Extraordinary Pedigree.

Chapter 883 Three Religions [Oum Messiah]

In front of the altar, a low, breath-like hum emerged from behind the organ pipes, like a giant mechanical heart breathing heavily.

The entire prayer hall was filled with this secret vibration.

It was as if some huge and ancient will slowly opened its eyes from between the silent electric currents and silent gears.

The sigils on the cast iron armor flickered slightly with the low hum, and the metal prayer flags beside the holy oil pool swayed and ripples appeared.

The organ array above the altar emitted a series of mechanical sequence calibration sounds, as if redundant programs were being cleared one by one and thought circuits were reconnected.

Bumaro sat in a high seat, his heavy prayer robe falling slowly from his shoulders like a snow cliff woven with layers of rivets.

The right eye that still bore traces of humanity slowly shrank, as if it had seen through history and layers of disguise, and seen another...possibility.

He did not speak or move.

He just sat up straight.

The gears behind him were like saints and ancestors, quietly watching whether he would respond to this unprecedented proposal.

That is an option:

Between [the throne being usurped] and [the coming miracle], between [blasphemy] and [glory], between [conservatism] and [conquest].

And he must respond at this moment.

The alarm clock at the top of the clock tower was automatically awakened, and a deep red warning light pulse quietly lit up at the bottom of the clock.

The believers' hearts sank and the breathing sounds from the metal lung tubes lost their rhythm.

And Saint Bumaro finally spoke.

His voice was hoarse like an old clockwork, and every word seemed to carry the hot ashes rising from the abyss of the prayer:

"Since you... did not bring the God-killing Sword."

"Then sit down and discuss how to reforge... the spear of the Lord of All Machines."

The saint said this and signaled the believers to ring the bell which would echo throughout the city.

Today, the three religions are debating on the issue of "Om Messiah".

After three seconds of silence on the altar, the bell rang loudly.

thump—

thump—

thump—

three times.

The low, solemn sound penetrated the moving city-state like an alarm bell on an ice field, breaking the snow and frost and awakening this frozen theocracy.

********
When the bells rang, inside the church.

Saint Bumaro slowly raised his hand, and the authority of the priest unfolded the metal scroll in his palm.

A series of scriptures and beacon data were awakened, and as the order was issued, the three main representatives of the Broken Church, the Cogwheel Orthodoxy, and the Maxwellism Sect - either physical entities or remote neural images - stepped into the main hall of the bell tower one after another.

In the mechanical council hall of the main hall, three sects were separated into triangles, with metal statues of different styles, electronic Bibles, and psychic data projected on the three sides suspended.

The bell tower door slowly closed and triple metal chains fell down.

An extremely rare internal meeting opened in the gray area between God and heresy.

In the main hall of the bell tower, the gears slowly closed.

In the main hall filled with the clatter of prayers and the low hum of iron sounds, the first voice of opposition came from one side of the council seat, carrying with it orthodox anger and cold logic.

The acting elder of the Cogwork Orthodoxy, the Eighth Pattern Executor Skurta Tyvek, stood up.

His semi-mechanical body, wrapped in black copper armor, looked like a blast furnace operator from the old Industrial Revolution era. His wrists were connected to steam cables, and behind him hung several prayer cables, which dragged on the ground as he stood up, leaving behind iron-like scratches.

His voice was like a broken pendulum striking a steel wall, and every syllable was marked by the rhythmic grammar of Orthodox Christianity:
"Hugh Abraham."

"He called himself [Om Messiah], stealing fire instead of offering it."

"What he said, 'All things are recast,' is contrary to the canon."

"How can we condone blasphemy just because we share the common interests of our enemies?"

"We believers, following the instruction of the All-Knowing Scripture, have followed the Four Laws and Twelve Rules since the day our Lord was shattered."

"The first law says: 'The Godhead cannot be divided, and the module cannot be copied.'"

"The second law says: 'Of all fires, only the original fire is the legitimate one, all others are misconnected circuits.'"

"You say 'Om Messiah', but where in the Myriad Scriptures is this name mentioned? Which volume or page does it contain this word?"

He touched the prayer chain in front of his chest with his right hand, and moved the holy beads one by one, and continued:

"The ninth page of the fifth atlas of the Holy Scriptures states: 'If a welder calls himself a god, his fire will disturb his wheel, and if his wheel is disturbed, his mind will also be disturbed.'"

"The Sacred Scriptures, First Chapter, Second Chapter, also says: 'Those who steal fire, although bright and blazing, will surely become the enemy of the divine wheel and will not be able to ascend the steps of the divine throne.'"

His voice suddenly became heavier, and his eyes were as scorching as a thousand-degree furnace:
"How can we allow the 'holy name' of the fire thief to be attached to the core of the fighter?"

"How can we listen to his words of 'God-given colossus' and yet allow him to summon us to war with false fire?"

