That creepy little "performance" made my skin crawl.
"Hey! Hey! Wake up!" I bent down and called to the Lady Inquisitor in a tense whisper, even putting a hand on her shoulder and gently shaking her.
But this time, she didn't react at all, like a devout statue. Her hands were crossed and clenched against her chest. She stared upward like an idiot, eyes locked on that blinding shaft of daylight, lips moving nonstop in a prayer I couldn't make out. The sunlight hit her eyes directly, forcing tears to stream down her face, yet she didn't blink even once.
What the hell, she's this far gone?!
And then I remembered what the Archbishop had hinted about her background earlier, and I connected it with all the odd behavior she'd shown since arriving in this damned place. A thought slammed into me:
Our Lady Inquisitor used to be Church-raised, ninety-nine percent certain.
No wonder she reacted to this "divine manifestation" with a near-pathological obsession and fanaticism.
This wasn't like dealing with daemons and warp-evil. When someone willingly sinks into the beautiful illusion they've built for themselves, when they refuse to be awakened, my shouting and shaking means nothing. What was I supposed to do? Slap her awake? Give me ten more lives and I still wouldn't dare.
Just as I was standing there, nerves screaming, debating whether I should quietly slip away on my own, the Lady Inquisitor finally stopped praying and swayed as she rose to her feet. Her eyes were still fixed on the skylight, but at least she was responding again. I let out a breath, then couldn't help feeling irritated too, and I said in a teasing tone:
"So the Living Saint's 'descent' ceremony is over, yeah? Hm? Didn't see Her Ladyship leave a few words behind to guide the work, did we?"
"No… the Living Saint, she… she only watched us for a moment," the Lady Inquisitor answered dully, voice still hoarse, as if she hadn't even noticed my sarcasm. "She said nothing, took no action, and then spread her wings and departed…"
She lowered her head and shook it, like she was trying to force herself down from that extreme high.
"No wonder Archbishop Azorian dared to be so aggressive, taking us straight in to deal with Corruption Star. So that's what he was doing… he summoned a Living Saint as the final safeguard," she murmured, realization glittering in her eyes. "Even if we failed, a Living Saint would be enough to suppress that evil again. And if we succeeded, we'd have seized a once-in-a-millennium opportunity to pull this poisoned thorn from the entire sector. And the Living Saint…"
She cut off abruptly.
Her eyes widened, as if something monstrous had just occurred to her. Then she snapped her head around, shot me a look that I couldn't begin to describe, and immediately looked back up at the pulpit.
And at that moment, the Archbishop had stopped shouting too.
He looked down at us. On his aged face, all the fervor and joy had drained away, leaving only cold, undisguised rage.
He raised one withered finger, thrust it through the column of light, and pointed straight at me.
"Just as I thought! You unclean thing, even you are not tolerated by the God-Emperor! You are not bathed in His radiance!"
There wasn't even a trace of his earlier warmth left in his voice. It was sharper than ever, heavy with judgment.
"You do not believe. You do not accept. You do not revere. You are not illumined! Such a thing must be purged!"
No. What just happened? What did I miss? Old man, you flip faces faster than pages.
"Withdraw your accusation, Archbishop Azorian! Do not commit such a disgraceful act of killing the mule after it has ground the grain!" the Lady Inquisitor snapped, lunging forward and planting herself squarely in front of me. She glared up at the pulpit, voice severe to the point of steel.
"He has just performed an unparalleled service for us, for Grandtale, for the entire sector! And Grandtale's crisis is not yet resolved! Besides, as I understand it, your Santorias Sect is not one of those extremist creeds that preach 'to seek knowledge is the first step to heresy,' is it?"
"It is the Inquisition's shameless pragmatism that has blinded your eyes, Inquisitor Ireya!" Azorian's tone turned icy, utterly unlike his earlier self. "This man is a complete unbeliever! In his prior speech, he outright denied the God-Emperor's divinity, denied the purpose of the Ecclesiarchy, slandered the Imperium's very continuance! Did you not hear him? If such heretical poison is not destroyed in time, if his thinking spreads like a plague, can your Inquisition truly sit idle and still pretend to hold office?!"
Loose lips sink ships.
My teeth ached instantly.
When I'd been chatting with this old man earlier, I'd run my mouth. Based on what I'd read and what I'd experienced these past days, I'd thoroughly mocked the "Imperium's" style and its reality. And I'd expressed my contempt for the so-called "God-Emperor" they worshipped.
