Chapter 2209: Indiscriminate Attack
The eyes within the gems opened. Unlike the carved and painted eyes elsewhere, these eyes seemed to come alive as they opened. They swiveled, and whoever they looked at would suffer a mental attack. In an instant, players began falling one after another.
"Shatter the gems!" The players besieging the temple quickly reacted, focusing their targets on the Divine Envoys' hands. Killing them was difficult, but using traits and items to make them drop one or two things was not hard.
Thus, after the clash, two of the Divine Envoys had their gems slip from the altar, which were then snatched up by the stranded Outer Zone players.
Three against two. Both sides began to inflict damage on each other. Players continuously succumbed to the mental attacks and withdrew from the fight, but the Outer Zone players were clearly more battle-hardened than the temple side. Before long, the temple side was at a disadvantage.
"As long as the Goddess doesn't interfere, we will surely win!" The Outer Zone female player raised her arm and shouted, "Kill the Divine Envoys!"
The defensive barrier on the altar was about to collapse. One of the Divine Envoys, terrified, grabbed a nearby Holy Maiden and ordered the players to back off.
The stranded players had apparently formed a cooperation with the Holy Maidens and their supporters. Ensuring the Holy Maiden's safety was necessary, so the besieging players exchanged glances and pulled back.
But at that moment, an unforeseen change occurred. The captured Holy Maiden, without a word, directly impaled herself on the Divine Envoy's blade. With a spray of blood, she collapsed to the ground.
The other Holy Maidens on the altar surged forward, driving the Divine Envoy's own knife into his chest!
The Divine Envoy and Holy Maiden, representatives of the Goddess, had been killed. The scene fell silent. Everyone stared at the two corpses on the altar, momentarily unsure how to react.
The Divine Envoy and Holy Maiden guarding the temple for the Goddess had been killed right beside the Goddess statue?
Not only the temple staff and believers found it hard to believe, but even the stranded players who had been clamoring to kill the Divine Envoy were somewhat taken aback. But they quickly recovered and shouted loudly, "The Divine Envoy used the Holy Maiden's murder as a pretext to secretly hunt down and persecute her followers. Now he dares to kill a Holy Maiden in broad daylight! He deserves to die! They all deserve to die!"
However, this did not sway the believers to their side. Someone prostrated themselves at the feet of the Goddess statue and wept, "Has the Goddess abandoned us?"
The weeping infected more people. More than the internal strife within the temple, the believers feared that the Goddess would leave them. Allowing the Divine Envoy and Holy Maiden to attack each other, even resulting in death, seemed to confirm this fear. Instantly, more and more people burst into loud wails. The momentum (sheng shi) was so great that it even overshadowed the life-and-death struggle on the temple platform. The combatants were left aside, as if the things they were fighting over mattered to no one but themselves.
Tens of thousands of people had gathered around the temple, not counting the believers scattered further away in the city. The simultaneous weeping of such a crowd was shocking (zhen han), even for the indifferent Outer Zone players, stirring a touch of pity and sorrow within them.
"This must be the infectious power of faith," the yellow-haired man said, deeply sorrowful. "Seeing devout faith crumble touches anyone. Especially when the collapse of faith might be followed by survival difficulties."
Xu Huo caught a piece of balloon debris falling from the sky. "Petals differ from one another, but that difference isn't worth scrutinizing."
Just then, he sensed a fluctuation of power from the Goddess statue. The next second, all the eyes on the statue suddenly opened wide. With the spread of spiritual power, the eye patterns on the plaza's paving stones, the surrounding buildings, inside and outside the temple, and even those suspended high in the sky, all came to life in an instant!
A massive spiritual shockwave struck everyone simultaneously, like a sudden tsunami sweeping through everything in the city. Whether believer or player, everyone felt as if their brains were being squeezed. After a brief silence came unbearable, excruciating pain!
Some people fainted under this indiscriminate attack, but more screamed in agony. Those closest to the temple bore the brunt. The players hovering above the temple were the first to be hit—stranded players and local zone players alike, friend and foe, all plummeted to the ground. Since the temple itself was an instance dungeon, aside from those who were immediately knocked unconscious or killed, the rest were swept into the instance, vanishing directly from the temple.
With the players gone, the overwhelming spiritual power began to slowly recede. As the eye patterns in the city gradually lost their vitality, Holy Maiden Xue Yi, covering her bleeding ears, knelt down and shouted hoarsely, "Goddess! Were we wrong?"
"Our ancestors encouraged dual-sex births to ensure the continuation of our race. Now that the nation is strong enough, why must we let our descendants be crippled generation after generation?"
"Over the years, I've watched my companions give birth one after another. At least half of their children never grow up. Some die even before they are born. Dual-sex is not strength. It should not be something deliberately pursued. Since the normal children born from unions with Outer Zone people are so healthy, why must we cling to these rules that harm our own kind?"
"We are not wrong!"
"It is their fault!" Xue Yi pointed a finger at the Divine Envoy beside her. "They force the Holy Maidens to bear children. They restrict interactions between local and Outer Zone people. They persecute the healthy children who are born. They have become the stumbling block of our nation. Our future, our children's future, cannot be forever defined by flawed dual-sex!"
"Only healthy, strong children can survive in the game. As long as our bloodline continues and our nation prospers, dual-sex can disappear from this world!"
The Goddess did not respond to her. More and more eyes returned to their original state. As the Holy Maidens' hopes gradually faded, the Divine Envoy on the central altar finally spoke, "Do you think this is merely a matter of whether dual-sex disappears or not?"
"It is by relying on the Goddess that our district remains safe. Even if you mate with Outer Zone people, can you guarantee that their children, and their children's children, will all be normal? There will always be dual-sex births. In a world dominated by dual-sex, their safety is assured, and they can live well. But if normal people become the majority, they will become the vulnerable (ruo shi). Don't forget that this nation survived only because of our dual-sex ancestors. We are all their descendants. The original purpose of establishing the Goddess Cult was to protect dual-sex people—their descendants, our descendants. Can you bear to see them become targets of casual bullying?"
"You may not care about the glory of dual-sex, nor about their future treatment. But don't forget why the Goddess exists. Without dual-sex, who would believe in the Goddess Cult? Those Outer Zone players who say one thing and do another?"
"If the Goddess were to disappear, regardless of whose descendants they are, this district, this nation, everyone present here today would soon be ruled by those Outer Zone people. The reason those clearance players from outside are just watching from below instead of interfering as they please is precisely because of the Goddess's existence. Otherwise, you wouldn't even have the chance to speak!"