This heretic cannot be burned, he must be hung up and whipped!

Red Tide: 1921: Chapter 69: The hymn of humanity is the hymn of courage!

"Zi-"

"Just say it!" "Boom!!!"

Neos had no time to ask any further questions. He dodged a sudden distorted beam of light and at the same time, his psychic energy spread outward, sensing the chaotic tides of the surrounding subspace, trying to capture the source of the demonic power or even a faint clue.

"Right inside that demon—there's a strange voice crying for help! Could it be the Lord?" Luce said.

Neos frowned as a vast, chaotic, tsunami-like "sound" instantly surged into his consciousness, more deafening than the roars of the surrounding demons and the explosions of energy. This was the price of faith. In reality, barriers could block out most of the noise, but in the warp, as long as he reconnected with his essence, he could hear the vast torrent of countless independent voices, both living and dead.

"Saint Neos... please... give us strength... to defeat the devil..." "Carpathian Eagle... save my child... he is starving to death..."

"Please end this war... I don't want to lose any more loved ones..." "Praise Neos... You are the savior sent by God..."

"Why...why didn't you save us...Venice is still burning..."

"Nyos...Nyos...Nyos..."

"He is a heretic! A false god! May hell devour him!" "Curse you! You bring disaster! Destruction!" "He is a liar! Just a more powerful demon!"

It wasn't a unified prayer, but a chaotic murmur filled with a variety of emotions, conflicting and conflicting. Shouts, sobs, curses... Desperate pleas intertwined with fervent praise, devout hopes mingled with vicious curses. Every sound was crystal clear.

Normally he could filter out the "noise" and listen to the sounds of many people praying together, but Luce asked him to listen carefully, which was the end of him!

This is what makes him special, and it is also the price of his power. Luce has a rock-solid faith in God, and this firm belief in God helps her filter out the malevolence of the warp, allowing her to focus on pure divine power.

As a user with a special identification code, Luce only needs to accurately search for the data representing God in the vast sea of ​​data, but Neos, as a faith server, has a lot to consider.

"Damn... I have to focus... focus... concentrate--" "Roar!" Another group of subspace demons pounced on him.

Just as Neos was struggling to block out these voices, Luce's voice rang out clearly in his heart again. This time, she spoke faster, with an epiphany that seemed to have finally grasped the key:

"Saint! My Lord—my Lord is within that false god. He told me! It's sin... the sin of eight hundred years ago! That demon exploited not pure faith, but... the Christian faith tainted and distorted by sin!"

"Even if it is a faith tainted by human sin, it is still our faith. Your power is directed against the demons of the warp!"

"Fuck! Even rotten meat should be put into the rotten pot, right? No wonder my spiritual power is not so effective against this thing!"

He understood. This demon wasn't truly capable of harnessing his psychic energy, pure enough to defeat any demon of the Warp. It was exploiting all the heinous crimes humanity had committed in the name of faith over the past eight hundred years!

The slaughter of Jerusalem eight hundred years ago, and the countless cruelty, hypocrisy, despair, and suffering accumulated in the long war that followed. These dark emotions entangled with the piety of faith, forming a highly toxic mixture, imbued with the power of faith and filled with the corruption of the Warp. This is precisely the food that demons love to devour and exploit!

No wonder... everything makes sense... No wonder the Christian style in this world is so crazy, so destructive to humanity, so cruel to the enemy and even more cruel to oneself!

Instead of absorbing the pure and true faith in God, it directly destroyed the former Christianity and rebuilt a monster with the same name on its corpse!

"This is Christian revisionism! These false gods!" Luce was even angrier than Neos, and her slashing movements became faster.

Neos had never been so angry at the stupidity of mankind - they had fed such a monster with their own beliefs and sins!

"Okay, the next thing we need to figure out is how to separate this thing from its cult. When we get out, we have to find a way to start a religious reform and restore our former beliefs. But the Bible has been revised in the past eight hundred years.

How did you use the false scriptures to worship the true God?"

"Did He tell me?"

This is a true saint.

