Chapter 120#

The Distant Star’s Reflection Ends#

Space was folded by the mirror-star, and the passage opened. Human eyes cannot perceive the structure of a wormhole. The ship leapt out of the invisible channel like an insect passing through a doorway, arriving in another world entirely — the surrounding scenery changed in an instant.

After three seconds of vacuum-like silence, the near-derelict ship appeared above the Holy City. Beneath pristine white mist, the magnificent Holy City stood at the center of the capital star, like a self-contained kingdom unto itself.

The Holy City’s defense systems naturally detected the enormous energy fluctuation overhead, and radar locked onto the ship that had appeared without warning. Its response speed rivaled that of a major military base. In the blink of an eye, squadrons of fighter jets rose like swarms of bees from every corner of the Holy City. The signal that the Holy City was under attack was simultaneously relayed to General Ashley and to the Church’s own Knighthood.

Ashley was right beside Baisong. He was staring fixedly at Baisong’s every move.

Baisong sent a message to the Knighthood’s commander with an anxious expression, saying that both the Pope and Duke Langdon were aboard that ship, and they should not act rashly.

The commander was shocked and asked whether they had been taken hostage by the rebel forces.

Baisong brushed him off with noncommittal responses — “Hmm… I’m not entirely sure… stand by…” — that sort of useless filler.

“Since when did Langdon know you?” General Ashley said.

Baisong answered carefully: “I have long admired the Duke.” A look of skepticism crossed the General’s face, as if he had just heard that a duck had learned to climb trees.

“They’ve taken the Pope hostage. This must all be Tangpo’s scheme — and you serve under Tangpo,” the General said.

“Perhaps,” Baisong murmured, “but whatever the case, truth is still truth, isn’t it, General?”

The General fell into thought.

After passing through the wormhole, the ship had continued on by inertia for a while, then shifted from a direct course to a hover. The piercing alarm that had been blaring until now cut off abruptly, replaced by an endless loop of error tones.

“Error: coordinates lost.”

“Error: no valid flight path found.”

“Unknown error.”

“Unknown error.”

“Alert: unknown error.”

“Navigation halted. Please confirm —”

Yu Feichen threw the switch. The world went quiet.

Passing through a wormhole was an unforeseeable emergency for any navigation system — the spatial coordinates had suddenly changed, the flight path was gone, there was no contingency plan, and the flight had been forced to abort.

So when the navigation system rebooted, the ship had already exited self-destruct mode and switched over to manual control.

Yu Feichen piloted it in a slow descent. The ship gradually pierced through the cloud layer, drawing closer to the buildings of the Holy City.

From the outside, it looked like a smoke-trailing warship bearing down on the Holy City’s core with hostile intent. The Holy City garrison’s fighter jets hovered motionless in the air, every manner of weapon trained on the ship — yet not one opened fire.

It looked as though the military’s hands were tied. But the Pope, at the center of it all, understood what the scene truly meant: his cause was lost.

Windsor, Simmons, Kayan, Ashley… not a single one of them was truly loyal. Ashley had spoken endlessly of reverence for the Church, yet —

At last, the Pope grasped something he had not understood before.

What everyone professed reverence and praise for was not the Pope himself, nor the Church — it was Truth itself.

The unbreakable edifice of power he had labored so meticulously to construct had only ever been a temporary theft of the authority that rightfully belonged to Truth. The moment even one person exposed its true nature, this Holy City would scatter like a reflection on water when the wind blows.

The ship descended slowly, and the Pope’s blood gradually ran cold. Victory was no longer possible. The only thing he could do now was secure for himself an ending that wasn’t too humiliating.

At last, the Pope let out a long, weary sigh.

“Whatever you want,” he said, exhaustion plain on his face, “take it.”

Click. A soft sound of glass against a surface — Tangpo had placed a cup of warm water in front of the Pope.

Everyone exchanged glances. Indeed, if they didn’t let things settle, the Pope was going to have either a cerebral infarction or a cardiac one — he was teetering right on the edge of being angered to death.

The Pope did not pick up the water Tangpo had poured for him. Tangpo, for his part, made no demands of him, and simply watched Yu Feichen work the ship’s controls.

Yu Feichen looked the same as ever — cool and aloof, without much expression. His emotions never showed on his face.

Something in the whole episode between the Pope and the rebel forces had finally rubbed this man the wrong way to the point of no return, and things would not end well.

