Chapter 663: Whose Finger Did You Say?

"Those were already ours to begin with." Cheng Shi sighed and was about to say "Fine, let's leave it at that" — but Qin Xin beat him to it:

"Deal! A pleasure doing business!"

The moment this Torchbearer founder heard Shi Lolin's wish to protect the Shanty Area, his heart had already been swayed. Seeing that Cheng Shi still wouldn't relent, he stepped in and accepted the partnership first.

Cheng Shi blinked, not particularly surprised. He hadn't expected the one who'd been playing bad cop to suddenly switch to good cop — while he, the good cop, got "whitewashed" in comparison.

Well, whatever. It's not like he had a reputation worth protecting.

Cheng Shi smiled, then looked at Qin Xin with a teasing grin:

"What — 'guarding beauty' triggered your keyword?"

The remark was intended as a harmless jab, but for some reason, Qin Xin's expression froze the instant he heard it. A flash of barely perceptible shock crossed his eyes — but he lowered his gaze and concealed it before anyone noticed. Then he looked up again, smiling as he nodded:

"Life isn't easy for anyone. It's rare to meet someone who thinks of others before themselves. A moment of soft-heartedness — forgive me."

So rather than saying Shi Lolin was "guarding beauty," it was more accurate to call her simply devout.

But arguing the point served no purpose. The Torchbearers already walked a hard enough road. They deserved to find comfort where they could — especially on the Land of Hope, where the moral climate had only grown more degraded. Acts of "self-sacrifice" were vanishingly rare.

Cheng Shi understood their hardship well, so he didn't press the topic further.

He smiled casually and turned to Mo Rabic. With Shi Lolin's situation settled, it was time to ask these two wise men what this so-called finger actually was.

By now, Mo Rabic had sorted out his thoughts. He could see that from today onward — no, perhaps forever — he and Allendor would never again be masters of their own fate. They could only dance to others' tunes. Yet the dream of faith in his heart wouldn't let him abandon his experiment. So, inspired by Shi Lolin's example, this Folly wise man made the wisest decision since they'd been discovered:

Cooperate! Proactively cooperate!

And the first step of that cooperation was showing sincerity to the three people who now held power over their lives.

Mo Rabic reached into his shirt and produced a small metal box. Under the shocked and furious gaze of Allendor, he pushed aside his partner's obstructing arm, withdrew the finger — barely two and a half segments long — and said with utmost gravity:

"This is it. This is the most critical instrument in the Divinity extraction experiment — its most essential component. Only with this can the muddled, unidentified Divinity be refined from the Abyss Colorful Crystal. And only this can classify and separate the distorted Divinity.

When our fathers were first exiled, they did manage to bring down a fair number of Crystal fragments. Thanks to those, we've been able to continuously improve the experiment over the years. But... materials run out eventually. After exhausting the last Crystal shard, we had no choice but to venture out and find a new source."

"Mo Rabic, you're a traitor!" Allendor erupted, pointing at his companion and roaring: "We swore an oath — we would never reveal the core of this experiment! You can show them, you can demonstrate for them, but you absolutely must not tell them everything!

This experiment belongs to us! It's the only experiment that can attract His attention and summon Him! You've broken your oath — you've betrayed Him!"

"I have not!" Mo Rabic replied calmly. "This is my final effort toward earning His audience. Allendor, I'm not afraid of death. I'm only afraid of dying before I have the chance to witness this come to fruition. And now, I believe that with their help, we can accomplish it all — complete the experiment that not even our fathers managed to.

We need a massive quantity of Abyss Colorful Crystal to succeed. And right now, they're the only ones who can provide that volume."

"The Abyss Colorful Crystal is still in the Proxy Hand's possession!"

"Excuse me — if I may interject: it's temporarily. Temporarily in the Proxy Hand's possession.

They're called the Proxy Hand, after all. The meaning shouldn't be hard to grasp — they're temporarily proxying as our warehouse manager.

When we go to collect, the goods naturally become ours."

With that, Cheng Shi offered a friendly smile and gestured for them to continue.

But the interrupted pair could no longer muster the emotional momentum from before. Allendor seemed to have come to terms with Mo Rabic's decision. He faltered, his eyes dimming, and said nothing more.

With no one blocking him, Mo Rabic continued sharing.

"Since the Tower of Logic first began observing the Abyssal Volcano, its eruption frequency has been generally stable — though the intervals are immensely long, often measured in centuries.

Because the Underworld contains vast quantities of resources that don't exist on the surface, the Erudition Presidium never gave up researching the Abyssal Volcano. Their vision was to transform this continuously erupting volcano into a spatial corridor that ordinary people could use to travel underground, allowing them to deploy massive labor forces to extract Underworld resources.

However, the Void Energetics Department repeatedly failed in their spatial research. No scholar could stabilize the Abyssal Volcano's spatial structure. Instead, it was the Creation Alchemy Department that, during peripheral research on the Abyssal Volcano's byproducts, discovered the Abyss Colorful Crystal containing distorted Divinity — and through it, found a door waiting to be pushed open toward refining Divinity.

But the door was too heavy. Up until the day our fathers were exiled, every scholar involved had failed to find any method to open it...

Yet now, after years of underground experimentation and refinement, that door has been opened — no, not by us alone, but by all the Creation Alchemy scholars across the generations — forced open the tiniest crack!

We've found the method to gather the distorted Divinity. And that method is..."

Mo Rabic raised the box once more and declared, word by solemn word:

"This finger! A finger taken from the great leader of the Creation Alchemy Department — Zangier!"

"?????"

Who?

Did he just say who?

Cheng Shi was thunderstruck. His pupils contracted as his mind reeled.

Both Torchbearers had clearly heard this name before as well. The Blind One's brow furrowed: "The Zangier who presided over the Stars Dagger?"

"The very same!

Only a genius of his caliber could have conceived such a fantastical experiment to steal Divinity from the gods. And we merely followed his lead — learned his method of slicing open the gods' pockets — and cut a slit in the Stars Dagger itself, stealing a small segment of the finger that the greatest thief of all used to cut those divine pockets!"

"..."

"..."

"..."

Cheng Shi's mind shook like an earthquake. He was utterly floored.

'What is this — the one who steals shall have stolen from him in return?'

'Well, well, well — so this is what Truth was really like all along.'

'Oh, right. Now... they go by Folly.'