Chapter 1177 - Taking the Blame
Chapter 1177: Taking the Blame
The Saint was just about to calm himself down. The few powerful figures were already rushing towards the main hall towards the outside. He, too, began to switch on the scanning circle of the temple. He looked around and could see that the scanning circle was very powerful. Within 50 miles of reach inside the temple, nothing that was moving could escape the scan of the scanning circle.
Still, he could see what was strange within the sky very quickly. There was a very strange airflow. There seemed to be something that was flying. However, he didn’t see anything that was inside his circle. The most concrete proof he could get was a line of air that was just piercing through. The Saint had no ways of confirming, though. It was too fast to make sense of.
Everyone began to chase after it. The powerful figures, especially, were doing their best to catch up, but the invisible, flying object was just too fast. The Saint didn’t let anyone return. He needed to pass through the guardian wings to realize what was happening. At the same time, he needed to pass through the guardian wings to help with the search.
The Saint asked the guardian wings, “Search for anything alive that’s going inside the temple!”
The guardian wings quickly replied, “There has been no sightings of anyone going in, the Saint.”
The Saint was not sure what to think. The statue was already stolen, but the wings told him the opposite. The guardian wings didn’t have the ability to lie, so he was even starting to suspect that the message was an indication of betrayal.
He asked a different question, “What caused this trace in the air?”
The guardian wings replied, “Nothing alive caused it.”
The Saint just realized how severe the situation was. He used to think that the guardian wings’ reach was perfect, but he was stolen from just like that. He couldn’t do anything about it. He didn’t even search the air. He got nothing else, however, since he couldn’t make it.
One sacred knight charged in front of the Saint, “There was a theif in the warehouse, the Saint.”
The Saint was extraordinarily frightened. He connected his power of the Will with the temple once more and went towards the warehouse. Very quickly, he could see that a lot of stuff went missing. The holy crystals, especially, were all gone. He felt distraught because of this. This had to be one of the biggest financial losses that happened to the Nation of God. He prepared those holy crystals for the divine spirits.
He did another scan with his power of the Will. He searched for the underground basement and found something new. The divine sword, divine shield, and guardian wings were all gone. All of a sudden, blood started gushing out of the Saint’s mouth. It dyed his extravagant robe and the ground red.
He murmured to himself, “How do I tell my lord?”
His eyes were filled with doubt. He had a feeling that this was all just a dream, something like a nightmare.
“What happened to you, Master?”
After a few screams, he became a lot more awake, but this meant that all this was real.
The Saint shouted with his bloodshot eyes, “Search for me! I need to know who did this! As long as I know who did this, we’ll use the entire state’s power to make him pay the cost!”
No one knew where to start, but after seeing the Saint’s state, they had no choice but to bow and begin the search. After calling everyone away, the Saint started feeling a lot calmer. He then began to think about what happened today.
First of all, the most important thing to consider would be the timing of this thief. It was just right as he left the temple. If he were still inside the temple, then the chance of the thief entering would be quite low. Another thing to consider was the extent to which the thief could move at high mobility and invisibility. He had tp be better than ordinary powerful figures to achieve this. All these things could basically make the range a lot narrower. As for whether the thief was a competent fighter, the Saint wasn’t sure that he was to act like this, but as long as he could make a rough guess, he could make a better analysis somewhat.
Before that, however, he needed to put back the two divine items with his guardian wings. Those were not so easy to be stolen, actually. They were all forged by the divine spirits, so they could also be withdrawn the moment they were summoned.
The Saint contacted the guardian wings, “Call my lord’s guardian wings! I want the two weapons back”
The guardian wings unleashed a ripple. After waiting for tens of seconds, he realized that nothing was happening.
The guardian wings’ response was not a good one, “They cannot be returned.”
A sacred knight was just rushing in with a bottle containing a drop of blood, “We’ve discovered a drop of blood, Master.”
“Bring it to me.”
While the Saint reached for the bottle, he began to see that there was a drop of blood inside. He was immediately sure that this was a drop of divine blood. Now, the important question was whether the blood flew down from that thief’s body. Could it be that the thief was injured during infiltration, by any chance? Or, could it be that he was using the blood as some sort of catalyst? The Saint wasn’t entirely sure, but he was already plenty certain that this thief was some sort of divine spirit.
Which really made sense in a way. Only divine spirit could be inside the Nation of God. He wasn’t sure what kind would try to infiltrate like this into the temple of another one, actually. Most divine spirit temples weren’t supposed to be like this. The difference in divine power was not something that could be messed around. Also, the expenditure of energy for going after one temple was already quite tremendous, such that going in to steal one divine item was said to be virtually impossible.
Inside Abel’s mind, he was already thinking back to all the information he knew about the divine spirit. As a matter of fact, for potential enemies of the demon from beyond, it was a top priority for the Nation of God’s intelligence agency to get whatever they could. From the central continent to the subcontinent, with all kinds of methods, the intelligence agency had been spending thousands of years trying to locate any information they could get on the divine spirit. As all the information was going back, the Saint was already gaining some understanding with the divine spirit.
