Chapter 853 — A Small Secret of the Augustus Family

"Of course, I did not tell him that behind the 'Eye of God' stood what the masses would call a 'true god.' For ordinary people's view of the gods is plainly quite different from ours. I told him it was a mad, malevolent deity—and that our research and the digging on the surface had together awakened it.

"We—those below and those above—had together created an unimaginably vast disaster. But there was no time then to assign blame. After swiftly assessing the situation within the palace, the emperor decided to evacuate the entire city, withdraw all the uncontaminated, and create a no-man's-land around its perimeter—while we, in the meantime, would activate the annihilation protocol underground and destroy the Eye of God utterly."

Gao Yun gave a slight nod: "Evacuate the civilians, establish a psychic isolation cordon to prevent the spread of mental contamination, destroy the contamination center... The reasoning was sound. And then?"

Merkaur III fell silent for a moment, a faint sigh in his voice: "Driven by the knightly orders and the noble troops, the evacuation was completed quickly. Ji Yaoxu and I, meanwhile, returned to the underground palace and sealed off all the inner passages, blocking those maddened knights and diggers who had already entered. That bought us some time. At the appointed hour, the energy was at last sufficient; we successfully triggered the energy oscillation of the restraint device, and the Eye of God was reduced to ashes amid the tremendous shock—we began to cheer, until the Wrath of the Earth and the Blight of Annihilation came crashing down upon our dome, one after another."

Amber blinked, spread her hands: "...Just as I thought."

"But we never anticipated it," Merkaur III said in a self-mocking tone. "We were a group of... researchers. Extreme researchers, perhaps. We were a dark cult, fallen priests—bigoted, cold, having chosen a terrible path. But strip all that away, and our identity was still that of researchers—myself included.

"A researcher's mind is not well suited to anticipating the Wrath of the Earth and the Blight of Annihilation falling upon his own head."

"The Typhon emperor of two hundred years ago made a cold decision. But would you like to hear my view?" Gao Xi said slowly, his gaze resting on that cluster of starlight.

"...Within the bounds of reason, is that it?"

"Within the bounds of reason," Gao Yun nodded slightly. "If you had failed to destroy the Eye of God then, the Orendel region would have become the epicenter of the catastrophe. Destroying the entire region might not have stopped the 'malevolent deity' from descending, but it could at least have bought more time for everyone else to evacuate. And if you had succeeded in destroying the Eye of God, the Typhon emperor of that time would not have let you live on either—you were the Ashen Nether Order, and you had flourished for centuries in the imperial capital, right under the royal house's nose. To some degree, you even had the capacity to plunge the entire empire into turmoil. No ruler could tolerate that.

"So whatever the outcome, you all had to die in Orendel."

"I came to understand that afterward," Merkaur III said with a light laugh. "Many of us came to understand it."

"But you had no way to seek revenge against an empire—especially after suffering such grievous wounds," Gao Heng said unhurriedly. "More importantly, as time passed, the ranks of new-generation adherents replenished your numbers, more and more of them. The Long Twilight Order would eventually forget everything that happened in Orendel; the Augustus family would conclude that no survivors could possibly remain after an entire city collapsed. Given the technical conditions of the time and the chaos following the relocation of the capital, they should have had no capacity to examine in detail what lay deep underground—this dreadful affair, which might have left a stain on the royal house, would be buried, and everyone would forget it. Even if someone remembered, it would never be acknowledged.

"And on the other hand, later events proved that the Typhon emperor's judgment had in fact been quite accurate—barely two hundred years later, you 'researchers,' bound by neither law nor morality, stirred up a second 'divine calamity' right on the same spot. This time the calamity was even a god of your own making.

"If I had not appeared, how great a disaster would the Upper Narrator have caused?

"I believe the scale of that disaster would absolutely have warranted the Typhon royal house dispatching their mage corps to smash the entire Orendel region—and all of you—with the Blight of Annihilation all over again."

Merkaur III's body of starlight contracted, his tone full of helplessness: "...Utterly ironic. Beyond all rebuttal."

"So to sum it all up in one word—" Gao Yun sighed softly. "Deserved."

Merkaur: "..."

"Let us set that topic aside," Gao Yang shook his head, moving past it. "There is now evidence that your destruction of the Eye of God back then was apparently not entirely successful—the gods' mental contamination has persisted. The curse upon the Augustus family is proof of that."

"We suspect that the Eye of God escaped in the final instant before its destruction, but gravely wounded as it was, it lacked the strength to return to the gods, and so it parasitized the bloodline of Augustus," Merkaur III replied. "For two hundred years the curse has persisted, neither strengthening nor weakening. Some of our Mingxu adherents who extended their lifespans and lived through those events even believed it was the price the Augustus family paid for its 'betrayal'... Of course, after the 'Upper Narrator' incident, the mindset of those Yaoxu adherents will likely have shifted somewhat—the blow was simply too great."

Gao Yang now understood why the Sleepers of the Mingxu Order followed Cecil so resolutely—his deterrent value as a "wanderer from beyond the domain" was only one reason. The remaining factors were plainly bound up with that disaster in Orendel two hundred years ago.

Beyond all this, what concerned him most at this moment was the curse upon the Augustus family.

"Do you believe that after entering the bloodline of the Augustus family, the 'Eye of God' might still recover and escape?" He furrowed his brow, his expression grave as he asked in a low voice.

"The likelihood is very low," Merkaur III answered. "We have kept constant watch on the curse of the Augustus family. It has plainly degenerated into a pure affliction, something akin to the aftereffects of spiritual contamination, and as the bloodline thins and transforms with each generation, the 'divine element' within that curse can only grow weaker and weaker. After all, the soul of a mortal stands on a far lower order of being than a god; when the power of a god lodges long-term in a mortal soul, its decline is inevitable. Of course, it is only the 'divine nature' in the curse that decays—the strength of the curse itself... over these two hundred years, it has shown not the slightest sign of weakening."

"Is that so..." Gao Yang stroked his chin and spoke as though to himself. "Can anything touched by the gods really perish so easily..."