Chapter 507: The Heavens Angel

Chapter 507: The Heaven's Angel

Let the Celestial Chariot Ox take forty-seven steps back.

On the Continent of Time.

The Swordswoman and the Witch sat in the sports car, enthusiastically interrogating the Watcher about his secrets.

"What is the most embarrassing thing you have ever done?"

"Which person do you feel the most sorry toward?"

The Watcher remained tight-lipped, refusing to say a single word.

Seeing this, the Swordswoman suddenly had an idea and began asking about trivial matters instead.

"What dish do you like the most?"

"Charcoal-grilled Lala Fat."

"Which spirit do you like the most?"

"Substitute."

"What time of day do you like the most, and why?"

"After midnight, because that is the private time that belongs only to me."

"What is something you dislike doing?"

"Working."

"Where would you like to go on a date?"

The Watcher actually had to give this question some thought, as it was something he had never considered before. Then he suddenly realized something was amiss. "How could these questions possibly be secrets I need to protect? Why are you asking me these?"

The Swordswoman responded, "Then I will ask some serious questions. If the Witch and I fell into the River of Flowing Gold, which of us would you save first?"

The Watcher glanced at her suspiciously. However, he noticed the Swordswoman giving him a subtle look. After thinking for a moment, he answered, "The Witch."

The Witch blinked. "Huh?"

"Now that both of us have mastered the Time Class, if we obtained a Time Orb, which of us would receive it first?"

"The Witch."

"If we encountered the Empress Hero again and only one of us could escape this time, which of us would you let leave first?"

"The Witch."

The Swordswoman continued asking several questions that could increase the Witch's favorability, and the Watcher chose the Witch every single time.

Just when he thought the Swordswoman was simply taking this opportunity to act and win the Witch over, she suddenly asked, "Which person do you like the most?"

"The Wi— no, it is—"

The Watcher stopped halfway through his answer and immediately realized something was wrong. After attempting to correct himself, he realized that correction was also wrong.

He looked up and saw the Swordswoman staring at him with sparkling eyes. He swiftly closed his mouth and said nothing more. ℯℯ𝘭.

The Swordswoman snorted, the corners of her lips curling upward. She did not press further. "Try saying it. If you cannot say it, that means this is the secret sealed away by the Authority of Secrecy."

The Watcher changed the topic. "Actually, the secret itself is not the important part. The most important aspect of the Authority of Secrecy is the desire to reveal that secret."

The Witch found it strange. "If you want to tell it, why keep it hidden? Is that not contradictory?"

The Swordswoman reached out and pressed down the Witch's little tuft of hair. "It is not contradictory. There are always things you want to say but are forced to keep buried in your heart. It is like planting a flower. If you are unlucky and no spring is willing to let it bloom, then regardless of how fertile the soil is, to that flower, it remains nothing but darkness."

The Witch asked, "What if you are lucky?"

The Swordswoman smiled. "Then even on a glacier, it can still bloom with a hundred thousand roses and bring you a new spring."

***

Authority of Secrecy: Your lips remain tightly sealed. No one can pry into the deepest secrets of your heart, and those very secrets serve to protect your soul. You are forbidden from revealing the secret you treasure most, and the more desperately you wish to confess it, the more absolute the secret-keeping effect becomes.

Secret-Keeping (Confession Progress: 100%): Your mental resistance is increased by 100%. Your soul's adaptability toward Divine Spirits of aligned sorcery classes is increased by 100%.

The Authority of Secrecy! The Incarnation of Secrets! The Conjuring spirit! The Watcher is Ashe, and Ashe is the Watcher!

Looking at Ashe kneeling before her, Dia felt her thoughts fall into chaos. Has he not already met me since the tower? Did he not personally watch me jump from it? Why did he act as if he did not know me? He could not possibly be pretending. Could the Four Pillars Cult's underground hall really have been the first time we met?

At this point, Dia inevitably projected her own situation onto him, arriving at one possibility. Could Ashe also have another personality hidden inside him?

Soon, she thought of another possibility that fit Ashe's situation far better, something that had already happened to him once before. Could another Divine Spirit be impersonating him?

When the Gospel impersonated Ashe and carried out assassinations, it showed up and disappeared without a trace. When the Watcher met her in the tower, he also felt both real and unreal, neither completely present nor completely absent.

The two situations were almost identical.

Even more bizarre, the Watcher was only a Two-Winged sorcerer, yet he had the ability to forcefully gather her and the Swordswoman from different kingdoms to explore the Virtual World. This ability was already far beyond the limits of ordinary sorcerers. Neither Sacred Realm nor Legendary sorcerers could pull this off.

Not to mention, there was always a sports car waiting to pick them up after work. According to the Swordswoman, they even had a boat in the Sea of Knowledge.

They had never specifically discussed it, but both she and the Swordswoman had always assumed that the Watcher possessed a Divine Spirit, and not just one with ordinary abilities. It had to be a Divine Spirit that could somehow create things and form teams.

If the Watcher suddenly created a Lala Fat in the Virtual World one day, neither of them would find it strange.

In the past, Dia believed that the Watcher held total control over the Divine Spirit. Now that she was personally controlling a Divine Spirit herself, however, she realized that was fundamentally impossible.

She herself did not even possess enough power to sustain a Divine Spirit! The reason the Gospel Divine Spirit could operate was that Legendary sorcerers continuously supported it together.

Furthermore, the Gospel system had nothing to do with previous holders of the Gospel's First. It was purely the Divine Spirit's own natural expansion upon being fully nourished, occurring as automatically as breathing, eating, or digesting.

Within the Gospel Kingdom, the Gospel was almost equivalent to natural phenomena such as the sun, wind, rain, and earth.