"Luce, buy me some time. Let the brother inside the demon interfere a bit. I'll see if I can remove the demon's armor!"

Neos roared, and the sound echoed in the subspace, shaking away a group of twisted spirits that were rushing towards him.

He no longer tried to use pure psychic fire to fight the shield of twisted faith. That would be like using pure water to cleanse a swamp of filth and toxins - inefficient and might even be contaminated in return.

He changed his strategy.

A pale golden flame rose in his hand, but its form and essence subtly changed. The flame began to resemble a living being, emitting a low hum. It was no longer pure "light," but energy capable of sniffing, separating, and "dissecting."

"Wow—"

The flames spread throughout Neos' body and gathered in his eyes, allowing him to see deeper into the nature of things.

He immersed himself completely in it, sensing the twisted shield surrounding the demon. He sensed the weight of eight hundred years of sin committed by humanity in the name of faith. He sought the hypocrisy hidden behind the mask of piety, the fear within the prayers, the cruelty within the hymns.

His flames are now burning not the faith, but the dirt on the faith!

"Stand back, Luce!" Neos' voice was eerily calm.

He stepped forward, facing the oncoming torrent of Warp. The flames coalesced in his hand, no longer a broad blade, but a thin, precise beam, like a surgeon's laser knife.

"Squeak--" The light knife cut through the weapon blocked by the subspace demon, making a harsh friction sound.

"Face me! False god!" Luce angrily stabbed with a gun, creating an opportunity for Neos.

He aimed at the thickest, foulest points he sensed on the demon's twisted shield—the wails of countless souls in despair, the blood of innocents dripping from the Templars' swords, the sins that priests heard in confessionals but were never truly forgiven.

"Let me see what's left when you lose your 'nutrient solution'!"

“Buzz—Crack!”

The slender blue-white beam pierced the demon's shield of faith as if piercing paper. There was no violent explosion, no resounding sound, only a teeth-grinding tearing sound. The punctured area of ​​the shield began to spread outward like tattered cloth, revealing the disgusting true face of sin and distortion beneath.

“No—!!!” “Impossible—how did you do that?!”

The demon let out a scream of pain and confusion. This attack method was completely unexpected! Neos's flames, instead of burning his body, were stripping him of his power!

The twisted creations formed by dissolved souls around them also lost some kind of support, their movements became slow, their forms began to become unstable, and some even directly disintegrated into finer subspace dust.

"It felt good to have you masturbate just now, didn't it? You enjoyed it, now it's my turn!"

Neos gave the demon no chance to breathe. The pale golden flames, like maggots on the tarsal bones, gnawed tightly at those points tainted by sin, constantly tearing and stripping away the twisted faith that the demon relied on for survival. He wanted to completely expose this monster that devoured human sin to the pure light!

"No! I will never die here—you are the villain who will die here, believers—heed my call!"

"The power of fifty million believers—you! Just be defeated!!!"

The devil wanted to fight to the death, so he began to suck the lives of the real believers. Suddenly, the vitality of tens of millions of believers began to flow into his body.

“Boom——!” “Oh no, that thing is crazy!!”

The waves of prayers, embodying the wishes and sins of billions of people, assaulted Neos's psychic shield, briefly disrupting his ability to maintain the "anatomical fire." He was forced to retract the beam that had pierced the demon's shield, concentrating all his energy into a solid blue-white dome that enveloped him and Luce.

Outside, the torrent of the Warp surged like boiling magma, carrying with it an indescribable amount of twisted energy that impacted the shield. This force was stronger and more chaotic than before, carrying a madness that was determined to destroy everything in its path!

"He's draining us!" Neos snarled. "He'll kill us, even if it means draining the pond dry! He intends to drain all of Europa's believers in one breath!"

This demon had reached a point of desperation. He sensed that Neos could attack the very essence of his power, and knew that the "twisted faith shield" upon which he depended for survival was not invulnerable. To deal with this deadly threat, he chose the most extreme and cruel method—

He desperately exploited the hundreds of millions of believers under his control in the real world, and forcibly pulled their vitality and soul essence into the subspace through the bond of faith, transforming them into the most primitive and violent torrent of power!

