Starting as a prodigy wanting milk? A world-destroying deception in the opposite direction.

"Understood." Shen Zhen put away the fragments, cupped her hands in a respectful gesture to the two of them, and

"Instructor Liu, Uncle, I'm going to see Lord Wang first, and I'll come back to see you later."

Liu Xubai waved his hand:

"Go ahead, just go in."

Also, in the future, if you encounter something you don't understand, just ask.

"Those old monsters in the Ceremonial Department may seem rigid, but they're actually quite willing to teach eager younger generations."

Shen Zhen smiled and agreed, then turned and walked towards the main courtyard's archives office.

The office of the scribe was built with blue brick walls and black wood doors. Above the door hung a plaque that read "Examining the Origins and Development of the Ritual," which was personally inscribed by the previous heads of the Ritual Academy.

Shen Zhen was stunned for a moment when she pushed open the door.

The faint scent of cypress incense in the study dispelled the heavy smell of ink.

Wang Juan sat behind a large desk by the window, wearing a dark blue uniform from the Ceremonial Court. He was calmly flipping through a stack of files.

Sitting in the guest seat next to the large table was someone he never expected: Shen Zhenglan.

Shen Zhenglan was wearing a wide white robe.

A few strands of silver hair were mixed in with his hair, but he did not look old at all. He sat upright like a mountain peak, and his body was surrounded by a restrained yet powerful mental energy fluctuation.

That was the unique aura of a sixth-tier Divine Blessing Master; even when deliberately concealed, it was still something that made people dare not look directly at it.

"Father," Shen Zhen said softly.

His father was once a core member of the Zhennian Hall, and his strength as a sixth-level Divine Protector was among the best in the temple. However, he stepped down four years ago and rarely mentioned the temple, only occasionally coming over to help.

His father was very strict with him, especially after his mother died, which led to a less close relationship between the two.

Shen Zhen came to the Ceremonial Office, but he didn't expect his father to find out so quickly and was waiting for him there.

Shen Zhenglan looked up at him, her gaze sweeping over him without any particular emotion, yet it made Shen Zhen inexplicably feel somewhat restrained.

"You've advanced to the mid-stage of Tier 1? Is your psychic power stable?"

"It's relatively stable," Shen Zhen said, walking up to him and stopping in front of him.

"He encountered the Demon of Illusion in Ruanjia Lane and broke through his limits in the heat of battle."

Wang Juan put down the file, a faint smile playing on his lips:

"Little Shen is quite good. You were able to break through the illusion of the Illusion Demon with your willpower at the early stage of the first level, and even advance in the process. Among the younger generation of the entire Purification Division, you are the only one who has done it."

He pointed to the chair next to him.

"Please sit down. I asked you to come over today."

"Firstly, to see the clues you brought back; secondly, your father heard you broke through to the mid-stage of the first rank and came specifically to see you, and also to check on your recent training at the Cleansing Evil Division."

Shen Zhen sat down and handed over the shards of the pottery jar:

"Lord Wang, this is the mark left by the mutated version of the steamed bun shop, which eventually escaped."

Wang Juan took the fragment, gathered a wisp of mental energy at his fingertips, and gently swept it across the surface of the mark.

The moment the telekinetic energy touched the mark, the patterns on the fragment suddenly glowed with a faint green light.

"There was definitely a problem." Wang Juan's eyes narrowed, and he turned to look at Shen Zhenglan.

"Old Shen, where are your fragments?"

Shen Zhenglan took out a palm-sized stone from his pocket, which also had markings engraved on it.

They placed the stones and fragments on the table and pushed them together.

A miraculous scene unfolded.

As soon as the two marked objects approached each other, the green light suddenly surged, intertwined, and projected a blurry light and shadow in the air.

There are no concrete images in the light and shadow, only a distorted darkness, like a black hole.

In the darkness, the faint sound of chewing could be heard, along with a broken, intermittent sound that seemed to come from a distant place:

"Longevity...feeding..."

Shen Zhenglan's eyes darkened, and he added:

"These two words also appeared in an old case I was investigating four years ago."

