The sky suddenly rumbled. For no apparent reason, a bolt of lightning flashed across the night sky.
The winding, twisting lightning had no discernible trajectory, yet it had an endpoint—and that endpoint was the statue of Him atop Mont Cristo.
He held out both arms, his head slightly bowed as He gazed down upon the world from on high, as though explaining one thing: God loved the world.
Yet the lightning came to His side and struck Him—in fact, the statue had already been struck by lightning once, back in 2014. It had even been damaged at the time, though it was later repaired.
So it was not inconceivable for Him to be struck by lightning again. At the very least, it was already nighttime, and there were no tourists around, so no one would be injured.
However, the sudden gale nearby and the thunderous roar of the lightning jolted the caretaker awake. He hurriedly put on his shoes and ran forward. If any part of the statue had been damaged by the lightning, he had to notify someone to repair it as soon as possible.
There was still some distance to cover before reaching the statue. Although the caretaker had rushed over at the first opportunity, he still failed to arrive at the scene in time. Thus, he missed something.
At that moment, directly before the statue—in the middle of its enormous outstretched arms—the lightning descending from the sky suddenly converged, forming a sphere crackling with electricity.
Something seemed to be brewing inside the sphere... Several points of light swelled within it. Suddenly, the sphere of lightning split open like a bubble, and the light brewing inside had expanded into a human-sized ball of radiance. It slowly descended beneath the base of the giant statue.
There were three figures