Chapter 249: The Divinity Within Human Nature

According to the Sinful Son's temperament, it should have torn up the Feiguang contract and crushed Feiguang and the others in the same motion, but its hand had just reached toward the Iron Armor Team when it suddenly retracted, its gaze shrinking as it glanced upward at the upper floors of the Hymn Tower.

Schultz's voice rang out, "You shouldn't have only this much ability."

Feiguang and Chiyeh's faces were grim; they could feel Schultz's words weren't meant for them, but for the powerful figure behind them.

Clearly, Schultz had never regarded them as worthy from the start.

As top players of the Wasteland Realm, when had they ever endured such humiliation? Since Schultz wanted to play, they would play a bigger game.

Chiyeh flipped his palm, and a tiny golden tree sprouted from his palm, bearing three emerald-green leaves.

Though called a tree, closer inspection revealed it was merely a small branch tip—yet even this scrap of a scrap emitted a grand aura disproportionate to its size.

For this scrap came from the legendary World Tree, Yggdrasil.

In myth, the World Tree connects the Nine Realms, its trunk bearing "Midgard," the realm of humanity; even the tiniest branch of such a primordial tree must not be taken lightly.

This branch fragment was the Iron Armor Team's final trump card.

Releasing it meant Feiguang and Chiyeh were going all-in—but not with their own lives.

As Chiyeh manipulated it, the three leaves drifted free and settled on the foreheads of the three subordinates trailing behind them.

Before they could react, their eyes glazed over and they lost consciousness.

Their pupils widened, gradually stained pale gold; within a few breaths, their irises turned entirely pale gold, their bodies reshaped by the leaves into two men and one woman of differing physiques.

Most striking was a giant over two and a half meters tall, his biceps larger than an ordinary man's head; he wore a brass helmet stamped with an iris emblem, gripped a massive axe, and crackled with lightning.

Wu Chang was also a lightning user; his residual Thunder Scripture made him hypersensitive to electrical energy—he could sense from afar that the lightning attack from the contract had originated from the brass-helmeted giant.

Unsurprisingly, the thunderstorm that nearly killed him earlier was also his doing.

The brass-helmeted giant was none other than Perun, the Thunder God of the secret organization.

The other male in the trio was an old acquaintance to Wu Chang—he wore a full suit, sporting a salesperson's fake smile; though the suit's fabric, craftsmanship, and tailoring were top-tier, he somehow made it radiate the cheapness of an insurance salesman.

Only Mercury, who had once elbowed Wu Chang from afar, possessed such a distinctive aura.

The final woman in the trio had long golden hair, wore a simple white gown, and leaned on a long wooden staff coiled with a giant serpent.

A single serpent on the staff was the symbol of a healer; paired with her demeanor, her role was clearly the team's medic.

The trio's arrival made Wu Chang frown deeply.

Each of them radiated dense, solid divinity—they were clearly stable lower deities with the power to ascend to mid-tier deities.

Such power should place them at the pinnacle of the Abyss's second layer; they shouldn't have been able to enter the intermediate layer at all.

Yet here they were, not only inside, but their displayed strength far surpassed the helmeted man in the underground shelter, approaching that of the Mother of Desire summoned via divine descent ritual.

This meant the three leaves from the World Tree branch possessed a simplified divine descent effect; though individually a single leaf might not rival the Wood Carving of Wuqu Star Lord, together their value was equal or greater.

The Wood Carving of Wuqu Star Lord was an A-rank consumable; pouring this much manpower and cost into it, even if they gained an S-rank item, it would still be a loss.

What exactly was the secret organization behind the Iron Armor Team searching for?

Below on the square, the Sinful Son faced the sudden appearance of three powerful foes with no fear; it roared skyward, its aura intensifying.

Its black robe flowed like liquid, its divinity growing denser; beneath the robe, nine withered arms burst forth, lashing directly toward the trio.

Having been casually crushed through the contract earlier, Perun had simmered with rage; now free from its confines, he could finally let loose—and he intended to settle the score with the Sinful Son.

"None of you move—I'll handle it!"

Perun swung his axe, charging upward against the arms; lightning crackled along the blade, and the axe cleaved through the withered limbs as easily as snapping twigs, due to lightning's inherent suppression of evil.

A few swings severed all nine arms; unsatisfied, Perun gripped the axe handle with both hands, spun once in place, and hurled the axe like a discus.