Tangpo had considered what “not ending well” would look like — no more than what Yu Feichen had said before: uploading the Universal Language Dictionary directly to the knowledge database, where anyone could see it. The Empire would undoubtedly be shaken, but Yu Feichen had no intention of managing that. By then, they would both be back in Eden anyway.

The Church maintained a system called the “Veil,” which monitored people’s communications and speech and restricted everyone’s network permissions. Uploading to the knowledge database required the highest level of clearance — clearance that could only come from the Pope. Now the Pope had capitulated, but Yu Feichen showed no inclination whatsoever to communicate with him.

Tangpo walked over to Yu Feichen’s side.

The control interface displayed was not the navigation system. It was the weapons system.

The ship hovered at an angle in front of one of the Holy City’s buildings. The Pope let out a ragged gasp, staring fixedly at it.

Inside the building, evacuation alarms blared. Church clergy fled as if for their lives, scattering in all directions.

Then the weapons system locked on.

An explosion erupted. The earth shook, and the building crumbled and collapsed.

After the deafening roar, a cloud of billowing dust rose from the Holy City, centered on where the building had stood.

Across the Empire, those searching the knowledge database, those posting questions in the inquiry forums, those logging into their accounts — their terminals all suddenly went white in unison.

The dust surged upward, enveloping the ship. Outside the portholes, everything was grey and white. Inside the cabin, there was absolute silence. Windsor blinked.

Deranged, he thought quietly.

In the stillness, measured footsteps sounded — and stopped in front of Bishop Cowen.

Cowen was being held to the side by two guards. The guards were far more pragmatic than the Pope — one look at the air of reckoning, and they hurried to push their prisoner forward.

Yu Feichen was much taller than Cowen. When he looked at people he tilted his eyes down, an air of indifference about him, his smoke-silver irises opaque, cold, and utterly empty.

Cowen shuddered.

Yu Feichen extended his hand toward one of the guards, palm facing up.

The guard considered briefly, then offered his sidearm, placing it in Yu Feichen’s hand.

Yu Feichen took the gun. His gaze lingered on Cowen a moment longer before shifting to the silver-white weapon.

He seemed to be thinking. Thinking about why he was doing this — what force had driven him to do everything he had done today.

Half a minute later, he raised the gun toward Cowen. The barrel gaped like a dark void, as though it opened onto hell itself. But Cowen felt he had long been dwelling in hell already — desperate and terrified to the point of forgetting to breathe.

A faint voice suddenly came from somewhere distant. Cowen’s sluggish mind took a long moment to register that it was Tangpo speaking. Tangpo was still standing where he had been, looking at Yu Feichen’s back. The cold overhead light cast a faint, formless outline along the edges of his figure.

“That’s enough,” he said.

The words reached Cowen’s ears like a voice from a distant heaven.

Yu Feichen lowered the gun and turned back toward the helm.

The ship, barely clinging to its last before decommissioning, finally received the signal to land and touched down in the center of the Holy City plaza. They had scarcely walked away from it when a tremendous explosion erupted behind them — it had endured too much today, and in the end, went out in a blaze of glory.

Upon understanding the situation, General Ashley wore a look of deep sorrow, but still ordered the garrison to stand down and let them pass. He then sent doctors for the emergency care of the Pope — but he did not ask the Pope what had happened, nor did he personally go to attend to His Holiness.

The capital was about to change hands. He knew it, so he chose his side accordingly. But as that young bishop had said, no matter how circumstances changed, truth was still truth.

The nobles, through Duke Windsor who had returned from his unlikely survival, learned a great deal: they learned of the Pope’s current weakness before Langdon, and they learned of Bishop Tangpo’s great undertaking — to make the secret language disappear, to give everyone the right to seek truth. They all smelled the incense of the Church of Truth about to be snuffed out, and they were jubilant.

Windsor only smiled. A great edifice was crashing down around them — he could see it. But everyone else — priests, nobles, commoners — had not yet seen it at all.

Though this was no longer much of Yu Feichen’s concern.

Across the entire capital, people were unsettled and anxious about recent events. Only within Langdon Manor did a settled calm prevail.

Yu Feichen was taking a call. Baisong had just finished his report: “Brother Yu, you blew it up real good — physically bypassed the permission system. The network’s communication functions have been patched back together for now, barely. The knowledge database is partially restored, the inquiry forum is still down but might be salvageable. As for the ‘Veil’s’ physical hardware — blasted to pieces, officially declared defunct. With the Veil gone, commoners can access the Church’s repositories, and Church members from different departments can freely cross-access knowledge in other fields. In short, complete chaos.”

