Infinite Weird Game

Chapter 380: The Sacred City (VI) The Dying

Flor's face was pale, whether from pain or fear, it was unclear.

His lips trembled, and he whispered carefully: "I...I answer! Legend has it that the Holy Lord brought light and heat, dispelled poverty and fear, and protected us from the monsters in the dark...

"He brings us the prophecy of the Last Judgment, when the temple will fall and the dead will bury their dead..."

The first half is similar to what Father Laci said, but the second half is new. Asakura Yuko keenly captured the key words and asked: "How does the Holy Lord dispel poverty and fear? What is the 'Last Judgment'? What does 'the dead will bury their dead' mean?"

Flor said: "The Holy Lord transformed His authority into food for us to share. We ate the golden leaves He gave us, and we no longer felt hungry. Non-fatal wounds healed quickly. The priests said that we were the people closest to God.

"But the gift comes at a price. The prophet said that we must ensure the purity of our faith, and the Holy Lord will always protect us. But for some reason, there are more and more pagans in the city, and we have never been able to stop them from growing stronger. The Lord is angry and will withdraw his protection from us and drive us out of the promised land.

"When He does not protect us, the night comes. In the night are hidden all kinds of unspeakable dangers, tempting us to fall and taking our lives. All the dead gather in the cemetery, and the dead in the past will bury the new dead with shovels... These days, the nights are getting longer and longer."

In reality, "Judgment Day" is just a religious rhetoric to intimidate believers. For a period of time, the church used it as a basis to sell indulgences and collect money from believers. I just don't know if there is a similar setting in this copy.

But from what Flor said, the so-called "doomsday" is not an illusory legend. After losing the protection of the gods, the "dangers" in the dark can really cause death.

Asakura Yuko pondered for a moment and asked, "How do you judge who is a heretic? Is it based on 'refusal to donate'?"

Flor nodded and said, "Yes, only pagans would refuse to give back the gift of the Holy Lord and would be unwilling to donate to the Lord."

Combining the preceding and following circumstances, these words sound as if the Holy Lord is seeking to extract something from his believers as a reward for his kindness.

But Yuko Asakura knows many deep secrets of the weird game and can easily find the illogicalities in it.

It is undoubtedly true that the Holy Lord distributes authority to save believers, and every believer can judge this by simply feeling the condition of his or her own body.

Would a god who could divide up something as important as power really do something like "repaying a favor"?
Even if He intends to repay a favor, is there anything among these NPC believers that He needs that is more valuable than the authority He gave?

Although devout faith is valuable, it is far inferior to the unique authority of God. Asakura Yuko has followed Bai Ya for many years and has been busy with Bai Ya's plan to become a god. She thinks her value judgment will not be wrong, so she is even more puzzled.

She thought for a moment and then asked, "Are there any signs of the coming of darkness? What are the specific dangers of the night?"

"Usually, when the temple bell strikes twelve, night comes. Now, night comes when it strikes eleven." Flor's voice was filled with palpable fear. "The priest said that in the night, the dead will crawl out of hell to kill people, and the devil will tempt believers to fall."

"Have you ever seen the devil?"

"No, you know, we don't dare go out at night, and we don't dare look outside... Those who have seen the devil have fallen and become pagans."

Asakura Yuko had asked almost all of her questions when she stabbed the dagger into Flor's throat with her backhand. When she pulled out the blade, blood splattered on her cheek, which she wiped off casually and rubbed onto her clothes.

The black fabric absorbed all the blood stains, and there was no trace of blood from the outside. Only when you got closer could you smell a faint smell of blood.

Flor's eyes were wide open with his pupils dilated, and he lost his breath before he could even scream.

Asakura Yuko held her glasses and said to herself, "The rules say 'the Holy City cannot attack others', but I was able to attack and kill believers, which means that believers are not considered human beings in the dungeon setting."

She calmly dragged the body to a corner and threw it away, then returned to Wade and took out the [History Page] in her arms to write and draw.

She had a strange guess about the world view background of the "Holy City" copy.

The believers judged the time by the sound of the bells in the bell tower, which shows that they had no tools to measure time, and the sound of the bells could be controlled artificially through some means.

Combined with the fact that believers were so frightened that they dared not go out at night or look outside, and it was said that those who "saw the devil" would become pagans and be executed to silence them... It was hard for Asakura Yuko not to suspect that the so-called "donation" was a farce concocted by priests for the purpose of making money.

