Chapter 966: The Sin-Bearing Conception and the Birth of the Holy Son

The pews inside the church were packed tightly with believers.

These believers, called “faithful” by the people of Zhigucheng, wore varied attire—some in brocade and silk, others were dockworkers or poor residents of the city; some were drawn by the teachings of the Holy Church, others by fascination with Western machinery and alchemy, and still others were merely local ruffians seeking protection.

Yet now, all bowed their heads before the sacred triangle above the sanctuary.

The silver light from the topmost lamp had dimmed; Lao Guangming did not know this was a sign of sacrilege in the Holy Church.

The priest, clad in the crimson robe of an archbishop, held a silver inverted-triangle ornament against his nose. He lifted his head slightly at the sound of the church doors opening, revealing a face devoid of color.

Seeing Lao Guangming enter, the priest with the large nose opened his arms and said to the newcomer: “Welcome, my brother and sister!”

“Welcome into the embrace of the Holy Mother, welcome into our blood and bone…”

Lao Guangming frowned slightly: “Brother and sister? You’re a foreigner—my hair and skin are different!”

“Do you believe the Holy Mother created humanity and all things?”

The foreigner’s tone was gentle, as if to make one forget the silent, corpse-like believers slumped on the pews.

Lao Guangming carefully observed the believers on the pews—they sat motionless, as if dead.

Though he knew the church was haunted, this sight still chilled him—he had never imagined foreigners would turn on their own faithful. In daily life, they cherished these believers dearly!

He replied offhandedly to the priest: “The Holy Mother you speak of must be the Cauldron Mother among the Three Sacred Creators. Among the Three Sacred Creators, the Bright Lord sent forth spiritual light to become the souls of heaven and earth; the Mirror Lord opened the world and governed time and space; the Cauldron Mother shaped humanity and all things. If the Cauldron Mother is your Holy Mother, then I have no doubt!”

“Don’t be tense!” The priest spoke fluent Central Plains Mandarin, smiling: “I am not one of those rigid minds in the Church who deny that the Eastern Cauldron Mother is the Holy Mother—they merely seek to monopolize the interpretation of doctrine. I have no such intentions. Before the Great Sacred One, we are humble and must obey, not defy or dominate.”

“Thus, the Holy Church elevates the Lamp Father—who granted humans free will—as the supreme deity, reducing the Holy Mother and Mirror Lord to mere incarnations of the Lamp Father, fabricating the lie of the Trinity.”

“Yet the higher-ups know well: the Holy Church’s Trinity is a lie. Each of the three supreme deities possesses their own will.”

“And their obedience to the Lamp Father? Merely to usurp divinity! The Holy Church is a sect of traitors. Ever since the Savior discovered the Lamp Father’s secret—that the supreme deity who sent forth spiritual light to become all souls in the world willed us to stay far from Him—that our essence is one with Him, yet we cannot understand each other, cannot unite in spirit—the Holy Church long ago recognized this, calling that barrier the Wall of the Heart.”

“They forged myths: that in the paradise of the spirit realm, we were once part of the Father’s radiance, and it was the Fallen Mother who made us drink the blood of original sin, severing us from the Father and casting us down as mortals!”

“This is the doctrine of original sin!”

“It represents the source of human bodily desire, the barrier of spiritual light, and the impurities binding our true soul—we are born guilty.”

“They say so…”

“But they long knew the Wall of the Heart was not caused by the Holy Mother’s tainted blood—it was the Lamp Father’s own will, which separated us from Him. What a stern yet loving father, driving his children out of the house!”

“And the Holy Mother, in her maternal nature, embraces us without distinction.”

“Thus, mystics believe our selfhood arises from the soul’s dominance—the Lamp Father granted us free will, allowing us to become ‘I.’ Hence, across the entire Western Continent, people revere the spirit.”

“Supernatural power is spiritual; free will is spiritual; noble virtue is spiritual.”

“What of our flesh? It is merely the source of corruption, the root of desire, the embodiment of original sin!”

Lao Guangming frowned slightly, gripping the gunpowder at his waist: “Why are you telling me this?”

The foreign bishop remained courteous, smiling: “No wonder you are the most beloved people of the Lamp Father—you never care about the myths of creation or the secrets of the three creators. You revere them without belief, as if their creation of you were self-evident. You regard them as ancestors, weaving them into the bloodline of your civilization. In your culture, the three creators are more like ancestors than gods.”

