Miracle

Ye Xunfeng and the other person froze when they heard the sound, a trace of confusion showing on their faces.

What had happened here? Why was there a plague?

Under normal circumstances, wouldn't it only arise when there were large numbers of corpses?

Ye Xunfeng recalled the urgent news he had heard some time ago. It seemed war was about to break out.

It appeared the war had begun long ago. Could this place have been a battlefield before?

Ye Xunfeng continued wandering through the city, looking around in confusion at the gray, decaying, ruined scenes surrounding him...

In the small forest outside the city, two middle-aged men stared blankly at the dead city.

"Damn it, this is bad. Why did that person go into the city?" Snake Lance Douluo looked utterly dumbfounded.

"Why does this city feel like something's wrong?" Pufferfish Douluo flew into the air and surveyed the area.

"It's a plague! Wh-what do we do?"

"We should notify the Grand Pontiff."

"Fine, let's hurry. A Soul Master's resistance to plagues should be pretty strong, anyway."

The two Titled Douluo swiftly headed back toward Spirit Hall.

Ye Xunfeng wandered through the city in confusion, watching scene after scene of human tragedy.

Suddenly, he heard the sound of hooves. It seemed to be coming from outside the city.

"Seal the city gates! Seal the city gates!"

Clatter, clatter, clatter...

The hoofbeats came from afar, accompanied by the sound of the great city gates being shut.

"I don't want to die! Let me out, please, let me out! I don't have the plague!"

"Please, sir, I don't have the plague..."

"City gates sealed! No one may approach! Violators will be killed!" the soldiers shouted in unison.

Ye Xunfeng looked at everything at the gate and sighed inwardly.

With his strength, no one could stop him if he wanted to leave.

But...

For some reason, as he wandered through the city, an indescribable desolation welled up within him, along with a compassion that seemed not to belong to him.

"Father, there must be a way. There has to be..."

"There's no medicine left, son. Go quickly. Stay away from me. Maybe you'll live a little longer..."

"Dad! The gates have been sealed. We have no way out. We might as well spend our last days together."

Ye Xunfeng silently passed a ruined doorway where a father and son were weeping to one another.

"I never thought, I never thought it would come to this! Hahaha..." A crazed voice came from an alley.

"I survived through a hail of bullets and arrows, only to die from this miserable, ridiculous plague." An old soldier missing one arm was pounding the ground and shouting.

Ye Xunfeng listened to the cries of separation and death from all around him, the shouts of those resigned to their fated deaths, and the curses against the unfairness of fate.

Suddenly, he felt dizzy, and everything drifted away from him.

He saw himself as a child.

"Mom, why do you worship this statue of the Angel God?" Three-year-old him had looked up and asked his mother.

What had he been thinking when he asked that? Perhaps it had been hatred. Why could Qian Xunji live so happily in Spirit Hall?

Why was his mother physically weakened, yet too afraid to go outside to seek medicine?

Hadn't they said the Angel Clan was not lacking in virtue? Why?

"Because the Angel God is a guardian deity who has compassion for all under heaven and destroys evil and wickedness." His mother gently stroked Ye Xunfeng's head.

"But..."

But hadn't Qian Xunji harmed you to this extent? And all because of him, Ye Xunfeng...

"Xiaofeng, your grandfather and grandmother died at the hands of Fallen Soul Masters while protecting Mother. Mother was about to die too, but an Angel descended from the heavens and saved me. No matter what Spirit you awaken in the future, you must..."

A tear slowly fell from Ye Xunfeng's eye.

At that moment, for some unknown reason, his Wishing Angel Spirit emerged on its own. Then, the red Soul Ring flashed, and the Martial Soul Avatar activated instantly.

A vast Angel phantom suddenly appeared in the sky, fully revealed before everyone's eyes.

The people of the city, who had been consumed by despair, all instinctively looked up.

Streets that had been filled with sobbing, curses, and sighs just moments earlier fell silent in an instant, as if an unseen hand had seized everyone's voices and lodged them in their throats.

"Th-that... what is that..."

A woman clutching a child sat collapsed against a wall. She craned her neck upward, her lips trembling nonstop. The child in her arms had forgotten to cry and stared straight at the sky with wide, round eyes.

The enormous Angel phantom shrouded the entire city beneath it. Eight wings slowly spread through the clouds, every feather glowing with a lustrous light as feathers seemed to scatter continuously over the city.

The Angel's face was blurry, its features impossible to discern, but its eyes alone were exceptionally clear. With lowered eyelids and hands pressed together, it seemed to be praying.

The Angel's gaze fell gently upon every person in the city. There was not the slightest majesty or hint of judgment in it, only boundless compassion.

"The Angel God..." An old soldier missing one arm staggered out of the alley and looked up at the sky. The white radiance filled his clouded eyes. "It really is the Angel God... The legends were true..."

With a thud, he dropped to his knees, supporting himself against the ground with his one remaining hand as his body shook uncontrollably.

"The Angel God has revealed itself!" Someone was the first to shout.

Then, as if the first domino had fallen, the sound of people dropping to their knees rang out one after another from every corner of the city.

A middle-aged woman knelt on her doorstep, clasping her hands tightly together. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she murmured over and over, "Bless my child. Please bless my child. He's only three... only three..."

The father and son who had been embracing each other in the ruined house also stumbled outside.

The father burned with fever, his face flushed red. He could only stand steadily with his son supporting him.

Yet he still used all his strength to raise his head and gaze at the Angel phantom in the sky. His lips moved for a long time before he finally forced out a sentence. "I-I'm about to die, aren't I? Is that why I can see a god..."

His son held him tightly, tears pattering down as he cried hoarsely, "Dad, you're not seeing things. It's real. It really is an Angel!"

More and more people poked their heads out from behind tightly shut doors and windows, then slowly emerged. In the end, the entire street was filled with kneeling figures.

Some kowtowed without stopping. Some cried aloud. Others merely stared blankly at the sky, like drowning people who had finally grasped a piece of driftwood.

At that moment, the Angel phantom in the sky suddenly moved.

It slowly lowered its head. Its lowered eyelids trembled lightly, as though it could no longer bear it.