So, how can believers who are shepherded like lambs be considered human beings? They are nothing more than property and means of production…

Of course, all of the above are just conclusions she drew based on her understanding of religion in reality. She would have to wait until she went out and investigated in person at night before she could have a say on the specific situation.

"You're going to kill him just like that?" Wade looked at Asakura Yuko with a complicated look in his eyes. "Won't you stay a little longer?"

After this little episode, his perception of Asakura Yuko took a 180-degree turn.

They killed people so skillfully, and never talked about it. Are they still Tingfeng's group of intelligence dealers who can only talk big? Are you sure they are not Xila's people?
"We have asked all the questions that need to be asked. He is useless now and might even report us to the priest. I don't want to be hanged as a heretic before the voting begins," said Asakura Yuko calmly.

She seemed to see Wade's doubts and added: "Also, although I am a civilian, I have been a war correspondent in real life and have killed people."

"So this instance has banned weapons, why are you still able to use a knife?"

"That's not a weapon. When I bought it in the store, the game classified it as tableware."

"Can this still happen?"

Asakura Yuko's words did not affect her writing at all. At this moment, a paragraph of words had already been written on the pages of the history book in her hand. Her tone was cold and stern, just like the words in a real history book:
[The Holy City is a place full of faith and death. Its birth came from the kindness of the Holy Lord. In the words of believers and priests, "the monsters were driven out and light came"...]

The effect of the [Forbidden Scholar] identity card requires sufficient "history" to be accumulated before it can be activated. Coincidentally, this copy is also related to "history", so Asakura Yuko simply took notes.

As she wrote, she realized some problems——

Is the Holy Lord really the Siqi who was once a player? With such a long time span, how can he participate in the past history of the Holy City in such a short time? Is it related to the authority of time and space?

As a newcomer, Si Qi left countless TE clearance records in just a few months, blew up several copies, and rushed to the top of the newcomer list after killing Chang Xu. He also possessed multiple identity cards... It was as if he was arranged by some high-level being to reap the game.

Combined with the rumors about the gambling game among the gods, and the fact that the Lord of Time and Space, Li, had been inactive for some time, a guess suddenly popped up in Asakura Yuko's mind:
Could it be that Siqi is Li's agent?
"Did you find anything?" Wade observed Asakura Yuko's expression and asked suddenly.

Asakura Yuko collected her thoughts and said calmly, "If the clues provided by Father Lach and Flor are true, then there is a monster wandering outside the Holy City, also known as an 'evil spirit' or a 'devil', that will haunt people in the dark night."

She solemnly repeated the information she had just learned from Flor: "In the past, this land was always shrouded in darkness, until the arrival of the Holy Lord, there was light that could drive away the monsters.

"The Holy Lord built a holy city to isolate monsters, but only those who believed in him devoutly and paid regular tributes could be protected. If believers could not pay the tributes, they would be killed by the priests as pagans. "At the same time, the interior of the holy city was not safe either. Monsters would still appear at night, and those who witnessed the monsters would degenerate into pagans. "

Everyone knows this information. Wade asked, "What do you think of the main quest? How could a sacred city protected by gods be destroyed? Could it be that the sacred master died one day and the monsters rushed into the sacred city?"

Asakura Yuko stared blankly and said, "If I knew the answer, we should be sitting in the game space now, listening to the clearance prompts and copy settlement."

Wade didn't get more secrets out of him, but he wasn't disappointed. He pondered for a moment and returned to the previous topic: "There's something wrong with the 'heretic' mechanism.

"Witnessing a monster and not paying the offerings will both make you a 'heretic'. The two methods are too different and don't even belong to the same system. Someone must be lying."

"That's my conclusion as well." Asakura Yuko nodded slightly and said, "If you want to know more, either wait until night to go out and explore, or keep going forward and collect more clues."

It was not yet nightfall, so the two could only do the latter.

They moved forward one after another in the previous direction. The deeper they went into the eastern district, the more appalling the scene became.

Yellow-green rotten water surged between the rocks, blocked drains kept spewing out dirty foreign matter, and yellow-green foam like burst abscesses rose and fell in the gullies.

Men, women, old and young had ulcerated skin and were half-dressed, their cloudy eyes staring straight ahead with dull gazes. Scabies spread like moss among the living flesh, and ragged pieces of cloth wrapped around festering scabs.

