Awakening

The small monster in the statue, now rendered clearly, was one Chen Rui had slaughtered countless times in the legacy of the ancient Alchemical Civilization. It had also been the most common kind of monster in the modified test's "combat game."

An Abyss creature—the Rift Demon!

Those petals were no Flower of Darkness, either. They were Abyss Flowers!

The mysterious heretical sect the Church of Light had always sought to eradicate was actually a cult that worshipped the Abyss!

Chen Rui recalled Paul saying that, twenty thousand years ago, this cult had committed a bloody crime, slaughtering the inhabitants of ten cities as living sacrifices to their "god." The atrocity had shocked the entire human world. In the end, the Church of Light joined forces with the various nations to purge the cult, crippling it and driving it underground. Ever since, it had remained one of the enemies the Church of Light was determined to eliminate.

Back when Chen Rui had used Shura's avatar to steal the power of faith, the Church of Light had mistaken him for one of the Black Death Cultists from that mysterious church. Who would have thought that after he returned to the Demon Realm, Shura would become a genuine Black Death Cultist through a twist of fate!

It seemed the Abyss Clan's black hand had reached not only into the Demon Realm, but also into the surface world. The symbol drawn in blood during the attack on the Church of Light was some kind of sacrificial ritual. It not only sacrificed lives, but could also plunder faith. The Black Death Cultists simply did not know that most of the Church of Light's faith had already been devoured by Shura.

Based on Chen Rui's understanding of the Abyss, aside from the shape-shifting "Rift Demons," the