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Chapter 20- This World Has No God

  Ocean Cities across the nd.

  City Administrators gathered, gazing up at the colossal skeletal behemoth that pierced the Heavens. Its terrifying form loomed like an unprecedented mountain range, its immense weight pressing heavily on every heart.

  "We can begin."

  "Your Majesty has ascended to godhood! We must spread His Divine Name across the nd and celebrate the birth of this new God!"

  "We've avoided confronting the Church of Light for too long, allowing them to thrive among the people. Now it's time to strike back!"

  "All for Your Majesty's glory!"

  "Fight for Your Majesty!"

  The voices rang out in unison.

  As they stared at the Giant God in the sky, they suddenly recalled the strategy they had devised during their audience with Your Majesty at the Tower of Babel—their pn to counter the Church of Light.

  Some time ago, within the Imperial Pace, the Empire's hero, Herodotus, spoke with burning fury:

  "Your Majesty, the Church of Light harbors sinister intentions. They are deceiving the people of our cities, and the Tyrant Theory is spreading like wildfire. More and more believers are being bewitched into joining rebel armies to overthrow us!"

  The Empire's Wise Ones had tried to reason with the people, but their efforts proved futile.

  "What utter fools!" one Wise One excimed, unable to contain his anger. "The Evil God's schemes are too cunning! He seeks to strangle our Empire's very spirit and ensve us all!"

  Upon the imperial throne, Emperor Atabia sat calmly, as if nothing could disturb this supreme sage of civilization.

  "Let us not expect too much of them," he said. "After all, we recruited all the Wise Ones for the Tower of Babel Project. The remaining citizens are merely ordinary folk with limited intellect, prone to wavering faith and making mistakes..."

  Such was human nature.

  They forgot the Empire's benevolence, the countless times their lives had been saved. Not only did they ck gratitude, but they now lent their ears to the honeyed words of the Outer God, who ceaselessly plotted the world's destruction.

  So forgetful, they couldn't even remember who had brought death upon them.

  Emperor Atabia suddenly chuckled softly. "The Outer God... he wants me to annihite seventy percent of humanity and personally orchestrate the Third Great Extinction Event? This must be the curse the gods have bestowed upon me."

  He resembled a strange, specutive philosopher, his gaze profound, his smile gentle.

  "But how can we avoid sughtering them and convert these followers of the gods? How can we overturn the fate the Heavenly Gods have ordained for me—to be a tyrant whose name will be reviled for eternity?"

  "We must never attempt to reason with fools. The only way to conquer them is to make them believe in another form of foolishness."

  He turned to face the Wise Ones behind him, his voice tinged with contempt. "Gentlemen, I will don the Divine Crown, become a god, and use a Church to defeat their Church, foolishness to conquer foolishness, and a god to conquer a god."

  "A god?" The ministers immediately grasped the brilliance of this audacious pn. "You intend to reinvent yourself as a god to confront him?"

  Imperial Hero Herodotus excimed, "Then we must establish your Church at once! We'll forge its doctrine and erect majestic statues in your divine image."

  "No, the statues must not be majestic," Emperor Atabia replied with a sardonic smile. "Since the Church of Light is so enraged that they want to crucify me, this tyrant, as a sacrifice to their Heavenly God, my Church shall be called the Church of the Suffering. Its divine image will be that of a tormented sufferer bound to the cross—the God of Suffering himself."

  Emperor Atabia's next words struck them as profoundly ingenious:

  "We will procim to the world that Atabia is Mombis, the Giant God of Heaven, who, dissatisfied with the ideals of the other gods, reincarnated in this world to bring the spark of civilization to humanity."

  Mombis, in the Atabian nguage, means "one who suffers to the utmost."

  "But when the gods saw that he was bringing joy, civilization, hope, and happiness to the mortals of this world, making them less reliant on the divine, they were both astonished and enraged. They dispatched a Giant God to attack this world, inciting the Atabians to demand the crucifixion of this Deity's reincarnation."