The axe screamed through the air, thunder exploding behind it, and slammed into the Sinful Son's chest, piercing clean through its massive body.

Perun gestured, and the axe arced through the air, returning to his grasp.

Watching the Sinful Son stagger backward, clutching its chest and crashing into a high-rise, Perun did not stop.

He let out a boisterous laugh, swung his axe sideways, and lightning tore through space, carving a charred fissure in the air.

Ding-dong. Ding-dong.

With the sound of bells, two massive rams, each over five meters tall at the shoulder, pulled a two-wheeled chariot from the fissure.

Perun leapt onto the chariot, pointed at the Sinful Son, and shouted, "Ha!"

The rams obeyed, galloping forward, stepping on air as if it were solid ground, carrying Perun through the sky.

As they ran, the two rams transformed into spectral forms of lightning, resembling twin spheres of thunder.

The Sinful Son had just stabilized itself against the building behind it, still reeling from the axe strike, when the ram-chariot was already before it.

The chariot slammed into its chest with a muffled boom; in that instant, every citizen of Wildo City felt their heart become a small drum, as if someone had struck it with a mallet—many nearly had their hearts shattered.

Weaker residents bled from nose and ears just from hearing the sound; many patients in ICU were instantly killed by the thud.

Even citizens merely hearing the noise suffered such effects—imagine the damage inflicted on the Sinful Son, who bore the full impact.

The two rams crushed the Sinful Son's chest inward; the liquid black robe over its chest evaporated under the chariot's lightning, revealing the Sinful Son's withered, pitch-black body beneath.

Its thoracic vertebrae shattered; its upper body folded forward, its head dangling. Perun swung his axe, severing the Sinful Son's head clean off.

"Akso, act."

As the Sinful Son's head hit the ground, the woman with the serpent staff, Akso, swiftly approached and tapped the top of the head with her staff, instantly freezing its struggles; Mercury followed immediately, pressing a contract against the Sinful Son's forehead and sealing the head inside.

The Sinful Son was not Xingtian—it could not fight on with nipples as eyes and navel as mouth.

Its body immediately withered and collapsed slowly to the ground.

The Sinful Son, which had triggered dimensional ascension and appeared invincible before Feiguang and the others, was utterly powerless against Perun, slain in two strikes.

This was the gap between native deities of the Wasteland Realm and true lower deities of the Rational Realm. Perun hovered in midair atop his chariot, gazing at Schultz atop the Hymn Tower, sneering:

"See that? This is the difference between mortals and gods. Hand over the Omniscient Crystal—it's not something you can wield."

Though the Sinful Son had been easily slain, Schultz remained calm; he pushed forward, turning the floor-to-ceiling window before him into powder, then stepped out the window—his foot landed firmly on empty air, as if stepping on solid ground.

He walked step by step away from the Hymn Tower, arriving above the square that served as the arena.

Meanwhile, from Wu Chang's temporary administrator perspective, the other end of the Hymn Corporation's dimension had pierced through the intermediate layer and connected to the barrier of the Rational Realm.

At this moment, the Saint Song Corporation's plane had become a pillar of the manifest world.

Wu Chang snapped out of his daze and looked at Schulz, who stood in midair, his mind murmuring.

He had told Booker and the others before: whether it was a Degenerate Monster or a Primal Weapon wielder, the fragility of the physical body was their greatest weakness; if one could break through their divinity, they would become extremely vulnerable.

Even a hundred-meter-tall Son of Sin had been beheaded by Peren with a single axe blow—how could this cheap cousin of his dare get so close to Peren without fear?

Schulz met Peren's gaze and replied to Peren's earlier words.

"I see. The gap is smaller than I imagined."

!

Peren laughed bitterly with anger, raised his axe, and cursed: "I hope your head is as hard as your mouth."

Before Peren could move, Schulz reached into his chest and pulled out a black crystal shaped like a double prism, asking:

"Is this the thing you're looking for?"

At the sight of the black crystal, the trio's eyes widened—especially Peren, who immediately drove his vehicle closer and reached out to snatch it.

"Give it to me!"

Schulz sneered; the crystal in his hand vanished in a flash, then reappeared embedded in his forehead.

"But it tells me it doesn't want to leave you."

Peren swung his great axe at Schulz. "You're asking for death!"

Schulz was merely flesh and blood, his physical strength comparable to that of a level-ten player, like all other Saint Song executives—he offered no resistance and was instantly reduced to ash by Peren's thunder.