At that moment, in the distant real world, countless devout believers, whether shivering soldiers in the trenches, struggling women and children in the rear, or even kneeling in prayer in church, felt a chill sweep through their bodies. Their spiritual vitality quickly drained away like sand, and many collapsed with pale faces and vacant eyes. The front line began to collapse.

The light within the shield flickered, bearing the overwhelming force from without. Though Neos was forced to defend, his earlier efforts to weaken the demonic shield had not been in vain. The torn layer, though quickly healed under the onslaught of new power, in that instant, a crack opened in the chaotic sea of ​​the Warp, allowing another, faint but ancient voice to penetrate.

Luce's body trembled slightly, and her subspace essence resonated with this power. The voice carried the indescribable weakness and long-lasting torment of Jiuling Lu Liuqi Ebi's father, but also contained a deep love and anxiety.

"The Emperor..."

Luce suddenly opened his eyes wide and looked at Neos through the cross-slits in the visor.

"'Emperor'?"

"The devil is sucking my children dry... I must stop him... Open a gap in him quickly... Only then can I... Only then can I take back control..."

The voice was so weak that it seemed like it would disappear at any moment.

"Emperor...?" Luce tried to ask God in his heart.

"The future I've glimpsed is..." God paused, reassessing Neos's existence, his tone adding a subtle hint of respect and complexity:

"He is the Lord of Humanity... not my... vessel. Now is not the time... to tell him what I said... keep this secret..."

Luce took a deep breath and suppressed the doubts in his heart. Now was not the time to think about these things.

"Saint!" she said hurriedly to Neos through the mental link. "The real God! He is communicating with us! He is inside that demon!"

The shield of blue and white flames around Neos crackled under the immense external pressure, but he remained absolutely calm.

"What did He say?"

"The demon is draining the life force of all believers!" Luce relayed at a rapid pace, "He must regain control as soon as possible, but He is too weak. You need to open a gap in the demon! The sooner the better!"

While the demon was extracting power at all costs, the real God was able to communicate with Luce. This in itself showed the existence of opportunity - the more huge and complex power the demon gathered in its body, the more unstable its internal structure became, and the more vulnerable it was to targeted attacks.

He once again sensed his surroundings. Rome, a city steeped in history and symbolism in the real world, now existed in a distorted, decaying state in the shallow reaches of the Warp. Those once majestic buildings now resembled scenes from a nightmare, riddled with traces of Warp energy, yet stubbornly retaining the outlines of the real world.

"I understand." Neos said slowly, "We need to bring the battlefield back to 'Rome'."

"This environment is favorable to us. The devil cannot fully exert its power in this impure subspace, and He needs to destroy this place to clear all traces, which gives us an opportunity."

"boom!"

The blue-white shield caved inwards under another violent impact, emitting a sharp wail. Neos knew they couldn't hold out for much longer.

"go!"

The shield instantly erupted with a dazzling light, repelling the external impact force like a spring for a moment. Neos seized this opportunity and, without hesitation, rushed backward with Luce, retreating towards the area where St. Peter's Basilica had once stood in the warp.

The demon naturally wouldn't let them go. Seeing that Neos was no longer holding on, he rose up and let out a roar filled with violence and hunger, followed closely by an overwhelming wave of twisted energy.

The chase unfolded through the twisting streets of Rome. Once-mighty buildings, shattered like building blocks by the demon's power, were mercilessly destroyed, reduced to Warp dust, in its path. Neos and Luce fought and retreated, taking advantage of the gaps between the wreckage and the bursts of energy to avoid the demon's violent attacks.

Suddenly, as he passed through a ruined area, Neos' figure blurred, and the blue-white flames burning around him suddenly surged! The flames became pure and dazzling, like the midday sun, instantly illuminating this distorted subspace.

"Watch out for your eyes!"

It was just a flash that lasted less than a second.

