Chapter 30

Sitting somewhere safe and watching a despicable schemer jump through hoops was a truly novel experience.

However, neither Gerald nor Palin was a very good audience.

Gerald got sleepy after watching for a while. For someone as big as he was, standing hunched over inside a cave was certainly uncomfortable. He sat down on the ground, but before long he was dozing off again.

Palin, on the other hand, watched with keen interest. But his face soon began to pale, and the life in him gradually faded, until he looked sickly and close to death.

Being without a soul is such a nuisance! Sui Xiong muttered to himself. He sent another burst of magic to replenish Palin's vitality.

Time passed slowly as the screen showed every move Ryan made. The things he thought he had kept secret were all laid bare before Palin.

It turned out he was the head of the Thieves Guild in Glimmerstone Town. He had disguised himself as a down-and-out old thief solely to ambush Gerald. He wasn't trying to seize the holy relic that housed a deity's will; he simply wanted to please the god he worshipped.

The god he worshipped wasn't the God of Thieves, but the God of Conspiracy. That deity relished having his followers use schemes and frame-ups to achieve their aims. He scorned simple violence, and he scorned honest dealings. Only underhanded methods like plots and trickery could win his favor.

Ryan was the head of the Thieves Guild. Though his position gave him authority over only the Thieves Guild of a single, insignificant town like Glimmerstone, he had fought for decades, exhausting all his strength and wit and relying on countless schemes and acts of bloodshed to attain that power and status.

Throughout his life, he had used schemes more often than violence. He truly enjoyed plotting, which made him a devoted follower of the God of Conspiracy. He had even profaned the glory of the God of Thieves more than once for the sake of his new faith.

All of it had paid off. More than once, the god had praised him, granting him power and status beyond what his abilities should have earned him. He had firmly kept his deputy, whose abilities far surpassed his own, under his thumb.

But none of it mattered much to him anymore.

A few days earlier, he had used a scheme to wipe out a band of bandits who had always refused to sell their stolen goods to the Thieves Guild at a low price. As Ryan celebrated over drinks, he saw an old man on the verge of death reflected in his cup.

In that instant, he suddenly understood: his life was nearing its end.

Once he realized this, power, status, money... everything lost its luster. A single thought consumed him completely.

He had to reach the God of Conspiracy's divine realm after death. He absolutely could not go to the Underworld!

Given the sort of man he was, if he went to the Underworld, he would probably fall straight into Purgatory. The devils there were always smiling up at the sky, waiting for scoundrels to arrive so they could welcome them and make them endure every torture imaginable—perhaps twice or three times over. The devils certainly wouldn't go easy on him. If his soul managed to survive until the punishment was over, they would grind it to pieces and scatter it into the River Styx, where it would be combined with fragments of other souls to form a new one. He would never have the chance to be reincarnated as himself again...

He absolutely refused to accept such a fate!

So he hurriedly prayed to the God of Conspiracy, begging for the right to go to the divine realm after death. But the God of Conspiracy did not grant his request outright. Instead, he ordered Ryan to do something that would please him in exchange for the right to enter his divine realm.

After careful consideration, Ryan decided to use a scheme to kill the giant who possessed the holy relic. He thought this would surely please the God of Conspiracy. To that end, he cashed in a valuable favor to forge records for himself at the Adventurers Guild in Gold Rush Town. He also brought in a large number of people who didn't know him to pose as adventurers there.

He had prepared everything with great care. During the process of gaining their trust, not one of the people involved had told a single lie.

He really had once been an adventurer, and he really had quit the trade about twenty years ago. He also really did have a son who loved gambling—he had even arranged for his son to lose a sum of money at a casino, then be held there until Ryan came to pay the ransom. And he really couldn't afford to pay that much—because he had temporarily transferred his funds to someone else.

Every last detail was designed to fool a deity capable of detecting lies.

In the end, he succeeded.

Once he had gained their trust, the rest was simple. All he had to do was pull a few tricks in the treasure cave. He had done things like that more than once back when he was an adventurer. It was easy.

Things had gone even more smoothly than he had expected. The treasure cave of Bloody Hand Ruhl could only be entered and exited through a teleportation array. Ryan had no idea where the orc bandit had found it—perhaps it had been left behind by some great mage...

With the cave and a scroll of Death Cloud Spell, which was virtually impossible to counter in an enclosed space, Ryan had successfully created a deadly trap. To make sure it worked, he had even destroyed the teleportation array that led into the treasure cave after leaving it.

Even if the giant could withstand the Death Cloud Spell's deadly fumes, he had no way out without the teleportation array. He could only remain trapped inside until he starved to death.

Ryan's plan had been perfect. From design to execution, nothing had gone wrong.

So when he returned to Glimmerstone Town under cover of darkness, he was in an excellent mood. He even felt that the God of Conspiracy's divine realm had already opened its gates to him—that gloomy, silent world, where night never ended and only the stars and moon shone down on its followers as they schemed against one another all day long, devising seven or eight tricks over even the smallest matter; that world where men like him could thrive... It lay right before him.

