13 Mink Street

Chapter 76: I Want To See It With My Own Eyes

Order is a mask. When you need it, you put it on. When you do not, you take it off.

Pu’er saw Karon’s hands trembling slightly. At first she thought that he was in pain, but she slowly realized that it was not that. That was because she noticed that tears were leaking from the corners of his eyes and dripping down along the edge of the ashen mask on his face. The sight made Pu’er ache for him.

She jumped onto Karon and climbed up onto his shoulder. She reached out with a soft paw to gently wipe away the tears from his cheek. “What are you crying for? Tiz already prepared everything for you. You should be happy.”

As she spoke, Pu’er shifted to his other shoulder and continued to wipe the tears away with a paw. “For all these years, I could feel his pain. The more of a genius he was, the more he suffered, because he walked down his road too quickly. By the time he realized that it was the wrong road, he no longer had any chance to turn back. That is the tragedy of a genius.”

Pu’er dropped onto Karon’s lap, bracing her front paws against his chest. “Every elder has their own expectations for the younger generation. This has nothing to do with being open-minded or not. Even if they never say it, in their hearts, they always hope that when their juniors walk the same road, they will take fewer detours, avoid the mistakes the elder once made, go farther and do better. I used to be puzzled, puzzled by why Tiz liked you so much. His affection even surpassed the affection that comes from sharing the same blood. Now, I think I understand. In you, Tiz saw a chance to make up for what he lacked. This is a legacy, Karon. Tiz will not leave you. He will only stand in the doorway, watching you shoulder your pack and travel far away, his gaze long and deep.”

Pu’er was trying to comfort Karon, but realized that it was not helping. The trail of tears she had just wiped away had already been replaced with a new one. She jumped back onto Karon’s shoulder, but this time, when she went to wipe his tears, she stopped herself. No one understood better than Karon how to console others, and that included how to console himself. He did not need to hear what she was saying. He cried right now because he was wearing the mask.

Even so, Pu’er reminded him, “That mask has finished its work. If you want, you can take it off.”

Karon spoke quietly. “I will keep it on until Tiz comes back.” After a short pause, he added, “Tiz promised me that he will come back.”

***

At the church, after completing the blood sacrifice, Tiz stood at the center of the platform, his face gradually turning pale. Rasma leaned back against the back of the pew. At this moment, he was the most relaxed person present, because the situation had long since moved beyond his control. There was even a faint, petty satisfaction in his heart, because things had also clearly moved beyond the control of the three behind him.

Look at them, three sacred Temple elders engaged in something so unbecoming.. They tug at one another, argue with one another, stop one another, and then each one is shocked in turn. It’s like watching a Divine Servant preaching at a mountain village, where the villagers shift from disdain to doubt, only to finally be stunned into silence.

Rasma took a deep breath and forced his expression to remain solemn. He was genuinely concerned that he might laugh out loud. For years he had wondered why it was that every time he got entangled in matters related to Tiz, he needed to readjust his state of mind afterward. He felt that the reason was not merely that they had once been rivals in their youth.

Perhaps, in his heart, Rasma had always felt a kind of admiration for Tiz.

He still remembered being young and standing beside Tiz when they had received an audience with Elder Gale. Rasma had watched with his own eyes how Tiz, before of a Temple elder, had compared Order to a mask. Had Rasma been influenced by Tiz? No. Because he had gradually realized that he could never catch up to Tiz’s pace. Before, it felt like a gap in distance, but he now discovered that the other man had never even been on the same playing field. What Rasma resented might have been that admiration had risen up of its own accord.

Rasma was not Mr. Hoffen. Mr. Hoffen had pursued the academic path throughout his entire life, living in suppression and monotony. For that reason, when he had first heard of Tiz’s deeds, Mr. Hoffen had felt almost no resistance. Later, he could say without hiding anything that Tiz was the person he admired most throughout his life.

Rasma was different. He had once been one of the proud elites as well. His lowly origins and outstanding talent had earned him a reputation within the church as being a bright star on the rise. To truly admire a peer was, for him, rather embarrassing.

But now it felt fine. Rasma felt light in both body and mind. He had already thrown the Code of Order and the Light of Order onto the ground. At this moment, he was simply Rasma. He had no other identity. With the shackles of his identity set aside, he could finally look at Tiz from the perspective of a free soul and simply watch.

At last, with one more flash from the simple teleportation array beneath the platform, the middle-aged Tiz returned. The array at his feet shattered as he appeared. After all, it was a disposable thing, and so many transfers through arrays in such a short amount of time had placed an immense load on the middle-aged Tiz. His body itself had become half transparent, and only the godhead fragment at his chest still shone with clear luster. It was like a second heart, supporting the existence of the middle-aged Tiz.

Then, the middle-aged Tiz began to dissipate, breaking apart into a glittering dust that drifted away. In the end, only the single black godhead fragment remained, and Tiz took that in his hand.

