Chapter 164: Defining Holy Light · Rebirth

Ange gathered the faith essence into his arms: "Mine."

"Yes, yes, yes, it's yours. How come you're acting like a little angel now? Even though it's yours, they don't know who you are, so the offerings went to the wrong place. This power slipped away through the Light Gods' faith essence network. You intercepted it just now, which essentially means you stole the Light Gods' faith. Understand?" Lord Nai Ge said helplessly.

This was a very serious matter. The foundation of a god was faith essence. Stealing another god's faith essence was like digging out the corner of their wall — that would spark a divine war to the death.

Ange tilted his head, then suddenly let out an "Awooo!" toward the distance. Before long, the little angel came running over, arms held out flat, its great wings spread wide, pattering along.

An angel — and still you say it's not an apostle of Light? The surrounding believers went into an even greater frenzy. Endless streams of faith essence gathered together, keeping Ange terribly busy — grabbing here, grabbing there, not letting a single drop slip through.

When the little angel ran up to him, Ange stuffed a great big clump of faith essence into its hands.

The little angel blinked its eyes, clutching the faith essence in its hands, looking at Ange in confusion.

"Awooo!" Ange made a biting gesture.

The little angel suddenly understood and took a bite out of the faith essence.

The little angel used to be nothing but a skeleton wrapped in skin and flesh. But on that night, it took a direct hit of Holy Light Radiance from an enemy Holy Spirit Angel. The power of Holy Light acted upon its holy remains, evaporating its skin and flesh, reshaping it anew, and restoring it into a true Holy Spirit Angel.

Lately, the little zombie didn't even want to play with it anymore — one touch and its skin and flesh would sizzle and burn.

A true Holy Spirit naturally wouldn't be harmed by the Light's faith power. The little angel bit into it, and with a slurp, sucked it right in. After gnawing it down, it smacked its lips, then threw itself forward on its own to snatch up the faith essence.

A Holy Spirit Angel bouncing and skipping around right before everyone's eyes — wasn't that more direct and vivid than those vague, ethereal Light Gods? In an instant, everyone switched the object of their prayers to the little angel. Now it didn't even need to grab — the faith essence drifted right up to the little angel's face, and it could catch it with one swipe of its hand.

Lord Nai Ge sighed, a deep sense of helplessness washing over him: "Thank goodness the Light Gods have disappeared, otherwise we'd be facing a divine war right now — daring to steal their faith essence? But honestly, how did you do it? Can you intercept it whenever you want?"

Plundering another god's faith essence was no easy feat. Even if a Mage of Truth came, they couldn't do it — magic and divine power belonged to different systems.

Ange tilted his head, not knowing how to answer. He didn't know how he'd done it himself — he just felt like he could, so he reached out and grabbed it, and he got it.

Seeing him like that, Lord Nai Ge knew he wouldn't get any answers. He flapped his wings and flew off.

Ange continued healing. He treated people on one side while the little angel snatched faith on the other — both of them busy nonstop. As long as the faith essence didn't drift away, Ange didn't care that the little angel got it. After all, if the little angel got it, it was the same as him getting it.

Healing was a miracle. "Healing without pause" was also a miracle. Even in the church's records, very few beings could heal thousands of people nonstop. There was only some saint or other who poured out his heart's blood, creating a miracle at the moment of death.

As more and more people were healed, the conviction of those waiting in line behind them grew stronger and stronger.

Among the crowd was a thin, delicate-featured man, wearing a heavy coat even in the hot weather. He watched Ange from afar, his expression wavering, shifting, as if wrestling with some agonizing decision inside.

As the line moved forward, it was soon this thin man's turn. Ange split his attention, and a Purification Art landed on him.

Feeling the pleasant sensation spread through his body, the thin man gritted his teeth, put on a look of someone resigned to death, and suddenly shut his eyes and flung open his coat.

There was nothing under the coat — only some old scars, mostly whip marks, and one thing missing that a man should have.

"A eunuch?! It's a eunuch! So that's what a eunuch looks like down there?"

Whispers rose from all around, making the eunuch so ashamed and furious he wanted to die. But for that sliver of hope, he threw caution to the wind.

Ange didn't feel much about it. He cast a Purification Art on the man, and the old scars healed rapidly — scabs fell away, revealing fresh, tender skin. Only that missing part stubbornly refused to grow back.

This couldn't stump Ange. He flipped his palm, took out a bottle of Holy Essence Liquid, flicked a few drops onto it, then slammed down three or four Purification Arts in one breath...

After several repetitions, the missing part grew back. Ange shifted his gaze to the next person, leaving the eunuch standing there with his eyes shut, striking a pose.

