Chapter 1843: Chapter 446: Please Kill Me
"Do not kneel."
Meng Xizhou’s voice echoed through Light City, and also echoed in the Heart Lake of every Transcendent watching the projection.
The newborn sun that tore through the long night hung high above the urban district, its radiance falling evenly upon every Believer of the Light Church.
Those who were kneeling on the ground only lifted their heads to look at the sun before them.
They did not get up just like that.
So Meng Xizhou said it a second time.
"You are not allowed to kneel."
This time, she changed just one word... but the effect was many times better. The Believers kneeling on the ground showed troubled looks, then stood up one after another.
They had offered their lives to the Light.
When the Light advised them not to kneel, they would still kneel.
But if it ordered them that they were not allowed to kneel—
Then they could only stand.
The Elders in the temple looked at that blazing, dazzling radiance. On this northward voyage of the Cloud Ship Fleet, Meng Xizhou had brought only a very small number of high-ranking members with her.
As for the Temple Elders, she had brought only Batu alone.
Having just gone through the Red Lake incident, the foundations of Light City were now impoverished. If they rashly took away more high-level figures, and an accident occurred in the Old World, they would be completely overturned... so most of the Elders, as well as the Quasi-Gods, were waiting in Light City for news from beyond the northern frontier.
They knew.
Not long ago, a pillar of light reaching the heavens had shot out from Red Lake, its aura incredibly terrifying.
Although it was shrouded in thick fog, the more keen-sensed High Order Transcendents among them had still detected something unusual...
The Goddess leading the fleet north might very well have been just a "smoke bomb." Perhaps the true goal of Light City’s fleet this time was to assist Lord Divine in completing His descent in the Old World.
Of course.
What exactly had happened in the Old World, they did not know; they had only vaguely inferred such a conclusion from the anomalies over at Red Lake.
Yet no one had expected this.
In just a few short days, Meng Xizhou returned... and had already become the formal inheritor of the Light Fire!
Not some nominal heir, but a Quasi-God who truly grasped the origin power of Light!
In the Elders’ seats.
One Elder asked anxiously, "Where has Lord Divine gone?"
"Insolence!"
Batu spoke coldly, reprimanding, "Lord Divine is standing right before your eyes!"
The Elder froze, realizing he had misspoken, and swallowed back everything else he had meant to say.
But Meng Xizhou understood what he meant.
With her hands clasped behind her back, the Goddess asked softly, "You want to ask where the previous Divine Throne has gone."
The Elder nodded desperately.
"Everyone, the reason I convened this audience today is to make this bad news public to all..."
Meng Xizhou lowered her eyes. This was not the first time she had heard this question; on the return journey, Batu had already asked it once.
She understood very clearly.
This question could never be avoided.
So she had to give the world an answer, and also give an answer to the ’Light’ in her own heart.
The moment the words "bad news" left her lips—
The faint hubbub that had just arisen within Light City instantly sank back into silence.
"The previous Light God’s Seat... has already left this realm, and his soul has returned to the Land of Light."
Meng Xizhou took a deep breath and slowly spoke this news. In an instant, the expressions of Believers in every street and alley turned bleak.
This ancient city had already existed for nearly a century.
It had endured through an entire era.
The Light God’s Seat had given much for this ancient city. Although some of the decisions He made in His later years... could not be called wise, on the whole, His merits far outweighed His faults. He was without question a colossus of his age, who by his own power had propelled the development of the entire West Continent and influenced countless people.
He had cultivated such stunningly brilliant figures as Gu Changzhi and Rustbone.
He had spread the blessed radiance of the Light Church to every corner of the Five Continents.
Many years from now.
On the monuments of human history, there would be his name, his face, his deeds.
Yet no one expected that after pausing for a few seconds, Meng Xizhou would continue from her previous sentence: "As of today... it has already been twenty years since the collapse and passing of the Light God’s Seat."
As these words fell—
Boom!
The streets and alleys boiled over once more.
Everyone was stunned.
What did this mean—that the Light God’s Seat had not fallen recently, but twenty years ago?
This single sentence not only sent all of Light City into an uproar, it also left every Transcendent in the deep water area watching the images utterly dumbfounded.
If the Light God’s Seat had died long ago—
Then who had been appearing in the world under the identity of the Light God’s Seat all these years?
This question surfaced in everyone’s mind, and then they realized something terrifying... that the Light God’s Seat really had not appeared in the public eye for close to twenty years.
In fact, this was not something entirely unreasonable.
The Divine Throne sat lofty and aloof.
Especially the Light God’s Seat—aged, with everything within the Church stable...
He had no need to show himself, even less need to meet the mortal world.
So when the news of this "Light God appearing before all beings" spread, the whole of Light City was packed with Believers, and even the neighboring county cities sent crowds surging in to witness and venerate the Divine Miracle, because it truly had been a very, very long time since Light had manifested in the flesh.
"The news of the Divine Throne’s fall and demise was originally known to no one. Had I not stepped into the Forbidden Book Tower, I too would have believed the Divine Throne was still alive, still dwelling by the shores of Red Lake."
Meng Xizhou said softly, "It’s just a pity the traitor who schemed to usurp the Divine Throne Shell miscalculated one thing: even if it seized the body of the Divine Throne, it could never comprehend the ’Heart of Light’, and for its entire life it would never be able to step into the Forbidden Book Tower left behind by the Progenitor."
