Chapter 773 471: Tide God [1]

The shadow cruised through the streets and alleyways, gliding along the mottled city walls. It was incredibly stealthy under the dim, lightless sky, completely imperceptible to the naked eye.

Even if an ordinary person did spot it, they would just assume their eyes were playing tricks on them.

No one would think a shadow that flickered past in an instant could be a living thing.

This shadow was none other than...

...Hu Qi.

Although he hadn't killed Dick,

he had seized the path of a 'Shadow Walker' from another Professional.

So naturally, he could also slip into the shadows.

After all, Hu Qi found this Ability from the professional path quite useful. It was practically an essential Skill for robberies, sneak attacks, and ambushes.

Although the area where he lived wasn't close to the Sea God Church,

by using the power of shadow to travel, it didn't take long for him to arrive outside it.

He looked up at the Sea God Church before him.

The Spirituality around it was dense.

And it was mixed with a watery vapor.

The church occupied a large area,

at least the size of two or three football fields.

And this wasn't even the Sea God Church's headquarters,

just a branch church.

Furthermore, there were no other buildings within a one-kilometer radius of this area.

But that wasn't what caught Hu Qi's attention.

It was something else entirely.

At this moment,

in his vision, the Sea God Church, which should have been a place of divine worship, was shrouded in a gloom invisible to the naked eye.

Countless twisted, illusory human silhouettes coiled around the church like vines. They would sometimes coalesce into form, then disperse like smoke, or wrap and cling to the building like long, thin snakes.

A look of terror was frozen on their faces,

as if they had suffered unimaginable pain before death.

They weren't so much Spirit Bodies as they were apparitions of resentment from the dead—frozen snapshots of countless moments of despair.

These agglomerations of resentment didn't exist in the material world but were instead entrenched in an interlayer of this world's Mind Realm.

They were impossible to capture with the naked eye.

Had he not previously killed a Professional and seized their 'Spirit Medium' path,

using its Sequence Nine 'Spirit Seer' Ability,

along with the special vision from his Eye of Tempered Blade, he would have never been able to perceive the full picture.

And each of these phantoms was pierced by rusty chains extending up from the ground.

Like specimens pinned to invisible crosses, they could only move within a certain range.

They couldn't take a single step away from the Sea God Church.

This formed an absurd contrast with the Sea God Church's sacred and solemn facade.

However, Hu Qi wasn't too surprised by this.

After his recent investigations into Professional circles, Hu Qi had long since seen through the ornate veneer of this so-called faith in the Seven Gods.

Behind the hymns piously sung by mortal followers lay a chilling truth.

The so-called Seven True Gods were, in essence, merely a few of the more moderate ones among a multitude of unknown, transcendent beings.

These Churches themselves walked the paths passed down by these Seven Gods.

As for the Seven Gods,

They had no need for the Power of Faith. The towering churches, the complex rituals, the fanatical prayers—

all of it was nothing more than a spontaneous, fawning performance by a swarm of ants in the eyes of these 'gods'.

If They were pleased, They might cast down a sliver of a blessing, much like a human watching a colony of ants.

When happy, one might drop a grain of rice. When unhappy, one might just crush them underfoot.

They couldn't care less what the ants did or what they called them.

Humans always love to name the celestial bodies in the vast, starry sky.

If those stars were truly sentient and knew what these insignificant humans were doing, they would probably die laughing.

Hu Qi was a True God himself, so naturally, he understood this mentality like the back of his hand.

It couldn't be called right or wrong; it was merely a matter of different perspectives and the immense gap in their Life Levels.

Compared to the ferocity of the Evil Gods and other unknown entities,

the Priests of the Sea God never killed people directly for their rituals.

They only needed to lift a finger, guiding the waves to capsize a few fishing boats.

A contented sigh from the deep sea was the best offering.

The churches of the other six gods each had their own methods of sacrifice.

It was just that these methods were very subtle.

Ordinary people could never detect them.

It was precisely this behavior that created the illusion of the Seven Gods being 'True Gods'.

And among them,

perhaps because he held dominion over the seas, the Sea God was considered the most temperamental and fickle of the Seven Gods.

The church before him was proof of that.

After learning all this,

Hu Qi couldn't help but have a strange feeling.

The humans of this world were like food kept in a cage,

surrounded on all sides by bizarre and terrifying entities.

A single moment of carelessness could lead to humanity's complete extinction.

But this was normal, too.

He had traveled far and seen so many worlds.

No matter where he went, it was always the law of the jungle: eat or be eaten.

The strong made the rules, and the weak had only to obey.

'Still, I actually like it this way. If everything was truly about love and beauty, it would be much more awkward to act!'

With a calm expression, Hu Qi stepped forward.

His face began to twist and transform. His skin visibly coarsened and darkened, his frame expanded, and his joints grew thick and prominent.

In the blink of an eye, he had taken on the appearance of a common fisherman from Night Crow Harbor, rugged and weathered.

"Who goes there?"

The guards on both sides of the church spotted the uninvited guest at almost the same time.

One of the guards frowned, his sharp gaze sweeping over Hu Qi for a moment before he waved his hand impatiently.