body. As long as Asakura Yuko is alive, the Authority of Time and Space will prioritize parasitizing the 【Forbidden Scholar】 card of the same path.”

He paused, looking into Zis’s eyes: “The only question is, can you confirm that the former Holy City Lord was Li himself, and not someone else?”

Zis admitted: “I am not certain.”

In the history of the Holy City that he understood, the god who was believed to be “Li” acted too strangely, not like one of those who jointly devoured the Ancestral God beneath the World Tree, but rather merciful and benevolent, much like the Ancestral God Itself.

Looking back, the aura of the Authority of Time and Space was initially solid enough to attract him to descend, but after he truly stepped into the Holy City, it became elusive and scattered, resembling a carefully planned trap to lure him in.

So, returning to the original question: Who exactly was the original Holy City Lord?

…【The Bloody Feast of devouring the Ancestral God drew to a close, but the gloom left by the Ancestral God covered the heart of every deity. The brief revelry was followed by terror that stretched across eternity.

Gods with endless lifespans cannot truly die; the death of the flesh is merely the beginning of the path to deicide. The gods would spend more time preventing His resurrection than they spent killing Him.

Sever the faith in Him. The deity who wielded the Authority of Time and Space traveled through the long river of history, erasing all traces and remnants belonging to the old god, and tampering with the supposed “truth” at the root of the timeline.

The seeker of ancient knowledge stared directly into the Ancestral God’s taboo, which madly consumed his remaining sanity, transforming his body into a terrifying phantom.

He sat withered beneath the World Tree for tens of millions of years, proclaiming the epic of the Ancestral God to every passerby—yet no one ever understood his words.】

【Identity Card: Forbidden Scholar】

In the North District of the Holy City, lines of silver-white text appeared before her eyes.

Asakura Yuko saw the identity card in the upper right corner of her vision suddenly fly out of the system interface, spreading into a golden phantom suspended in the high heavens, gradually covering her figure completely.

She didn’t know what mechanism had been triggered. She looked around, and the surrounding scenery had completely changed without her realizing it.

The bloody believers, the well-dressed priests, Vidor, the low houses lining the streets, the foul water flowing on the ground… everyone and everything had vanished, leaving only a turbid orange-yellow sky and yellow sand everywhere.

Her black robe had been replaced by a brownish-yellow sackcloth tunic. The biting wind and sand struck her face with knife-like pain, making her realize she was on a journey, though she didn’t know the destination.

Figures of varying heights stood among the dust and sand along both sides of the road. It seemed to be another group trekking in the opposite direction. Asakura Yuko squinted and vaguely thought she saw Zis, the legendary Lin Jue, and many other familiar yet strange faces.

But in just an instant, all the faces became blurry. The figure of Senior Xiao stepped out from the pitch-black crowd, speaking with unprecedented urgency: “Yuko, beautiful girl, don’t believe anything you see next. Just know that none of the gods are good things…”

The subsequent words were cut off. The crowd vanished without a trace, leaving only yellow soil before her, a vast expanse of confusion.

Asakura Yuko couldn’t understand what was happening. She stepped forward through the yellow sand, countless indistinct murmurs sounding in her ears.

The foreign language poured into her ear canals as if substantial, impacting her eardrums and triggering the illusion that her brain was shattered. The yellow sand was whipped up by the gale, condensing into scenes that were both divine and bizarre:

A woman’s corpse lay supine on the ground, and boys and girls shared and ate the flesh, growing robustly at a visible speed.

The older figures dissipated and faded after growing to a certain size, replaced by the small figures at their feet, who grew up little by little.

Tribes clad in animal skins erected ancient altars, offering sacrifices and slaves. The gigantic woman who should have died reappeared, granting them fire and farming tools, and telling them of the existence of gods.

They quickly cultivated the land, hunted prey, and multiplied into large groups. When they put on beautiful clothes, the god taught them writing and etiquette.

Nations were established, and wars began. Corpses piled up in layers at their feet, blocking rivers. Plagues spread across the land, and the bodies of those who died from disease crawled out from underground as monsters.

The population steadily declined, and more and more living people were converted into walking dead. They knelt and prayed, building an altar on the scorched earth once again. Thus, the god granted them a city.

This was clearly the past of the Holy City, a history where gods existed. The shadow of a god was present at every important point in time. People henceforth fanatically believed in the gods, becoming helpless in the face of disaster and praying for divine mercy as always.

It was logical, yet extremely dangerous. The world was merely a sandbox game for the gods, but the ants insisted on treating the capricious gifts of higher-dimensional beings as inevitable. It was both ridiculous and pitiful.

Asakura Yuko shook her head slightly, yet couldn’t help but think of various things in reality, her expression momentarily stunned.

