Although he didn’t know what the priestess inside was doing, the Bishop couldn’t afford to hesitate any longer. He had to go in and stop her!

The Bishop raised his hand. A white shadow shot out from behind him, punching the large door and shattering it!

Boom—

The two-meter-high sanctuary door was blasted into pieces, revealing the vast interior of the sanctuary before him. The scene inside left him stunned.

In the center of the three massive stone pillars, within this enormous space, knelt countless corpses.

These incomplete bodies, looking as if gnawed upon, all knelt facing the direction of the throne.

A huge blood array enveloped them. Blood threads connected all the corpses, like a giant spider web woven from blood.

At the center of the web, the blood threads intertwined upwards, feeding into a vortex so red it was almost black. The whispers in the Bishop’s mind were being influenced by that black blood vortex.

This is...

Blood sacrifice?!

How could she?!

The Bishop looked down from the blood vortex and saw, before the throne, the shriveled corpse suspended in mid-air... that was the priestess.

She... is dead.

Then... who conducted the ritual?

Thump—

The drained corpse slowly fell to the ground, revealing the red-haired figure hidden behind it.

She wore a half-mask bearing a damaged blood seal. The other half of her face showed a smile as she looked up at the dark vortex above the sanctuary, slowly raising her right hand towards it.

Brilliant starlight drifted out from the dark vortex, floating towards the corpse in front of the figure.

At this moment, the Bishop’s mind felt like it had suffered a heavy blow. All the wails and whispers vanished instantly, as if they had never existed.

He stared blankly as the brilliant light entered the corpse, watching the corpse slowly rise.

Cocooning, hatching, emerging... a terrifying half-human, half-insect figure appeared before him. In that instant, he felt an unprecedented calm, and a sense of intimacy that seemed to originate from the depths of his soul.

The figure, seemingly stepped out of a divine statue, stood real before the sanctuary, its back to him, making it impossible for him to tear his eyes away for even a second.

Summon... summoned?

It really... succeeded?

Something the Divine Advent Church had failed to achieve for countless ages, over generations of effort.

Now, like a dream, it appeared before his very eyes.

The potion could no longer suppress his emotions. Tears streamed down his face inside the mask, eventually gathering and dripping from his chin.

Like any other devout believer, he stepped into the blood array behind the corpses and knelt down, then looked at the lofty, sacred figure that seemed to have walked out of scripture...

Slowly kneeling before the girl in front of the platform.

Bishop: “?”

The Bishop had wanted to ask since earlier.

Who is she?

“Mother Goddess... above...” An ethereal voice echoed in the Bishop’s mind. After a brief stupor, his expression slowly shifted from confusion to incredulous shock.

Ignoring the whispers starting to plague his mind again, he snapped his gaze towards the girl before the throne, his mouth slowly falling open beneath the mask.

What did It say?

Who is the Mother Goddess?!

No... no no no... calm... you must remain calm...

You are a mature “Radiance Bishop.” That girl before you absolutely cannot be the Mother Goddess. If she were, you wouldn’t even be capable of thought right now.

If the Mother Goddess descended upon the world, the world would have long been under the control of the Divine Advent Church.

She... could only have one identity...

The Mother Goddess “Sadhana’s” proxy, her human vessel for observing the world... The Divine Advent Church’s own Saintess!

He knew that Saintess from the Church of the Savior Goddess was fake! Because she still hadn’t awakened any power of her so-called goddess!

Their Divine Advent Church! They were the few who walked the correct path!

Glory and pride surged from the depths of his heart. As a witness to this miracle, his heart was already overwhelmed with excitement.

Right now, he desperately wanted to report this news to the higher-ups, tell them the time for the true counterattack had arrived.

But not yet... He couldn’t bring himself to move even a single step. Even missing a second of this sacred scene, the Bishop felt he would live the rest of his life in regret.

Meanwhile, Ciel also noticed the “Radiance Bishop” kneeling behind the pile of corpses.

Ciel had seen him blast the door open earlier, which scared her into quickly having the summoned brilliance possess Kitty’s corpse in front of her.

But just as Ciel anxiously waited for the half-human, half-insect monster to emerge from its cocoon, the Bishop, upon seeing the emerged monster, knelt down on his own?

Ciel wasn’t affected by the spiritual being, so she couldn’t perceive what the Bishop saw, but she was certain that the Bishop had misunderstood something after seeing the monster kneel before her.

But judging by the current situation... it seemed combat wasn’t necessary?

After a moment’s thought, Ciel shifted slightly to the left, hiding behind the summoned spiritual being, and addressed the Bishop, “Who are you?”

Hearing Ciel’s voice, the Bishop’s form began to distort, gradually changing into the appearance of a well-dressed man. He looked up towards Ciel and said:

“Subordinate is a Bishop of the Divine Advent Church, named Braque,” he lowered his head deeply, speaking respectfully, “I inadvertently disturbed the birth ritual of the Holy Spirit... Please forgive me, Your Highness the Saintess.”

Saintess... Your Highness?

Ciel blinked.

Okay, okay, this is getting ridiculous, right? Why are both the Church of the Savior Goddess and the Divine Advent Church making the exact same mistake?

Every time they see me in a simulation, they call me Saintess... Can you only say this is expected from people originally from the same church?

The Church of the Savior Goddess was slightly better; they only suspected her of being the Saintess due to certain events. Both Uris and Hugh said they needed to take her back to the Holy See to confirm her identity.

This “Radiance Bishop” before her, however, saw her summon a spiritual being and immediately concluded she was the so-called Saintess.

Could it be that the standard for identifying a Saintess was simply the ability to cause some disturbance from the “Other Side”?

Was this a rare feat? Could no one else in this world communicate with the Other Side?

It seemed that apart from the initial instance of faking hearing a divine oracle, every other time she was mistaken for a “Saintess” was somehow related to the Other Side.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by lotustale.com