Falling into the Abyss

Seeing the priest’s gloomy “smile,” Ethan quickly retracted his arm and walked a few steps towards the stairs to approach Tanisiel. Roland raised his head and looked at Tanisiel’s gaze. It was true that the Eve priest’s exotic beauty often would render people unable to distinguish his gender. However, his tall height and the invisible pressure he was diffusing allowed Roland to quickly judge that the other party was an Alpha.

Seeing that Ethan and the priest were standing too close, Roland’s expression slightly stagnated. For a moment, the three people did not speak. They were strangely quiet, and the other two guards in front of the gate glanced at each other.

At this time, another human came quickly and said something to Roland. Roland nodded, then gave Ethan a final glance and followed the man away.

Ethan was relieved and turned to Tanisiel. “What did you say to the chief? Will they let us go?”

At this time, he realized that Tanisiel’s gloomy aura had permeated through the invisible soul bond between them.

“Uh…… What’s the matter with you?”

Tanisiel was still looking at Roland’s back. “That person’s motive is hidden very deep inside, and there are many false images mixed together in his mind. Even I can’t easily see through him. It looks like he’s been trained to manage his subconscious.”

“……You mean Roland?” Ethan gave him a wry smile. “I’m not surprised at all.”

“Don’t associate with him. It’s too dangerous.”

Ethan laughed. “You’re dangerous, too, so why should I continue associating with you?”

“Because I look better than him.” Tanisiel patted him on the back and led him down the steps. Ethan rolled his eyes and noticed that when they moved, the other two horned people were following them from afar, staring at them.

It looked like they didn’t plan on allowing them to leave?

“This base is surrounded by an anti-reconnaissance device provided by the Ophiuchus Alliance, so the Earth Union won’t be able to find this place for a while. However, they’re not going to let us go for nothing,” he whispered as he walked.

“What do they want?”

“The God of Order’s egg.”

“What? But you don’t have it with you, do you?”

“This is definitely that Roland’s intention. They want to know how to obtain the God of Order’s egg and how to use it.” Tanisiel said with a sneer, “They probably thought they could get some kind of antimatter resources for free like how the Eves got them?”

A deep chill seeped into his bone marrow.

Clearly, he should have been psychologically prepared, but he was still a little sad. It felt like he was being pricked by a needle.

“In addition, the horned people are also a little jittery now. They found the corpses on the other side of the altar. Some horned people think something went wrong with the sacrifice, infuriating the ‘Great Wise Man’ they believe in. Fortunately, so far, no one seems to know what happened.” They had arrived at the library where they had stayed previously. With one walking in front and the other following after, the two of them entered the room and closed the door.

Tanisiel’s sceptre morphed into his ten-thousand function sphere again. He waved his fingers in the air a few times before pulling out some documents written in the Eve’s language and browsing them. “Think about it carefully. Apart from the few humans, including Samuel and the others, did you let some horned people live? If you did, you should tell me now.”

Ethan didn’t want to recall that memory at all. As long as that scene with corpses littered everywhere appeared at the corner of his mind, he wanted to vomit. He turned pale and shook his head. “I don’t remember anything……”

“No, you remember. You just don’t want to think about it.” Tanisiel sighed and said, “I created a peaceful illusion that your consciousness could escape to because I was afraid that you might descend into madness if you had nowhere to escape to. However, it was still you who killed those people, not some other unknown force.”

Tanisiel’s words slapped Ethan in the face. He stood still, his intestines tangled into knots.

He recalled the purple eye lying in the middle of his vomit.

Was he afraid he still had a lot of flesh and blood in his body?

Ethan leaned over and retched again. His mind was in chaos, and many pictures of hell flashed by.

There were blue and red splatters everywhere, accompanied by unparalleled pleasure, the pleasure he got from killing, and boundless power. It was as though with a flip of his hand, the sky would overturn, and the earth would collapse.

“I don’t remember! I don’t remember!” He put his hands over his face, trembling as he refused to accept the fragmented memories.

He was a devil whose hands were covered with blood.

