Even if you're a corrupted magical girl, you still have to try to redeem yourself.

“Haven’t I thought about it? Of course I have! It’s because you told me to think about it that I’ve come this far! I want to be a qualified bishop, I want to continue to fulfill this glorious responsibility, and I’m even prepared to sacrifice myself! But I don’t want to see everything I do as an accomplice to evil!”

Saint Sir sneered a few times: "Acting as accomplices to evil? Wrong! It's an honor! It's for our destiny and responsibility! We who used those powers didn't seek personal gain! We've all been like this for thousands of years! Our church has always been like this for thousands of years! Without us, do you know what Moonsea City would become?"

"I don't know." Shengqi's tone softened, and he gently shook his head.

"Isn't that enough? Moonsea City must be under our protection. Once we are gone, what will Moonsea City become once the seal of the Primordial Darkness is broken?" Seiji chuckled, her shoulders trembling slightly with her laughter, her tone filled with even more certainty.

Unfazed by the other party's gaze, Shengqi took another significant step forward.

"But Mother! You don't know! You don't know what Moonsea City will become once we make a change. Maybe we'll lose everything! Maybe we'll be reborn! This current cycle is nothing more than humbly coexisting with the power of the Primordial Darkness! Who can guarantee that the Church isn't being manipulated by the Primordial Darkness? Or that it hasn't become an accomplice of the Primordial Darkness? The saintesses of past generations used their lives as vessels to bear this power, and what did they get in return? The corrupted magical girls are still rampant, the Church is still trying to eliminate all discordant voices, nothing has changed, not a single thing has changed!"

"Shut up!" the priest interrupted the prayer sharply. "Are you denying the sacrifices of all ages? Are you negating the history of the Church? It is through the sacrifices and selfless dedication of generation after generation that the Primordial Darkness has been able to stabilize! Power exists to be used! Besides, I have not used it for anything wrong! It is for the sake of faith! Do you understand what faith is? You have completely failed the Church in nurturing you!"

"Mother, stop! That's enough!" Faced with his hysterical mother, all Shengqi could offer was a sigh.

However, the bishop standing on the high platform continued to ramble on.

“Mashiro, that woman Mashiro, what kind of bewitching potion did she give you? I am your mother, your bishop, the symbol of the entire church. I sent you to her side in the hope that you could correct her thinking and rebuild the glory of the church, not to make you her appendage!”

"Mother, I told you that's enough, isn't it?"

"Enough? Absolutely not enough! If that's the case, then leave! Get out of here! I'll let Shion take over your responsibility! No one can stop the wheels of history. A few ignorant young girls, don't think you can change the world with your passion! Stop being so naive!"

“I’m not being naive! I’m thinking about the future of the church! I want to listen to my mother and become a qualified bishop, not one who aligns with evil, but one who can truly lead everyone down a different path.”

"Shut up! Shut up! You're spouting nonsense! You're talking rubbish!"

Saint Prayer clutched the hem of her robe tightly, pouring out her heart to Saint Priest with all her might, hoping that they could understand each other.

Seiji stomped his feet hard, cursing loudly at the girl he had poured all his heart and soul into raising, giving Seiki no chance to argue back.

The argument that day lasted for a very long time, and the noise from the argument between the mother and daughter, who were not related by blood, was clearly audible to Genji Mashiro outside the door.

Which side was right at the time?

Even today, Xu Yan Zhenbai has not found the answer.

On one side is the former bishop who clings to the old ways, desperately trying to maintain the church's survival and interests, taking it as his own responsibility, and never even questioning whether using the power of the Primordial Darkness was the right thing to do, only knowing how to numbly fulfill his duties.

On the other side is Saint Prayer, who witnessed the "crimes" of the former bishop and even the entire church. His worldview, which he had built up since childhood, collapsed with the truth. He wanted to change everything with his own hands, but did not know where to begin.

Yes, both sides have problems, and Mashiro Goraki cannot deny that.

But if both sides had backed down back then, things wouldn't have gotten to this chaotic state now.

However, that was just a hypothetical scenario involving Genki Mashiro.

Those who truly want to shoulder the future of the Church will never easily back down.

Having received church education since childhood and using that education to nurture more children, the priestess, who considers this all she has, would never abandon the glory of the church, or rather, her useless pride.

Therefore, the conflict broke out.

The situation was extremely chaotic. The priest called for the remaining nuns, while Xu Yan Zhenbai and Sheng Qi were forced to fight each other and defeat all the nuns.

This is the second time that Grimmjow Mashiro has done this.

She was unwilling to do so, but the nuns in the church maintained the same useless glory and held unthinking loyalty to the current bishop.