“The god of theft?”
Abel thought of the name of one divine spIrit. The god of theft was a very timid spirit who was very capable of disguise and theft. He disappeared after that fight with the Wizard Union against the demon from beyond, but the Saint knew very well that he was still out there somewhere. The god of theft had to be out there somewhere to get so many believers of his own. He virtually had no other way of getting more powerful on his own. At the same time, it was pretty much impossible for the followers to be completely eradicated on their own. As long as burglary and theft remained a thing, there would always be thieves screaming “bless the god of theft” while they continued with their work.
The god of theft was a pretty bizarre spirit, in that sense. No matter how hard the Nation of God conducted their search, it was still impossible to find the whereabouts of this divine spirit. According to the analysis of the intelligence system, however, the god of theft could just never become a serious enemy to the Nation of God. This could be seen from the way he was acting the whole time. He was probably the kind to act on his own.
Based on the observations that were made, it could be said that the god of theft was the most likely suspect here today. As a matter of fact, the “divine blood” was exactly what Wizard Dolan passed over. From his perspective, this was no different from blood that was new. Only a grandmaster alchemist like Abel, really, could be capable of telling where the difference was.
As it stood, this drop of the divine blood was pretty useless to either Abel and Wizard zdolan. Abel just left it as a decoy to influence the decision of his pursuers. To be honest, no matter how much the Nation of God was trying to think of a rational method to discern his identity, he was already pretty certain that they were going to label him as a divine spirit. Under these circumstances, it was already pretty clear that he was already safe.
The Saint cried out loudly, “Call out the intelligence system. I want you to find everything there is about the god of theft. Bring him out of the central continent.”
The more he thought about it, the more he was sure that it was the god of theft. The motives matched. So did the capabilities of the god of theft. The god of theft didn’t possess that much divine power, to begin with. The holy crystals had to be what he wanted the most, so if the god of theft wanted to use the holy crystals, he could always use that to boost his own powers. If the god of theft didn’t want to boost his own strength, the holy crystal could always be preserved or used to increase his longevity by another tens of thousands of years.
In terms of the divine power, the more powerful a divine spirit was, the greater the need would be to use more of it. This was why many divine spirits lost their strength as soon as their followers decreased. Of course, some followers would be able to stay in the Nation of God for a bit longer. They would be more faithful than followers outside and could retain more faith power in the long run. While the dead ones could be revived, that would always come at even more cost of the divine power.
Without enough divine power for the followers outside to replenish, the divine spirits would lose more and more divine spirits on their own. The process would take quite a while, of course. It was a long and arduous process for divine spirits to be weakened. If they remained asleep, it might take an eternity.
If the Saint had to make an estimation of the invader’s strength, it’d be based on the fact that he could sneak his way into the central temple. This could not be the ordinary power of a regular divine spirit. Come to think of it, only divine spirits under the name of the god of theft could possess abilities like this. This wasn’t quite possible before, but as it stood, he understood that the god of theft had to accomplish something like that for this to happen.
While the Saint started to believe that the god of the theft was the culprit, Abel was already flying far away. His power of the Will was not detecting the powerful figures chasing after him. He was already way ahead, so he slowed down for a bit and turned towards the valley from which he arrived.
Some of the powerful figures behind spent a while and came over here. After looking at each other for a while, they shook their heads and turned back.
Abel was quick when he made his way into the valley. He entered into the intermediate seclusion circle and summoned with his power of the Will. Johnson was just rising out of the underground. Following, the multi-surfaced metallic spheres on its body started moving and revealed Abel’s human body. The human body was just opening its eyes and doing a stretch. It waved towards the angelic body while the angelic body took out the divine sword and divine shield.
He thought about changing the procedure. Otherwise, they wouldn’t know when the next time would be. He was feeling quite glad, actually. He thought that the temple had already forgotten about all this, so he stretched his power of the Will into the long sword, but he just couldn’t tell if he could make his way into the verification circle.
He immediately slammed his head, but quickly realized that the druid spirit was already separated from the angelic body. The angelic body took a step forward. The power of the Will was going into the long sword, and it very quickly discovered the verification circle. Inside, a golden streak of the power of the Will was just inside. This had to be the message of the demon from beyond.
The angelic body pulled the golden power of the Will for a bit. Although Abel considered it to be a pain, the angelic body was just pulling it out of the verification circle quite easily. Following that, under the guidance of the human body, one streak of the power of the Will was left amidst the verification circle. Almost instantly, the longsword changed its enemy, but Abel wasn’t preparing to leave it for the human body. In a sense, the angelic body was leaving some power of the Will to become somewhat of a secondary master, just in case.
Under the same conditions, the human body was just retaining the highest order to keep the divine longsword so he could place the divine power of the Will at any time. This was so that the sword could not be taken away by the demon from beyond. Even if he wasn’t using it, he still wouldn’t want to get the demon from beyond to put the sword away. He needed to keep this and the shield away from the demon from beyond with all that he could.