Archbishop Adam had considered that the Church's books might be true.
Archbishop Adam had also considered that ancient traces might exist in the real world to prove God's existence.
Archbishop Adam had even imagined that one day, during Mass at the Church, God might appear in a divine light.
But he had never dared imagine that one day, God would appear before him.
And a dead God, at that!
A strange humanoid creature had been nailed to a cross made of bone, and a long, white bone spike had been driven deep into his chest.
Thin streams of golden blood seeped from the pale humanoid creature's chest along the white bone spike, but the process was extremely slow. Even after all this time, not a single drop of golden blood had fallen onto the hollowed-out jade pedestal below.
Archbishop Adam seemed to have been frozen in place. Shock, fear, bewilderment, and even fascination filled his eyes as he stared fixedly at the body of God, with its seemingly perfect form, hanging high on the bone cross before him. He could not even react.
At this moment, putting it together with the mural he had just seen, how could he not know that the corpse before him was God, whom Kuba had killed in the air and Shenyin had hung on a cross to bake in the sun!
He had never expected the Church's books to be true, or that even God's corpse was in the Church's hands!
His Holiness the Pope looked a little better than him, but not by much.
The same fascination was mixed with fear, and the shock in his eyes was no less than Archbishop Adam's.
He had not seen it many times himself. In the more than a hundred years since he had taken over as Pope, he had only come here three times in total.
The first time, he had been brought in by the previous Pope, just like Archbishop Adam. The second time had been more than fifty years ago, when he had come to collect divine blood.
And today was the third time.
God was a god, and gods could not be directly beheld!
Even a dead God possessed immense power!
Archbishop Adam gazed raptly at God's body, nailed to the cross in the distance. But the longer he looked, the stronger the sense of dread in his heart grew. The longer he looked, the more his scalp tingled and the more frightened he became.
It felt like a lower lifeform standing before a higher one. Even looking at the higher lifeform was a desecration.
And the more closely Archbishop Adam looked, the stranger that perfect body became.
God's skin was pale and smooth, with no pores on its surface at all.
His body was completely naked, but there were no genitals to be seen. Even that area was smooth and bare.
His face was exquisite and perfect, so beautiful that it was neither male nor female. But he had no hair anywhere on his body, and his head was covered in smooth, tender white skin.
His chest seemed to still be rising and falling slightly...
Archbishop Adam snapped out of his fascination. Drenched in sweat, he looked once more at God, nailed to the cross.
This time, the corpse seemed to remain motionless, without the slightest sign of movement.
Archbishop Adam felt his hands begin to tremble.
He didn't think he could have been mistaken. He had definitely seen God's corpse rising and falling faintly just now.
"Adam!" His Holiness the Pope's voice jolted Adam out of the fear that had consumed him, bringing him back to his senses.
Only then did Archbishop Adam realize that his back was completely soaked, and even the fingers gripping the wheelchair had gone white and were trembling.
"Your Holiness, I just saw... God seemed to still be breathing!"
Archbishop Adam's voice trembled slightly.
He didn't know why, but looking at God's corpse on the cross filled him with a fear he could not suppress, a sense of inferiority like that of a lowly lifeform seeing a higher one. He could even sense an extremely dangerous presence from God's corpse.
This fear and wariness, carved into his genes, made him afraid to look at it any longer.
"That wasn't breathing, Adam. It was a manifestation of life! God is not dead. He is merely sealed." His Holiness the Pope had also looked away.
"Sealed? Not dead?"
"Yes, Adam. With the great power to create all things, how could God possibly die so easily?" His Holiness the Pope looked up at God's corpse, hanging high on the bone cross, and sighed deeply. "Do you remember 'Revival'?"
"I do, Your Holiness." Archbishop Adam no longer dared look at God's corpse. He shifted his gaze to the jade pedestal supporting the cross.
"Death was separated from the divine body; the deity shall never perish. The divine corpse hangs high upon a stake; the divine consciousness revives in Heaven. The messenger lays waste to the earth; Jonah is imprisoned in the sun. Shenyin hangs the divine corpse high; the Garden of Eden seals off Heaven."
"Even death was stripped from God's own body. How could he possibly die?"
Archbishop Adam was utterly stunned.
In that case, everything recorded in the Church's texts-God, Heaven, Hell, Shenyin, and Jonah-all existed!
Then this...
Archbishop Adam felt that even his Dao heart was becoming a little unstable.
He had originally thought he was about to become the most exalted person in the world, only for the Pope to tell him: don't be ridiculous, there are plenty of beings in this world who could crush you whenever they wanted.
The sense of loss was almost like plunging straight from Heaven to Hell. He even began, like Norton, to fear that a god might suddenly descend one day and kill him outright or destroy the world.
Just as even God would fear the vampires he had created, even the Church that worshipped God did not want God to actually exist!