Chapter 491 — In the Darkness

Gao Yang rose and stepped forward to switch off the projector, and from behind him came Pi Yun's voice, drifting and leisurely: "Truly terrifying."

Gao Yang turned back to look at this little old man who went about the territory forever wearing the face of a cynical, shameless rogue, and a hint of mockery surfaced on his own. "So even you find things terrifying?"

Pi Yun stroked his beard and said mildly, "Of course I do. I'm afraid of a great many things. Otherwise, who do you suppose cultivated that adaptable streak in Amber?"

Gao Yang gave Pi Yun a sideways look. "And what is it you're afraid of now?"

"People. A crowd full of fury is a fearsome thing," Pi Yun shrugged. "But I think you're more fearsome still — because all of this is your doing, your guidance. You're wielding a power apart from the transcendent arts and from guns and cannon, and its effects... are far more chilling than what you described at the outset."

"Power is neither good nor evil; what matters is where it is pointed. To deal with men who use holy light for wickedness, sometimes you have to use uncommon means," Gao Yang said evenly, then his expression darkened slightly. "Especially once I learned that the remains of children had been found in those facilities... I knew that no matter what I did to those charlatans, it would not be excessive."

Pi Yun sighed. "Raising orphans from infancy on brainwashing is a common method by which every church cultivates loyal fighting strength — it grows their power and their reputation at once. But not every child is attuned to the divine arts; some simply have not a scrap of spiritual talent, and no potion or ritual will force it out of them. And for these 'bad seeds' — useless, and a drain on resources, and already privy to a portion of the darkness behind the curtain... no church's hands are clean."

"Seven hundred years ago the churches were nothing like this," Gao Yang said, shaking his head. "Those priests and knights who charged the aberrants head-on back then — they surely never imagined their successors would sink to this."

Pi Yun gave a chuckle. "And did you ever imagine, back then, that you would wake to find the aberrants already at the door of your tomb, and your descendants having gone and lost your shield for you?"

Gao Yang shot the little old man a glare. "...Bring that up again and I'll have your hide."

Then he cleared his throat twice and steered the conversation back on course. "Never mind that. What do you make of the oddity Amber mentioned in her report — Faran Belan's behavior? The bishop has shut himself up in the cathedral. Is he drawing power through some channel to strengthen himself?"

"...I do not believe he could strengthen himself by drawing on power or anything of the kind. That is the craft of witches and warlocks. But something is certainly wrong. A normal bishop in that position could not possibly shut himself in a church and do nothing. He would either keep trying to salvage the situation, or simply flee, or come out and crush it by force — in any case, he ought to be doing something."

Gao Yang shook his head slightly. "In my original plan, Faran Belan ought to have taken some desperate, all-or-nothing action at this stage. I never expected him to lock himself in the church and do nothing at all. Frankly... it has disrupted my arrangements a little."

Pi Yun pondered, and after a moment this little old man, who knew a fair amount about theology, spoke. "Perhaps... he is attempting to commune with his god, begging for a power beyond imagining to see him through this hopeless pass."

"A divine descent?" Gao Yang's brows knit at once. "He can bring one down?"

"...It is precisely because he cannot that I cannot make sense of it. A divine descent demands a tremendous price, and the threshold is strict — only a legend-rank wielder can bear a descent and survive it; a high-rank wielder, at the cost of his life and having met certain conditions, may bring down a brief descent; and a priest of lower rank than that... has not even the capacity to commune with the divine will. His words cannot reach his god's ears. Whom would he call down?"

Gao Yang thought it over, and only after a full two minutes did he break the silence. "In any case, it seems the next step will need more 'insurance' written into it. We have come this far — there can be no slip of any kind."

Not everyone could understand Gao Yang's fixation and caution in this matter. In this matter, only he himself knew —

In this world where transcendent power existed and society had stood still, this would be the common folk's first act of defiance against the transcendent.

Perhaps there had been farmers driven past endurance who raised their pitchforks against a knightly lord; perhaps there had been innocents condemned as heretics who shouted curses at the priest who judged them. But those scattered, feeble acts of defiance, raising not the faintest ripple, were nothing like this.

This time, it was the common folk, long deceived and exploited, standing up for the first time as a collective to defy the priests who had made themselves another collective altogether.

The world had waited a thousand years and more for this first time, and if it failed, no one knew how long the second would take.

So it could not fail.