Yu Feichen told Baisong to upload that language. Baisong muttered that it would just be chaos on top of chaos, but dutifully accepted the task from his Brother Yu all the same.

The Empire descended further into disarray, as expected. No one knew what to do next — only that they were full of questions about what in the world the Church was up to.

Facing the Chief God, Yu Feichen was also pondering a question.

“After we leave,” he said, “what will happen to Tangpo and Langdon?”

“They will skip over this period of time and appear at the moment just after we depart. But you may choose whether or not to share your memories with them,” the God said.

Yu Feichen said: “No.”

Let the real Tangpo and Langdon simply close their eyes, open them again, and find themselves suddenly arrived at what they had imagined to be their future.

He said: “What about our marks? Will those remain on them?”

“They won’t. Their state will be as it was in the moment before they were replaced. But if you wish for the marks to remain with them, you may pay the Tower of Creation to modify this.” The Chief God then remembered something. “Sharing memories also requires payment.”

Yu Feichen said sincerely: “Does the Tower of Creation really need the money that badly?”

The Chief God gave him a mild look.

Then let them be, Yu Feichen thought.

Still — picturing the real Duke Langdon and Bishop Tangpo coming to terms with their new reality, staring at each other in speechless bewilderment, it was like an absurd comedy. He generally had no interest in other people’s stories, but because traces of himself and the God had passed through Langdon and Tangpo’s lives, there was something oddly worth being curious about.

There was a faint amusement in the Chief God’s eyes, as if He too had imagined the scene.

“Tangpo has always known that his compatibility value matched Langdon’s,” He said.

Yu Feichen listened as He continued.

“But their time together overlapped too briefly, and Tangpo’s mission could not afford delays.”

He was Langdon’s Cardinal — destined to follow him back to the estate lands after Langdon came of age. On the eve of leaving the capital star and its seat of power, Tangpo knew he had to make his final gambit: succeed or fail permanently.

“So he also… did not want to drag Langdon into it,” the God said.

“Then he —” Yu Feichen’s words had barely begun when he caught himself.

He had been about to ask whether, now that there was no longer any need to weigh pros and cons, that Tangpo would be willing to form a mark-bond with Langdon. But the question was too cumbersome, and it didn’t quite say what he meant.

Something strange took hold of him, and he blurted out a word he had never used before.

“Does he like Langdon?”

The question caught the God off guard.

He seemed to be considering it.

Never mind if He doesn’t know — it was only a passing thought.

But watching the Chief God’s pensive expression, Yu Feichen found it oddly familiar. As if, in the next moment, this person would close his eyes, give up on the thought entirely, and say: “I’m triggered.”

He suddenly laughed.

“You had a strange triggered moment on the ship once, and I never did figure out why,” he said. “Could it really be that you were thinking through this kind of problem on behalf of Langdon and Tangpo?”

He remembered clearly — just before that triggered moment, he himself had said: I’d like to see your compatibility stats.

“No.” The Chief God recalled the moment, then said: “That time I was thinking about something involving you and me.”

“What about?”

The Chief God’s gaze passed through the glass to the world outside. In the mist, the city’s silhouette emerged and vanished, tangled up with the sky.

“I was wondering whether what exists between you and me might change because of this world.”

That was a reasonable thing to worry about, Yu Feichen thought. Change had indeed occurred.

But he said nothing. His gaze rested on the curling ends of the Chief God’s golden hair. As the God observed his every move, he too had come to know a God who was tangible and present — not one who lived only in rumors and hymns.

He said: “Were you trying to convert me into a believer?”

He certainly had no talent for becoming another Murphy.

The Chief God shook his head.

“Your faith is limited,” He said. “But to me, you are someone of great importance.”

His voice still carried that classical, elegant cadence — whatever He said sounded like a vow.

Yu Feichen had raised the topic only hoping to catch the Chief God off guard, but hearing those words, the faint light in the God’s hair suddenly dazzled his eyes.

He wanted to say something in return. For a long moment nothing came — nothing meaningful, anyway — though his heart beat out several counts that he was fully aware of. He felt he wasn’t so different from Murphy after all.

In the end he offered three words: “You are too.”

The Chief God heard this, and a faint, wistful look came into his eyes as he glanced over. Yu Feichen shifted his attention away before he could be put under any more of whatever spell this was.

He looked at the long, slender wound on the God’s neck, nearly healed now, and asked a needless question: “Is it better?”

As soon as he said it, he noticed his own voice was a little hoarse. He needed water.

What followed held no more surprises. Change continued to unfold across the Empire, and no one knew when the remaining thirty percent would finally be walked through.