Peren shattered Schulz's body, his power deliberately avoiding the Omniscient Crystal; he reached for the floating crystal—but instead of falling after its master's death, the Omniscient Crystal now emitted a brilliant white light and shattered along with it.

Peren grasped at empty air. "No!"

He thought Schulz had deliberately provoked him into destroying the Omniscient Crystal. As he struggled to explain to his boss, Mercury below shouted:

"Peren, the Omniscient Crystal isn't that fragile—watch your surroundings!"

Hearing Mercury's warning, Peren looked around and realized Schulz's body had not turned to fine carbon dust under the lightning—it had become fine white-gold powder.

The powder scattered with the wind, floating in the air, coalescing into a faint white light.

On the 100th floor of Saint Song Corporation, Wu Chang noticed movement in the glass jar at the room's center—the liquid inside rapidly drained away, vanishing in an instant.

He turned to the window and saw the vast quantities of white-gold liquid stored in the room now transformed into white-gold mist, spreading toward the direction where Schulz's body had shattered.

The instant the two mists merged, a new divinity began forming in the air.

Unlike the Son of Sin, when people saw the Son of Sin's body, they saw the hidden ugliness within their own hearts, the deepest malice of the entire world—gaze too long, and their minds would be corrupted.

The divinity within the white light was different: when people saw the white light, they saw all of humanity's noble qualities—courage, justice, mercy, sincerity…

Gaze a few seconds longer, and one felt an inner warmth, a stirring force rising from the soul.

Though this divinity had not yet fully condensed, the power it contained was already stronger than that of the Son of Sin.

"Don't give him a chance!" Mercury drew his two-headed serpent staff and unleashed a skill toward the sky.

Peren also sensed danger—he drove the Ram War Chariot through the air, wildly charging while gathering Thunder, trying to obliterate the white-gold mist.

But no matter how hard they attacked, the white-gold mist remained untouched, steadily coalescing.

In barely ten seconds, a white humanoid silhouette appeared in the air—then it plummeted violently and merged with the dead body of the Son of Sin on the ground.

In that instant, the air of Wildo City seemed to freeze; even Peren and the others held their breath, staring at the overlapping, black-and-white fused figure.

Inside the 100th floor of Saint Song Corporation, Wu Chang swallowed hard. In his gaze, every person in Wildo City now extended black-and-white threads representing good and evil, pouring into the newly formed black-and-white humanoid on the ground.

A memory of Xiao En surged into his mind—long ago, Schulz had spoken to him about human nature.

Schulz said that across all world cultures, some believed humans were born with original sin, that human nature was inherently evil; others believed humans were born good, like blank paper, with sin gradually emerging from later contamination.

Infants represent the moment when differences between people are smallest—thus, the innate virtues and sins humans carry are humanity's greatest common denominator.

In the memory, Xiao En could not understand what Schulz meant and pressed for clarification, but Schulz only smiled and gave no answer.

Now Wu Chang understood the meaning of those words.

As a collective term, humanity recognizes itself as one species only because there exists some shared quality among people—a spiritual commonality beyond mere biology.

This commonality is what Schulz called humanity's greatest common denominator—and it is precisely this quality that defines what it means to be human.

If humanity could become divine, then the divinity within human nature could not be separated from the definition of being human—that is, good and evil, virtue and sin.

The Hymn Project began in Wildo City precisely for this moment.

Through the deliberate manipulation of Saint Song Corporation and its shareholders, factors such as wealth disparity, survival pressure, Degenerate Monsters, and the Saint Song Corporation's "Light of the Underclass" pushed every citizen of Wildo City toward extremes of virtue and sin.

Within Saint Song Corporation, extreme virtue and sin served as raw materials for Degenerate Monster and Primal Weapon experiments.

Outside Saint Song Corporation, ordinary citizens' virtue and sin made them more susceptible to influence from the Son of Sin or Schulz himself, more likely to resonate with the final product of the Hymn Project.

Through the commonality between people—virtue and sin—Schulz linked every human in Wildo City, fusing his will with all their wills, achieving a kind of soul synchronization.

The giant humanoid on the ground took on Schulz's form; the alternating black and white hues transformed into Schulz's original skin tone.

At this moment, he truly mastered the divinity within human nature, becoming the artificial god of the plan—the true Hymn.

(End of Chapter)