Radiance's Shadow
After the five-speed fan got off his arm, Yusheng didn't hide the illusion he had seen in the chaos of the "Death Border." He sat back down in his seat and laid out everything he had just witnessed.
Eileen had crawled over from her own chair halfway through his account, sitting cross-legged on the control panel in front of him, arms crossed, listening with a serious expression.
Yusheng had immediately cut the control panel's signal the moment the little thing started crawling over—mostly because he was afraid Eileen might slip and accidentally deactivate the ship's stealth field.
Anyone who had ever owned a cat probably had experience with this kind of thing—or if you didn't have a cat, raising a human child under the age of four was pretty similar.
"It sounds... like it really could be an illusion from the Gate of Eden," the little puppet said, shaking her head on the control panel. "That thing was modified using Realm Bridge technology, and you swallowed the original Realm Bridge, so it's not surprising you saw it. The key point is that Light-forged Giant..."
Eileen suddenly paused, her eyes sparkling as she looked at Yusheng. "Hey hey, was it male or female?"
Yusheng had been seriously contemplating the matter, but the little puppet's question almost made him lose his composure. "Wait, why do you care about that?"
"Just curious!" Eileen scooted closer. "We've run into several Dim Angels, and almost none of them had a decent human form. Now finally there's one that looks like a person..."
Yusheng gave the small puppet a peculiar look. Just as he was about to remind her that she was still logged into the Goddess of Ill Omen's account, he thought of the Goddess's eight long legs, and the words got stuck in his throat—well, she wasn't wrong; none of the Dim Angels he had encountered had looked human...
Unless you didn't count Hu Li as a special case—she was an "otherworld visitor."
"Couldn't tell the gender. It was just a lump of light, its face heavily pixelated, resolution terrible—pretty much like the I ran into before," Yusheng said thoughtfully, rubbing his chin. Then, for the sake of rigor, he added, "Actually, we can't even be sure what that Light-forged Giant really is..."
"Don't bother thinkin' about it, ninety-nine percent chance it's the real form of that 'Shadowless Bones,' or at least its spiritual body," Eileen waved a hand. "It's tied to the Gate of Eden and getting drained of blood. Unless those fanatics pulled a second Dim Angel out of a greasy paper bag next to the Gate... then damn, I'd give them credit."
Yusheng thought for a moment and nodded. "That makes sense."
Meanwhile, Luo, who had been hanging on the communicator for a long time, looked up at Yusheng, then at Eileen, and finally couldn't help but speak up. "Um, boss, I don't really understand what that 'Death Border' is, but you mentioned... that the ' ' guarding the star gate looks very similar to the giant you saw in the illusion?"
"Yeah," Yusheng nodded. "The features are very obvious. I'm starting to suspect that the Hidden Cult's 'Living Saints' might have been 'manufactured' based on that giant's form... I was already suspicious when I first ran into that . There's no way normal biological evolution could produce something like that, and it had that stiff, pseudo-human feel similar to the artificial saintesses. The more I look at it, the more it seems man-made..."
He quickly raised a hand to Luna, who was nearby. "I didn't mean you."
"Mm, I know," Luna said with a smile—even though it was still that "saintly smile," her expression had long since become as gentle as any living person's. "Now I'm different."
"The Hidden Cult has always been obsessed with creating 'perfect organisms.' The Knights and Saintesses are products of that line of thought, but at least those two types were still transformed from humans," Luo said with a frown, speaking seriously. "But using a 'Dim Angel' as a blueprint to create something like a ' '... is that really something a mere mortal religious order could pull off?"
Yusheng began to catch on, his own brow furrowing. "You mean..."
"I'm not disrespecting their skills—those fanatics are crazy, but I do recognize their 'synthetic human' technology," Luo said, turning sideways in the projection as if operating some device off-screen. "But using a Dim Angel's 'corpse' to create a stable, controllable 'warrior' is a whole different ball game from regular synthetic human technology. The first problem is: how can they ensure they don't go mad while trying to understand the 'knowledge' carried by the Dim Angel?"
Yusheng said nothing, his brow tightening further.
Luo continued unhurriedly, "At their core, the fanatics of the Hidden Cult are still human. They can be tainted by angels, their sanity can degrade into madness, and madmen can't conduct precision research. Overloaded 'knowledge' doesn't translate into controllable technology—it only tears a person's mind apart between the cognitive distortions of two worlds until they're destroyed. And from what we know so far, they have no more breakthroughs in that area than I do.
"They even stole the technology for building the Gate of Eden from me—and now that Gate is about to go out of control. Other than stealing the 'Angel Catalyst' from the Borderlands, they have no other solution. What does that tell us?
