Gallo's Response

When Gallo felt the call of that spiritual fluctuation, he immediately thought of the doctored translation he had given Sacia the day before. The document had originally contained a ritual for summoning Gorak, a Subspace entity, but Gallo had altered it.

For Gallo, who understood Subspace, altering a ritual was no difficult task. He only had to attach a trace of his own spiritual fluctuation to the document. If the other party performed the ritual using it, the fluctuation on the page would naturally begin linking to Gallo's own spirituality.

It was much like embedding a startup command in the document through a spiritual fluctuation. As long as they followed the instructions, the fluctuation attached to the document would make sure everything in the ritual was correct, then activate the function Gallo had prepared in advance.

The difference was that rituals for communicating with Subspace entities often required particularly bloody sacrifices. The prescribed ritual called for the sacrifice of large numbers of sentient beings.

When these living beings were used as offerings, the moment they died, their souls broke free of their bodies in the physical world and entered Subspace completely. All kinds of negative energy within their souls then erupted violently.

It was like broadcasting a signal at a fixed frequency into Subspace. When the summoned entity received that signal through its own psionic power, it would hurry over through Subspace to receive and savor the sacrificed souls.

If the Subspace entity was pleased, it might even answer the ritual's call and communicate with the officiant on a mental level.

If the officiant was a psychic, such mental communication with a Subspace entity had a very high chance of success. Ordinary people had no innate psionic talent; unless the entity was willing to expend considerable effort and pay a price, it could not communicate with them on a mental level.

However, even with the correct ritual, summoning a Subspace entity meant risking the attention of other terrifying beings within Subspace when the offerings were made. After all, the negative energy released by the sacrificed souls was a delicious temptation to the entities there.

Thus, any ritual related to Subspace came with an extremely high risk. The chance of success... depended on the scale of the sacrifice and whether the officiant had psionic talent.

At that moment, as the call born of his own spiritual fluctuation grew more urgent, Gallo knew he could not afford to hesitate any longer.

If he missed the signal of that spiritual fluctuation, then once it faded, he would no longer be able to trace where it had led.

"I can't believe Sacia and her people are already so impatient to perform the ritual in the document. I only gave it to her yesterday. I thought they'd wait a while longer."

He paused, then thought, If I don't answer this time, they might think the ritual failed, or suspect something's wrong with the document. They'll come looking for me again, on top of that.

And there's no telling whether they'll perform another ritual. Besides, holding a ritual will also consume the spiritual fluctuation I left in the document.

But...

Gallo sensed something that puzzled him. The spiritual fluctuation he had left in the document shouldn't have caused such a strong reaction. The difference was as obvious as the difference between whispering in someone's ear and shouting at the top of one's lungs.

He gently set down the bread spread with butter and jam in his hand, placing it on the open waxed cloth.

Using the unique "coordinates" perceived by his Inspiration—the pull of a spiritual fluctuation that was one with his own essence—he began projecting his spirituality.

On the level of Subspace, distance had no meaning. Intent was the path.

He focused all his attention, imagining part of his spirituality as an arrow loosed from a bow, shooting precisely along the direction from which the call had come.

The process was not entirely smooth.

He felt as though he were passing through a turbulent current made of chaotic lights and whispers, surrounded by indescribable Subspace murmurs.

But thanks to the clarity of the call's source and his powerful control over spirituality and Inspiration, the projection went quite smoothly.

Almost the instant his thought took shape, his "viewpoint" shifted abruptly.

His Inspiration carried part of Gallo's consciousness to a... vast indoor space furnished with considerable refinement.

It looked like a spacious living room inside a large building, but the place was in complete disarray.

"Where is this?" Gallo's Inspiration quickly swept over the scene, and his mind filled with questions.

He had assumed that Sacia and the others would perform their ritual somewhere more concealed, somewhere better suited to the atmosphere of a "ritual," like a hall or a church—not in a residence that looked so respectable.