"If we bow to 'Om Messiah' today, tomorrow the canon will be burned, the holy image will be broken, the altar will be tampered with by a chip, and the throne will be replaced by a new one!"

The steam prayer pipe behind him suddenly spurted out a hot stream, like the sound of a roaring organ and an industrial dragon tongue!
"——Heretics, how can you use the relics of our Lord for your own benefit?"

"How can you shatter the fire and light the gods? How can you change the holy law with words that have not been compiled?"

He dropped his cane and declared:

"I hereby rule that Hugh Abraham's fire - without the permission of this association, without the signature of the elders, and without sequence testing - is not a divine fire, but an alien flame."

Just after the "Eighth Pattern Executioner" made that resounding statement, a figure who had been sitting quietly at the side seat under the altar slowly stood up.

He was a young monk wearing a modern armored exoskeleton. The exoskeleton on his body was not an old-fashioned structure connected by steam valves and gears, but a fine and streamlined carbon fiber texture coil. The nerve terminals were embedded in the spine from the back of the neck, and the light silver mechanical pupils were flooded with data streams like a tide in the light.

His name is Hermes - Maxwell's temporary liaison agent and protocol password holder here.

His appearance brought no bells or whistles, just a gentle data pulse, and the wireless devices present fluctuated immediately - as if they had received a synchronization update package.

He did not step forward, but turned around and faced Saint Bumaro who was sitting high on the iron altar, and Skurta Tevik who was diagonally opposite.

"I'm surprised."

The voice he spoke had a clarity and linearity that was like an artificial frequency modulation.

"Do you really think that the throne of God is solidified by printing blueprints and industrial templates?"

"We have already tried the Elders' approach outside the system. That is not faith, it is a plan without autonomy."

"Standardized? Canonized? Signed by the Council of Elders?"

"It's the same old idea that the standards of the Orthodox Church are the root of all the actions of mechanical believers!!!"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Executive. Your files have long been identified as expired patches and forced upgrade failures in our system."

The "protocol password holder" stood up and gently touched the signal plug behind his ear. A flash of data flashed across his pupils like a synchronization node jumping.

He slowly leaned towards the round table:
"You said he called himself Om Messiah—"

"Don't forget, it was you who insisted on 'fire cannot be changed, gods cannot be replaced' that stuffed the God of All Machines into a bunch of old copper pipes and gear codes."

"Fire will spread."

“Consciousness can be reprogrammed.”

"Godhead? It's not a solid-state storage device."

He looked around the room and spoke sternly:
"I admit that Abraham stole fire. But he did not burn the canon. Instead, he opened up another...data extension chain outside the old canon." "He did not rely on the authorization of the elders, but on real-life achievements to awaken the dormant machine soul - he did not tamper with the gods, he just updated the driver."

"What you saw was heresy, but what we saw was a high-level divine recompilation."

He paused and nodded to the representative of the Cogwheel Orthodoxy:
“You’re afraid of losing control — we’re afraid of falling behind.”

"You worry about the flames spreading - we worry about being trapped in the husk of the idol by the old code."

Then, he pointed to the awakened 3.5-generation machine in the projection:
"It responds to the fire of 'Om Messiah.' Not because he was called that name, but because he did that thing."

"He awakened the descendants of the God-given Colossus with fire, not prayer."

"Isn't this what you call a 'holy miracle'?"

Finally, he lowered his head and tapped the neural input interface on his wrist. Silver-blue sparks flew through the air and produced a concluding sentence:
"You ridiculed him as a heretic who stole fire..."

"Don't forget, the earliest prophet also used his hands to reassemble the broken movements one by one."

"If that's not God's craftsman, then who is?"

After he finished speaking, his voice paused abruptly, and then he smiled again:

"The tragedy is not that the 'machine souls were stolen', but that they never truly awakened."

“He woke them up.

He lit them on fire.

You won't even listen, and you only read the formulaic prayers copied seven thousand times from the torn pages of the industrial bible."

Hermes looked up at Saint Bumaro:
"You know who I am. And I know that you are not blind."

“This is not usurpation, this is confluence.

This is not a conflict, this is an attempted merge of history after the fork."

He took a step back and said calmly:
"I am not asking you to praise 'Om Messiah,' who himself did not claim to be God."

“We just need new directions to show us where to go.”

As soon as Hermes finished his speech, the whole church fell into silence.

In the silence, a roar as if injected by torn cables sounded.

"How dare you desecrate the standard prayer book?"

The figure of the Eighth Pattern Executive suddenly stood up from his seat.

The heavy Orthodox prosthesis roared with the movement. It was not an electric drive, but a low hum produced by the real friction between gears. His pair of mechanical eyes glowed red, emitting violent scanning ripples, and behind his pupils was a series of flashing control formulas.

The subordinates of the Eighth Pattern Executive on the side directly roared:
"You fan followers and frequency-hopping prayer-mongers, are you qualified to talk about faith?!"