In this moment of extreme brightness, the devil instinctively closed his ugly, redundant eyes.

When he reopened his eyes, he saw the same dazzling golden flame shield in his path. Two figures seemed to stand within the glow. The demon snorted coldly, and without a second's hesitation, he pursued the flame shield, intending to completely rip Neos and the other two apart.

However, he did not notice that in that brief flash of light, a slimmer figure, as if blending into the light itself, silently peeled off from the shield and flashed into a deeper darkness.

Luce followed the weak guidance of her heart, passed through the collapsed walls and rotten arches, and came to the ruins of St. Peter's Basilica. This building, which once symbolized holiness and power, now became like a dissected monster in the warp, its interior filled with the smell of distortion and death.

She arrived at the base of the church, an area distorted beyond recognition by explosions and the energies of the Warp. Beneath the ruins, a deep cavern loomed, covered by a heavy bronze door, mottled and twisted by the erosion of the Warp.

Luce didn't hesitate. She took a deep breath, feeling the innate power of the Warp surge within her. With a thought, a gentle light blossomed from her essence. That light coalesced in her hand, forming a radiant pilgrim's staff.

This is her essence as it materializes in the Warp.

The light from his cane illuminated the darkness ahead. Luce pushed open the twisted bronze door with a teeth-grinding sound and stepped into the tunnel behind it.

The tunnel was ancient and deep, the air thick with dust and an indescribable solemnity that had been etched in the air for ages. The light from the cane stretched forward, illuminating the scenes on both sides of the tunnel.

She is walking the same path that all previous popes have walked.

This place wasn't completely empty. The walls were carved with reliefs and inscriptions, recording names and deeds both familiar and unfamiliar. In niches along the way, various mementos and relics were placed—fragments of ancient papal robes, blood-stained crosses, Bible pages inscribed with runes, rusted scepters, and some strange objects that emitted faint psychic energy.

Those are the deeds and commemorative items of successive popes.

"I saw……"

That frail, ancient voice resounded once more within the depths of Luce's soul, this time carrying a compassion and respect bordering on tears. Its voice was no longer rapid, but rather long and profound, spanning vast swaths of time as it surveyed everything before it.

"Eight hundred years since the catastrophe of Jerusalem... scores of mortals... have shouldered burdens beyond their imagination..."

The light illuminated a relief that depicted an elderly pope sitting in a simple room with a map and ancient books spread out in front of him, his eyes tired but determined.

"This is Benedict VII. That kid is very capable... Unfortunately, Hell assassinated the Pope, the Prophet, and the Holy Roman Emperor all at once that year. And then, Pius rushed to take over the scepter."

God began to remember.

"They walk the tightrope between humanity and God, between reality and the abyss... False gods, human traitors, the pressures of reality, the erosion of hell... Every pope plays this game. They make mistakes and have weaknesses, but they never truly fail..."

The light then illuminated a rusted holy sword, its hilt engraved with intricate runes. Next to it was a stone tablet covered in names, many of which were scratched with blood-red marks.

"And there are countless mortals, the psykers who made sacrifices, the paladins who fought in the shadows, the missionaries who dedicated themselves silently in the slums... the people who still held high the cross in the flames of war... the unknown people who sacrificed their lives for even a glimmer of hope—"

God's voice trembled, not from weakness, but from the depths of love and pain. He saw it all. He saw every lie, every betrayal, every sacrifice, every act of perseverance.

"The hymn of humanity is the hymn of courage." Luce said softly.

"Yes... They used blood and tears, faith and despair, sin and redemption, to fight for me for eight hundred years—supporting me through the purgatory-like torment and pain... never giving up."

The light of the cane extended forward, but at the end was still deep darkness.

"They have completed their mission. This difficult game of dozens of popes...is finally coming to an end."

God's voice carried a hint of relief. Luce gripped her pilgrim's staff tightly, the light illuminating her visor. She finally understood the weight of this mission and felt the hope that spanned eight hundred years.

She will continue to move forward, just like all her predecessors who have fallen on this slow pilgrimage over the past eight hundred years.