There was a faint trace of envy in the bishop’s tone; he shifted his cadence: “But our civilization has been disturbed by the Savior’s preaching and the Holy Mother school, leaving us with too much curiosity and inquiry into our origins.”

“To depict the three creators, to draw near them—that is our civilization itself.”

“Yet the closer we draw to the Lamp Father, the clearer it becomes: He rejects us. Those who revere free will never understand—the will that grants free will must itself be free! The nearer we are to Him, the farther we drift.”

The bishop lowered his head: “So what truly shapes us? Is pure free will truly meaningful?”

“The Lamp Father never guided or directed us. Everything we have on earth—our love, our desires, our cravings—springs from that original sin. To seek where we came from, to attain true ‘love,’ if anything deserves our praise, it is our ‘Mother’—who bestowed upon us the first ‘original sin!’”

The organ’s sound suddenly surged, its brass pipes resonating with sacred harmony.

A grand, soaring hymn rose from behind the bishop—a choir clad in black robes, their central figure holding a silver chalice, flanked by others bearing crimson candles, then mirrors that reflected their images.

Upon the altar, their reflections multiplied in the mirrors, as if a world were unfolding.

“Exalted, Most Good, Love and Fertility—our Mother.”

“Pour the blood into the cup…”

“Let us be born!”

“Sin through love…”

“Fallen within the Father’s light.”

Above the altar, the great silver triangle suddenly lost one corner, rotated, and hung upside down upon the altar; the silver lamp fell from the top, landing below, where the chalice and mirrors now supported the inverted triangle.

Thus, an inverted triangle hung above the altar—like a cup, like a womb!

“Original sin! Original sin! Original sin!”

“The desire and evil flowing in our blood, the Mother’s call—our blood shall reunite, we shall return to your womb!”

Facing Lao Guangming, the bishop opened his arms.

“Let our blood merge as one, return to the Mother’s embrace! Let all become brothers and sisters—all evil shall melt within the blood.”

“We shall become divine offspring once more…”

All the believers on the pews rose and extended their hands toward Lao Guangming.

Only then did Lao Guangming see—they had all become corpses, their flesh melting away.

“Death alone can expel the Lamp Father’s will.”

“Original sin alone can unite us as one.”

“Mother, Mother gave us life; Father, Father tormented us… Original sin, original sin—the supreme, most virtuous original sin!”

The bishop lifted the silver chalice, within which flowed red blood. Amid the soaring hymn, he drank the blood.

His crimson robe slowly split open; his skin cracked with bloody fissures; countless hands emerged from his flesh, tethered to muscle; behind him, dozens of arms thrust forth, lifting him high.

Those arms encircled his head like a sacred halo.

In that moment, he became divine—the “Holy Son!”

“I have become the Complete One!”

The bishop proclaimed aloud: “I have completed the Conception Rite—I am the true child of the Holy Mother!”

The Original Sin Bishop stood atop the sanctuary.

“You are merely fallen into original sin, usurping the Lamp Father’s light!”

A voice roared from outside the church—a priest clad in black robes entered, raising a crystal pendant in his hand.

He held the holy relic toward the Original Sin Bishop: “Mynor! You have finally fallen! You voluntarily resigned as Cardinal of the Papacy and came to the Eastern Continent, which just violently expelled the Church—I knew this day would come.”

“But you have desecrated the Holy Mother. Perhaps from the moment you proposed revising the Holy Mother’s doctrine at the Synod, this day was destined.”

The bishop’s expression remained gentle: “It is not I who have fallen—it is you.”

“The Lamp Father rejected us, so we have only the Holy Mother. The Holy Son shall descend—but it shall be all of us. We are all the Holy Mother’s children; only the Savior is not!”

“Judgment Court Xinosai’er, I am now the Complete One!”

The Original Sin Bishop raised his right hand; the countless arms behind him raised theirs in unison, index fingers pointing at Lao Guangming and the others: “Beneath the Heavenly Empress Palace, I shall reclaim the Holy Mother’s relics, melt all blood into one. Even if you reject me, I still love you, my brothers and sisters!”

“All wars, all evil, all atrocities shall vanish; all desires shall be fulfilled.”

“We shall become one—the Holy Son shall descend!”