He couldn't even wait to send someone to ransom his son, who was still being held at the casino. He hurried straight to the secret chamber where he prayed and began calling upon the god he worshipped.

His chamber was small, a completely sealed room. The walls were pitch-black. Only on the ceiling above the entrance were a few fragments of glowing magical stone embedded like stars. But the stars parted to either side, leaving a deep red, waning crescent moon in the middle—the holy symbol of the God of Conspiracy.

Special gray-green candles stood at the four corners of the chamber. Ryan lit them one by one. Gray-green smoke soon drifted through the room, carrying a strange fragrance that brought on hallucinations. A breeze from the vent below stirred the smoke and sent it toward the crescent moon overhead, where it formed an inverted vortex.

Ryan knelt in the center of the vortex, facing a small altar made from the skull of the former head of the Thieves Guild, whom he had murdered. His face filled with anticipation and joy as he began to pray.

"Master of shadows, Dim Moon reigning over the night sky, mentor of deceit and betrayal, hidden hand behind prosperity and ruin... Your humble servant prays to you. Your servant has completed the task you entrusted to him, deceiving his enemies with a lie and leading them to their doom. May this small offering please you, and may your servant earn the honor of going to your realm after death to continue serving you..."

As he prayed, the bone-white skull altar began to glow with an eerie black light. The light was deep and thick, spreading slowly through the chamber like a viscous liquid. Before long, the entire room seemed to be submerged in black fluid.

Amid that rippling black light, Ryan's prayers sounded low and indistinct. Their echoes from the walls blended with his voice, creating an unsettling rhythm.

Through the Eye of the Soul, Sui Xiong saw a black beam of light appear abruptly from somewhere in the sky and slowly descend toward the chamber.

After waiting in the sky for a long time, he gave a cold laugh. His enormous body spread out completely, his color-changing, transparent form transforming into the night sky and stars. Not even the most keen-eyed mortal on the ground could detect the slightest hint of him. His tentacles wove countless magic arrays, covering all of Glimmerstone Town. Not even a mosquito could get in.

Yet the magic array deliberately left a gap, allowing the black beam to keep descending. Several thick tentacles coiled around it, ready to strike at any moment.

"So you're the God of Conspiracy, huh? Your follower dared to deceive me and ambush me. Let's settle that score!"

The enormous floating jellyfish waved its tentacles and sneered at the spot where the black light was descending, like a hunter lying in wait for its prey.

Inside the chamber, Ryan had been praying devoutly for quite some time, but for some reason, the God of Conspiracy had not answered him.

He continued to pray, but his heart was already filled with terror.

Answering a follower's prayer was an innate instinct for a deity. If a god stopped answering, it meant the link of faith between them had been severed. There were several possible reasons: the link of faith might have been blocked, or the deity might have grown weak. But the most common reason was that the deity had abandoned the follower!

Had the God of Conspiracy abandoned him?

How was that possible? He had just used a scheme to deceive a deity! Wasn't that exactly what the doctrine called for? Why had he not only failed to please the god, but been abandoned by him instead?!

Inside the chamber, the head of the Thieves Guild in Glimmerstone Town fell into a panic.

He was tense, he was frantic. Countless thoughts buzzed through his mind like headless flies, and terrifying visions rose one after another. He felt that he was doomed. Perhaps he would fall into hell the next second; perhaps a cruel judge was already inspecting him, brandishing a red-hot pitchfork and deciding where best to stick it...

But he had truly wronged the God of Conspiracy.

In fact, his actions had greatly pleased the God of Conspiracy, so much so that the deity wanted to send an emissary to escort him to his divine realm.

However, both the God of Conspiracy's link of faith and the emissary he had sent were being blocked.

Two or three hundred meters above the ground in Glimmerstone Town, the enormous floating jellyfish had spread its body out completely, using it to form a vast magic array that had entirely severed the connection between the God of Conspiracy and his faithful follower.

Above it, a pair of powerful tentacles had tightly wrapped around a strange creature with four faces and six arms, its body surrounded by chaotic black winds. This was the God of Conspiracy's divine emissary, the strange being known as the Four-Faced Monster.

The Four-Faced Monster was an extremely powerful creature. The black winds swirling around it were the embodiment of illusory power. Mortals often fell into a hallucination just by looking at it. The God of Conspiracy had created these monsters specifically to carry out his commands. Whenever they appeared in the mortal world, they made the virtuous tremble with fear and the scheming villains rejoice.

But this time, the Four-Faced Monster, obeying the God of Conspiracy's command and heading for the mortal world, had been stopped on its way. A huge jellyfish, completely unfazed by its powerful magic and terrifying illusions, had wrapped it in its tentacles. Ignoring its repeated spells and the fury of the god behind it, the jellyfish was trying to swallow it whole.

"If you're going to cause trouble, you'd better be ready to pay for it. I'll eat your divine emissary first!"

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