Chapter 26: Black Death and the Deity 08 Part 2

He didn’t look like it.

After a moment.

The man seemed to have pondered for a long while. His brows furrowed again, and his voice remained cold and indifferent as he spoke words that astonished Jian Bumian.

Jian Bumian heard the procedure the other described. His calm expression slowly changed, taking on shades of awkwardness and strangeness.

His face was like a freshly steamed bun—red, soft, and fluffy. A single poke would reveal the soft, sticky filling inside.

Biting lips was one thing, but extending the tongue… uh, that was quite hard to accept.

Exchanging fluids was even more out of the question…

The duration of the kiss was also impossible. His lung capacity wasn’t that strong.

Jian Bumian was so shocked he couldn’t speak for a long time.

He just wanted to eat something delicious. Did so many obstacles have to block his way?!

The man looked down, his golden eyes reflecting the youth’s slender figure, his gaze darkening slightly.

“Do you have any other questions?”

Jian Bumian quickly shook his head: “No more.”

— Even if he did, he wouldn’t dare ask even if he had a hundred times the courage.

The man leaned down, his eyes fixed intensely on Jian Bumian. His handsome, god-like features were magnified several times over in Jian Bumian’s sight.

His magnetic, hoarse voice was like a crimson velvet carpet.

“Then you must remember, before this world ends, to put me back together.”

When he awoke in the painting, this powerful obsession had broken free in his heart. It was the only thing he remembered. It was his everything.

To be put back together.

Only then could he recall more…

Recall more about him and this youth.

“…?” Jian Bumian still didn’t understand what “put together” meant.

He wanted to ask further, but the next instant, just like last time, the man vanished into the darkness like smoke, completely soundless.

The last impression left on Jian Bumian was the man’s pair of golden eyes. They blazed like the noon sun, completely incongruous with the deep, dark hallway.

Jian Bumian committed the man’s wish to his heart and left the gallery.

As for the passionate kiss tutorial the man taught him, he hesitated whether to remember it.

—Because it was just too embarrassing!!

Jian Bumian had never imagined he would actually have to kiss someone.

This was something only lovers did.

How could it happen between a diner and his food?!

Jian Bumian walked out into the main church hall, wanting to cool down in the cold breeze.

But he unexpectedly discovered that there wasn’t a single player in the church.

According to the usual pattern, he should have seen these players here, dejected and complaining about their fate…

Jian Bumian: “??”

He waited here for a while before a player came running over, panting. This player saw Jian Bumian and quickly ran up to him, saying, “Mister Jian Bumian, we’ve made a new discovery in the church basement. It’s related to the sacrifice mission. Would you like to come take a look…”

Jian Bumian had never noticed, nor cared to notice, that his status among the players in this instance had become pivotal.

Ninety-nine percent of the progress in this instance had been unintentionally pushed forward by Jian Bumian.

If the other players didn’t do something, it would be completely unjustifiable.

“Related to the sacrifice mission?”

Jian Bumian was a little curious. If the deity who could eliminate the plague was the God of Darkness or the God of Light, then simply offering a related sacrifice would suffice.

But the true God was “People”—millions upon millions of flesh-and-blood humans with lives and aspirations. What kind of sacrificial ritual corresponded to that?

It couldn’t possibly be sacrificing people, right?

Then identifying People as the God would be pointless—causing harm to one’s own kind.

Jian Bumian agreed to go take a look.

He followed the player to the church basement.

The basement wasn’t very large. It was a narrow, small, dim room, deeply hidden underground. It wouldn’t have been discovered without a careful search.

Initially, a player had smelled the stench of a corpse emanating from within and found the basement’s existence.

The player opened the basement’s iron door. What greeted Jian Bumian’s eyes was a horrifying, ghastly scene.

The cramped basement was forcibly jammed with an enormous silver cross.

What shocked the players wasn’t the cross itself, but what hung upon it.

It was a female corpse that had been burned.

She was charred completely black. Her blackened, skeletal frame was exposed. Stiff, singed strips of flesh hung loosely from the bones.

Yet, her head had not been burned. It must have been protected by cloth or sheet metal before the burning.

She had long, flaxen hair, piled high on the back of her head. Her eyes hadn’t closed. The eyeballs were as green as a forest, veiled by long lashes. Her lips were half-open, revealing neat, pearly white teeth.

She had been a very beautiful woman.

If one ignored her horribly burned body, that is.

The contrast between the head and the body was too jarring. Looking at her head alone, one would think she was simply sleeping peacefully, ready to open those eloquent green eyes at any moment.

But if one looked just at the body, one would be left speechless with fury.

…Why burn her to death?

The player beside Jian Bumian spoke in a subdued voice:

“She died before the Black Death outbreak. She was labeled a witch and burned alive…”

“A witch?”

Jian Bumian’s eyelid twitched.

The bullet comments scrolling in the livestream room momentarily froze.

Many disasters had happened in medieval Europe, including the Black Death. The Church placed the blame for these disasters on the women of that era.