A wisp of darkness appeared at his fingertip, then surged forth, engulfing everything, sweeping toward the two.

Lao Guangming felt his blood boiling—every fiber of his flesh seemed to gain its own will, bowing toward the Original Sin Bishop. At that moment, he should have surrendered all flesh and blood to the bishop’s will—but the Black Tai Sui he had ingested refused.

Lao Guangming roared and turned to flee.

Facing a fifth-stage grand master, one step away from becoming an Immortal Saint?

He was not mad!

Before the darkness swallowed him, the black-robed priest’s crystal pendant suddenly blazed with blinding light, tearing through the dark—but in that instant, a hand pierced his chest. In a flash, the black-robed priest lost all capacity to resist.

Before the Holy Son who contained all original sin—even another Complete One—

The Judgment Court’s “Complete One” meant “Sinless One.”

The Original Sin Sect’s “Complete One” meant one reborn from the Holy Mother’s body, infused with original sin’s blood.

The difference in mystical depth was immense!

Instant kill.

Had Lao Guangming not, before fleeing, acted on the principle that an enemy’s enemy is a friend and pulled the black-robed priest along, the priest would have been absorbed into the river of blood at first glance.

Watching the two escape, the bishop’s expression remained calm. The only thing he could not have foreseen was the presence behind Lao Guangming.

“Sacred flesh?”

“The brothers and sisters of the Eastern Continent are indeed the most cherished by Mother and Father—not only the Most Sacred Bone Chalice, but even humanity’s original flesh resides here. Indeed, humanity’s original flesh contains the seven original sins—not the sinless body the Church claims!”

“Here lies the original flesh and the Holy Mother’s bone chalice—I shall here absorb the blood of all my brothers and sisters, completing the Holy Son’s birth ritual!”

“The age has reached its end; the long ladder to divinity is about to fall—I shall stand atop it, bringing all my brothers and sisters back to the Holy Mother!”

The bishop entered the church’s basement, where countless coffins lay. Behind him stood a dense crowd of believers who had become corpses.

Since arriving in the East to preach, every Eucharist among the faithful included a silver chalice and wine.

No one knew the wine contained trace amounts of blood medicine. Over the years, those who died of hunger or thirst, and those still alive, had all come here.

Conception Rite: Shed the Lamp Father’s light, abandon free will, sink the soul into the abyss, fuse the flesh of at least ten thousand into one whole, contain perfect original sin’s blood.

Requirement: Use ten thousand beings, living or dead, to bear original sin.

During the rite, drink the perfect original sin’s blood, embrace death, sink the soul into the abyss, then resurrect as the Original Sin Holy Son.

Conception Notification: Declare to others: I have become the Complete One; announce the birth of the Holy Son!

The Original Sin Sect disbelieved in free will—they believed free will was merely the Lamp Father’s denial of all. They held that evil did not arise from bodily desire, but from the soul’s creation of ‘separation’ among selves.

All suffering stems from the sense of separation.

Thus, only when all abandon their souls and their flesh merges into one, reborn anew by the Holy Mother,

will there be no distinction between self and other, love will have no barrier, and evil shall vanish.

The bishop recalled all the evil he had witnessed in the world—war, suffering—and tears finally streamed down his face.

He offered up all memories, all souls, with his own hands.

Their physical desires, their original sin, melted into his blood and became one with him.

At this moment, the bishop finally confirmed it.

“Without souls, we still exist; all are children of the Mother, and each can love others as they love themselves.”

“I feel it! I finally feel ‘love’!”

He turned to look behind him, at the dense crowd of believers, behind whom countless hands reached out toward them.

He grasped the believers’ hands, his own hands also gripping the hands behind him; at that moment, they became one!

“I will bring this love to everyone…”

The bishop swore.

He looked lovingly at the dense mass of corpses behind him—they were all part of him.

Then the bishop looked up at the canal within the basement, which connected to the Haihe River and served as the church’s water source.

The bishop opened the sluice gate, and the dense rows of corpses stepped one by one into the river.

Against the current of the Haihe River, toward the densely networked Zhigucheng…

In the coffins, in the church, nine hundred and ninety-nine had merged with the bishop.

Nine thousand corpses spread along the waterways in all directions, carrying fragments of the bishop, extending his presence, guiding the true birth of the Son who would unite all humanity!