They all call me an Outer God.

Chapter 38 Rhapsody of the Door

As he spoke, two lines of clear tears slid down the old man's rugged face and wrinkles. He covered his face and wept bitterly, sobbing uncontrollably, which inexplicably reminded people of a pitiful, fat polar bear.

In the face of faith, even the hardest shell becomes fragile and easily broken.

He felt as if the sun had seen through all his sins, and a long-forgotten sense of guilt took root and sprouted in his soul at this moment.

But more than anything, it was a source of shame.

Ria looked at him with pity and patted his back to help him catch his breath.

"It does sound like a very serious crime, Your Excellency, but as you have said, the sun is great and it will purify all impurities."

Whether your sins can be forgiven remains to be seen, and we must ask His will.

"...Don't cry, have some bread."

Lia couldn't stand the old man's miserable expression, as if he had done something to him. So, in an effort to calm the old man down, he stuffed the black bread he had bought that morning into his mouth, hoping the old man would eat something and relax.

The old man instinctively bit down, and with a few "crunch" sounds, three of his few teeth were knocked out by the black bread.

He covered his bleeding mouth and asked, "What did you feed me?"

It was bitter and sour, and smelled tasteless, but when the bishop took a bite, he wondered if he was gnawing on a piece of rusty, blackened pig iron.

“My breakfast may look ordinary, but it can even be used as a hammer.” Ria simply introduced her food to the other person, then tapped it twice on the table, making a shallow dent in the wooden table.

"Does this seem hard to swallow? But this is what most people in Winstown eat every day. As for why not the vast majority... it's because there are still some people who simply can't afford it."

Black bread is fine when it's hot, but once it cools down, it becomes an incredibly hard "weapon" that can easily shatter an adult's elbow joint.

You should repent properly.

Ria made her conclusion, and a note identical to the one from last time appeared on the table, only this time, its contents were slightly altered.

The note reads: "Cardinal Brown Kaido, your confession is genuine and you are deemed to have a repentant heart. Therefore, you are hereby [enigmatic characters] permitted to leave the confessional to atone for your sins."

Shortly after this text appeared, the door to the confessional reappeared.

Ria raised an eyebrow, surprised that Radiant Sun would let the cardinal off so easily, and immediately wanted to say something to tease the cardinal.

But things didn't end that simply.

Brown's body stood upright like a jointed doll, but when he saw the newly appeared door, he instantly went limp as if he had discovered the gates of hell, and was then held back by something unseen, preventing him from falling to the ground.

He pointed towards the door with a look of terror on his face, making a "heh heh" sound.

“What’s there?” Ria looked in the direction he was pointing, but saw nothing.

Brown suddenly stood up and walked towards the door with an extremely reluctant expression. His expression was abnormal, and his limbs moved unnaturally as if they were being pulled by something.

Lia thought for a moment and suddenly realized that the other person's figure perfectly overlapped with the marionettes in some performance theaters.

However, the bishop's movements were not as fluid and graceful as those of a puppet in a theater; instead, they were stiff and awkward.

"I'm guilty."

As he approached the door, he repeated the phrase again, and then he reached his hand onto the brown wooden door and began to scratch at the lacquer with his fingernails.

As he dug, the old man shouted, "Hot! So hot!" In his eyes, the so-called wooden door had long since become a red-hot door covered with heat-resistant moss and insects.

The lacquer was those insects; he had to peel them all off, otherwise he wouldn't be able to leave through that door.

If he had ever doubted the existence of the sun, he had never felt its presence so clearly at this moment.

He forgave him.

The condition was to "leave the confessional." This simple condition, however, plunged Brown into despair.

The skin on the back of my hand, which was originally intact, has begun to carbonize and peel off due to the high temperature. The veins that contain blood are quickly charred black, with tiny red sparks clinging to them and then spreading to every muscle cell.

He didn't want to touch the door, but the nameless force had already taken control of him, and the blood-red threads would carry out all the commands for Him.

Brown raised his cloudy eyes to look at the silk threads that were embedded in his clothes and stretched all the way to his bones, and the tears on his face evaporated instantly.

“Is this… faith?”

Those fine, almost invisible threads weave a spiderweb-like cage for all believers, and no believer can escape their bondage.

but……

When Brown looked at Ria, he saw countless blood-red threads surging around him, as if they could rush in and completely envelop the new believer in a cocoon if the young man were to open his heart even slightly.

But they did not do that; instead, they swarmed around him like thousands of venomous snakes and centipedes, eyeing him covetously.

Brown seemed to understand something.

"You never believed in Him at all."

This is simply absurd and defies common sense.

How can someone make requests of a God, recite His calling, and yet have no faith in Him, treating Him merely as a tool?

This is blasphemy against God!
"Indeed, the disorderly are the disorderly, and you will all go to hell sooner or later—hehehehe, yes, my sins will be burned away by the blazing fire of the radiant sun, but your sins will not."

I look forward to the day when your sins are truly judged.

After saying that, Brown suddenly leaned close to the wooden door and pressed himself against it completely.

He was embracing the wooden door, as if he were embracing his own death.

Fireworms quickly crawled all over his body, and his clothes were also invaded by dense moss spores.

Soon, the new moss sprouted from beneath the charred flesh.

"squeak……"

The door opened.

The cardinal suddenly fell to the ground outside the door, his body convulsing, his eyes wide open, and a few drops of saliva still lingering at the corners of his mouth. Even so, it couldn't hide the fact that he was missing three teeth.

"It seems he was having some rather terrifying hallucinations."

Lia shook her head regretfully and closed the door again.

Now, the entire confessional room is quiet, with only him and Xu Ri present and no outsiders to disturb them.

"Praise be to you."

Ria leaned on his cane with one hand and made a sun sign over his heart with the other. Then he called out Little Swarth and plucked another feather from it.

"Radiant Sun"

A newly emerging star in the land of life and death
The center that all things seek in their cycle of rebirth.
Using flames to bisect day and night,
I am waiting in an endless expanse.
Sing praises to the rising sun,

A tribute to the rising sun

To become the rising sun.

(End of this chapter)