In my eyes, even if a founding emperor is a great man, he's still a man. Inheriting his ideas and will is one thing. But burning incense to him like a god, begging him for favors, worshipping a personality every day like that? That's laughable. It's the classic stupidity of ignoring the living world and interrogating ghosts and gods instead.
But sure. This old man's grudges were smaller than a needle's tip, and he remembered every word.
"This man's ability may indeed be used to oppose evil," Azorian's rebuke boomed across the vast hall, ringing with force. "But his essence is unknown, his influence uncontrollable! To say nothing of how your own psyker attendant is practically crippled when near you! Have you considered what that means for the Imperium's Navigators and Astropaths?!"
He stared daggers at the Lady Inquisitor, then slammed the base of his staff against the floor with a heavy, dull thunk.
"The Warp has its evil aspect, yes, but the Imperium cannot be separated from the Warp's power even for a moment! And you dared to bring such an unknown, unexplained existence directly toward Holy Terra! Madness! If the Astronomican, or even the golden holy seat itself, were adversely affected, could you bear that responsibility?! Praise the God-Emperor, your voyage failed…"
Oh, come on. Your starship launch went wrong, and that's my fault too?
Peeking out from behind the Lady Inquisitor's shoulder, I couldn't help protesting weakly:
"Is it possible… I mean, just hypothetically… that if your starship voyages followed the correct procedures, you wouldn't need all this superstitious mumbo-jumbo at all? It's just that your technology has degraded, you've lost the full process, and you've gotten used to relying on this stuff to roll the dice and pray for luck?"
That whole line about "the end of science is mysticism" is obviously just a joke. It's like those infamous disaster zones I'd heard about back home. Even PhD students in certain lab-heavy fields would pray to the heavens before running experiments. The real reason is always the same: some key variable that affects results still hasn't been identified, or the current technical conditions can't keep things stable, or it's simply operator error.
So "mysticism" becomes a hail-mary, an option of last resort.
"The interstellar travel and communication you're talking about, I don't know the exact engineering," I continued, still trying earnestly to give this rigid, superstitious old man a basic primer on modern scientific thinking. "But I'm confident it's built on a systematic framework of science and technology."
"It's just that, to promote it quickly, whoever was in charge needed to standardize it for populations and regions with low education and low technical capability. So they used something like religious rites and superstitious ceremony to forcibly lock down the operational steps."
Right. Like that world religion that rose in a desert region, which was basically a life encyclopedia written into scripture, convenient to spread among illiterate nomads. It could forcibly accelerate primitive tribes into a feudal-level society.
Or like the way I'd heard certain telecom base stations and engineers ended up being treated as a sun-temple and priests by locals deep in the African interior.
It's fast. It's convenient. The barrier to entry is low. But every shortcut has a price. These methods eventually create long-term side effects that are difficult, sometimes impossible, to reverse.
"But the method is still extremely unstable!" I concluded, emphatically. "Problems are the natural outcome. And when problems happen, you can't even trace the cause!"
And then, from the old man's face—black as the bottom of a pot—I could clearly tell my "explanation" had achieved the exact opposite of what I wanted.
· Evil materialist -100
· Stupid idealist -100
In front of me, even the Lady Inquisitor turned back and shot me a vicious glare that practically screamed toothache.
And only then did I jolt, finally grasping the key issue:
One, I'm on someone else's turf. Two, the other party is the biggest religious boss on that turf. Three, I just used a complete theoretical framework to deny the entire value and legitimacy of his existence and his organization.
What happened next came too fast for my brain to keep up. Afterward, my memories were fragmented, like broken film:
— On the pulpit, the old man's face twisted with rage, his mouth wide open, roaring something I couldn't even process.
— From the surrounding shadows, the heavy clatter of armor and urgent footsteps.
— A thunderous gunshot that nearly stopped my heart, followed by a hot wave of air and needle-sharp pain as something tore past my cheek and hair.
— A sudden, uncontrolled warmth and looseness in my lower body.
— And then a massive force yanking my upper body backward, the suffocating sensation of being dragged at high speed…
And finally, one truth I'd learned from a literary work I'd read long ago, now echoing with terrifying clarity in my mind:
Whether an ideology is right or wrong doesn't matter. Whether you like it or hate it doesn't matter.
But whether violence is stronger or weaker matters very much.
(End of Chapter)
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