Chapter 85#

Genesis Seven#

Yu Feichen originally didn’t know why Claros needed to find someone to accompany him to a meeting. Upon entering, he discovered it wasn’t a meeting at all, more like a tea gathering. The host of this gathering was Iskadila, the Goddess of Rituals and Celebrations. This official’s appearance was that of a good-natured elderly man, with beard and white hair curling like a Christmas gift-giver’s.

In a glass flower corridor overgrown with white roses, the officials conversed in small groups. Some Yu Feichen recognized; others he’d never seen.

Claros said: “For resurrection day, some outside deities recently returned.”

Yu Feichen’s gaze swept across those deities. Paradise’s deities fell into three types: first, those stationed within the Tower of Genesis, each with their duties; second, those deployed outward, residing long-term in important territories or worlds as guardian deities; third, those with uncertain whereabouts, “wandering deities” who traverse various places. The latter two rarely stayed in paradise, but many of paradise’s tasks were issued and verified by them.

But when Claros walked into the flower corridor and passed by them, none of these deities spoke to him. They acted as if they didn’t even see his existence. The occasional gazes directed his way were aimed at Yu Feichen instead.

The scene was indeed extremely awkward at one point. Until the two of them sat down at the periphery.

Unfortunately, not far away were the painter and Murphy.

Murphy had recovered his original appearance—chestnut-gold hair, wizard’s robes, and in his left eye socket, a cluster of fiercely burning flames. But he seemed unhappy, leaning on the painter’s shoulder staring blankly. When his gaze passed Claros, he turned away, showing his back to them.

“Every epoch on this day, I feel embarrassed. Yet I can’t not come,” Claros put a pastry in his mouth. Beneath his hood, his skin was pale, his lips thin and bright red. When he smiled slightly, it carried an eerie, ominous quality.

Having finished, he ate another one.

Yu Feichen glanced at the pastries on the crystal tea table. The God of the Eternal Night actually enjoyed this cloyingly sweet nonsense.

He said: “What did you do?”

For so many deities to ignore someone was quite an accomplishment. Yu Feichen didn’t think he could manage it. At least on his recent journey, Mogoros had patted his shoulder, and the painter had smiled at him.

“Me?” Claros sighed. “Nothing at all. Every day I dutifully do my job, opening the door, closing the door, teaching newcomers with meticulous care.”

Yu Feichen didn’t respond to him.

Perhaps realizing that if even Yu Feichen ignored him, he could only go catch a dog in the garden to relieve the awkwardness—though paradise’s dogs probably wouldn’t acknowledge him either—Claros said: “Because I’m an outsider.”

Yu Feichen: “You’re not the highest-ranked deity below the supreme god?”

“That also… is true,” Claros ate another pastry, then suddenly changed the subject. “What cards did you draw from Murphy? I’ve never seen the legendary Arrow of Truth before.”

Yu Feichen: “Was it you who opened the Door of Eternal Night for me back then?”

“Actually no,” Claros replied.

He continued with more explanation. The opening of the Door of Eternal Night required the Tower of Genesis to accumulate power. When sufficient power was gathered, the pathway between paradise and the fragment world could open. The speed of power accumulation was a matter of mysticism.

As the gatekeeper, Claros controlled who the door opened for, not when it opened.

In that case, Claros had still helped him.

“You don’t want to say? Let me guess.”

Saying this, a card slowly materialized above Claros’s hand. Murphy, who was not far away, acutely raised his head to look this way. The card instantly vanished, and Claros continued eating pastries as if nothing had happened.

But even in that split-second flash, Yu Feichen glimpsed the card’s image clearly.

—A mass of pitch-black, grotesque darkness. Somewhat different from his own card, but clearly part of the same series.

“I didn’t guess wrong?” Claros smiled slightly. “What did Murphy say this was?”

“A prophecy without meaning.”

Claros’s voice suddenly became lower and more eerily drifting.

“It’s a prophecy, but he’s determined to kill you. For the dead, prophecies lose their meaning. In that moment, he wouldn’t be lying.”

Yu Feichen: “So this card actually has meaning?”

Claros raised a finger to his lips in a shushing gesture: “Don’t tell him I showed you this. This is my first card. For the rest, guess yourself, or ask me.”

Yu Feichen gave him a cold look—the kind of gaze one might direct at a madman.

They said nothing more. After a while, Yu Feichen suddenly saw the painter smiling warmly, making a cautionary gesture toward him.

Before he could become wary, he was suddenly embraced from behind by someone.

A voice of indeterminate gender, soft and sweet, sounded in his ear: “I haven’t met you before. Interested in bedding with me?”