Priests wrapped in pale shrouds passed by street corners, wandering like ghosts in the crowded yet silent streets, two by two, holding jars and daggers.

Asakura Yuko hid herself in a corner, staring at the scene before her.

The jars held by the priests were transparent, and from her angle she could just see the pieces of meat stained with fine blood.

The pieces of meat were crowded together in a sticky mass, and each one was wriggling slightly on its own initiative, expanding and contracting as if breathing.

Black tentacles appeared and disappeared in the void, piercing into the jar like blood vessels, pulsating vigorously at a certain frequency, like a living thing that was eating.

The glass jar was moved by the tentacles, opening and closing like the heart of a giant monster. The meat at the bottom of the jar was rapidly decreasing at a speed visible to the naked eye, and the incision where the blood vessels met the air oozed a little golden light.

Gilded fragments floated in the air, floating up and down like torn ancient scriptures, then slowly faded and disappeared into nothingness in a certain moment.

A holy and beautiful miracle could actually be born from such a strange background. If one had not seen it with one's own eyes, no one could have imagined that it came from the nourishment of flesh and blood.

Wade also saw this scene, gasped, and cursed: "Oh my God, this disgusting thing again, I hope there will be no meat for dinner tonight. By the way, what on earth is this? What is it for? You are not going to give it to us to eat, right?"

He might just be talking to himself, but Asakura Yuko still thought about his question seriously, but of course she didn't come up with any valuable answer.

Vader didn't ask any more questions, as his question was quickly answered.

The priests were seen holding transparent jars and stopping in front of low-rise houses. The skinny believers waiting at the door took the daggers from them, silently cut a piece of meat from their bodies and put it into the glass jars.

The moment the meat fell into the glass jar, it began to wriggle and merge into the original piece of meat, while dense buds of flesh emerged from the wounds on the believers' bodies, growing at a speed visible to the naked eye.

The new flesh had the texture of a festering sore, hanging on the skin like a pool of phlegm, and trembling with the shaking of the body.

It turns out that the offerings that believers need to hand in are not simply money, but their own flesh and blood!
On the system interface, three lines of silver-white text quietly appeared:

[Side mission has been refreshed]

[Side quest: Complete a donation]

[Mission Reward: One Fire Seed]

……

In the backyard of the temple, Qis, dragging his black robe, walked across the damp, cold and broken bluestone road, heading towards the depths of the eerie and desolate place.

He held the Scepter of Poseidon, and the surging divine power swept away the sand on the road and the dust floating in the air. Only a wisp of dark and rotten smell lingered around his nose.

At a certain moment, as if he sensed something from afar, he raised his hand and gently stroked his throat, the smile on the corners of his lips becoming even more profound.

"You killed a lot of people, didn't you?" He glanced at Father Laci beside him and spoke in a soft voice.

After realizing that he could not stop Qis from entering the backyard of the temple, Father Laci was able to act as a guide and followed Qis, nominally leading the way but actually monitoring him - but in fact he could not play any substantial role.

Hearing Qis' question, he closed his eyes and said, "Yes, I killed many people. All the pagans who passed by died at my hands and were buried deep in the tomb."

As if to confirm his words, a large number of bulging graves appeared not far ahead, and they were covered with crosses of various sizes, some of which were new and some of which had already decayed.

Qi Si raised his fingers and tapped his chin, the scarlet in his eyes swam into a pool, and the illusion of a sea of ​​blood and a mountain of corpses unfolded.

The past scenes were superimposed on his original vision, and he saw: the ground beneath his feet began to wriggle softly, like rotting and festering flesh; bright green rotten water and yellow-white maggots flowed down the slope, and when they were about to touch his feet they were blocked by the golden-red glow; countless gray-black outlines crawled out from the ground, raised their heads high, and let out painful wails.

A sacrificial scene unfolded before the eyes. The believers used daggers to scrape the flesh off the bones. The blood and flesh gathered in the huge pit and formed a huge tumor.

The people in front fell, and the people behind followed. The tumor grew larger and larger, but the sacrifices never stopped. New corpses covered the old skeletons, layer upon layer, turning into a huge grave...

Qi Si raised his hand and waved it, the phantom disappeared, and scarlet sank into his eyes.

He seemed to realize something, took out a page of history book from his arms and opened it to one side.

I saw a line of messy notes written spontaneously on the yellowed paper:
[Record 1: Let the dead bury their dead]

[Skill: After you die, you can choose to kill a player]

(End of this chapter)