The capital star’s situation was settled. Tangpo’s retrial passed in a tacitly agreed-upon flow of lenience — the legal loophole Windsor had helpfully provided was easy enough to slip through, and Langdon’s private forces, under the guise of training exercises, had already been stationed in the Holy City for three days running.

The final verdict: not guilty.

Upon hearing the result, Duke Windsor sighed once again to Bishop Kayan: “See — the rot of feudal aristocracy.”

Once the dust had settled, the old Pope signed Losh Langdon’s coronation decree, then declared himself ill, resigned, and went into seclusion on a rural planet.

The papacy was a position that could not be removed by others — voluntary resignation and death were the only two ways to vacate it. After the old Pope’s resignation, a new Pope, much like an emperor, had to be elected through proper procedure.

But the emperor’s coronation was imminent, and there was no time. Of the Cardinals below the Pope’s rank, there were only so many: Bishop Simmons was bedridden recovering from injuries, Bishop Cowen had suffered some kind of shock and was mentally unsound and unfit to appear in public, Bishop Kayan repeatedly insisted he was far too young to shoulder such a responsibility, and the remaining bishops all took his lead and shut their doors to visitors. When all was counted, the only Cardinal still able to temporarily stand in for the Pope and officiate the imperial coronation was, remarkably, Bishop Tangpo alone.

The coronation ceremony was elaborate. On the eve of the formal proceedings, Windsor came to pay a visit, carrying an ornamental rose as a prop.

“The nobles are celebrating the future they envision — promoting the universal language, studying the books of truth, establishing independent monasteries, cultivating their own clergy. They believe you will lead them toward that future.” Windsor smiled pleasantly. “But if you ask me, once commoners can access Truth, the death knell for the nobility will already have been struck — they simply won’t have heard it yet.”

Yu Feichen sat in the dark green velvet chaise: “What are you trying to say?”

“Seeking your agreement,” Windsor said. “The person I sent to keep watch over Pope Paul says he’s behaving himself now, though his mind is a little… off. I was thinking —”

The door behind Yu Feichen opened. He turned, and saw Tangpo walk in. Tangpo was dressed in the Cardinal’s grand ceremonial robes — magnificent and resplendent, golden hair flowing down, shimmering against the gold brocade of his deep crimson vestments. In his left hand he carried a pastoral staff; in his right, the platinum crown that belonged to the emperor.

Windsor: “Good day, Bishop Tangpo.”

“Good day.”

Tangpo walked to stand behind Yu Feichen, his crimson cape trailing across the floor, a figure stepped out of a religious oil painting — solemn and exquisite.

Windsor said: “I was just discussing Pope Paul with Duke Langdon — wondering what, precisely, this failed life of his got wrong.”

“There is only one circumstance,” Tangpo said, setting the staff to one side and leaning down to straighten the sash across Yu Feichen’s chest before continuing, “in which a single person can hold all power in a kingdom…” He paused. “…that person guarantees they will always be clear-eyed, always right, and utterly without self-interest.”

What came to Yu Feichen’s mind was the Chief God’s vast and luminous eternal day.

“And you?” he said.

The Chief God did not answer him.

Windsor placed the rose into a vase in the hall, gift delivered. He said: “Your Grace, Your Excellency — may I ask a favor?”

Yu Feichen: “What is it?”

“If you are nearly ready to leave — consider taking me with you.” Duke Windsor still wore that same warm, faintly smiling expression, inscrutable, as if he had long since seen through everything.

Tangpo: “Is it not good here?”

“I’ve been here many years. I think I’ve grown a little tired of it,” Windsor said. “I’d like to experience a different kind of order.”

Baisong appeared from nowhere: “You just don’t want to be socially dead when your alpha identity gets exposed by the omega rights protection organization now that you’re nearly of age.”

Windsor denied it outright: “That is only one of the reasons.”

Yu Feichen glanced back at Tangpo — this person did not look opposed.

Outside, the voices of the master of ceremonies and the secretary drifted in. The ritual was about to begin.

Just then, a cheerful chime sounded: “Gatekeeper Reminder: The world’s trajectory has changed through your participation. Occupation progress has reached 100%. Congratulations!”

“Core stronghold secured. The Tower of Creation is initiating the takeover process for this world. You will soon return to Eden. Countdown: 10, 9, 8…”

The Chief God raised his hand and gently placed the gleaming crown upon Yu Feichen’s head.

In the next instant, grey-white mist swept in, and the familiar scene of the final settlement unfolded.