Chapter 86: The Holy True Lord

The towering giant merely twitched its eyelids, yet a terrifying aura surged forth.

The entire Hall of Audience began to tremble faintly. The floor quaked and heaved; chips of stone broke loose from the walls; dust sifted down from the dome above, sending grit swirling through the air.

An air thick with boundless suffering began to stir awake. Even a single breath felt like thorns piercing flesh and bone.

Such a staggering disparity in strength and weakness made the hairs on Li Nanke’s body stand on end, a bone-deep chill racing from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head.

An overwhelming sense of danger told him that against the First Divine Grace, the Holy Father of Thorns, there was only death. Victory was utterly impossible.

In that instant, countless thoughts flashed through Li Nanke’s mind.

Though the Great Beyond repeatedly assigned hidden nodes of absurd difficulty, every one of them had a way through. There had never been an absolutely unsolvable riddle, never a deathtrap without escape.

His gaze fell on the Thorn Throne, then turned toward the cathedral doors, as though passing through layer after layer of obstruction to see the countless Penitence troops standing ready outside.

At this moment, the great defensive prayer enclosing the cathedral had already faded to a dim shell and was on the verge of collapse.

“Run first. I’ve got a way to deal with this thing!”

Before Reynold could react, before he even had a chance to stop him, Li Nanke sat down without another word upon the throne bristling with thorns.

Li Nanke’s ability to return to the Great Beyond at any time was the source of his courage and confidence in this moment.

The dense blood-red thorns seemed to sense a new master and immediately began to writhe wildly, spreading and growing.

Along both armrests of the throne, blood-red thorns coiled around Li Nanke’s hands. Their barbs bit into his flesh, their vines sank into his limbs, and the two became one. From the base of the throne, more crimson thorns surged outward, climbing his feet and locking him firmly to the seat.

The thorns moved like living things, rapidly wrapping his arms and legs. Blood-colored vines snaked across his skin, burrowing into every inch of flesh and binding him tightly.

Thorns coiled above his head, forming a crown of blood-red briars.

With the warhammer fused with the Thorned Divine Grace in his hand, Li Nanke used that sacred power to shut out all pain.

He still remembered what the Holy King had once said: “Seated upon the throne, I receive the worship of all people and enjoy supreme authority. I can even use my connection to the First Divine Grace to draw in all the suffering in the world and exchange it for boundless power.”

Whether those words were true or false, they were the only hope Li Nanke could seize now.

The moment he fully sat upon the throne and merged with the thorns, his sight truly passed through the Hall of Audience and beyond the Cathedral of All Saints.

He could see the countless Penitence troops assembled outside, and every self-mortifying pilgrim upon Ash Mountain.

His vision continued to extend farther: soldiers patrolling the streets of the holy city, devout believers in prayer, farmers working at sunset, drunken patrons in taverns…

Even without the favor of the Divine Grace of Pain, merely surviving in such a twisted and deformed world was agony enough.

Through his connection with the First Divine Grace, he could clearly feel the despair and suffering in every corner of the world. The remaining fragments of the Divine Grace of Pain also appeared one by one before his eyes.

Heretics condemned to perpetual burning without death, people nailed to holy images by countless arrows, three sisters who transformed into monsters when they refused to marry a wealthy merchant under the church’s oppression, ghouls born of fasting and self-torment, saints who stitched their own lips shut, gouged out their eyes, and cut off their ears to seal away all sensation and sink into pain…

The Divine Grace of Pain that still existed in the world was grotesque beyond measure.

He could not only see the countless recipients of the Divine Grace of Pain, but through the entwined thorns he could also feel himself becoming connected to the First Divine Grace, the Holy Father of Thorns. Within the Holy Father’s spiritual world there was only endless pain and distortion.

Relying on that strange connection, Li Nanke strained his arms. The muscles in his shoulders bulged as he tugged at the blood-red thorns, forcing a hand to rise.

With a thunderous boom, the Holy Father behind him, though his eyes were still closed and he had not yet fully awakened, also broke free from the utterly warped restraints and raised a hand.

Even the motion of lifting their hands was identical.

Li Nanke was overjoyed, but he knew time was limited. That monstrously distorted consciousness was about to awaken completely; once it did, he would no longer be able to control the warped Holy Father through the thorn connection.

At once, he borrowed the power of the Holy Father of Thorns and drew in every variety of the Divine Grace of Pain.

Like rivers returning to the sea, the Divine Grace of Pain converged toward the Cathedral of All Saints, flowing into the Thorn Throne. Yet it did not enter Li Nanke’s body. Instead, it poured into the Holy Father of Thorns.

