Chapter 1541 — Progress in the North

Gao Song's orders were carried out swiftly. The "Lady of the Night's letters" prepared by Amber were soon dispatched to every major cathedral throughout the city, and there, within the protective zones of the anti-divinity barrier, the various Holy Sons, Holy Daughters, Grand Bishops, and the Church of the Glowing Pole performed sacrifices directed straight at the gods. Every rite was completed with astonishing smoothness, and once most of the ceremonies in the city had concluded, Virodai returned to the Cecil Palace to report to Gao Yang.

"All the 'letters' have been 'sent up' for now. The cathedrals have received no direct response from the gods, but judging by how swiftly the rites answered, the gods must have sensed the Lady of the Night's aura in the offerings—they did not hesitate for a moment," Virodai said, standing before Gao Song's desk with the platinum scepter in hand, a rather peculiar expression on his face. "I truly never imagined that one day things would come to this..."

"You're not the only one who never imagined it—neither did I," Gao Rong said with a shake of his head. "Afterward we should go over everything again, to see whether any god has been left unnotified."

"I've already made a rough survey," Virodai said, nodding at once, as though he had anticipated Gao Yang would ask. "The imperial capital is now the foremost hub of culture and commerce in the northern half of the continent, and likewise the seat of the Divine Authority Council. Hence every orthodox church in the world has established at least one 'proxy window' within Xuanyuan City—some have even planted their headquarters there outright. All these 'windows' are empowered to perform sacrificial rites and commune with the divine.

"Of course, beyond the orthodox churches I've named, there exist in this world certain smaller and more obscure faiths—tribal deities in the mountain forests of western Ogure, for instance, or the native gods worshipped by certain city-states of the southern continent. These regional sects have set up no windows of exchange in the capital, yet they remain on the Divine Authority Council's watch list. According to the Tribunal's most recent report, I believe these small regional sects are no cause for concern—the vast majority have not developed to the point of truly engendering a god, and the rest have produced only 'miracles' of the vaguest and most undirected kind, their activities already brought under control. A faith of that order lacks any foundation for generating a divine calamity."

Gao Yang rubbed the space between his brows. What Virodai called regional sects were, put plainly, blind-faith congregations that country bumpkins had spontaneously assembled after being hoodwinked by a few wild charlatans. Within the three great empires such "underground churches" were strictly forbidden, yet in the more backward regions the practice was banned again and again and never stamped out. They believed in anything and everything—some worshipped meteorites, some mushrooms. Their common traits: join the faith and you generally got eggs and flatbread, and the congregants almost always kept some real god on the side. The great faiths of the Loren Continent imposed no requirement of exclusive worship, and so this bizarre situation recurred again and again in many places.

Naturally the Divine Authority Council did not wish to see such a phenomenon—as safe as soldering a detonator to a lightbulb—but the Council was, after all, a recent creation. Even with the cooperation of the great orthodox churches and the united support of every nation in the world, its influence in remote and backward regions remained limited. For most of the "blind-faith sects" far beyond the reach of the three empires, the most the Council could do was monitor them and prevent them from spreading outward.

Such monitoring and containment was no long-term solution, but for the present situation it sufficed. So long as they never grew past a certain point, these country churches could not birth a true god; even if they conjured some hazy "spirit," it fell far short of provoking a divine calamity—or, to put it at its most extreme, even if those superstitious old folk really did cook up some backwoods deity out of a few ounces of pork cheek and half a bottle of homebrew, the local Council office need only file a report, and the Tribunal would dispatch a pair of judgment knights or a nun to stamp it out...

After all, times had changed. The peace-loving people of Loren were not the least bit soft-handed when it came to eradicating dangers that might threaten that peace.

"Now all that remains is to see whether the gods arrive on time to assemble," Gao Yun said with a soft breath, his expression easing somewhat now that matters were proceeding so smoothly. "Though at this rate, the 'Hermit's Retreat of the Lord of Nature' won't be a retreat at all. I wonder whether Amoen foresaw just how lively his corner of the world is about to become... Then again, the only one we truly need to worry about now is that one."

Gao Song's expression turned abruptly grave. He raised his eyes to Virodai's. "What is the current state of the God of Holy Light?"

The God of Holy Light—the one variable in Gao Song's entire "divine detonation" plan that could not be controlled. For the God of Holy Light had lost his mortal half to annihilation in the fall of Gondor more than seven hundred years ago; what remained in the Holy Light's domain was a pure crystallisation of divinity, answering the prayers of the mortal world in mechanical fashion for centuries. In the past, this half-crippled state had been a boon to Gao Yang: it let him boldly use the god as a "test subject" for the Divine Authority Council's many schemes, letting him complete the reformation of the Church of the Glowing Star without hindrance. But now it had become an enormous headache.

Without a mortal half, the God of Holy Light could hardly be expected to cooperate with Gao Song's plan of his own accord, could not help pile Cecil's "martial virtue" onto the divine throne—and when the divine calamity struck, there would be no "restraint" to keep that crystal from going berserk.

Of course, since the Church of the Glowing Star had been the first to accept reformation, and that reformation had gone relatively smoothly and thoroughly, the faith of Holy Light in the mortal world no longer pointed directly at the God of Holy Light, and the crystal's power had already been greatly diminished. Yet even so, a few years of diminishment could hardly offset a thousand years of accumulation—and Virodai's report proved as much.

"...The God of Holy Light still exists. His scale has shrunk by more than half, and the aura he radiates is no longer as mighty as in former days, but exist he does," Virodai said with a slight nod, his expression earnest. "At present his true body keeps operating within the divine realm. Even though the faith of mortals has been redirected elsewhere, his state remains as ever, running strictly according to doctrine."

"Like a bomb, quietly waiting to be triggered..." Gao Qi said slowly, his brows knit. "And there's no way for you to 'transport' anything into the Holy Light's realm?"

Virodai shook his head slightly. "I can 'visit' the Holy Light's realm through the power of the platinum scepter, but that is only a projection on the spiritual plane; the scepter has no function for sending physical matter into a divine realm. Still... personally, I think we may not need to worry overmuch about the God of Holy Light's state."

Gao Yang raised an eyebrow at that. "Oh?"