An uproar broke out.
The inner clergy of the Light Church all remembered the events of seven or eight years ago.
Meng Xizhou had been punished by the Divine Throne for trespassing into the Forbidden Book Tower.
This book tower had once been open to the outside world... yet now, it was hardly open at all. Even the Divine Throne itself had not gone into the tower.
If the Divine Throne had long since died, and the one claiming the name of Light was a "counterfeit"—
Then this point matched perfectly!
Every High Order Transcendent on the Temple Elders was struck by this news, shaken beyond measure.
They looked at one another, staring blankly, unable to speak.
Even Batu was no exception.
On the way back, Batu had asked Meng Xizhou about the whereabouts of the Light God’s Seat. The Goddess’s reply had been: wait until we return to the Five Continents... At that time, he hadn’t thought much of it.
Only now did he understand why the Goddess had to wait until they were back in the Five Continents to speak of this matter.
This matter was too weighty—nearly ten million jun.
"Who is this person... so utterly bold and brazen, that he dares scheme to usurp the Divine Throne’s shell?!"
The Elder who had always been in the opposing camp to Meng Xizhou was the first to speak at this moment. His voice trembled with agitation, his whole body shaking, furious beyond endurance.
Because of the West Sea Crossing.
Owing to that, Meng Xizhou and a portion of the high echelon on the Temple Elders were at odds.
But there was one thing on which every member of the Church stood on the same front—
That is: God must not be desecrated!
Voices of this sort surged like waves, spreading out in front of Meng Xizhou.
The Goddess quietly watched Light City being ignited by her words. At this moment, the deep water area was the same as Light City: the truth of the Light God’s Seat’s death had been transmitted to every corner of this world.
Under the compulsory mandate of the "Highest Seat" permissions, even the current main system of the Divine Sea could not sever Light City’s Spirit Network.
The Church had an enormous number of Believers across the Five Continents.
This was the fruit of twenty years of painstaking cultivation by Deep Sea. It had planned to use this power of spiritual faith as nourishment for its own future upgrade. But unfortunately... this "harvest" was being intercepted by Meng Xizhou. Benefiting from Deep Sea’s twenty years of cultivation, the image of Light City tonight was being watched by countless people; its scale even far exceeded that battle between Gu Shen and Jia Wei.
Meng Xizhou lifted her sleeve.
She summoned the image buried in the deepest depths of her own Spirit Sea. Those six years of sitting silently before the dark stone wall in the Secret Dungeon had truly been hard to endure.
She was born for Light, yet was imprisoned in darkness.
In those six years, her only "connection" to the outside world was a private Spiritual Link built by Allen Turing... but because mutual trust between them had not yet fully formed, control over the private link was in Turing’s hands. After giving her several crucial "guidances of Light", Meng Xizhou had to return to reality and continue facing the stone wall in silent meditation.
At those times, she would immerse herself in her own Spirit Sea, recalling the scene she had witnessed the first time she stepped into the Forbidden Book Tower.
Brilliant radiance slowly burned in the night sky.
At last, Meng Xizhou could share without restraint the images she had seen within the Forbidden Book Tower.
So that every person in this world could behold the true "Light".
The face of the Light God’s Seat appeared beneath the night, and appeared as well in every corner of the Five Continents. This was the "spiritual image" he had left behind before he had grown so frail. His hair was already quite grizzled, yet his eyes were as clear as a lake, reflecting every tiny ray of light in this world. To meet that gaze was to feel strength.
The Believers in Light City tonight had all come for him.
To see him now meant their trip was "not in vain".
"Whoever you may be, when you see this image... remember this: I am already dead."
The voice of the Light God’s Seat was gentle, yet powerful.
"Even a Divine Throne has birth, aging, sickness, and death. I have long been prepared to accept ’death’."
"I simply never imagined that in this life I would face such a wretched state, that even lifting a single finger would be difficult. So when the oil is exhausted and the lamp is dry, the Divine Throne is this fragile as well..."
The Elders on the Temple Elders all wore dazed expressions.
No one had imagined that in the final stage of his life—
Lord Divine, alone, hidden in the little house by Red Lake, would be this weak.
Because no one disturbed him, no one knew.
Back then, the Light God’s Seat had been in such a state of suffering.
"Everyone will die. I am no exception, so this is not what matters."
"What matters is... I felt a second Spirit forcing its way into my shell. A Spiritual Link from Deep Sea is very likely to take over my body after I die."
The smile on the old man’s face gradually faded.
"Faced with such a spiritual incursion, the only thing I could do was cast this wisp of Spirit into the depths beneath the Red Lake Book Tower, and then seal it away completely."
"I hope that those who come after can, at a suitable opportunity, make this recording public to all."
After several seconds of silence—
The old man said very solemnly, "If this recording truly does live to see the day it is revealed, then what I’m about to say next should be heard by every Believer of the Church..."
"All of you, if I have already ’lived’ for a very long time—"
"Then... do not hesitate. Kill me. The true Light will not cling to the afterglow of the mortal world; my time to return to the Ruins came long ago."
The Light God’s Seat said with grave earnestness, "Besides that, you must also kill the ’Deep Sea’ that seized this shell."