Suddenly, a comfortable coolness poured in from the top of his head, slowly wrapping around his entire consciousness. His mind was drawn back to reality, and he felt Tanisiel’s hand on his head. The eye on his forehead was half open, and a silver-white stream swirled in the room along with the priest’s gentle and low chants. It was a clean, soft ray of light, just like the man in front of him, that wouldn’t be stained by dust. Ethan suddenly felt so dirty that he did not deserve to feel the priest’s gentleness.

He jerked away from the priest’s hand, trying to keep his expression as calm as possible as he said, “I’m fine.”

Tanisiel didn’t question him further, and his gaze seemed to contain some pity. He looked at Ethan and sighed before saying politely, “Take a shower. I’ll ask them to send some clean clothes. The chief is going to invite us and the people from Ophiuchus Alliance to a banquet tonight, so I’ll try to deal with them.”

Ethan changed into a horned person’s robe, which was made of some sort of thick wool. It was deep black with silver patterns embroidered on the neckline and cuffs in the shape of a circle. He also had a belt around his waist, decorated with an aborigine grandmother’s green ore. He shaved the short stubble from his chin and cut his hair, which had grown a little too long recently, before fixing it with some kind of gum, used by the locals as hair gel, to show his clean forehead. His black clothes made his skin appear paler than usual. Without his glasses, his eyes sometimes narrowed because he couldn’t see clearly, floating with a layer of dreamlike confusion.

When Tanisiel saw that Ethan had finished changing when he came out in the bathroom, Tanisiel looked at him for a long time. Ethan was a little embarrassed and asked in a flustered manner, “What’s the matter? Are the clothes strange?”

The priest shook his head and sighed. “It’s not strange. However, it makes me want to take them off you now.”

Ethan coughed hard to hide his blush.

The priest had also changed into the clothes of the horned people. However, his robes were pure white. Obviously, the horned people also knew that the priest traditionally wore white clothing and provided him with a set of plain but exquisite clothes for the banquet. The ruffled neckline, cuffs, and belt contained the same light gold embroidered pattern. It complemented Tanisiel’s golden hair and silver eyes, making his whole person appear as though he was glowing. No matter how many times Ethan saw Tanisiel, every time he saw him in his complicated and beautiful formal robes, Ethan always felt that he was not looking at a person standing on the ground but at a winged angel from an ancient mural in a church.

He looked so pure now, but he was like a devil in bed.

The grand “banquet” hosted by the horned people felt more like a festival. Everyone gathered around a strange campfire in the center of the village in their costumes. The burning flames jumped on the round fuel that had been woven through some kind of unknown means, giving off a smell similar to that of burning pine resin. The banquet tables were arranged in circles around the whole venue, with a space emptied in the middle. Many Omega horned people were wearing elegant and thin clothes, dancing some primitive and strange dance, and making a unified and magnificent sound as the bells tied to their feet hit the ground.

The priest held the scepter in his hand and walked ahead, while Ethan followed him as his attendant. The horned people led them to seats on the left side of the chief. On the table was a milky white wine and some fruits that Ethan had never seen on Earth. As soon as they sat down, they saw three other humans on the right side opposite them.

Roland’s gaze immediately passed through the space in the middle and fell on Ethan while Ethan’s eyes were fixed on the campfire. He was glad that he hadn’t had the myopic correction surgery, so he didn’t have to see the man in front of him clearly.

The chief’s two young concubines sat at his table. However, the chief himself was old and withered. Even the two horns on his head were a little shaky, not to mention with the addition of the heavy ornaments on his head. He raised his glass, and his voice spread throughout the space using the portable capsule’s amplifying device. Although he spoke the horned people’s language, Ethan could guess that he was saying something similar to welcoming guests from afar.

Everyone stood up with their glasses in their hands. Ethan and Tanisiel followed the others and drank all the wine in the glass. A strong fishy smell came from the wine, which made Ethan a little nauseous.

After the banquet started, a beautiful female Beta sitting beside Roland gave Tanisiel a charming smile. Tanisiel also returned a kind and friendly smile to her and raised his glass slightly.

“They said that the priest is here to learn about the Great Wise Man this time?” the female Beta asked.