Then he saw the two sides facing off.

On one side were more than a dozen people in dark gray trench coats. They carried firearms, moved with practiced efficiency, and wore cold expressions.

Their bearing immediately reminded Gallo of the Clovin agent he had seen earlier through remote viewing.

"Clovin's people? I didn't expect them to break in right in the middle of Sacia and the others' ritual."

Gallo was visibly taken aback. He knew Clovin had been secretly keeping an eye on Sacia and the others, but he hadn't expected Clovin, as an agent of the Empire, to intervene during their ritual—and so quickly.

The other side surprised him even more—they were several people dressed in robes resembling those of priests!

Some were already lying motionless on the ground. Others still held weapons, but were clearly at a disadvantage, completely suppressed by the Clovin agents' firepower.

Sacia Taylor was pinned to the ground by a Clovin agent. Gallo's attention swept over the lifeless body in the corner and confirmed that Malcolm was dead.

"Those are unmistakably clerical robes. Are they with Sacia? Just what kind of organization is this?" Gallo's confusion deepened.

The force behind Sacia was far more complicated than he had imagined. It seemed to be a secret religious order with a specific faith.

At the center of the chaos stood an old man in a red High Priest's robe.

He stood before a makeshift altar, his body surrounded by flames invisible to ordinary people.

But a psychic could clearly sense the blazing flames of spirituality through Inspiration—he was sacrificing himself!

This reckless act greatly accelerated the ritual and strengthened the transmission of the spiritual fluctuation from the document through Subspace. That was why the call Gallo had sensed was so unusually powerful.

At that moment, Gallo's spirituality was like a curtain of rain, descending and filling the entire room.

Time passed extremely slowly from the perspective of Gallo's consciousness, but he clearly noticed the High Priest's exhilarated expression and the horrified looks on the faces of several Clovin psychics.

Gallo had answered the other party's ritual invocation and descended, but this was not a physical body. It was an existence projected into reality by psionic power passing through Subspace. To make Sacia and the others believe their prayers had been answered, Gallo had carefully staged his arrival to project "divine majesty."

His projected psionic power centered on the High Priest and spread out like ripples, instantly filling the heart of the ritual site.

Damon, the leader of Clovin's operation, was about to take final action against the High Priest when she suddenly stopped all her Clovin subordinates.

Her sharp, falcon-like eyes fixed on the High Priest, and her face showed extreme caution and apprehension.

She had clearly sensed the powerful, uncanny psionic fluctuation that had suddenly appeared, as well as the High Priest's deeply unstable state, his connection to Subspace profound.

"Cease fire! Seal off the scene! Everyone, fall back!"

The ritual had actually attracted the descent of a Spirit Realm entity. Her voice rang out in a stern command, taut with tension.

She knew very well that killing the High Priest now would be like detonating a psionic bomb with its fuse already lit.

The High Priest was using his own spirituality as fuel to forcibly maintain a fragile passage to the Spirit Realm. Any violent outside interference—especially a lethal physical attack—could cause the passage to collapse out of control and trigger an unpredictable, catastrophic psionic incident. It would be far worse than an explosion, plague, drought, natural disaster... or any other calamity in the physical world.

At the instant Gallo's spiritual projection descended, the High Priest seemed to find a purpose for the psionic power and life he was burning away.

He tilted his head back. His wrinkled face showed no pain; instead, it lit up with an almost ecstatic joy.

As his spirituality burned too fiercely, his senses had grown unnaturally acute. To him, Gallo's projected spirituality carried the cold, exalted sense of "divinity" he had spent his entire life pursuing.

Tears mingled with blood as they slid from his eyes. He spread his arms and summoned his last strength to cry out, his voice hoarse but filled with reverence:

"Holy... True Lord... You... have truly descended... I am Your servant... You answered the call of Your humble servant!

"I see You... Holy True Lord... You are so beautiful!"