As he inspected it, Tiz asked, “Want it?”

His tone matched that of someone shopping and having a bit of spare change with which they teased a beggar on the side of the road.

Even so, Sithe gritted her teeth and walked over. The losses the Temple of Order had suffered had already occurred. What mattered most now was to seize what could still be taken.

She stopped in front of Tiz and held out her hand. Tiz glanced back down at the fragment in his hand, and then at Sithe. With a casual indifference, he tossed the godhead fragment to the ground. Such a thing would not break easily. Even after it fell, it was still protected by a layer of a black halo. What could not be concealed was the contempt in the gesture.

Sithe said, “Tiz, sometimes there is no need to completely provoke someone.”

Tiz shook his head. “I don’t like placing hope in whether a person has been provoked by me. Besides, you misunderstand; What I despise is not you, but these three so-called godhead fragments that have tormented me.”

Sithe flipped her hand over, and the godhead fragment rose and entered her grasp.

By this time, veins were already bulging out across Tiz’s face. Whether it was splitting himself into three earlier, or the blood sacrifice that he had just performed, both had been massive expenditures for him. There was also yet another enormous expenditure, though the three Temple elders and Rasma did not know about it. That was, at this moment, most of the members of the Order’s Whip who were outside of the church were supporting themselves with their hands on the ground, trying to steady their breathing as they dealt with injuries suffered from retracting their Arts too quickly.

Simon was panting, a cold sweat dripping from him. In his mind, one sentence kept echoing. “Our God of Order is not a true god. Everything he has done was only to become one.”

In the church, hearing such words meant that one’s faith was no longer firm, that it had been corrupted.

Simon knew exactly what the source of that corruption was. It was inside the church right in front of him. He pursed his dry lips tightly. All around him were his subordinates and colleagues, each one trying to catch their breath. Simon did not know how many of them had heard the same words he had, or if any of the red-robed clergy who stood further away, who had laid out the ritual array, had heard it as well. Just how widespread was this corruption really?

Yet that was not what frightened Simon the most. Similar incidents of corrupted faith had happened before. It was nothing new among the major orthodox churches. What truly terrified the man was that he was hesitating about whether to report this.

***

“What happens next, Tiz,” Gale asked, staring at the man.

Condensing three godhead fragments was something unheard of, and yet Tiz had done just that. Still, no genius was without their limits. Genius often belonged to only a single era, whereas the church’s accumulation could span an entire epoch. That was why Gale believed that Tiz had chosen to negotiate. The man himself knew that he could not fight the entire Church of Order alone. He could not.

There was a saying that had circulated within the Church of Order for a long time: Order rests only on the fist.

Tiz’s fist was not hard enough. Beyond that, he had a soft spot. He had a family that he cared about.

Gale believed that if Tiz entered the Temple of Order, relying on the advantage of three godhead fragments would enable his standing within the Temple to rise quickly. It was inevitable that he would surpass Niven and Sithe, and perhaps, years later, he might even become the one who sat upon the Throne of Order within the Church of Order, becoming the first beneath the God of Order.

Yet the man refused, and his refusal was uncompromising.

Because he’s afraid of being swallowed.

What am I thinking? Gale jolted awake, a tremor rising up from the depths of his soul. As a Temple elder, why would he have such an irreverent thought? Was it because the true genius of the church before him had chosen to betray the God of Order? One could say that genius is short-lived, but one could not deny that a true genius possesses perceptions that ordinary mediocrities do not. Perhaps with nothing more than lowering his head and lifting it, he could see a scenery that others would never see throughout their entire lives.

Gale steadied his emotions and made a decision in the dark. When he returned, he would find a way to break his oath. He would scrub away as much as possible of his divinity’s perception of what happened today.

He closed his eyes, opened them again, and spoke, “Tiz, what do you intend to do next?”

You detonated one godhead fragment, handed over one, and performed a blood sacrifice. You are already very weak, and that weakness is irreversible. Most importantly, even though you handed one over, you still have one left in you.

Gale found himself worrying about Tiz. He genuinely admired this young man who had once stood before him with pride. Back then, when Rasma, praised as a rising star of Order, had stood beside Tiz, yet Gale had felt that Rasma looked mediocre from every angle. Even when that young Tiz had said something utterly taboo, Gale had still chosen not to punish him, and had not even wanted to be angry with him. Perhaps, even then, he had a feeling that before long, the junior would be sitting with him in the Temple of Order, sipping black tea and discussing the true meaning of Order.

When you consider someone to be a peer, or at least someone on the same level, you can even make jokes with them. Whether that joke goes too far depends largely on the status of the one making it.

Gale quickly let his concerns go. Did such a person need his worry? Everything that happened in the church today already exceeded anything he might have imagined before arriving. Tiz must have arranged everything long ago.

Tiz pointed at the godhead fragment in Sithe’s hand, the one he had just given away, and said, “The past affects the present, but the past can be forgotten. Once the future is lost, the past will lose the foundation for its own existence.”