"Move on, move on — it's grown back, why aren't you leaving? Don't block the way." Not until the person behind him impatiently shoved him.

It grew back? The former eunuch's eyes flew open. He looked down — the thing he'd been dreaming of his whole life was now hanging there, swaying.

A surge of emotion crashed into his brain, leaving it blank. He'd been castrated when he was very young and had never seen his own thing before. He'd imagined it countless times in his dreams, but nothing came close to the tangible reality now within his reach.

He knew he should be laughing, but the moment he cracked a smile, tears silently welled up and spilled from his eyes.

The person who'd pushed him from behind glanced down, jealous, and said: "Not bad either. If I'd known, I would've cut mine off too and asked my lord to make mine bigger." With that, he shoved hard, pushing the silently weeping man off to the side of the road.

The man didn't mind. He knelt as people passed by, his face alternating between crying and laughing, sometimes drifting off into a dazed, silly grin. After a long while, he finally calmed down. Slowly, he kowtowed toward Ange, and said word by word: "Eunuch singer, Sanglide, gives thanks to my lord, for granting me, rebirth."

Ange seemed to sense something and raised his head, only to see a thick pillar of soul flame fly from Sanglide toward him, forming a sigil within his soul.

This soul flame didn't drift toward the little angel like everyone else's — it flew straight to Ange. Clearly, what Sanglide believed in wasn't the Light, but the Ange right before his eyes.

Another believer with a sigil? It had been so long since he'd gotten a sigil-bearing believer that Ange had even forgotten how many he had — five or six?

But getting a sigil wasn't special. What was special was...

A Holy Light rose in Ange's palm. Compared to the glow of Purification Art, this Holy Light had undergone some different change. Like Lisa, this Sanglide had defined Holy Light himself. This Holy Light was called — Rebirth.

Ange tilted his head, turned, and called out toward the distance: "Awooo!"

No one came for quite a while.

Only then did Ange realize his mistake and called out again: "Lightning!"

Lightning burst out in a wild flurry of fur and mane, unable to contain himself: "Here, here! What does my lord need?!" Looking like someone who'd just escaped the devil's clutches.

Ange smeared the new "Light" he'd obtained onto Lightning's broken horn.

Lightning's broken horn had already grown back most of the way — only a small tip at the very top remained. That last bit was the hardest. Holy Essence Liquid and Purification Art had no effect on it. He'd even secretly eaten plenty of World Tree saplings, but it still wouldn't grow.

Lightning had almost wanted to give up. After all, a half-broken horn didn't affect his ability to wield the power of Lei Ting, and he'd even learned to walk on air. Losing a bit was losing a bit.

But now, bathed in the light, that missing tip of the horn slowly grew out at a speed visible to the naked eye.

"Whoa! My lord, has your Purification Art leveled up again?" Lightning thought this was just Ange's Purification Art.

A few dozen seconds later, Lightning's broken horn had fully grown back under the light.

"Hahaha! I, Son of Lei Ting, the great Lord Lightning, am back!" Lightning raised his sharp horn, lifted his front hooves, reared up on his hind legs, and laughed wildly.

The sound carried far into the distance, and Zi Hai's voice immediately rang out from afar: "Lightning, come back!"

"Oh." Lightning obediently trotted back. So what if his horn was whole again? The Son of Lei Ting still couldn't out-stubborn the Lord of Lei Ting.

Inspired by Sanglide's example, that batch of eunuchs standing in the middle, neither man nor woman, learned to imitate him — opening their coats or stripping off their clothes in advance. Because they were prepared, this miracle of conjuring something from nothing drew wave after wave of onlookers.

Amid wave after wave of gasps, great surges of faith essence poured toward the little angel. For most people, this kind of miracle was absolutely more soul-shaking than ordinary miracles.

Startled by the commotion here, Lord Nai Ge flew over to take a look and couldn't help saying: "This method is way too efficient, isn't it? Next time we're short on soul flame, we'll just gather everyone, grab one up, cut it off and regrow it, cut it off and regrow it — we're sure to rake in a huge haul of soul flame."

"Come on, come on, let me teach everyone how to dig an earth dugout." Orem, the one who'd handled the land certificate for Ange back then, held up a leather megaphone and shouted: "First, bundle these reeds into bundles, lay them flat on the ground, press the edges down with sand — see? Press it tight."

"Good. Now we dig from the lake side straight toward the opposite side, digging a hole through. The direction has to be aimed straight at the lake — know why? The wind always blows this way. Once you dig through with the wind, the wind can pass through the tunnel and carry away the heat. Otherwise, the dugout will cook you alive. Got it?" Orem shouted until his mouth was parched.