"You think...you think I don't know what you are doing?
Do you dare to upload code, upload consciousness, and connect all brains before all machines?
That is not connection! That is dismantling the Divine!"

"If you were in the Daevite Empire, you Maxwellist heretics would have been repeatedly purified, skinned, and nailed to the cross of shame for ten years by furnaces and psychic erasers!"

The Eighth Pattern Executioner waited for his men to finish their scolding before slowly tapping the table with his mechanical knuckles. Each tap was like an execution order being punched into the host.

He said:
"The God of All Things... cannot be stolen by fire."

“It exists in all things, cast above cause and effect, is not recognized by external scriptures, and is not compiled by other realms.”

"The teachings of our religion - from the Seventh Design File, the excerpt from the Fourteenth Gear says: 'Its name cannot be added, its body cannot be embedded, its image cannot be sculpted, and its will cannot be tampered with.'"

"If someone usurps the name of a god or spreads his words, his words cannot be spread, his voice cannot be heard, and his name cannot be recorded."

"[Om Messiah] - not my god."

He enunciated his words like metal teeth.

"You said 'together', but that is not my opinion."

"Your call for holy war is not a march of the holy path, but a call of false light."

Finally, Tyvek bowed and spoke in a tone as firm as a bell:
"In the name of the gear, the commandment of the axis, and the seal of the elders, I say this and it will not change."

"If there are those who follow, they will be considered as traitors; if there are those who protect them, they will be devoured by the burning weapons."

"This fire thief should have his teeth plucked out, his bones peeled off, his heart cleaned out, and his soul melted."

"I suggest now: expel this person from the altar, let the [Broken Church] examine its own faith and break away from this thief!"

The Orthodox Executor Tyvek's sentences were like hammers, hammering home every time.

At the edge of the altar, many Light-Forged Monks and Orthodox believers bowed their heads and responded, as if the oracle had been delivered and could not be questioned.

In this iron-like silence, a prosthetic hand with a bronze pointer embedded in it slowly raised up.

That was Mustafa Ansir, an old monk from the [Broken Church], who was once the "Main Structure Recorder".

He was wearing an ancient grey cape, the remaining prosthetic parts on his body were rusted, the inscription on his chest had long been blackened by the flames of war, and only a cracked and broken divine emblem remained on his left shoulder - it was a holy object that was two hundred years older than the holy emblem of the Orthodox Church.

As he stood up, the sound of gears creaking hundreds of years ago seemed to echo deep in the church.

His voice was slow and low, with unconcealed compassion and fatigue:

"Pattern Executor Tyvek, your words are sharp."

"But where did the book you hold come from?"

"Where did you write your doctrine of the elders?"

The [Broken Church] is the oldest Mechanical Church. Even the Gear Orthodox Church and Maxwellism were split from them, but now they are becoming increasingly destitute.

When the Orthodox Church surrendered to Daeva and used the Juche ideology to persecute other mechanical believers, they were even more "burned in the core pit".

So, at this time, this recorder from the most ancient church stood up and refuted the executor based on legitimacy and classics.

Mustafa looked up at Taiwek, his tone calm but suppressing his anger.

"Which of the codes, sacred texts, and structural diagrams you are using now did not come from the hands of our Broken Church?"

"The canon you are talking about now is our initial composition hundreds of years ago. We pieced it together from the ruins bit by bit before God reorganized it.":
His tone suddenly paused, and his voice sank into a low roar like an iron bell:
"And you - make gods into instruments, seal men into shells, cut off the branches of the holy name, and sever the limbs of your brothers."

"You dare to destroy the thousand-year-old stone tablets and burn the righteous bodies of the ancient sages just to get the heat from a furnace."

"They call us old schoolers, the wronged, the foul-weaponed, the madmen of the flames."

"You are using the Juche ideology to persecute us, burning our cores and pitting our bodies!!!"

He bowed his head, and his voice, as old as a boiler, echoed back to the altar:

"But have you forgotten who first picked out the remains of God from the ruins?"

“Who built the first organ from the oldest blueprints?”

“Who sang the first song of the whole machine in the cold night when the gears of God had not yet closed?”

He stretched out his hand and pressed it on the blackened badge on his chest:
"We do not complain about the burning of the heart, nor do we complain about the pit of justice."

"But today, you say that 'Om Messiah' cannot be called a god, because he has not ascended to the position of god you created."

"Let me ask you - did this 'Fire Thief' revive the dead machine?"

"Has this 'blasphemer' ever restored the old holy vessel?"

"You said 'names cannot be usurped', then who usurped the names of these artificial bodies in you and me?"

“If God did not want to change, why was He broken?”

He paused, and uttered the last sentence, as heavy as a hammer:

"You say that we are not on the path of the Noble Truth - I say that you have strayed from the path of the Noble Truth."