Obviously, this question also aroused the chief’s interest, and his slender and old purple eyes looked over. Tanisiel nodded and acknowledged, “That’s true.”

“To tell you the truth, I’ve read some of Eve’s classics as well,” the female Beta puckered her beautiful red lips and said, “Maybe it’s because my thoughts are simple and naive, but I’ve always thought your beliefs are so strange. I can understand your belief in the God of Order, but your belief in the God of Disorder is incredulous…… Isn’t that like worshiping death and evil?”

Although the female Beta had a studious appearance, Ethan could still decipher the slightest provocation.

Tanisiel took a sip from his glass and said with a faint smile, “What’s wrong with death and evil?”

The other party was stunned by his rhetorical question and said with a smile, “Isn’t that obvious? Don’t you want to live, priest?”

“None of us have ever died. How do you know that death is an unfortunate thing? It is decided since birth that all will end with death. Even if one day we really unlock the secret to immortality, there are still many things that can cause us to die—disasters, accidents, suicide, and the end of the universe itself. Death is the most natural thing. As for evil……hehe, that kind of thing itself is stipulated by people living in this disordered universe to prevent themselves from falling into chaos and madness. If there is no God of Disorder, then how can there be a concept of evil or good.”

“Well, it sounds like you are the priest of the God of Disorder’s faction?”

“That’s correct.”

“Then, in your opinion, if the ‘Great Wise Man’ must be attributed according to the Eve’s religious system, is he the God of Order, or the God of Disorder?”

As soon as the Great Wise Man that all of the horned people believed in was mentioned, the atmosphere suddenly grew tense. The expression on the chief’s face has obviously changed. Just now, he merely felt that the priest’s ruminations were interesting, but now his expression had gradually solidified into coldness.

Roland gave his companion a look of warning.

Ethan began to suspect that this conversation was a trap.

“The Great Wise Man is the Great Wise Man and does not need to be attributed,” an Alpha sitting at the end of the chief’s table, who looked like the chief’s son, angrily said in the Earthling’s language. However, the chief raised his hand and stopped him from speaking, before looking at Tanisiel.

Tanisiel replied flatly, “In fact, there has always been a myriad of ties between the beliefs of the horned people and the beliefs of the Eves. It’s not just us, but many other religions on the planet have amazing similarities. You ask me whether Yog-sothoth is the God of Disorder or the God of Order. In fact, you can tell by the records of your own ancestors. Yog-sothoth, second only to the existence of Azathoth, the nucleus of the universe, is known as the ‘key and the gate’ and knows all knowledge in the universe.”

There was a lot of discussion among the horned people, and the chief was slightly surprised. Apparently, they didn’t know that the humans also possessed a similar belief to theirs. And of course, that Beta didn’t know anything about Yog-sothoth. After all, not everyone liked to study myths and legends that had long since gotten lost in the past.

Tanisiel laughed softly and said, “It’s clear that each race has developed differently, but they all worship the same superior creatures that transcend the universe. Isn’t that interesting?”

The chief suddenly stood up and said in the Earthling’s language, “The time is coming. The Great Wise Man will come to this universe. He is the night watcher and will open the door to heaven. Everyone, living and dead, will reunite and unify there.”

“And that is why you’re going to sacrifice a thousand people,” Ethan murmured.

“But something went wrong,” The chief said with a sad and angry expression, “The Earthlings said that we were a cult. They drove us out of our homes, destroyed our altars, and killed our people! The Great Wise Man is angry! The Great Wise Man will devour everything!”

Ethan suddenly realized, the horned people thought that the 3,000 horned people who participated in the sacrifice were killed by the Earth Union’s army?

At this moment, a horned man suddenly rushed through the dancing crowd to the chief and said something. Then, Ethan saw two horned people carrying in a horned man with blue blood all over his body. They walked around the fire and hobbled over to the chief.

Ethan heard Tanisiel say in a quiet voice, “Shit, you turn around quickly!”

However, it was too late. The horned person had already seen Ethan. His face twisted to its limits due to fear. He pointed to Ethan and screamed as if he had seen a nightmare.