It was a warning, and all four understood it.

That godhead fragment came from the middle-aged Tiz, from the past Tiz, which meant that although the fragment was now in Sithe’s hand, the one who truly controlled it was Tiz. He could detonate the fragment Sithe held at will. Even if it was taken into the Temple, that connection could not be severed, because severing its connection to Tiz would be the same as denying its existence.

Tiz’s face continued to turn paler. “I am very weak now. Whether body or soul, I have entered an irreversible state of decline. So I will return home. In my bed, I will complete my self-sealing and go to sleep. I will keep only the last trace of my consciousness, perhaps just enough to awaken once. I want to watch my family live safely and happily. If they are not safe, if they are not happy, if they suffer retaliation, then the godhead fragment you take back will detonate immediately, and I will sit up in my bed and go to the Temple of Order through the Gate of Order.”

“The Church of Order will not do something so crude,” Niven replied. “It will not retaliate against ordinary people, especially not your family. You have already drained their spirituality and cut off any possibility of them entering the church, both now and in the future.”

Tiz’s eyes flared the slightest bit. “I already said that I do not like trusting the future to so-called promises. That is why I choose to watch it myself.”

“Your term?” Gale asked.

“When this body of mine rots away completely, losing all vitality and I die, if, until that moment, my family continues to live safely and happily, then the godhead fragment that remains within me will be recovered after my death by the Church of Order, by you. I am not like you. I have no interest in extending my life through the Temple of Order. In fact, for a long time, the length of my life was an issue that troubled me. If I could die young, if I could die in my middle ages, then perhaps these problems would have been far easier to solve.

“Given the age and degree of aging of this body, I can remain in bed for another ten years. Ten years, twenty, or thirty, none of that holds much meaning for you, does it? I despise the God of Order, but I have never despised the Church of Order.”

“Good. I believe you, Tiz,” Gale answered.

Niven nodded along. Sithe offered no response. Rasma felt a quiet sigh rise in his heart. With the damage the Temple of Order had suffered already being a fact, returning with one godhead fragment now, and also being able to recover another in the coming decades was already a very good result. While everyone had believed that Tiz only possessed one godhead fragment at this moment, no one was willing to push things to the breaking point. Also, Tiz still technically held two.

He bent slightly, bracing himself with a hand on the lectern where he had once preached to believers. “So now, there are two issues.”

“Why do you have so many issues?” Sithe snapped.

Tiz nodded. “Alright, now there is only one.”

“Speak,” Gale said. “If the Church of Order can do it, it will.”

“No. This is not your issue. It is mine. The first was that although my body and soul are already very weak, if I were to return now and seal myself into sleep, there would still be a bit too much remaining. The second issue is that while today’s scene was large and many people came, the impact has been significant, yet there has ultimately been no real fight. That felt somewhat regrettable.”

He paused. “Now, there is no need to ask for either of those to be fixed. There is only one issue left.”

Tiz raised his hand and pointed at Sithe. “You’ve said far too much today.”

As his words fell, Tiz vanished from where he stood, reappearing directly in front of Sithe. Her pupils shrank, and an Order barrier instantly formed before her to block the man, other Arts already taking shape. At their level, casting no longer required elaborate preparation.

Yet at that moment, the godhead fragment in Sithe’s hand, the one that had come from the middle-aged Tiz, flashed and interrupted Sithe’s casting and, to some degree, even sealed the divinity within her. Even if it was only for an instant, Tiz was already right in front of her.

Most importantly, the three Temple elders were only present as projections of consciousness, which meant that the bodies they were using were not their true bodies. Any instinctive defensive measures or close-held holy relics that their true bodies might possess were absent at this moment.

In that moment, Sithe was utterly exposed.

Tiz’s left hand clamped around her throat, and he shot out of the church. Her body was pressed to the ground as she was dragged forward, carving a long trench through the stone tiles down the central aisle. All along, Sithe continuously tried to resist with her Arts, only for Tiz to counter and dissolved them just as steadily. Given their proximity to each other, the exchange unfolded at a rate far beyond ordinary comprehension, and even Rasma found it difficult to follow along.

Divinity crashed against divinity in blinding bursts. Arts unraveled Arts in impossible ways. Rules ground against rules in harsh friction.

In the end, Tiz managed to drag Sithe all of the way out of the church. Above it stood a cross, the tall marker rising into the air. Tiz lifted the woman and shot upward, hurling her towards the cross. The tip of it pierced her chest, suspending her in the air.

“Order—Cage.”

Sithe was sealed upon the cross. Her wide-eyed, absolutely furious gaze blazed, yet she could not move.

Tiz ignored her venomous stare as he dropped back to the ground. Beneath the gazes of numerous high-ranking clergy from the Church of Order, he dusted off his hands and announced, “I’m tired. I’m going home to sleep.”