Was it also a coincidence that human history was able to develop until now without interference from gods and ghosts? Could the future of bizarre invasions and rampant ghosts, as predicted by the Scales Church, be the world’s natural state?

There was little difference between the NPCs in the instance and people in reality; upon learning of the apocalypse, both invariably pinned their hopes on ethereal gods. Wasn’t she, too, placing her chips on White Crow?

She considered herself kind, but never pondered the underlying reasons. Perhaps it was just because the world advocated kindness and treated this trait as a mainstream value, which was why she earnestly and devoutly adhered to it.

She learned the truths deliberately hidden by the Federation, becoming righteously indignant and compassionate, but it wasn’t until she went to the African frontline as a war correspondent that she truly witnessed another possibility for the world.

She claimed not to believe in gods, yet she believed the Scales Church could change the world, believed she was doing the right thing, and believed she was a good person… But was that truly the case?

Since childhood, she had never thought about what she truly wanted. Her daily life, emotions, choices, and behavior were indistinguishable from the general public, like a vessel carefully crafted on an assembly line.

She was just an ordinary person, saying the same things, doing the same things, having the same thoughts… Frustration and inferiority uncontrollably sprouted from the bottom of her heart, followed immediately by a confusion that drowned out all thought. Asakura Yuko’s movements became sluggish, and she stared blankly ahead.

A white-robed, white-haired woman stood amidst the flying yellow dust. The moment she turned her head, her face showed a certain resemblance to White Crow. Her silver-gray eyes looked down with love, and she murmured like the mother of all things: “My child, why are you full of doubt? The answer is already written in your heart… “Why be anxious? Why be sad? If you do not know where to go, follow the guidance… “Why suffer? Why be lost? All things are incarnations of God, inherently identical…”

The surrounding sea of sand instantly collapsed, and the streets of the Holy City reappeared before her eyes.

Large masses of black shadows stretched out tentacles on the surface of the 【Forbidden Scholar】 card hanging overhead, with bizarre granulation tissue and repulsive blisters wriggling on them.

The voice of the god sounded in the back of her mind: “Lead these unfortunate people to charge into that false god’s temple, overthrow the old divine throne, and establish a new divine kingdom upon the ruins.”

Asakura Yuko frowned deeply. The mental shock caused by staring directly at the deity had not yet subsided, and her vision shattered into colored noise and fragments, rearranging into various grotesque scenes.

Her consciousness was chaotic, but she forced her brain to think, recalling that she had once heard that identity cards, upon encountering Authority of the same path, would guide the holder to converge with it.

The giant tumor she encountered on the street last night clearly belonged to a god. The moment she looked at it, a flood of information surged forth about the Authority of Time and Space, about the new god’s body… She had initially intended to avoid complications and kept away from it, but now it seemed she had no choice but to gather more power before the final instance began… because the god wanted her to do so.

But she didn’t believe in gods… No, she did believe in gods… didn’t believe in gods… believed in gods… believed… in the Ancestral God… “My God, Yuko, is that the legendary identity card? What happened?” Vidor looked up at the black shadow above her head, clicking his tongue in wonder. “It looks very Cthulhu-esque. What exactly does it do? I’m getting more and more curious.”

“Nothing.” Asakura Yuko recovered from her daze. Everything that had just happened felt like an illusion caused by extreme mental strain.

The silver light in her eyes faded into her black pupils. She exhaled softly and replied casually, “It doesn’t matter if I tell you. It’s just recording history.”

Vidor looked completely skeptical: “That’s it? Even if you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to fob me off with such a perfunctory answer.”

Asakura Yuko was expressionless: “I told you, even if I told you the truth, you might not believe me. Better not to say anything.”

As they spoke, the donation was completed, and more and more believers gathered toward the two of them like hyenas spotting food.

A little girl whose arms had been stripped of flesh grabbed the corner of Asakura Yuko’s robe with bloody hands, sobbing: “Please, save my mother, she’s dying…”

Women surrounded her, pressing bloody handprints onto her robe one after another, reciting the same words simultaneously: “Please, have mercy on us, don’t let them take our children again…”

Men reached out to her from afar, speaking of their pain and fear, clamoring for her to bestow blessings.

In an instant, she went from being an observer on the periphery of the event to the center of the crowd, treated as a deity capable of saving the world.

But… why?

Asakura Yuko looked up at the identity card that had been with her for so long, confusion knitting in her eyes.

Shouldn’t one who records history observe worldly affairs with cold detachment? Why… were they all begging her for salvation?

Oh, she suddenly understood. It was because she was a clone of the Ancestral God, and the Ancestral God was the Mother of All Things…