Gallo was stunned. Was something wrong with the old man's head? That last remark had almost made Gallo think the other man's Inspiration could pass through Subspace and see what he looked like outside Lubo Lane. But at that moment, Gallo's Inspiration filled the surroundings, placing the entire building within the absolute domain of his psionic range.

There was no way this old man in the red robes of a senior cleric could bypass Gallo's psionic domain, travel along the path of his projection, and see Gallo's true body.

The old man had probably become so worked up that his reason had failed him.

Even if he really had seen what Gallo looked like in the physical world, how could an old man describe a boy as "so beautiful"?

For a moment, the battle in the villa seemed to hit pause.

The Clovin agents stood at the ready, tense and holding their guns, their eyes shifting between the High Priest and the senior investigator in charge.

The surviving members of the order looked shocked and bewildered, apparently stunned by Clovin's sudden halt. They were ordinary people and had no idea what was happening. Only the High Priest and the four senior Clovin investigators present understood.

Sacia struggled to lift her head, disbelief in her eyes. Could there really be a chance to turn things around now?

Gallo's spiritual consciousness hovered calmly at the center of the chaos, in a space where time seemed frozen.

As Gallo focused his thoughts, the spiritual power permeating the room quickly drew together and gathered in one place.

To everyone's horror, a gentle yet majestic white-gold glow appeared before the altar, gradually outlining a vague human shape.

The figure had no distinct features, only a rough outline, yet the presence it radiated seemed almost tangible, pressing on every ordinary person there until they could barely breathe.

Even the four senior Clovin investigators felt their spirituality tremble violently, as though they had encountered a higher existence... no, one so far beyond their level that it was impossible to measure or comprehend.

"It... it's appeared!"

One of the surviving members of the order cried out, his legs giving way as he nearly fell to his knees.

For ordinary people like them, witnessing a "miracle" firsthand was a profound shock. For those who were priests, the impact was even greater.

Guided by Gallo's spiritual consciousness, the white-gold figure began to "stroll" through the wrecked living room.

His steps seemed slow, yet carried a lightness that ignored physical obstacles, as though he were walking in another dimension and only happened to be visible because it ran parallel to the time and space they occupied.

He deliberately walked around the four senior Clovin investigators, who were on high alert, showing neither hostility nor interest, as though they were nothing more than irrelevant scenery.

At the same time, he had to keep his spiritual fluctuations from spreading too far, lest he drive the four psychics mad.

His goal was clear.

First, he "walked" over to Malcolm's body.

The white-gold glow lowered its gaze slightly, as if confirming something.

Gallo's spiritual perception swept over the body and confirmed that Malcolm's soul had already dispersed. It must have entered Subspace. Living beings had physical bodies in the real world and their souls projected into Subspace. Once a living being died in the physical world, if there was no way to preserve its soul, it would lose its anchor in the real world and enter Subspace, where it would slowly sink into oblivion.

Unless it was particularly unlucky and caught the attention of another Subspace entity—but the chances of that were very small.

There was no trace of Malcolm's conscious soul left.

That put his mind at ease. The middleman who had watched him for a long time and learned some of his secrets had been silenced for good. Then, in another part of the room, he spotted the corpses of two familiar people among several others. They were the two men who had watched him alongside Malcolm, and they had already died under Clovin's guns.

Next, he turned toward Sacia Taylor, who was pinned to the ground.

Sacia looked up, her eyes filled with pleading—reverence for the "miracle," and hope of escaping certain death.

She parted her lips, as if she wanted to say something, but under the gaze of that white-gold radiance, no sound came out.

Gallo knew he absolutely could not let Clovin take Sacia away and interrogate her.

She knew too much—about that notebook, the translated document, and her dealings with Gallo Channing from Lubo Lane.

If Clovin pried that information out of her, he would be their next target. Until he understood Clovin's attitude toward psychics, he wasn't going to make contact with them.

So he had to make her "keep quiet" in a way Clovin couldn't undo.