They couldn't possibly defeat themselves, but Seiji did it anyway, driving himself to the brink of despair.

Perhaps she chose this path herself.

In short, the church bishop died, and when Seiji and Mashiro found her, she had already chosen to die in a corner where no one cared.

Shengqi cried bitterly, not for any particular reason, but simply for the woman he called his mother, who had raised him for more than ten years.

It rained heavily that day, perhaps the entire city of Yuehai was wailing mournfully as the church moved one step closer to its doom.

In the end, Saintess returned to the church with the former bishop, who had died alone. Faced with endless questioning from the other ignorant members of the church, the two of them chose to remain silent.

Only Mashiro and Seiki knew what happened that night, but they had already decided to keep it a secret.

From that day on, the entire church was essentially defunct in name only.

However, compared to what happened next, this was just a small appetizer.

Chapter 217 Before Her Story Begins

In the movie, the evil empire is always successfully dismantled through the protagonist's efforts, and the shattered world will usher in a new dawn.

How will the corrupt empire get back on track after its collapse, and how will the situation of being leaderless be improved? These are questions that will not be covered in the movie.

The church's former bishop has fallen, but where should the church go from here? Is there anyone who can, and how should, lead the church forward?

These things should be done by the Holy Prayer, but now I don't know what to do or what I can do.

Not to mention these problems that are already facing Shengqi, she can't even figure out how to respond to Shengshiyin and tell her what exactly happened last night.

"Mashiro, is it possible that we were wrong?" Seiki couldn't help but start to doubt herself, doubting that everything she had done was wrong, doubting that everything she had done was meaningless.

She also doubted herself, wondering if she could really shoulder this heavy responsibility.

At this moment, Mashiro Gorgen simply said what she had to say.

"I don't know. The answer to this question should be found by us together, rather than sitting here and arbitrarily coming up with an answer that satisfies us all, or at least that we can accept in our hearts."

So they began to search for the answer to this question.

After the bishop's death, Saint Prayer naturally took over the bishop's duties and naturally gained access to truths that she could never have accessed before.

Perhaps those truths can be called a completion of the inferences made by Genki Mashiro. All the recorded facts confirm that the series of speculations made by Seiki and Genki Mashiro in the past were basically correct.

From its inception, the Church has been using the dark power it has sealed away, and using this power to create successors, who are also new containers for the seal.

From the very beginning, Saint Prayer was destined to be unable to become a bishop and was destined to sacrifice himself in order to seal the power of the Primordial Darkness.

Saint Prayer herself had no objection to this. She valued her life and was prepared to sacrifice herself, but before that, she still needed to complete her unfinished duties.

These are things that Seiki and Genki Mashiro knew, or rather, that even if they didn't know, they guessed most of.

However, they also keenly discovered some deeper secrets: besides using this part of the primordial darkness to create more nuns, what else was the Church hiding?

At that time, neither Mashiro Gakuen nor Seiki knew that what was hidden, though a shocking truth, was actually not a big deal.

It was just a clumsy lie concocted by a silly girl from a thousand years ago to hide the fact that her only friend had fallen from initial hope to final despair.

At that time, the girl did not know that the church would continue to exist, nor did she have the energy to weave her well-intentioned lie into a flawless story.

However, none of the bishops throughout the centuries have ever questioned the legitimacy of their faith, nor have they questioned the veracity of the stories they heard. They simply knew that they should do this and simply followed what they believed to be the right path.

However, this mystery became a knot in the hearts of both Genken Mashiro and Seiki.

"So, we wanted to find the answer to this mystery, so we set our sights on the church's last forgotten secret: that magic wand, and that white coffin that has been passed down from ancient times."

As Genken Mashiro spoke, his eyes would occasionally dart towards Yuuki Yuuki out of the corner of his eye.

Seeing it with her own eyes, hearing it with her own ears, and feeling it with her own body—if she followed the habits of Seiki as described by Genki Mashiro, she wouldn't be able to put her mind at ease without personally touching the coffin.

"So, you went?" Yuuki Yuen asked.

“That’s right, we went there. On one hand, we wanted to find out what the Church was hiding; on the other hand, we believed that it was unreasonable for the Church to have been using the power of the Primordial Darkness to create magical girls and nuns for thousands of years and to exchange the sacrifice of each generation for stability. What other reasons could there be? Perhaps I have my own selfish reasons and want to find a way to completely end the history of magical girls.”

"and then?"

"Then, we came to the coffin to feel its magic, analyze its power, and guess its abilities, studying it little by little, but to no avail. Until one day, we felt we had to go a step further, so we tried to open the coffin."

