Chapter 169: Resurgence

"May I pay my respects and worship to the Lord God?!"

Upon hearing these words, the smile on the gray-robed figure's face vanished instantly, and his heart sank.

Only two or three tenths of his previous recruitment offer had been genuine; most of it was meant as a probe.

Now, the other's response sounded reasonable enough, but to a certain extent, it could also be interpreted as a probe of their own.

If it were a few centuries ago, right after the god had fallen into a deep slumber due to severe injuries, he would have played along, negotiated with a tiger, or even endured humiliation and clung to life just to survive, because back then, he was the god's sole attendant.

But now, after centuries of continuous recuperation and recovery, the god had reached the critical threshold of awakening. In this situation, the role he could play was no longer as crucial.

Therefore, as the final line of defense before the god, the only thing he could do now that he had been captured was clear.

Sacrifice himself, trigger all his previous preparations, and awaken our God ahead of time!

Even though doing so would slightly worsen the god's injuries, which were already on the verge of natural recovery!

Even though the two individuals before him might genuinely only be here to pay homage to the great god, as they claimed!

Yet, even if there were only a one percent chance of the worst-case scenario, he was willing to make a one-hundred percent sacrifice!

This is my devotion to my God!

While Claire was finishing his sentence, wearing a smile while looking at the cloaked figure and pondering how to bluff him next, he saw the latter—who had been smiling just moments ago—suddenly drop his expression, close his eyes, and fall silent.

Before the two of them could figure out what was happening, a sudden wave of mortal danger made their hair stand on end.

"Run!" Claire only had time to shout a quick warning before casting aside any reluctance and rapidly activating the remaining three formation arrays.

Layers of energy enveloped the cloaked figure, but the level of power emitted by the latter escalated exponentially in a matter of moments. All the forces within the gray spatial domain managed to delay the opponent for only a few breaths.

Half an hour later, the storm subsided. Lando and Claire stood with grim expressions before a vast expanse of ruins. Once a great northern city named Ragnarr, it was now reduced to a wasteland, everything obliterated in the cloaked figure's self-destruction... save for the Seed of the Demon God that Lando had instinctively snatched away as he fled!

"Talk about ruthless. He didn't view the people in the city as his own kin at all!" Lando clicked his tongue in disbelief.

"This is a madman entirely corrupted by divine power. He thought he was clear-headed, but he had long since lost his mind," Claire said with a heavy expression.

"By the way, your God-suppressing Domain was utterly unreliable. It felt completely useless!" Lando complained.

"The methods of gods are unpredictable and ever-changing. It's only natural that something like this would happen," Claire said, turning his head away.

Natural my foot, this is clearly your fault!

"Now look at this. We've even managed to get the Arch-Prelate killed. Finding the deity behind the scenes is going to be even harder. It's not like we can turn the entire world upside down!"

The real problem was that even if they did that, there was no guarantee they would find anything!

"I don't have any bright ideas at the moment. You're full of tricks, so come up with something!"

Lando's face darkened with a twitching brow. *You're the one full of tricks, your whole family is full of tricks.*

"It's not as if we're completely without clues," Lando said after a moment of thought.

"Oh? Tell me, tell me!" Claire leaned in closely, looking interested.

Lando stepped back a few paces with a look of disgust and said, "Actually, the establishment of the 'Dark Cult' must date back far earlier than Bridget's time of joining. In other words, they are merely a new batch of 'Dark Cult' members. To them, being untrusted and thus knowing nothing is normal. But what about the older members? Surely there must have been fanatical believers like the cloaked figure as well. No doubt the 'Dark Cult' wouldn't have kept many secrets from them."

"I see! It's possible that within the current 'Dark Cult,' there are old fossils hidden away who joined a very long time ago. As long as we find them, we might get some new information!" Claire grasped Lando's meaning.

"Of course, it's also possible that only the cloaked figure knew everything, and no one else had a clue."

"We can only do our best and leave the rest to fate!"

"Oh, right. Take this."

Lando tossed the Seed of the Demon God, cultivated by Bridget, to Claire.

"You rescued this; I can't take it." Claire immediately tried to return it to Lando.

Lando waved his hand dismissively and said, "Keep it. After suffering such heavy losses this time, we need to recoup some of our investment. Besides, if you hadn't deployed your arrays to block the opponent's self-destruction, I might not have escaped, let alone brought out this Demon God Seed."

"Very well then!" After a moment's hesitation, Claire accepted it without further refusal.

For some time afterward, Lando and Claire joined forces to hunt down all the high-ranking prelates of the 'Dark Cult.'

Along the way, they also confirmed with Prince Jigg that he indeed had an uncle who had undergone congenital atavistic awakening.

According to Prince Jigg's account, although his uncle experienced a congenital atavistic awakening, it was precisely this overly powerful talent that crushed his young physique, causing his uncle to die prematurely at the age of three.

The two accounts differed completely, and neither Lando nor Claire felt any inclination to dig deeper, treating the whole thing as a bad joke.

Just as the two of them were clutching at straws and continuously hunting down one 'Dark Cult' prelate after another—

"Lando, something's not right!"

In truth, ever since the cloaked figure self-detonated and died, Lando's Mindscape had keenly sensed a subtle anomaly. But at the time, that feeling was so minuscule that he couldn't even tell whether it was merely his imagination.

The sensation was bizarre, akin to the Earth's revolution speeding up by a single second, or the world's overall temperature dropping by a fraction of a degree.

At first, he paid it no heed, but now, merely three days later, that bizarre deviation seemed to have unconsciously grown to a degree beyond Lando's imagination.

"Did you feel it too? That bizarre shift in the world?!" Lando asked with a solemn expression.

Lando's words caused Claire, whose face had previously only worn a look of worry, to change color entirely.

"What did you say? What world shift?!"

Lando recounted his sensations to Claire, and upon hearing them, the latter's expression grew even more grim.

"This is bad. Perhaps we've encountered the worst possible scenario. Prepare to run!"

Amidst Lando's puzzled gaze, Claire enunciated each word clearly: "That deity... is likely about to awaken!"

"What?!"

"It's true. The reason I came was to tell you—remember those rituals the cloaked figure had Bridget perform? Just to be safe, I left monitoring wraiths in the ruins of every single town we visited. Now, all those towns have gone dark!"

Author's Note: Too tired, publishing this first and revising it tomorrow. So tired, good night, brothers!

7017k