Chapter 1 The White Stone House

The white stone house across the river turned out to be a small church.

Hao Ren, carrying a water bottle, arrived at the entrance of the white building. On the tightly closed door, he saw familiar Laita runes and a crest composed of a circle, a triangle, and lightning. The latter was the symbol of the Radiant Church in this world. He had learned about this mark when Vivian introduced the Radiant Church and knew the meaning of each part: the circle represents the church's interpretation of the world, that everything belongs to perfection and returns to chaos, forming a world in reincarnation; the triangle represents the authority of the goddess, located inside the circle, with three vertices supporting and determining the shape of the circle, meaning that the goddess's power determines the rules of the world; the lightning in the center of the pattern represents the church, with its apex being one of the vertices of the triangle, signifying that the church's authority comes from one-third of the divine power. This was a very interesting church. They precisely defined their scope of authority, namely "one-third of divine power." Hao Ren had never heard of any clergy who would specifically state that they could only represent one-third of a god, so he remembered this point especially clearly.

If he hadn't seen this symbol at the door, Hao Ren really wouldn't have been able to associate this small house with a church: it was too small, and it wasn't the typical spire building. There were no ornate stained-glass windows or religious decorations on the outside. It seemed that the churches in small rural villages couldn't compare with those in towns. This should be an "affordable housing" church.

The light that had just shot towards the river surface had disappeared, and the small church was dark inside. However, Hao Ren remembered that the light had been emitted from the round hole above the main entrance of the church. He had the data terminal float up to take a look and confirmed that this small round hole was a decorative hole in the wall that directly led to the inside of the church. There were no lamps installed inside.

When the light appeared, the church seemed to have been brightly illuminated for a moment, but because its doors were closed and the main windows were on the side, Hao Ren hadn't noticed the abnormality inside the church right away from the river.

Hao Ren placed his hand on the church door and gently pushed, but it remained firmly shut. He frowned. "The door's locked."

"Want to go in and take a look?" The data terminal floated next to Hao Ren, seemingly also interested. Because there was serious business to attend to, it wasn't playing with the little mermaid for the time being. Dou Dou was now curled up at the bottom of the bottle, resting quietly: the shocking scene in the river just now had frightened the little one, and she should be quite quiet for a while.

Speaking of that little one using all her strength to paddle in place in the rapids, Hao Ren still couldn't help but laugh!

"You go in and set a beacon, then teleport me over." Hao Ren came up with a good idea: High-tech gadgets should be used flexibly. The data terminal's beacon teleport function was truly a stealth miracle. No matter how tightly defended a place was, as long as there was a gap bigger than a mouse hole, Hao Ren could "sneak" in!

Without further ado, the data terminal floated in through the round hole above the main entrance of the small church. A moment later, it teleported Hao Ren inside the church without making any noise or damaging the door.

The church was empty. The rectangular, spacious room was covered with a solemn dark red carpet. Apart from that, there were no seats or anything like that: the Radiant Church's churches didn't have pews for believers to rest and listen to sermons like churches on Earth, because this church advocated the "human atonement theory," so even the Pope couldn't enjoy seating in the church.

The tall pulpit not far ahead was the only furniture in the room.

Hao Ren came to the pulpit and stepped up the four steps one by one. He had noticed that the number "four" seemed to have a special meaning in this world. The Holletta Kingdom had four sanctuaries and four relics. The Holy Crystal had to stay on the Blood Lake for four days, and now the steps in front of the church's pulpit were also exactly four. What did this mean? He hadn't heard of any religious explanation related to it yet.

On the pulpit was a black book that looked quite heavy. The deep black of the cover seemed to be mixed with a trace of extremely subtle dark red. Hao Ren opened the book and found that it was just a very ordinary "Bible."

He happened to open to the chapter describing the goddess's achievements, which used an obscure grammar to state what he considered to be empty and uninteresting stories: "...In the beginning of heaven and earth, He slumbered between heaven and earth, with spirit and without spirit, the supreme existence, incomprehensible to mortals...He is the first water, the first sea, the first source, the first storm and lightning, the land where life is born and promised...Because He is the mother of all life, He is regarded as a goddess...He incarnates into thousands, existing among the stars, He sculpts the world, sowing billions of mortals like dust and ants, this is His authority and mercy..."

"Half-understanding." Hao Ren looked at it for a long time and felt he couldn't grasp the key points, so he flipped through the Bible to the back. This time, it was the chapter on the goddess destroying the world: "...Mortals seek the truth but stray into wrong paths, facing the warnings of God without repentance, and the foolish kings of the ancient werewolf, vampire, elf, and human races are arrogant and absurd, wanting to seize the Sea of Origin as their own back garden, so God was furious, saying: 'It was a great mistake to give you intelligence, it must be corrected,' and burned the old world. But there were also wise men of all races who knelt down...so all things were able to survive."