Suddenly, Shen Zhen's pupils shrank, and the mental power within his body fluctuated uncontrollably.

In a daze, he recalled his mother's figure protecting him before she died, and that feeling somehow resonated with the darkness in the light and shadow.

"Quickly sever the telepathic connection!" Shen Zhenglan noticed something was wrong and flicked a burst of telepathic energy from his fingertip, instantly cutting off the connection between Shen Zhen and the light and shadow.

The green light suddenly dimmed, and the light on the two objects gradually faded away.

Shen Zhen broke out in a thin layer of sweat on his back.

In that instant, he felt as if he were being stared at by countless hungry eyes. He instinctively wanted to escape, but was pulled by a force that wanted to get closer to the darkness.

"This so-called 'Messenger of God' mark... how could it cause such an unusual phenomenon today?" Wang Juan looked at the stone, his tone grave, then looked at Shen Zhen.

"Xiao Shen, are you alright?"

"It's alright." Shen Zhen took a deep breath and quickly recovered; that power just now was too strange.

Shen Zhenglan confirmed that Shen Zhen was alright before saying:

"For the past four years, I have been investigating this so-called 'messenger of God'."

His voice lowered as he picked up the stone and unconsciously rubbed the marks on it.

A hint of pain and determination flashed deep in his eyes, his gaze seemingly piercing through the light and shadow before him, landing on a distant, seemingly unforgettable past.

"You're all grown up now, and there are some truths you should know." He looked at Shen Zhen:

"What happened to your mother back then... was inextricably linked to this so-called 'messenger'."

Shen Zhenglan paused slightly, and the cypress fragrance in the study seemed to freeze for a moment as well.

Upon hearing the news about her mother, Shen Zhen was also shocked, and her knuckles turned white as she clenched her fists.

My father rarely brought up my mother's affairs, and a complex mix of emotions welled up inside me.

There was anger, sadness, and a glimmer of hope.

The image of his mother's sacrifice came flooding back to him, and he wanted to know what the truth behind it was.

Wang Juan silently looked at his old friend, knowing that it was a heart ailment that had plagued him for four years, an obsession that gnawed at his reason day and night.

Shen Zhenglan was silent for a moment, then spoke again, his tone heavy:

"I won't close my eyes until I dig these so-called 'messengers of God' out of the gutter and see them completely annihilated."

I...have no face to see her."

"What is a 'messenger of God'?" Shen Zhen suppressed the pain in his heart and couldn't help but ask.

Wang Juan explained:

"It is a branch of heresy, or rather, a group of God-soothing followers whose minds have been twisted by the wrath of God."

They did not agree with the idea that temples appease the gods' emotions.

Instead, they felt that God's emotions should be released, and that they specifically cultivated mutants who survived on human instincts, using the power of these mutants to disrupt order.

They call it "following the will of Heaven."

This was the first time Shen Zhen had heard about the specifics of "heresy." He had only seen the words "Beware of heresy" in the temple's introductory manual before, but he never imagined that it was such a thing.

"Is the green mist in the steamed bun shop a mutant cultivated by the messenger of God?" Shen Zhen pressed.

"Yes and no," Shen Zhenglan interjected.

"That green mist is the mature form of a food-eating mutant, surviving by devouring appetites, but there must be a divine messenger behind it pulling the strings."

It was definitely man-made!

This statement perfectly confirms what Liu Xubai and Shen Moyan said earlier.

Shen Zhen suddenly remembered the issue of the Divine Grace Kunian Dust Liquid, which was most likely also man-made, so he voiced his doubts.

"By the way, Lord Wang,"

Chief Ling had previously warned that there might be a problem with the Mind Dust Liquid from the Divine Grace Treasury; a few days ago, some team members experienced mental disorder after using it.

"I went to collect the Nianchen Liquid today and noticed that the character 'Xi' on the bottle had an extra dot." He said, taking out the Nianchen Liquid.

No problems have been found yet.

But Jin Wanquan looked somewhat flustered. Even if the Nianchen Liquid didn't seem abnormal now, it had definitely been tampered with.