To settle over fifteen thousand people, relying solely on Ange's group and the three or five hundred people from nearby villages was definitely not enough. So Lisa mobilized personnel at the first opportunity, transferring a batch of people with administrative experience from the oasis to help.

The resettlement work had a thousand loose ends to tie up; just teaching them to dig pit-shelters had to be done hand-in-hand, and it had to be fast, otherwise these people wouldn't last a few days before being baked to death in the desert.

As for building houses, heh, unless one had several dozen mages like Seeing Ange, it would be far too difficult to build enough housing for ten-odd thousand people in the desert.

Not only housing, even meals were a huge headache.

"Mirrors, mirrors, whoever has a mirror, hand them all over!" Dragon Speaker Sha Fei Ya held a loudspeaker in her left hand and a big brick in her right, shouting at the top of her lungs.

Her face was too babyish, she was afraid she couldn't awe the crowd, so she deliberately pulled in Lady Nai Li, but the problem was Lady Nai Li was barely half a metre long from snout to tail — what kind of intimidation could she possibly project? The face she deliberately tried to stern up only looked cute.

When some little brats saw her, they shrieked and lunged forward wanting to ride the big dragon, which so infuriated Lady Nai Li she wanted to breathe fire.

A group of women casually pressed down the hems of their clothes, pretending to be nonchalant as they asked: "What do you need mirrors for? Mirrors are so expensive, how could we possibly have any?"

Sha Fei Ya wasn't stupid, how could such nonsense fool her: "Cooking, cooking, we need mirrors to cook. This is a desert, there's nothing to cook with. If you don't want to gnaw on raw rice grains, hand over your mirrors. Let me tell you, every night there will be wraiths on patrol. Hand over your mirrors now and everyone gets to eat. Hoarding mirrors — if the wraiths catch you, you and your whole family will be driven out, and you'll bake to death in the desert."

Everyone was scared into it and reluctantly handed over their mirrors, but even so, what was collected wasn't much, far from enough to solve the cooking problem for over ten thousand people.

The desert lacked fuel like firewood, so cooking was a huge challenge, but sunlight was plentiful and fierce — as long as there were enough mirrors, one could stick them together into a half-circle facing the sun, focus the sunlight, and it would boil water and cook rice.

Hope Oasis's staple food was green dates, so the demand for mirrors wasn't high; now that Dragon-Fall Lake's staple was rice, mirrors had become a hard necessity.

"No mirrors, what do we do?" Lisa, troubled, sought out Seeing Ange and Lord Nai Ge, and said with a worried face: "Let's just let everyone gnaw on raw rice grains and be done with it."

Nai Ge Li Si was somewhat dismissive: "No mirrors? Just smelt some. I remember the Dark-Side City has quartz mines, and the oasis's magic-crystal mine also has associated quartz — fetch some over."

"Huh? Smelt?"

A batch of quartz was teleported over through the teleportation array, and a sandstone kiln had long since been 'grown' out under Nai Ge Li Si's guidance by Seeing Ange.

In went the quartz, fire was lit, and then Seeing Ange poured in fire elemental power at full strength.

"Your magic level is too low. If you were a great mage, you could melt glass bare-handed; for now you can only use the kiln as an aid. Can't make mirrors — no reflective-coating material — so just make convex lenses directly, they can focus light just as well." Nai Ge Li Si rambled on, ordering Seeing Ange round and round.

"Spread the fine sand on, then turn it, coarse grind, then use elk hide, paste, fine grind. Heh, Seeing Ange, this kind of control of yours, using it for this is such a waste."

Before long, several dozen lenses the size of washbasins had been ground out, set up one by one, their angles adjusted to focus the sunlight, and within a moment the pot at the focal point was boiling.

The whole string of techniques left Lisa and the others staring in astonishment, and only after the lenses took shape did Lisa say in shock: "I finally understand, my lord, why they call you the God of Common Sense."

Nai Ge Li Si fell flat on his face and roared: "What God of Common Sense! Knowledge! Knowledge! The God of Knowledge!!!"

Just as everyone was making a racket, Anthony's anxious voice suddenly reached Seeing Ange's soul:

"My lord, may I ask, do you have grain? Could you sell me a little? The Heishan Duchy has suffered a plague of insects, the refugees have no clothes or food, and shipping grain from my side won't make it in time. My lord, please sell me a batch of grain and have it delivered to the Heishan Duchy, would you? I am willing to offer up one Earth Sacred Hammer as payment."