"It tells us they don't have the ability to control real 'Angel Heritage'—even with something like the Shadowless Bones, which is a 'corpse,' they can only use the crudest method to extract energy from it to keep the Gate running."
Luo turned around and leaned slightly forward in the direction of the projection.
"The origin of those 'Living Saints' is problematic, very problematic," she said with an especially serious expression. "Based on what the boss saw in the 'illusion,' the Living Saints are clearly closely related to the 'Shadowless Bones,' and at the same time, they're among the top combat assets of the Hidden Cult... I'm smelling something off here. You all need to be very careful when you reach the Holy Realm, especially around that 'Shadowless Bones.' I suspect..."
Eileen stood up on the control panel. "Don't stop halfway, what do you suspect?"
"...I suspect that the 'Shadowless Bones' isn't just alive—it might have been 'awake' in some form from the very beginning," Luo said slowly. "The Hidden Cult thinks that because it's lying motionless in the Adal Pit, it's dead. But what if... 'death' is actually this angel's normal operating mode?
"To get even more conspiratorial, maybe those 'Living Saints' are the byproducts of the Shadowless Bones running continuously. The Hidden Cult thinks they found that giant skeleton in the Adal Pit, but what if it's the other way around? What if the Shadowless Bones found them first? If that's the case, the Hidden Cult might have been in contact with the skeleton's power long before the time they think they did, and they've been thoroughly soaked with Dim Angel contamination.
"After all, Dim Angels are all different—they can have any number of traits and abilities."
The hall grew quiet. Yusheng and the others exchanged glances, and then Hu Li suddenly twitched an ear. "Wait, that doesn't fit. If that's the case, how could the Shadowless Bones be tied to the Gate as fuel? Shouldn't it be the one truly in control here...?"
She stopped mid-sentence, as if suddenly realizing something.
Yusheng and Luo in the communicator spoke simultaneously: "What if that's exactly what it wants?"
Even Eileen caught on. The little puppet's eyes slowly widened. "Oh my puppet ancestor..."
"Anyway, things have gotten complicated," Yusheng said as he maneuvered the Dimensions Hotel into a slow turn. Under the stealth field, he lit the micro-curvature engines and gradually accelerated toward the dark depths of space. "Let's get out of here first. I'll notify the fleet on the Borderlands to get ready. Once that Dark Star Cruiser reaches the Holy Realm, we'll start the next phase. Also, I need to warn Bai Liqing to be careful of that ' .'"
...
Hidden Cult homeworld, the Holy Realm.
Holy radiance surged within the cavity of the "Most Holy Furnace." This astonishing underground structure resembled a colossal well that seemed to pierce through the planet's core. Below, there was no visible bottom, only a faint crimson gleam of lava slowly churning in the darkness. Above, a massive dome supported by crisscrossing struts arched over everything, with countless tiny "Light Spirits" swirling and fluttering near the dome like a scattering of stars.
At the center of the giant well, a massive anti-gravity field formed a faintly glowing "cage." A mysterious skeleton hundreds of meters tall hung suspended upside down inside the field, radiating a faint aura that spread outward like smoke or mist. Countless enormous chains wrapped around the skeleton, their other ends connected to 120 "Energy-drawing Nodes" arrayed around the shaft.
Radiance flowed around the skeleton, occasionally giving birth to sonorous sounds like holy hymns that materialized out of thin air. Vague shapes would sometimes form in the light and drift slowly toward the well walls, but the next second, they would be blocked by the light barriers formed between the Energy-drawing Nodes. There, they would slowly decompose into blind Light Spirits, which would float up to the dome, wandering aimlessly until they dispersed.
Gorondel, sitting in a wheelchair, navigated the traffic ramp along the edge of the shaft with a mix of tension and reverence, trying his best not to look directly at the "skeleton" hanging in the center.
But his reverence was not directed at the suspended angel—it was for the Holy See walking ahead of him.
"Gorondel, look at this magnificent sight," the Holy See said, pausing and turning his head slightly to address the man behind him. "Even a being as powerful as this can become the fuel for our Gate of Eden—this glory belongs to every one of us."
Gorondel quickly lowered his head, speaking with joy and conviction, "Just as you say."
The Holy See laughed. It seemed he was merely making small talk with his follower, but then his gaze settled on the angel suspended upside down in the shaft.
He stared directly at the skeleton, his smile as gentle as the radiance around him.
Meanwhile, two "Living Saints," their bodies brimming with energy, stood silently behind him as always, their holy light wings gently swaying in the air, faintly resonating with the radiance emitted by the suspended angel.
(End of Chapter)