Hao Ren looked at it for a long time and felt he understood even less.

However, after flipping through it a few times, he did come to a conclusion: Although this Radiant Church revered a clear god, their doctrine never seemed to mention what the image of this god was like.

All the passages in this holy book that mentioned the goddess used vague phrases such as "Land of Origin" or "First xx" to describe that god. It never explicitly or vaguely pointed out what the god looked like, whether it had wings on its back or was eight feet tall, whether it was full of holy light or had a majestic demeanor, as other belief systems did. All of these elements were completely absent from this religious book. That goddess seemed to have no physical form. Even a vague and abstract image description was absent, which gave people the feeling that the Radiant Church was worshiping a symbolic thing.

Although He was called a "goddess," what Hao Ren saw from the holy book seemed to be a natural phenomenon.

They were worshiping the "phenomenon of creating all things in the world" itself.

"Their view of God is quite interesting," Hao Ren couldn't help but think of Raven 12345, then shook his head vigorously. "There's no comparison at all."

"Where did that light come from just now?" Putting down the holy book, Hao Ren curiously looked around this empty little church, which was clear at a glance everywhere, but he couldn't find anything that could be called a light source. He turned around and looked at the murals behind the pulpit. Logically speaking, this position in the church should be where a statue of a god or some other religious symbol was placed, but the Radiant Church had placed behind the pulpit a strange picture composed of distorted black shadows, red mist, and light. He didn't know if other churches were the same, but Hao Ren felt that this little church was quite strange.

After searching everywhere for a long time and still finding nothing, Hao Ren had to give up his exploration here, remembering that the others were still waiting for him at the village chief's house, and hurriedly returned to the mountain people's village.

The small church returned to darkness again. Only the hazy light of the two moons shone obliquely into the room from the stained-glass windows. A ray of moonlight fell squarely on the bizarre mural behind the pulpit. Under the moonlight, the twisted and grotesque black and red on the mural continued to slowly surge at a speed almost imperceptible to the naked eye.

And between the black and red stripes, the bright tones representing light were a little dimmer than before.

As soon as Hao Ren returned to the house, Vivian greeted him: "Where did you go for so long without coming back... Um, what's wrong with your pants?"

Before he could explain, Lily jumped over with a "whoosh": "Wow! Landlord, did you have a urinary incontinence?"

Hao Ren's stomach full of words was instantly dispelled by this husky. For the first time, he uncontrollably rushed up and pinched Lily's ears, pulling them hard to both sides: "Can't you think before you speak! Can't you think before you speak!!"

Lily jumped up and down in pain, crying miserably: "Ouch, ouch, it hurts, it hurts... I was wrong, I was wrong... I forgot that a person can't pee that much in a whole day..."

Hao Ren: "..."

He casually threw this hopeless husky aside: "I was washing my hands by the river just now and accidentally slipped. By the way, is that a small church across the river?"

He casually mentioned the church across the river, but he didn't say anything about the strangeness of the church or his exploration inside.

"Oh, that was built with the help of the priest of Lunbell," the village chief said without suspicion. "Hehe, the mountain people believe in the spirits of the mountains and forests, but they don't reject the Radiant Church either. The priest comes to the church to preach every second full moon, and then helps the villagers with their illnesses, but the church is usually closed. Are you a believer? If you want to go in and pray, I have the key here, but it has to be tomorrow."

In this land, there are two bright moons shining in the sky. The larger moon is called the "Main Moon," also commonly known as the Big Moon or the Large Moon, while the smaller moon is called the "Secondary Moon." The cycle of waxing and waning of the Secondary Moon is seventeen days, exactly half of the cycle of waxing and waning of the Main Moon. Many religious activities of the Radiant Church are linked to the waxing and waning cycles of the Main Moon and the Secondary Moon. The full Secondary Moon is one of the more significant days.

"Um, no, I just asked casually. I didn't expect there to be a church here," Hao Ren said with a smile, not revealing any unusual expression at all.

"Haaah—I'm sleepy," Becky yawned exaggeratedly at this time. "The village chief has arranged for us to rest in the two houses next door. The girls can squeeze together, and you two big men can enjoy being with fewer people."

Hao Ren thought for a while and felt that the Radiant Church was here in this world anyway and wouldn't run away. There were many opportunities to explore the mysteries of this world's mythology, so he temporarily put this matter aside. Under Becky's guidance, he found his own room, recuperated, and prepared to continue his journey tomorrow.