Chapter 430 – Devils and Divine Messengers

After sitting up, he breathed violently as if he had been holding it in for a long time, his gasps as rough and ragged as a broken bellows.

He muttered under his breath:

“Can’t die yet, not yet! The pit isn’t finished! A pit this small — I’d be too cramped sleeping in it. Gotta dig it bigger! Bigger!

Useless lot, can’t even outlast an old man like me. You’ve all gone and laid down nice and comfortable while I’m stuck here digging my own grave…”

Before he could finish, he noticed the neatly arranged corpses beside him and recoiled in fright: “How did you all get out?!”

He continued scooping dirt while declaring fiercely:

“Even if you’ve come out, I’m not dealing with you! I haven’t even finished digging my own pit!”

“Ahem!” Vasida cleared her throat lightly. “Are corpses always this slow on the uptake?”

The four of them were standing right beside the old man — they simply hadn’t crouched down, and as a result he had somehow noticed the other corpses but completely failed to register their presence.

At Vasida’s voice, the old man finally noticed them: “Y-y-you! Who are you?”

“I know! You’re devils from the Black Forest, aren’t you?” the old man asked, trembling all over.

“You’re the devil!” Vasida snorted coldly. “We are—”

“Never mind who we are. Tell us — how did you end up in the Black Forest?”

Mo Lan cut Vasida off and cast a confusion spell on the old man.

Even Undead Raising couldn’t be used without limits — he was already dead, and would soon revert to a corpse.

Moreover, each successive raising would be harder than the last, so it was best to get everything answered in one go.

The old man was about to argue back, but suddenly felt Mo Lan radiating holy light all over, inspiring an instinctive trust:

“You must be a divine messenger come to guide us to the Kingdom of the God of Light, yes?

So it’s true — blasphemers get devoured by the devils in the Black Forest, while true believers of the God are blessed by divine messengers who guide them to the divine kingdom!

We had no idea that man was a blasphemer. We have always been true believers of the God…”

The old man was clearly a fanatic — eyes burning with fervor, he poured out his grievances to Mo Lan in a rambling, incoherent rush.

This old man had been the village chief of a small village east of Mino Town. The surrounding corpses were all his family members.

A blasphemer who had stolen divine wealth fled to their village, and they mistook him for a holy man and took him in.

In the end, the blasphemer disguised as a holy man escaped. When the Temple’s real holy men came after him, the old man’s entire family was convicted for aiding a blasphemer and sentenced to the Black Forest for atonement.

By the time the old man finished speaking, the Undead Raising had run its course. He collapsed back to the ground with a heavy thud.

Mo Lan then used Undead Raising on the corpse of an old woman lying beside him, questioning her next. This time she applied the confusion spell from the very start.

After the same gasping sounds, the old woman clutched her throat and cried out: “&%$32@!”

“???” Sylph frowned. “Is she speaking Yala Imperial Language? I can’t understand a word.”

“I can’t either. Maybe it isn’t Yala Imperial Language?” Vasida said.

All of them had taken electives in both Yala Imperial Language and Mage Empire language. While they couldn’t claim perfect fluency, everyday conversation was no problem.

They had understood the old man earlier just fine.

Lilith looked at Mo Lan. “What do we do if we can’t understand her? You can’t use mind-reading magic on a corpse, and I assume Heart Speech won’t work either?”

“She’s saying she’s thirsty — she wants water,” Mo Lan understood. “This should be a southern Yala Empire accent. The pronunciation isn’t very standard.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve studied regional accents too?” Lilith asked.

Mo Lan nodded.

Fortunately, the Witch language’s phonetic notation system was remarkably powerful — capable of annotating any accent imaginable. Combined with Madam Amisha’s guidance, Mo Lan had managed to learn them. Otherwise, she would have been just as lost right now.

Even with Mo Lan’s familiarity with various accent patterns, listening to this old woman speak was still far from smooth.

Luckily, her account was much the same as the old man’s. With about seventy percent comprehension and thirty percent guesswork, Mo Lan managed to piece together her meaning.

She and the old man were husband and wife. The remaining corpses were all their children and grandchildren.

Fortunately, their children spoke reasonably standard Imperial Language, so all four of them could understand.

Since everyone’s accounts were largely the same, Mo Lan shifted to asking about conditions in Mino Town itself.

Mino Town was now entirely under Temple jurisdiction. Even the town mayor was a believer, attending Temple prayers every Sunday.

Anyone in the surrounding area who committed an offense would be handed over to the local Temple for judgment.

In lighter cases, paying a fine was enough for atonement. In more serious cases, not only would the Temple confiscate all their property, but they would be sent into the Black Forest for atonement.

Sometimes, when the facts were unclear and a verdict couldn’t be reached, the accused would also be sent into the Black Forest.

Because the Temple taught that the God of Light would send divine messengers to guide every true believer into the divine kingdom. As long as one was innocent, they would enter the kingdom and live in bliss. But if guilty, the messengers would not come, and the devils of the Black Forest would devour them — evil meeting its just reward.

In short, God himself would judge.

The corpse finished recounting the past and collapsed once more. The forest fell into silence.

Vasida stared at their bodies in disbelief. “Are these people stupid? Sent into the Black Forest for atonement, innocence rewarded with entry to the divine kingdom — and they actually believed that? There is no god!”

“How is it that after the Angels’ deception was exposed, the Temple of Light has only grown more brazen?” Sylph was utterly bewildered.

“The power behind the Temple of Light now isn’t the Angels anymore — it’s human mages wearing the cloak of divinity, profiting by duping and exploiting ordinary humans.” Lilith had heard some things from her father and knew a bit of the inside story.

Mo Lan gazed toward the edge of the Black Forest and sighed. “Ordinary humans are too weak. They might spend their entire lives never leaving the place they were born, ignorant by nature, constantly brainwashed by the Temple. It’s no surprise they end up like this.”

“Humanity is truly a baffling species. They were once deceived by the Angels, and after finally waking up, they willingly stepped into the Angels’ role and continued deceiving their own kind,” Sylph said.

“They say witches are the most favored existence of the Valen world consciousness, but I’d say humans are no less remarkable. With that willingness to slaughter their own kind for profit, the fact that they haven’t gone extinct is one thing — but to become the most numerous intelligent species? Absolutely incredible!” Vasida said.

“Sometimes they’re unspeakably cruel to their own kind, and other times they unite with unbelievable solidarity. Truly incomprehensible!”

Lilith shook her head and decided not to dwell on it any further:

“Moira, absorb these corpses into your Book of Cards as card-crafting material.”

Mo Lan didn’t hesitate. Eight corpses — men, women, old, and young alike. Though they were only ordinary human remains, they were more than enough for her to produce a considerable number of material cards.

Combined with the anatomical knowledge from her previous life, she now had no shortage of ordinary human body materials — every part, every type of corpse covered.

Of course, this was limited to ordinary humans only.