Those who still received the favor of the Divine Grace of Pain, those who had endured extreme torment, offered no resistance at all and allowed the power to drain away.

Anya collapsed weakly to the ground. The old scars upon her body gradually faded, and her yellowed skin slowly regained a snowy, delicate whiteness…

Endless divine power poured in, making the Holy Father of Thorns ever stronger.

If, at this moment, he controlled the Holy Father of Thorns to kill himself, then all the Divine Grace of Pain could be brought to an end.

At the same time, Li Nanke felt something and abruptly looked up. Through the cathedral dome, he saw the thing of terror appearing in the firmament.

It drew nearer and nearer, growing from a distant speck into something immense. As it approached, that twisted shape seemed to occupy nearly everyone’s entire field of view.

It was three massive heads joined tightly together. The three human faces were contorted, as though suffering unimaginable torment, their expressions ferocious and agonized, golden tears streaming from their eye sockets.

Reynold looked up as well. Through the glass of the dome, he too saw the horrifying faces descending from the sky, now already so close to the ground.

“The Spirit of the Three Saints!”

“That is the manifestation of the Holy True Lord’s will—the Spirit of the Three Saints!”

Reynold’s terrified roar echoed through the cathedral in layer upon layer of reverberation.

Eyes splitting with fear, he seized Anya in his arms, cast one deeply pained look at Li Nanke, and then fled the Hall of Audience.

Outside the cathedral, the countless Penitence troops, the pilgrims on Ash Mountain, the tens of thousands of residents of the holy city… all looked up at the sky at the same moment. Overcome with excitement, they wept and shouted wildly, kneeling and bowing toward the three enormous heads in the heavens.

Even when blood streamed down their brows, they did not stop.

In just a few seconds, the three giant heads had already fallen from the sky, tearing through the fragile veil of light as if it were thin paper. Their immense pupils pressed against the glass of the dome, peering inward.

That gaze was warped and tormented to the extreme. The golden tears dripping from its eyes melted straight through the dome and rained down.

Li Nanke did not believe in the Divine Grace of Pain at all and could not look directly at that horrific presence.

Even with his head lowered, refusing to meet the gaze of the Spirit of the Three Saints, his whole body trembled. Instinct carved into his bones shrieked and roared, urging him to abandon everything and return to the Great Beyond.

Li Nanke’s mind flashed with countless thoughts as he forcibly suppressed his survival instinct and let out a furious cry.

He stomped and leaped, gathering every ounce of strength in his body as he punched upward!

The blood-red thorns yanked at him, preventing him from leaving the throne.

But a giant’s silhouette had already risen from the earth!

With a thunderous crash, the floor of the hall split open, leaving behind a vast crater.

The wind howled in a violent surge as the Holy Father of Thorns sprang up from the ground.

Having absorbed all the power of the Divine Grace of Pain, the Holy Father of Thorns, cloaked in countless knotted crimson briars, burst straight through the cathedral dome.

His enormous fist slammed into that peering eye, unleashing boundless force.

The power was so overwhelming that even his whole body followed the fist into the eye, plunging into the giant head itself.

All the cheering, all the shouts, all the prayers came to an abrupt halt at that instant. The entire sky became deathly silent in a blink, as though time itself had frozen.

Beneath the afterglow of sunset, the Spirit of the Three Saints seemed to lose all divine power and slowly fell…

[Nightmare, you have completed the hidden node: sever all Divine Grace of Pain!]

[Hidden node reward: main essence Pain, unlocked certain special exchange privileges, increased dream settlement score!]

[Returning…]

As the giant heads fell, they crashed into the cathedral dome, and countless stones rained down. The Cathedral of All Saints, which had stood for less than three hundred years, was about to collapse.

Then Li Nanke frowned and froze in place.

Through the countless thorn-like connections, he could clearly feel that the Holy Father of Thorns, having absorbed all the Divine Grace of Pain, had already died completely, bringing an end to everything tied to it.

And yet… the Holy True Lord had not died.

His gaze seemed to cross mountains and rivers, as if the entire world still lay beneath the deep shadow of pain.

Even after all the Divine Grace of Pain had been extinguished, people still believed in pain, and new strands of the Divine Grace of Pain continued to descend.

The divine grace was still as twisted as ever… no, even more twisted, more deranged than before.

He had no time for further thought. A surging darkness swept in, thunderous roars rang out, and everything within sight was swallowed whole, all sensation and perception buried beneath it…

End of Chapter