One instance was the “witch hunt” religious campaign born under Pope Innocent VIII, which instructed all Christians to hunt down those they considered “witches.”

They were burned, eaten, drowned.

It was a stain on the history of human religion.

That player handed Jian Bumian a book.

The book was very worn, bearing black marks from burns and trampling. But luckily, the writing was well-preserved, and one could see it was bound in a pink parchment cover.

This must have been a book belonging to a girl.

The player’s words confirmed Jian Bumian’s thoughts: “These are the belongings of the burned girl. Found on the ground, along with her clothes.”

Jian Bumian took the book, carefully opening the title page.

Written on the title page in beautiful, elegant cursive English was a single line.

《Heliocentric Theory》

Player: “The Heliocentric Theory in the real world was proposed by Copernicus. He was burned at the stake by the Church as a heretic. This girl was likely a follower of Copernicus, and so… was also burned.”

The Heliocentric Theory contradicted Christian doctrine.

The Church, to protect its own interests, certainly couldn’t allow it to exist.

Yet, it was a tiny spark of light before the arrival of modern science.

Jian Bumian looked at the book, his brow furrowed, feeling a discomfort in his heart.

He closed the pages and placed the book, which had been discarded on the floor, onto the table. His voice was flat: “Let’s stop looking. Let’s go.”

“Many more female corpses are buried beneath this basement…,” the player muttered. “Maybe we can find clues.”

Jian Bumian’s expression turned cold. He turned his head, enunciating each word: “There are no clues. Let’s go.”

He didn’t like scenes like the female corpse in the basement.

Being in such dark, gloomy places was far less pleasant than sitting on a windowsill, sunbathing, eating some bread, and thinking about how to eat the target NPC.

Before Jian Bumian left the basement, he picked up a clean piece of cloth from the floor and draped it over the woman’s intact head.

She could still open those beautiful, lustrous green eyes in the darkness, unable to see her own devastated body.

Jian Bumian returned to the main hall on the first floor. The other players also drifted back into the hall one after another.

Aside from the basement, they hadn’t found anything that seemed like a clue anywhere else.

Only five hours remained until the instance ended.

Jian Bumian got a bowl of cream of mushroom soup from the church kitchen and sat on the windowsill drinking it.

Before eating, he glanced at the bullet comments.

[So angry!! She shouldn’t have been treated like this!]

[This is why I’m traumatized by instances set in medieval Europe. The horror is completely different from other instances…]

[Too horrifying. Her body burned away, but her head left perfectly intact. Was this malice from the church members? So she could watch her body burn away alive?]

[Ahh, a girl like her should have been well-educated and reasonable. If she hadn’t died, she might have become a modern scientist!]

Jian Bumian stirred the creamy mushroom pieces with his spoon and asked casually, “Are you all very angry?”

He rarely spoke to the viewers in his livestream. Now, looking suddenly at the viewers, his beautiful face magnified on screen, it caught them off guard.

[Of course!]

Jian Bumian looked down and said blandly, “Actually, I’m quite angry too.”

In the first instance, when he discovered the truth about the acrobat’s persecution, he’d also found himself getting angry.

But his true identity was an Infinite World NPC.

…NPCs getting angry at the instances they lived in?

How laughable.

—But if it’s laughable, then so be it.

Anyway, he was angry now, and he didn’t care about the rest.

Jian Bumian suddenly tossed the mushroom soup out the window and flipped off the windowsill. The youth’s figure was outlined in gold by the sunlight. His robe billowed up, slicing through the light. His fair ankles were faintly visible, and the crisp sound of bells rang out sharply with his steps.

Jian Bumian arrived at the center of the church hallway. From this angle, just lowering his head allowed him to see the players in the main hall below.

The youth leaned lightly against the golden railing of the hallway, one hand propping up his cheek. He raised an eyebrow lightly, curving his lips as he addressed everyone:

“I’ve planned a sacrificial ritual. Would you all like to hear it?”

Although he wasn’t keen on appearing before so many people, the sacrificial ritual he had devised was, in his opinion, truly interesting. Sharing it with everyone wasn’t out of the question.

He stood against the sunlight. Behind him were the ornate dome murals and the multicolored stained glass windows.

The handsome statue of the deity, which had somehow returned to its original position, stood silently behind him, watching.

This youth in the holy robe always seemed like a little deity who had accidentally stumbled into the human realm, attracting attention and affection.

Amidst the curious, expectant gazes of the crowd, Jian Bumian continued:

“We are people. Since this instance has proposed that ‘People’ is the deity, that means each and every one of us is a god.”

“…The sacrificial ritual we must complete worships people, and also worships ourselves.”

“Then what is offered as the sacrifice… is of course the gods.”

All the players instantly realized that in this instance, the positions of gods and people had been reversed from the very beginning!

A veteran player asked, his voice trembling, “Then what is the specific sacrificial process?”

Jian Bumian narrowed his eyes and smiled:

“It’s very simple. Just burn the deities, the Church, the cathedral… everything to ashes. Just as the Church once did to humanity in the name of God.”