Qiaona's eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness of the cave, and as his body sank, a putrid smell wafted over him.
Qiaona was overwhelmed by the stench of decay, but his excitement only grew stronger.
His gaze greedily swept downwards, struggling to adjust to the darkness inside the cave.
As he descended deeper, the scene at the bottom of the cave finally came into view!
Inside the enormous cave, as far as the eye could see, were countless corpses of knights, each wielding a golden greatsword and clad in exquisite golden armor, still in a charging stance. The scene was incredibly magnificent, as if one were on an ancient battlefield. Although thousands of years had passed, seeing these charging knights still gave one the feeling of being on the battlefield!
Qiaona was so shocked he felt his scalp tingle!
"Whoosh!" The first group of Church knights who descended to the bottom of the cave had already raised their torches. Although the torchlight was not enough to illuminate the entire cave, it still provided some illumination when combined with the sunlight outside.
Along with this brightness, Qiaona let out a gasp of surprise.
"What is this?" he asked, his gaze already fixed on the front of the cave.
The cave was divided in two; one half occupied the Holy Knight's body, while the other half contained ferocious creatures that looked like stone statues.
These creatures are bizarre and terrifying in appearance, crouching on the ground, resembling ancient tomb guardians or Gargoyle carved on the eaves of the Holy See to ward off evil spirits.
However, before he could be shocked for long, he sensed something unusual about his surroundings.
He quickly looked toward the side of the cave beside him, but was startled and cried out in surprise.
Two Gargoyle statues, hanging upside down like bats, were suspended on the stone wall beside him.
Qiaona's gaze met the two Gargoyle ' eyes, and he clearly saw their hideous faces!
"How could such a terrifying and grotesque thing exist in the holy grounds of the Church?" Qiaona trembled with excitement. Although the place was littered with corpses, its structure, resembling an ancient battlefield, already excited him.
These previously unseen stone sculptures are incredibly lifelike, with every detail meticulously crafted and exquisitely detailed!
Even without the pale corpse of the god, such a cave is still an invaluable archaeological site!
But what is most striking is not the Holy Knight and the terrifying stone statues in the cave, but the center of the cave.
A ten-meter-long and ten-meter-wide platform, seemingly built of pure jade and imbued with a strong religious style, is placed in the center of the cave. Although it is slightly damaged, it still exudes a strong religious atmosphere.
This thing, though called a base, is more like a water collection pool with a circular hole dug out in the middle.
In the middle of this jade base, there is a cross that is more than three meters high and looks like it is made of bones!
Hanging prominently from that pure white cross was a pale, humanoid corpse, over two meters tall, with a slender body and perfect physique.
The bizarre humanoid creature was nailed to a cross made of white bones, with a long, white bone nail deeply inserted into its chest.
Although no blood was flowing from the wound, some fragments were scattered in the groove of the jade base, which looked like skin fragments or remnants of skin that had been shed from something!
Although the corpse still had a human body shape, its perfect physique and slender body had a very incongruous, inhuman, and strange feel to it.
His skin was pale yet delicate, and his face was exquisitely beautiful beyond words, as if he were filled with endless holiness!
Its head was covered in a full head of white hair, which hung down to the ground from the three-meter-high pale cross, longer than the two-meter-high corpse of the god!
Whether it was the Church knights who had already descended or Qiaona himself, once their eyes were drawn to the holy corpse of the god, they could no longer look away.
If God truly exists in this world, then the only possible embodiment of His existence must be this pale, humanoid corpse before us!
"What... what... what is this?" Qiaona and a group of Church knights stared in shock and fascination at the pale, humanoid corpse hanging on the cross, feeling as if their worldview of the past fifty years had been completely shattered!
As the saying goes, "Lord Ye but was terrified of them."
As a theologian, Qiaona's greatest desire was to see traces of the mythical era, or even the species from that era.
But now that this inhuman thing has actually appeared before him, he is filled with boundless fear and panic.
Such a bizarre, inhuman body—just looking at it sends chills down your spine!
"It has not decayed for thousands of years, and it still feels alive... God... This must be God! This can only be God!" Qiaona went mad. He stared intently at the pale, humanoid corpse in front of him, feeling that it matched all his descriptions of beauty and all his fantasies about God!
Such a noble and sacred object is truly... something that one can only admire from afar!
The cave was dark, and the firelight and the few rays of sunlight that shone through illuminated the pale, perfect corpse, drawing the eye in without one noticing.
If it weren't for the sounds of the Church knights descending one after another, startling Qiaona and the other Church knights below, probably none of them would have been able to take their attention away from this pale, divine corpse!
"Such a magnificent object must be the corpse of God! Look at this cave bearing the marks of war, it must be an ancient battlefield where God led human knights to seal the demons, but he himself was sealed on the cross because he was no match for them!" In an instant, Qiaona's mind conjured up a typical story system that matched his inner thoughts.
His gaze was fixed on the pale, divine corpse, filled with both fascination and longing.
The other Church knights also gasped in shock, and some even climbed back up by ropes to ask His Majesty whether they should continue to transport such an inhuman corpse out of the country.
However, while they saw the sacred appearance of this divine corpse, the Pope did not.
Moreover, when His Majesty Lai'ao'duo heard about the scene inside the cave, he was not frightened at all, but rather became even more delighted.
"Excellent! Such inhuman and bizarre creatures are the perfect foil to God's holiness! In this way, our Holy Lord Church be able to use even more concrete facts to prove to the Southern Continent that our Holy Lord Holy See is the true orthodoxy of God!"
Lai'ao'duo ecstatic!
He had initially thought that even if the corpse sealed on the cross was just a skeleton, he would have to grit his teeth and admit it was God. But now, his servants had reported that the body inside was indeed a non-human species, and had remained undecayed for thousands of years. Wouldn't such a specimen mean that even without him giving false testimony, the world would still recognize him as God?
Whether this pale creature is truly God or some other species is irrelevant! It has been dead for a thousand years, so what it is doesn't matter!
"Start digging immediately! We must dig out this corpse... the corpse of God! From this day forward, our Holy Lord Church will be the only sect in the Southern Continent!" Lai'ao'duo waved his hand, and dozens of Church knights descended into the pit again to dig out the pale corpse of the god.
The believers around who heard his words were so excited that they trembled all over, and for a moment, the chanting became even more intense.
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(One more chapter, definitely coming out today! I really wanted to build up more, to make the emotions and details more vivid, and I haven't missed any updates, I've been writing 4,000 words a day, sometimes it's a long chapter, sometimes a short one, and I've only taken one day off (┬_┬)↘)