Azephala stared hollowly at the images unfolding within the white light, her whole body trembling uncontrollably.
And within those images, she slowly reached out, touched the Erosion Marks inside that Abyss's gaping maw, and signed a contract of eternal silence with the turmoil of the Deep Sea.
"Just as I thought."
Lynn watched her gravely.
"You were only using the Flesh God Cult's attack as an excuse for your own fall. Because you could tell yourself that their threat forced you to unleash that calamity. You hoped to deceive your conscience and your faith that way. You thought you hadn't betrayed your Older Brother or the entire Hidden Cultivation Society, or your god. You had no choice..."
"But did you?"
It was like habitually lying to yourself: keep doing it long enough, and even you would lose track of the truth.
And that was exactly the sort of person Lynn saw before him.
Perhaps she had already been corrupted by those Old Gods a thousand years ago. Or perhaps certain events had left her uncertain of her faith, subtly changing her beliefs along the way.
She was the Heavenly Lord of the Hidden Cultivation Society.
She should have been her deity's most devout believer.
But if you watched your deity slowly turn into the very calamity you had once fought against over a thousand years of vigil, would you fall alongside your god, or keep holding to your former faith?
Perhaps it was amid that uncertainty that her gradual fall had begun.
But surely they should have remained united.
Her Older Brother, for instance, had never wavered at all. But once their faith diverged, could they still remain as they had been, like Adam and Eve in the Bible?
And perhaps that was where her inner conflict had begun.
*I