Is There Even an Old Hand? (Please Keep Reading!)

"Ah..." The little girl's expression went blank for a moment.

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The gentleman before her seemed to be preaching to her instead...

Could things be turned upside down like this?

"Sir, our Lord is the one true God. You must not worship other gods..." the little girl said quietly to Zhou Yun.

Zhou Yun raised an eyebrow.

"What a coincidence. Our Emperor of Mankind said: He is not a god."

"Huh?" The little girl seemed unable to follow Zhou Yun's train of thought, and her expression grew even blanker.

"Furthermore, the Emperor told us: 'You must wholeheartedly believe in the following truth: There are no ghosts or gods among the stars, no supernatural phenomena, no magic or witchcraft. Everything can be explained through science. Humanity can overcome all things through the light of reason. Nothing should be worshipped. A rational galaxy must utterly eradicate religion, that backward concept.'"

Zhou Yun spoke to the little girl trying to preach to him with a serious expression and a powerful, ringing voice.

The little girl covered her forehead, her eyes full of bewilderment, confusion, and incomprehension. Her mind raced, trying to understand what Zhou Yun meant.

"Wait, sir!"

The little girl seemed to have finally sorted out Zhou Yun's logic.

"Your god says He is not a god, and your god says there are no gods in this world, nothing beyond human understanding, and nothing that should be worshipped. Your religion even wants to eliminate religion?"

"Yes." Zhou Yun slowly nodded.

"Then... huh?" The contradictory doctrine left the little girl thoroughly muddled. After a long while, she finally managed to ask, "How did you come to accept such a complicated doctrine...?"

"Our god says He isn't a god. What else could we do? Naturally, we go along with Him." Zhou Yun shrugged.

What he had just said was precisely what the Emperor himself had preached while walking among mankind during the Great Crusade.

Yes, yes, yes. Although the Emperor had a halo behind His head, radiated golden light all over, could squeeze a star down to the size of a house, had lived for tens of thousands of years, and possessed twenty-one sons like demigods—one of whom was even like an angel—He was not a god.

Although the Warp was a dimension of emotion and will, filled with all sorts of demons, ghosts, monsters, and the Four Peddlers, and although beings like the C'tan, practically gods of matter, existed in the material universe, there were no gods in this world.

A more joking explanation of the so-called Imperial Truth preached by the Emperor went something like this...

The state church held a religious council.

The pope said, "Those who believe the Emperor is a god stand on the right. Those who believe in Chaos stand on the left."

But one person stood neither on the right nor on the left.

The pope was puzzled.

The man said, "I do not believe the Emperor is a god, and the Chaos Gods do not exist at all."

The pope turned pale in shock and hurriedly said, "God-Emperor, when did You come down from the Golden Throne?"

Although Zhou Yun had mocked the Emperor's Imperial Truth from top to bottom in his heart,

he still said with a perfectly serious face,

"So what? Did you know that back when humanity had yet to leave Terra, there was a religion that tried to make people believe everyone had a Holy Spirit inside them that could impregnate virgins, and that this spirit, its son, and that son's father were all the same person?"

The little girl's expression suddenly became somewhat strange.

Zhou Yun had originally thought that after spouting such nonsense, the little girl would lose interest and stop blocking his way.

But unexpectedly, the little girl seemed to have been provoked. Instead, she stepped even closer to Zhou Yun with greater determination.

"Sir! I am increasingly convinced that you need to understand our one true Lord!"

Zhou Yun felt an increasingly severe headache.

"Is your one true Lord the god of love, beauty, and art? Does He like purple, use a snake as His symbol, and possess both sexes?"

The little girl shook her head.

"Then is He the god of life, immortality, and abundance? Does He like green, use flies as His symbol, and have a fat, bloated body?"

The little girl still shook her head.

"Then is He the god of courage, war, and the military? Does He like red, use hounds as His symbol, and sit upon a brass throne?"

"You mean the King of War?" The little girl scratched her head.

"Then is He the god of wisdom, change, and hope? Does He like blue, use an eagle as His symbol, and constantly change His appearance?"

"Not that either," the little girl denied.

None of the four?

Zhou Yun's expression became more serious.

"Is your Lord a dragon?" he asked.

He recalled a certain dragon beneath Mars...

"The dragon is my Lord's enemy," the little girl said devoutly, lowering her head.

Not even one of those five...

Zhou Yun found no sign of lying on the little girl's face. Could she be a follower of some wild demon?

Or perhaps some obscure lesser entity in the Warp?

Or perhaps...

Just then, the little girl slowly reached into her collar and pulled out the pendant hanging around her neck...

It was a silver cross.

"...So you're an old hand."

No wonder the little girl had become so fixated after he mocked the Trinity.

"You are a Catholic," Zhou Yun said.

The little girl revealed a gentle smile.

"You know a great deal about us. In this age, very few people still understand the holiness of the Trinity..."

In this damned galaxy, this old hand's faith might actually have been relatively safe.

Because according to Zhou Yun's memories from his previous life,

Catholicism in this world most likely pointed toward some yellow-skinned fellow.

Oll Persson, the Emperor's old comrade and a Perpetual who would later die before the Emperor, was a Catholic.

But Zhou Yun had no real intention of finding a faith for himself.

"I'm truly sorry, but I really don't have time to listen to your preaching. My niece said that if I get back late, she won't let me off." Zhou Yun gestured for the little girl to look at the parchment, bread, fish sauce, and fruits and vegetables in his hands.

The little girl hesitated.

"If you have time, you can visit our church in the Temple District... Um, the smallest house in the entire Temple District is our church."

"You must come. We give out fish sauce for free."

Free fish sauce... As expected, giving away eggs for free was still one of the most effective methods of preaching.

Zhou Yun could not help sighing inwardly.

But in the current universe, never mind eggs—even whether chickens themselves still existed was a question... Uncle Dinosaur had endured through the ages, only to be completely eliminated by evolution in the end. Uncle Crocodile, on the other hand, was still alive and well.

In Zhou Yun's memories, Macragge still had quite a number of crocodiles.

Other than terrifying upright apes, Uncle Crocodile, you were the toughest survivor in the entire universe.

Zhou Yun returned to the apartment he rented. After placing the bread, fruits and vegetables, and fish sauce in a corner of the room, he sat behind the wooden table and spread out the parchment.

He was now going to practice the traditional craft of a diviner.

Zhou Yun picked up a fountain pen and began drawing patterns on the parchment.