Ning Su knew that he wasn’t afraid. For his brother, he was unafraid of death and pain. If he were afraid, he wouldn’t have insisted on nurturing the contaminated sacred flower.
They arrived, and the Holy Maiden remained silent.
She stood in front of the Hua Feng, facing away from them.
Ning Su said, “The emperor is dead. The Queen and the two clan heads have had the sacred flower transplanted into them. This is what you wanted to see, isn’t it?”
Fang Qi asked, “Why? I don’t understand. Aren’t she and they on the same side?”
Ning Changfeng laughed. “They are not worthy to be on the same side as the Holy Maiden.”
Ning Su looked at the Holy Maiden dressed in deep black and said, “You died a long time ago, on that rainy night five years ago, under the small round window in the temple’s Great Hall.”
What Yenan Wang and Haobei Jing spoke of that grew stealthily in the darkness, slowly spreading. The thing that grew was the Lingxiao Flower. (T/N: The lily vine flower.)
It specifically absorbed the resentment and hostility born at the moment of death.
The Holy Maiden died after witnessing Hua Yuan being chopped into pieces in front of her.
Similar to how Snowball witnessed the death of Yin Daijun.
With intense resentment and unwillingness, she used blood to condense into the Lingxiao Flower, gaining infinite power and becoming a creator of a world.
Snowball couldn’t accept Yin Daijun’s death, while the Holy Maiden continued to maintain a world of madness.
Perhaps she had never realized that she was already dead.
She always told herself that she had seen a god and therefore made up the Flower God.
So, the death of the Hua Yuan and herself would have a meaning.
In reality, the Lingxiao Flower was born from the resentment and hostility in death.
In reality, Yenan Wang and Haobei Jing failed.
At that time, the Holy Maiden was as weak as Hua Yuan. They failed to awaken a Holy Maiden by killing Hua Yuan, but instead, they made her die in heartbreak and despair.
The moment the Holy Maiden became the Ghost Master, she might have already killed Yenan Wang and Haobei Jing, or maybe not.
However, in her world, she allowed them to live long lives, but had no intention of letting them go.
She, similar to Snowball, was deceiving herself, finding it hard to accept reality. Consequently, she persisted in sustaining and evolving this crazy world. However, deep down, there was a part of her that still remained like a clear soul.
She had no protective measures for these people. She indulged and assisted them in continuing their insane actions, intending to have batch after batch of players, countless times torturing and killing them repeatedly.
Ning Changfeng had nine heads; being killed nine times was nothing to him.
They were to be tortured by different people countless times, experiencing retribution from different individuals repeatedly, unable to reincarnate.
Fang Qi was stunned for a moment, surprised and then enlightened. “The Holy Maiden is the Ghost Master!”
It turns out that in this world, there was no god; there was only a Ghost Master.
Yes, the emperor was dead. The heads of the two largest families were easily subdued by them, leaving only the Holy Maiden.
He just didn’t expect the other to be the Ghost Master.
The Holy Maiden remained silent, facing away from them. Her hands in black sleeves were placed on the back of the chair as she slowly sat on the black chair.
She spoke in a low voice, “That night, I saw the Flower God.”
Ning Su: “You didn’t see Him.”
What she saw was just the Lingxiao flower, with three petals.
That was just one of countless avatars. It would appear as long as there was the deepest resentment and hostility at the time of death.
And His true appearance was the four-petaled Lingxiao flower.
Ning Su inexplicably believed in this.
The Holy Maiden’s voice suddenly became stern, “I saw Him!”
Ning Su stubbornly said, “You didn’t see Him!”
Just like that time outside the Flower God’s temple when the Holy Maiden said his sacred flower was a demon’s spawn, Ning Su resolutely said, “You didn’t see Him; what you saw was not the Flower God!”
“...”
Ning Changfeng and Fang Qi felt that, no matter what, it’s better not to provoke the Ghost Master in the instance world.
Ning Changfeng also felt that it might as well provoke her because at this time, his son must be feeling very uncomfortable.
Ning Su said the Holy Maiden was the Ghost Master, emphasizing repeatedly that the Holy Maiden had not seen the Flower God. In Ning Changfeng’s view, this was actually a denial of the Flower God’s existence. It meant that despite enduring so much suffering, his son couldn’t cultivate the Flower God.
Even Ning Changfeng couldn’t say for sure whether the Holy Maiden had seen the Flower God or not. After all, when they entered the instance, the system said that the Holy Maiden had seen the Flower God.
Furthermore, if there was no god, the only thing left for their quest was to find a way to see the god.
The method to see the god was devout belief, nurturing one’s own god (sacred flower) through personal devotion. But this would indicate that there should be a god after all.
He didn’t know why Ning Su was so steadfast in denying that the Holy Maiden had seen the Flower God.
“I saw Him!” The Holy Maiden turned her head, her face looking sinister and terrifying for the first time. “If I hadn’t seen Him, how would I know what the true form of the Flower God is, how the god’s image changes, and how the flowers I’ve seen on His palm grow!”
Ning Su said, “Indeed, there is a god, but you haven’t truly seen Him.”
...
In a moment of silence, the voice of Hua Feng sounded, “I also believe in the existence of the Flower God.”
Although there were some words he hadn’t understood yet, he believed in the existence of the god from the beginning to the end, just like his brother believed in the Flower God, even though there’s no reason for him to do so.
Ning Su made a thoughtful sound. The voice of the young man resonated calmly and firmly on the top floor of the Flower God’s temple, “I will prove it.”
***
The annual Flower God Festival had arrived.
It was the day of the Flower God’s descent.
It was the liveliest and most grand day in Furen County.
It was also the bloodiest day.
This day required a large number of sacrifices to welcome the arrival of the Flower God.
On the central street of Furen County, hundreds of flower servants danced in a grotesque sacrificial dance. Strange and unsettling songs came out of their mouths, accompanied by the “crack” of bones breaking.
The thick smell of blood seemed to come from nowhere, wafting through every corner of Furen County.
The front of the Flower God’s temple was the liveliest and most tense place.
More people than ever knelt in front of the main hall, and even the roofs in the distance were crowded with people.
Not only the major families but even some ordinary households offered sacrifices to the Flower God to pray for His blessing.
Countless grotesque and agonizing sacrifices “blossomed” in the cheers, silently howling in this abnormal world, making the crowd more excited.
The Holy Maiden, dressed in a gorgeous black and red sacrificial robe, stood in front of the statue, waiting for the official start of the Flower God Festival.
At ten in the morning.
The Holy Maiden walked out of the main hall.
As her foot stepped out of the Flower God’s temple, fervent cheers erupted in Furen County, and countless people knelt and worshipped the towering statue.
It was at this moment that the statue underwent a transformation.
