Chapter 68: Having Seen the Viceroy, Why Do You Not Kneel?

Mong saw the alien demigod, a monstrous entity crouched beneath the tower-like subspace engine.

Mong nearly vomited from the psychic shock.

It was a colossal beast nearly six meters tall, with six limbs and a tail, its skin a deep violet, covered in Cengcenglengjiaodejidingzhijiaqiao .

Its two massive, deformed heads were elongated triangles, each side of the skull bearing eyes as sharp as if carved by a blade.

Those eyes brimmed with intense malice, hatred, corruption, and greed.

Its powerful, lizard-like legs crouched atop a massive pipe beneath the subspace engine; two three-fingered claws, capable of tearing apart vehicles, plunged into the metal piping, while the other two spread wide like wings beside it.

This creature did not seem a product of this world, nor any life capable of arising in the galaxy.

It seemed a profound malice from deeper, darker voids, a mouthpiece of some vast will within the hive.

The instant Mong saw the monster, icy fear gripped him, his legs trembling uncontrollably.

Others around him stood frozen, their minds hammered by overwhelming terror.

Most had their mouths gaping wide, paralyzed into silent screams by sheer dread.

This was a gap in biological hierarchy—the monster was not something a mortal could hope to match.

Mong even entertained the thought of fleeing; he felt utterly powerless.

He felt as if he had returned to childhood, when his horns had just begun to grow.

His mother, gone mad, had charged at them with pliers and a cleaver.

Malkit had clung desperately to her thighs, his head bleeding, his horns severed by her blows.

Mong had hidden behind a cabinet, helpless, watching his brother being tortured, weeping silently.

The slug-like parasite in his chest writhed, its mild pain stimulating his nerves and pulling him slightly back to clarity.

No, no.

This time he was not powerless.

Mong bit his lip, and foul blood trickled down his chin.

If he could infect the monster’s genetic sequence even as it injected its corruption into him—

Mong steadied himself, suppressing the fear within.

But most of those around him had reached their breaking point.

Mong was certain: the moment one person broke and fled, the entire crowd would collapse into chaos.

“SILENCE!!!”

A voice saturated with potent psychic power blasted through speakers across the entire crypt.

Mong felt his inner terror instantly suppressed.

He turned toward the source and saw the Four-Armed God Emperor’s High Priest standing beneath the Viceroy’s claw, raising his staff high.

“This is the First Prophet, the Living Saint of the Four-Armed God Emperor, the core and genetic ancestor of our lineage!”

Intense psychic power, fused with the hive-will of gene-thieves, pressed upon everyone present.

“Having seen the Viceroy, why do you not kneel?”

Through the speakers held by the evangelists, the voice, thick with hive-will, pierced every mind.

Faces around Mong grew vacant; even Mong felt the world before him blur.

The dark crypt transformed into a sacred church lit with incense; the glow upon the subspace engine became radiant stained-glass light.

The Four-Armed God Emperor’s High Priest became a holy priest; the gene-thieves scattered around became the Emperor’s Death Angels.

And the six-limbed beast, six meters tall, standing upon the pipe, began to radiate holiness.

The pipe beneath it became a throne draped in crimson velvet.

Two of its four claws sprouted pure white feathers, becoming angelic wings wreathed in divine radiance.

Its violet skin turned snow-white; its triangular head became handsome; its chitinous skull sprouted brilliant golden hair.

In an instant, the horrific monster became a lofty angel, seated upon the crimson throne, wings spread.

Those eyes, once filled with malice, hunger, greed, and cunning, now softened into gentleness and sanctity, as if brimming with compassion for all living things.

An angel! A seraphim watches over us!

Mong was moved to the brink of tears.

Angel, Lord of our pure sacrifice—

Bless those who are deformed.

Accept those who bear horns.

Forgive those who are profane.

To be born with sin is to be born with blessing.

Your mercy shall erase all divisions, unite us as one, and scour our base sins.

Praise the sacrifice of our Lord; we too shall stand with this noble sacrifice.

A swarm of bloated, rotting, grotesque little creatures shrieked urgently in Mong’s mind.

They told Mong that the creature before him was merely a shameless, greedy worm.

It was not the offspring of the cursed, not that perfect angel, not the Ninth.

The parasite in Mong’s chest tore at his organs, jolting him fully awake.

Mong clutched his chest, gritting his teeth as he looked ahead.

He had walked half the length of the crypt in a half-dream state; the six-meter-tall gene-thief Viceroy now loomed just before him.

A chill rose within Mong.

The psychic power he had just felt was too immense—it could not have been generated by the gene-thief High Priest alone.

The Viceroy must have amplified his psychic power through some means, drawing upon the entire clan’s hive-will.

Just as Lyen Rus had said.

Mong recalled the words Zhou Yun had spoken last night.

The gene-thieves formed a hive-will through psychic links.

Under this will’s control, they were deluded and cognitively distorted, forever believing themselves true humans and devout believers.

The gene-thief Viceroy was the core and controller of the entire hive-will, the nexus of all psychic links.

Kill the gene-thief Viceroy, and the delusions and cognitive distortions clinging to all gene-thieves would briefly vanish.

Faced with their own mutated bodies and remembering their mad, profane acts, they would descend into chaos.

The opportunity lay within.

But after taking two steps, Mong noticed something wrong.

Huh? Strange—why had the people ahead stopped before reaching the gene-thief Viceroy?

Why didn’t the gene-thief Viceroy seem about to inject corruption?

Why were fewer and fewer people ahead of me?

Mong blinked, bewildered.

As the crowd ahead thinned, he began to see clearly.

Before the crowd, before the gene-thief Viceroy, lay a massive pool.

The pool was filled with foul, gray-yellow viscous fluid, occasionally bubbling with organic gases.

Those bewitched by psychic power drifted forward with serene expressions, falling into the pool.

Their flesh, skin, organs, and bones dissolved the moment they touched the fluid, turning into pure biological sludge that merged into the pool.

Mong held his breath, staring in disbelief at the pool’s contents.

Within the biological sludge crouched a monstrous figure, even more insectoid and far larger than the gene-thief Viceroy.

The figure was stretching its four blade-like limbs within the pool.

(End of Chapter)