Wings represented godhood!
Godhood was a very strange word. The gods of European mythology all possessed godhood, such as godhood over lightning or godhood over the sea. A god without godhood was trash; only one with godhood was a true god.
But godhood in this world did not carry those meanings. It merely represented a god's divine status.
It was more like a title.
In these pictures, the wings painted on a figure's back symbolized godhood. Anyone with wings was a god.
That made one point in the pictures very strange.
Only God and Kuba had wings. Shenyin and Jonah, standing beside them, had none, which was very wrong.
Why did Shenyin, the supreme god of all things, and Jonah, the primordial god of death in Hell, lack godhood?
Why did Kuba, the one God loved least, possess half a wing?
Archbishop Adam frowned deeply, staring at the pictures, unable to make sense of them.
"Strange, isn't it?" His Holiness the Pope's narrowed eyes seemed to sweep over the pictures beside them as well. His words brought Bishop Adam out of his immersion in the murals.
"Yes, Your Holiness. There seems to be something wrong with the details in these murals." Bishop Adam continued pushing His Holiness the Pope farther inside.
The narrow passage through the rock grew wider as they went. Gradually, even pinpoints of firelight appeared ahead. It seemed very likely that someone else was up there.
Hearing Bishop Adam's words, His Holiness the Pope seemed to answer a different question.
"What kind of creature do you think a vampire is, Adam?"
"A perfect creature, Your Holiness. They neither age nor die, and remain at their peak forever. Even if they never drink blood, they can survive endlessly. They are perfectly everlasting creatures." A trace of greed flashed through Archbishop Adam's eyes.
"Yes, Adam, vampires are truly perfect creatures, so perfect that they could not possibly be more perfect. God created the Garden of Eden and all things, yet vampires alone are the most perfect species.
"Why, then, would God dislike such a perfect species?"
Archbishop Adam fell silent for a moment.
Why would God dislike them? After all, before Kuba killed God, he had not killed God. Unless God was omniscient and omnipotent and knew Kuba would kill him later, there was no explaining why God loved every other species but loathed vampires alone.
But God clearly had not been omniscient, or he would not have died at Kuba's hands.
So Archbishop Adam hesitated before saying, "I think perhaps it was because vampires were too perfect."
So perfect that even God feared them.
Archbishop Adam did not say the rest aloud, but there was no need to say it for anyone to know what he meant.
His Holiness the Pope sighed softly. "Yes, Adam, vampires were too perfect. Whether it was Shenyin, whom God produced by mating with a woman, Jonah, whom he produced by mating with a man, or the various monsters he produced by mating with other animals, they all had one thing in common: God's divinity intertwined with the vitality of the creatures, giving them a mortal nature.
"Divinity is eternal and unchanging, while living things change at every moment. Thus, living things can never bear divinity.
"Of all the creatures God produced, only vampires, a species born from his mating with the dead, could bear the divinity that belonged to God."
In fact, this could also be explained in terms of genetics.
How could a corpse's genes possibly fuse with his? A corpse's genes had no vitality.
All the other species could be seen as new species and new life born from the fusion of God's genes with those of other species. (You can think of God as a primordial life-form whose genes encompass those of every species, so he can mate with any species. Of course, I'm not a biology specialist, so I may have gotten some things wrong. Just understand the general idea.)
Vampires alone were more like life-forms with entirely God's genes, born from God's genes being nurtured in corpses.
In other words, all the other species were produced through natural mating, with an exchange of genes, while vampires alone were genetic clones.
Genetically speaking, vampires were exactly the same as God. They were little Gods.
"Vampires were too much like God, Adam. Or rather, they were exact copies of God. If you were the supreme God and created a species no different from yourself, yet possessed of an independent will, how would you regard them?"
A rare look of shock actually appeared on His Holiness the Pope's aged, lifeless face.
Even though he had known these things for a long time and had pondered them countless times, he was still full of shock as he spoke of them now.
Hearing the Pope's words, Archbishop Adam said without hesitation, "I would wipe them out!"
No god would like to create a whole group of things exactly like himself. This was not a bloodline being passed down; it was creating enemies that would be difficult for Him to deal with!
"That is why God disliked vampires, Adam."
His Holiness the Pope sighed deeply.
"That is also why Kuba, the vampire progenitor in these murals, bears the symbol of godhood. Vampires themselves can be considered copies of God.
"Naturally, they can possess divinity as well."
Archbishop Adam was deeply shaken by the Pope's explanation!
All their lives, they had been taught that vampires were unclean.
And now he was suddenly being told that the vampires they had always targeted and slaughtered were God's true children, practically no different from God himself. What was that supposed to mean?
Didn't that mean they had been slaughtering little Gods all along?
And if reality truly matched His Holiness the Pope's explanation, didn't that mean God truly existed?
Archbishop Adam's mouth felt dry. He opened it to say something, but his throat was so hoarse that he could not get a word out.
Fortunately, as a man in a high position and one of great ambition, Archbishop Adam recovered almost instantly. Still, his voice carried disbelief as he asked, "Your Holiness, if what you say is true, does that mean God really exists too?"
"Of course, Adam. He is right in front of you."
As His Holiness the Pope spoke, the cave the two were traveling through went from pitch-dark to bright as day in an instant.
After passing through the narrow opening, Archbishop Adam found himself before an enormous hollow deep within the mountain.
The immense cavern had hollowed out almost the entire mountain. Inside stood hundreds of Holy Knights, though he could not tell exactly how many, arranged in neat ranks.
These Holy Knights all seemed to be like the two at the cave entrance: they had not been activated for a long time, and their armor was covered in dust.
It was said that the Holy Judgment Order's five hundred Holy Knights were His Holiness the Pope's true foundation, but judging by what he saw now, there were no fewer than five hundred inactive Holy Knights here as well.
But the most eye-catching sight was not the Holy Knights in the cavern. It was what stood at its center.
A platform that seemed to be built of pure jade, richly religious in style and ten meters long and wide, stood in the center of the cavern.
Though called a platform, it looked more like a collecting pool with a circular hollow carved out of its center.
In the middle of the jade platform, a pale humanoid corpse hung from a cross that seemed to be made of white bone. It was over two meters tall, with a slender body and perfect proportions.
Although the corpse still had a human form, its perfect proportions and slender frame gave it a jarringly inhuman strangeness.
Combined with its exposed pale, delicate skin, the corpse's exquisitely perfect face still gave anyone who studied it for a moment a chilling sense of horror.
"G... G... God??!!!"
Archbishop Adam nearly lost his voice.