Even though Mashiro Urokin is usually good at hiding her true feelings and emotions, Yuuki Yukino could still sense that Mashiro Urokin was greatly shaken at this point.

This is a lie, but the details of the lie are actually irrelevant. The reasoning is correct, the process is correct, and the result is unchangeable. The only thing that might be problematic is the motive.

Those who believe that further progress is necessary are probably not Genki Masashiro, but Seiki.

Given Seinki's personality of needing to experience everything firsthand, it's quite normal for him to make such a decision.

However, the coffin cannot be opened. In Nishio Reki's memory, what appears after opening the coffin is the Holy Prayer, whose mind has been devoured by Shub-Niggurath's darkness—this has a major premise: that Nyaruko, who was in the coffin at the time, and Yog, who was likely also sealed in the coffin, are no longer there.

When Mashiro and Seiki opened the coffin, they must have faced something even more terrifying.

Genken Mashiro was silent for a moment, and his gaze briefly shifted from Yuuki Yuuki, as if he were looking at the distant past.

After a long pause, Genki Mashiro spoke again.

"Later, I learned that there was no such thing as primordial darkness or primordial; they were originally a whole. The idea that the two forces restrain each other is not entirely a lie, but it is not entirely true either. They are not restraints, but coexistences. And the power used by the Church has always been the complete power."

“Shub-Niggurath gave magical girls life, so magical girls came into being; Yog-Sothoth gave magical girls a stage, so the existence of magical girls can continue, and your Nyarlathotep gave magical girls possibility, so magical girls have abilities that belong only to them.”

"Don't understand? Let me put it another way. If this world is a drama, then the three pillars correspond to life, the stage, and the script. They complement each other and are indispensable. These powers have touched upon the rules themselves, but even they are the result of the original power being corrupted by darkness. The complete original power has been able to do these things from the very beginning."

"That's right. Judging from the results, the bishop who clung to the old ways was not wrong, nor was what she did wrong. She did use the power of the Primordial Darkness, and she did attack me in order to maintain the Church's correctness. But she was also able to maintain the stability of the power in this way, allowing the Primordial and the Primordial Darkness, which had not yet separated, to continue to coexist."

"However, when we opened it, the delicate balance that it maintained, which seemed to be on the verge of collapse at any moment, was disrupted by our slight intervention."

Yuuki Yukino's words may seem a bit convoluted at first glance, but Gorgen Mashiro's words are actually not difficult to understand at all.

The Primordial Darkness and the Primordial One were originally one, so let's call it "Unnamed Magic A". The Church has been using "Magic A" to create magical girls and nuns as vessels, in order to prevent "Magic A" from becoming a destructive force.

That being said, "Magic A" does indeed contain the Primordial Darkness, or rather, the Church is directly using the power of the Primordial Darkness, and there is nothing wrong with that, and the Church continues its actions knowing this.

Is it wrong for Genki Mashiro to approach it?

It's hard to judge Yuuki Yukino.

This is like a seriously ill patient who, if she doesn't go to the operating table quickly, only has a week to live, but if she goes to the operating table, her life may only have one day left, or it may be extended for a very long time.

Ultimately, the patient died on the operating table, her life, which could have lived for another week, was prematurely ended.

The bishop's decision to refuse surgery as a precaution is understandable, and there's nothing wrong with Urobuchi Mashiro and Seiki wanting to find a way to resolve the current situation. If we have to find a fault, it would be that Urobuchi Mashiro and Seiki actually don't have the ability to perform the surgery.

"So, they split up?" Yuuki asked.

"That's right. The power of the Primordial Darkness seems to have its own consciousness. After the balance of power was disrupted, it immediately split itself into three parts. Perhaps it had already split into three parts and had been waiting for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. In any case, when we investigated it in order to destroy it, it gave us a big surprise."

Chapter 218 The Magic Box

As Mashiro and Seiki faced the pure white coffin standing silently in a secret room hidden behind the grand stage of the sanctuary, they both fell into silence.

Some long-forgotten memories, some future possibilities, and their current feelings of wanting to move forward while also worrying about the unknown all combine to create the driving force that propels them forward.

"Xiao Qi, are you ready?"

"Yes, no problem."

The two of them took a deep breath at the same time, their breathing rhythms unconsciously coinciding, their breaths so light that they seemed about to disappear into the dry, dusty air around them.

Genjiro Mashiro and Seiki simultaneously reached out and placed their fingertips, which had become icy cold from nervousness, on the edge of the coffin that had always stood there.

The moment his fingertips touched the coffin, Genji Mashiro felt a touch even colder than his own hands, like a venomous snake flicking its tongue, seeping into his very bones.