Volume 2: Funeral Song of Crows Chapter 4 About Faith
There are a total of eight Holy Spirit Church churches in Thorn City, which is the same configuration as most large cities, with one for each of the eight Holy Spirit faiths.
The Holy Spirit Church is by no means just a place responsible for meeting the religious needs of the people. In fact, a considerable part of the municipal functions are handled by the church's different churches.
For example, the funeral church of the Seventh Holy Spirit "Dead" is responsible for the requiem, cremation, sacrifice and related work of the deceased. Whenever a ghost appears somewhere, or an ancient tomb in the nearby countryside is suddenly haunted by a ghost, it is usually the requiem master of the funeral church who is responsible for handling it. Of course, they will also charge corresponding fees.
But the situation in Thorn City is a little different. Duke Simon has shown his determination to suppress the Holy Spirit Church almost since he refused the coronation of the bishop of the First Order at his ennoblement ceremony.
During his more than 20 years in office, he almost drove the entire Holy Spirit Church out of Blackwater Province. To this day, only two churches in Thorn City are still barely maintaining.
And the place William is heading to now is one of them, the Kane Church, which symbolizes the Eighth Holy Spirit.
William felt a little toothache when he thought of the name.
Just as the authority of Oka or Vera can be obtained through the Wangkou ritual, the Seven Holy Spirits, who are the archetypes of all myths except the Void King, can also theoretically obtain their authority through the corresponding mirror ritual.
Of course, if you want to mirror to the level of Holy Spirit, the process is countless times more complicated than mirroring ordinary local myths, and the resources required are also countless times more terrifying.
The Holy Spirit Church had tried this in history, and for this they basically squandered all the wealth that the church had accumulated since the first year of the Platinum Calendar. They also subsequently exploited the secular regime without restraint, which ultimately caused the church's influence to plummet , directly leading to the end of the Platinum Calendar era of theocracy and the rise of the Seven Kingdoms era.
So what is the result of paying so much price and investing so many resources?
The answer is the emergence of seven disasters.
No one can retain his human personality after being baptized by the archetypal power of creation.
The subjects of the ritual, those mortals whose brains have been damaged by the vast will of the Holy Spirit, vent their power indiscriminately like crazy, and instinctively want to transform the world into a world where only the symbols of their own rules exist.
The world is built on a delicate balance of the elements, and too much of any one element becomes poisonous.
And because the power of the Holy Spirit directly affects the rules that construct the world, the disaster is even more serious than the invasion of the Moon Realm in terms of pure destructive power.
The worship of the Eighth Holy Spirit that has emerged in the past thousand years, especially the behavior of binding the object of worship to a specific individual, whether intentional or unintentional, in William's opinion, has more or less borne some of the shadow of the previous mirror Holy Spirit behavior.
Gather and merge the archetypes of mythology, and then inject power through personal beliefs.
And the final madness ritual.
At least the miracles caused by the "Kane Horn" incident have proved that the Eighth Holy Spirit currently has a certain degree of activity, and is not like the other seven holy spirits that have settled into the rules of the world.
And this sign of activation is currently bound to oneself, at least half of it is bound to oneself.
I just don't know what Terra Riel's current status is.
At present, this process can be said to be difficult to reverse, and this hidden danger can only be gradually removed in the future.
However, because the Holy Spirit Church has very strict restrictions on the missionary work of the Eighth Order, the current situation is still a long way from the disaster that occurred that year.
But more importantly, there had never been a living person before who could serve as the subject of exercising the power of the Holy Spirit - if Terra Riel really died of old age as recorded in history.
But now it has.
William pushed open the carefully maintained, spotless church door with a slightly heavy heart.
Oh, that woman wouldn't be here...
William thought as he pushed open the door.
…………
"Praise the Hermit, praise the Holy Spirit Cain, you are the head of all the Holy Spirits, the father pioneers the law, the mother blows life, the elders enlighten wisdom, the ladies illuminate the soul, the young give rewards, the children bring growth, the dead promise rest... and you, the Hermit hidden behind the light of the seven Holy Spirits, you give us spirituality..."
Nezemar, wearing a rough linen robe, knelt before the cracked statue and prayed softly.
The sound of footsteps behind her caused her voice to pause for a moment, and then she continued to pray:
"You are the immortal spirit in every living being, the never-ending desire for freedom, and the first driving force behind the creation of the world... You are the most merciful of all the holy spirits. You have walked on earth twice to save the world from fire and water, and now you are about to come for the third time..."
"Okay, stop worshipping me. I have never been a holy spirit."
The sudden voice behind her made Nezemar stop. She stood up and looked at the man who called himself William Kane.
The man continued to say to her:
"I should have told you that I have never been a holy spirit. That is just an identity that was imposed on me by later generations to cover up my own incompetence."
In response, Nazemaar said:
"But the Holy Spirit Cain walked the earth twice and saved the Vic continent. This is indisputable."
"I only remember it once, and that was also as a mortal, just like now."
"No mortal can accomplish such a feat."
"I am the proof that a mortal can do it. It is you who have used this to prove the exact opposite."
As he spoke, he walked over to his own statue and looked closely at the face that had evolved over a thousand years of artistic imagery. It couldn't be said that it was completely identical to his own, but rather had nothing to do with him, as well as the crack on it.
Nezemar followed him quietly without saying a word.
Some time ago, she had been in a kind of psychedelic and ecstatic religious experience - she confirmed that the Horn of Cain, which the cult had been searching for for hundreds of years, had witnessed with her own eyes that an evil conspiracy that was about to devastate the earth was stopped by the power of the Holy Spirit, and had met a man who claimed to be William Cain. This was the most real pilgrimage for any believer.
But after actually coming into contact with this man who called himself William Kane and was suspected to be the incarnation of the Holy Spirit, she began to doubt.
It is not about doubting the authenticity of the Kane Horn, but about doubting the authenticity of the man as the Holy Spirit coming to the world.
Because she really couldn't understand why the other party would acknowledge William Kane's identity while completely denying his nature as the Eighth Holy Spirit.
He vehemently denied it, even when the manifestation of the Divine Power was an ironclad fact.
Anyone with basic common sense should know that these two are just different names for the same thing and are concepts that are absolutely impossible to separate.
The seeds of this doubt were sown the day the other party came back from the Holy Sepulchre. He wanted to kneel down to greet him according to the etiquette of the Eighth Order, but was stopped by him with an invisible force.
Therefore, she changed into ascetic attire and came to the church to pray for solutions, hoping that the Holy Spirit would give her revelation.
Except he wasn't really William Kane.
Looking at the other person's back, Nazemal thought.
The other party was just a magic caster who was lucky enough to obtain the "Horn of Cain" and then used it to disguise himself as an impostor of William Cain.
It’s just like the countless false divine initiates captured by the Eighth Order’s Sealed Temple every year.
The other party was unwilling to claim that he was the Eighth Holy Spirit because he was afraid that he would be judged after seeing the Holy Spirit appear.
As soon as this idea came to mind, it seemed as if all my questions were solved in an instant.
Then, a bold idea grew wildly in her mind like a weed.
She looked at the ancient horn hanging on the other person's waist, and her hand unconsciously touched the silver sword at her waist.
As soon as she figured this out, her instinct as a relic recycler began to be triggered.
"I advise you to give up your current bold idea."
The man facing the cracked statue suddenly spoke.
Nezemal's movements froze for a moment.
Literally.
Then William temporarily ignored the believer who was petrified. He walked forward, stretched out his hand to touch the statue, and closed his eyes silently.
Then, although it was very weak for him, William truly felt the "blessing" of the Holy Spirit.