Yu Feichen: “Not interested.”

“Tch.” The person withdrew their hand. They had pale green long hair, silver eyes, and a pair of elf-pointed ears. Yu Feichen thought paradise’s deities were quite well-designed in appearance, each with their own distinctive colors and styles, making facial recognition unnecessary.

The elf withdrew their hand, true, but their gaze still lingered meaningfully on Yu Feichen several times, carrying a playful, sprite-like smile. Only when they noticed Claros did the smile gradually fade.

“Never mind then,” they said and turned to leave.

At this moment, Claros was eating a plate of pastries, unconcerned. Only after the person left did he say lazily: “That was Sathernal, the Goddess of Life.”

So that was the one prohibited from entering the twelfth floor. The twelfth floor was the Disciplinary Deity’s domain.

Yu Feichen: “What did they do?”

Actually, Yu Feichen thought the pronoun “they” might not quite fit that elf, but in paradise where races and genders were diverse, everyone was fairly casual about it.

“Them? They seem unable to sleep without discipline, so every day they go to the twelfth floor to fake-cry,” Claros said. “The Disciplinary Deity asked them to leave. Sathernal said they wouldn’t come back unless you wrote ‘Sathernal not permitted to enter’ on the elevator key.”

Reaching this point, he sighed regretfully: “The Disciplinary Deity is a new god, still too young. To reject Sathernal, they actually wrote it. Now all of paradise knows they and Sathernal have unspeakable entanglements.”

Finishing, Claros patted Yu Feichen’s shoulder: “You see, if I weren’t beside you, you and the Disciplinary Deity would face the same fate.”

Yu Feichen picked up the crystal cup and drank his first sip of water since arriving here. Divine hearts were treacherous.

After drinking, he said: “How do you know?”

Claros spoke naturally: “When I first arrived in paradise, I met a tour guide.”

At this moment, the Celebration Goddess stood at the center and said everyone had arrived, time to discuss business.

What followed was an extremely tedious session, merely arranging various processes and details of the resurrection day ceremony, refined down to the angle of placement of eternal sleep flowers beside the path the supreme deity would walk, and the size of dewdrops on the petals.

Next came the miracles that should appear in the divine kingdoms and various worlds.

Not until the end was Claros mentioned.

“Lord of Eternal Night,” Iskadila said, “please do guard the Door of Eternal Night. We much appreciate your efforts.”

Claros: “No thanks needed.”

When the gathering dispersed, Sathernal had taken Murphy’s place, boneless-like leaning in the painter’s embrace, gazing blankly at a white rose in the flower corridor about to wither. Yet Murphy, such a petty person, showed not the slightest displeasure. Instead, he stood leaning against a column, his hand reaching up to brush away a rose petal from the painter’s hair.

Claros followed Yu Feichen’s gaze.

“Time, life, and creation—those three are paradise’s primordial deities, having followed your supreme god the longest,” he said.

Yu Feichen frowned looking at those three, their expressions warm and affectionate with each other, and said: “Is the supreme god like them as well?”

Claros didn’t react at first. Three seconds later, as if he’d heard the world’s greatest joke, he laughed so hard his hood slipped off halfway. “You all… you all who grew up in paradise, how are you all so naive?” he laughed while picking up another pastry. Sure enough, he choked on it, coughing tore his heart out, prompting Murphy to glance this way once more.

Just then, Sathernal tossed something into the air and said: “Tomorrow we’ll be able to meet It.”

Those three huddled together, already quite chaotic, and that sentence made Yu Feichen feel it was beyond looking at. He turned and left the flower corridor. Before leaving, Claros finally caught his breath and said if he got bored, he could come find him on the thirteenth floor anytime.

Finally leaving the Tower of Genesis, a fluffy-feathered dove came flapping toward him, squawking that Bai Song kept requesting communication. Yu Feichen left word for him to entertain himself and turned to call Xiamson. He’d wanted to do this the moment he returned to paradise but had been interrupted by Claros.

Xiamson picked up quickly: “Yu-ge? How come you remembered to find me?”

Yu Feichen: “Where are you?”

“In paradise, but I’ll be heading to Landenworth soon. We still need to harvest eternal sleep flowers one last time.”

Yu Feichen: “I want to go to Landenworth.”

Xiamson laughed on the other end of the call: “Why?”

Yu Feichen: “I want to go to the Temple of Twilight.”

“By the grace of the supreme god, you want to pay respects to the temple of the deity? Where are you? I’ll come pick you up immediately.”

His tone was so earnest, like a benevolent father seeing a prodigal child return.