  This...

  The will of everyone present jolted with sudden force.

  This strategy was brilliant!

  It was using ignorant public opinion to defeat public opinion itself!

  His Majesty, as the Deity's reincarnation, now possessed Divine Status, instantly elevating him to the level of an Outer God!

  This meant the people would no longer see him as inferior; everyone would be a Heavenly God.

  This transformed the conflict into a war between gods, not a war between mortals and gods.

  The implications were completely different now.

  Moreover, Mombis, the God of Suffering, could leverage his image of pain to garner sympathy and unch a counterattack against the Church of Light.

  "Your Majesty, shall we establish the Church now?" Imperial Hero Herodotus asked.

  Emperor Atabia shook his head. "No, establishing the Church now would be ineffective. Our Church cks miracles, making it vulnerable to enemy attacks accusing us of being false gods. The resulting infamy would be far greater!"

  "We must wait until we can manifest genuine miracles before propagating our doctrine."

  Time returned to the present.

  The moment for the miracle's birth had arrived.

  "Begin!"

  At that very instant, the ministers in the various Ocean Cities, who had endured hardship and waited patiently, sprang into action.

  One by one, the newly constructed temples, long concealed, were unveiled to the people.

  "Emperor Atabia! The suffering mortal! The Heavenly God Mombis! Will recim his Divine Status on this nd! Ignite his Divine Status!"

  The shouts echoed across the nd.

  A faint, ethereal chorus drifted through the air, as if every child on the pnet were singing together, praying for their Emperor.

  "The torrential rain will colpse into a flood~"

  "Purple mists will bnket the earth, turning it into an abyss~"

  "Ruins will rise into towering spires~"

  "Bones will be covered in flesh and blood~"

  "And I will return to my heavenly form~"

  "Then I will find you~"

  "And I will kill you~"

  The Holy Anthem of the New Church echoed through the air as members of the Church of the Suffering smiled piously and loudly chanted verses from The Passion of Mombis.

  In the Imperial City, countless Holy Knights halted their bdes, stunned by the voice: "A new... God?"

  Simultaneously, the entire world began to learn the origins of this new deity through their doctrines. He had descended from the heavens to defy the gods for the sake of mortals, exposing the Church of Light's so-called "plot" as a mere conspiracy.

  This was a monumental reversal!

  A fwless counterattack!

  The Pope, Li Qing's spy within the Guardian Corps, erupted in fury. No wonder he had remained silent all this time—he had been plotting this!

  "Emperor Atabia, the Heavenly God reincarnated, Mombis, the God of Suffering!"

  Across Atabia, the Atabians raised their heads, silently sensing the colossal new deity. His crystalline skeletal form seemed to radiate a pure, celestial holiness that pierced the clouds.

  "The King, the wisest man Atabia has ever produced from its peak popution of seventeen trillion, saw through all suffering, contempted all the world's problems, and guided the evolution of civilization. He had already decided everything."

  "He could have abandoned it all."

  Imperial Hero Herodotus emerged from the basement of the Imperial City, leading his elite troops, a faint smile pying on his lips.

  "But he was too arrogant. When the gods demanded obedience, he defiantly refused."

  "He impersonated a deity in mortal flesh, used a church to conquer churches, and turned ignorance against itself! He countered their propaganda with his own, drawing them back into our ranks!"

  "This was his choice!"

  "There are no gods in this world. Gods are merely powerful mortals."

  "If we Atabians must cling to the notion of gods, if we crave spiritual soce, why should we worship Outer Gods?"

  "This Holy Emperor, who ushered in a new era, is the sole True God that we earthly Atabians should worship!"

  He suddenly ughed, his eyes bzing with war-like fervor as he turned to the Holy Knights of the Church of the Suffering behind him.

  "Come! Join our counterattack to recim the Imperial City! Crush these cultists! Fight for the Church of the Suffering!"

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