The Book of Gospel, the Gospel database, the Gospel intelligence system, and other foundations of civilization created by sorcerers were no different from farmers using fertilizer to grow crops or miners extracting ore from the earth. The only difference was that sorcerers were slightly more advanced.

Despite being the Gospel's First, the host of the Divine Spirit, she could only access part of its authority. She could not truly command the Divine Spirit to serve her.

Using the sun as an analogy, ordinary people could only receive a very small portion of sunlight. The Gospel's First stood slightly closer to the sun. She could utilize more solar energy and even influence how sunlight was distributed among living beings. Only an Angel or a Divine Lord, however, could control the sun's flare, extinction, and collapse.

The relationship between sorcerers and Divine Spirits had never been one of domination. It was symbiosis. At most, sorcerers could only take advantage of a tiny portion of the Divine Spirit's power. And even that was only possible because the Gospel Divine Spirit was already fully nourished, continuously fed by Legendary sorcerers around the clock, expanding on its own.

Dia had spent so much time with Ashe that if he truly had a group of Legendary sorcerers acting as batteries to supply his Divine Spirit, there was no reason she would not have noticed.

Since there were none, it meant Ashe had no energy source capable of nourishing a Divine Spirit. Even if he did have one, it would be nothing more than a drop in a boundless ocean.

Yet the Divine Spirit still provided him with customized services. Every night, it helped him form teams, prepared his sports car, and arranged his maps. Even biological parents would struggle to be this attentive.

There was only one possible explanation. The Divine Spirit served him wholeheartedly. It was even desperately trying to absorb energy itself just to support him.

Just then, Dia recalled the Watcher's appearance, which was almost identical to Ashe's, as well as the Swordswoman mentioning that the Watcher might be a powerful figure who had lost his memories and reincarnated. A new possibility emerged in her mind. Perhaps Ashe's Divine Spirit is something he personally summoned in the past. Self-summoned spirits share many similarities with their sorcerers, and a Divine Spirit is no exception. It is normal for them to share an appearance. It is the only way to explain why the Divine Spirit protects Ashe so devotedly. Still, that Divine Spirit has also hidden many things from him, such as my true identity...

Ashe gently pressed the back of his hand against her cheek, feeling her warmth. "Lys? Did you really come back?"

Not just Lys... I am also back.

Dia's lips moved slightly. So many things filled her heart, desperate for an outlet. She wanted to tell him that she was the Witch. She wanted to tell him that Lys was actually her younger sister. She wanted to tell him that she was not truly a little girl... Yet she could not utter a single word.

Authority of Secrecy. The conceptual incarnation had not only isolated her from the Divine Spirit, but had also raised an invisible barrier between her and Ashe. The more desperately she tried to reveal her secret, the tighter the chains bound her. The stronger her desire to confess, the more potent the power of secrecy grew.

Never had she imagined such a cruel reality could exist. The person she loved stood directly in front of her, yet her heart could not move even a fraction of an inch closer. She was like the mermaid in the fairy tale whose voice had been taken away, leaving no one to hear the truth in her heart.

Facing Ashe's expectant gaze, Dia bit her lower lip. Her eyes turned red. She took a deep breath, yet tears still spilled out. Rising from the throne, she wrapped her arms around his neck and choked out, "I'm back."

In that moment, Dia lost all restraint. Buried in his arms, she quietly sobbed. She wept with unbearable pain and absolute helplessness. Escaping from the tower had once felt like escaping fate itself. In the end, however, she realized she was still trapped inside the tower, having never truly broken free from destiny, destined never to obtain what she truly desired.

From the moment she deceived Ashe by adopting the identity of Lys, the seeds of tragedy had already taken root. The night she begged Ashe to save Nina had been her final opportunity to confess everything, yet she had still surrendered it. She had refused to settle for being merely Ashe's Lys. She had wanted to return to her original form, reveal her true self, and reunite with Ashe properly.

Explaining everything had felt troublesome... Yet ultimately, it all came down to one simple reason. She was afraid. Terrified that Ashe would hate her for deceiving him, she had chosen to keep running away.

In this regard, she and Lys were identical. They were both merely children waiting for someone to find them. They passively waited for Ashe to discover the truth on his own, while arrogantly believing he would forgive them regardless.

That was why, when Lysdia bade farewell to Ashe, she had still chosen not to reveal Dia's existence or the underlying truth.

They allowed Ashe to believe that, from beginning to end, there had only ever been Lys and Lysdia.

Lysdia's decision had undoubtedly arisen from kindness.

Firstly, Ashe had no knowledge of Dia's existence. Because of the Reverse Day spirit, their body remained that of the little girl Lys, not the young woman Lysdia. Suddenly declaring to him that several girls in love with him resided inside his daughter's soul would only throw his mind into chaos without achieving anything.

Secondly, Dia and the others had already resolved to sacrifice themselves for Ashe at the time.

Under the influence of such noble conviction, they believed that keeping their feelings hidden, allowing their silent sacrifice to go completely undiscovered, would make their love seem all the more romantic and poignant. Like angels from fairy tales, spreading their wings to silently shield the one they cherished.

It was precisely these human weaknesses of hesitation, deception, sacrifice, and romantic idealization that had birthed this secret deep within Dia’s heart.

A secret that desperately yearned for expression remained buried beneath a thick glacier. Only with the arrival of the Authority of Secrecy did it finally bloom into one hundred thousand roses, sealing the Gospel Divine Spirit within.

That was the true source of Dia's tears. Not her past failure to confess, nor the conceptual incarnation preventing her speech, but the reality that she would have to continue guarding this secret from now on. If the secret were ever exposed, the Authority of Secrecy would unravel. The awakened Divine Spirit would then overwhelm her soul until she became nothing more than an empty vessel named Dine.

She would lose the ability to see Ashe, as well as the Watcher. Consequently, she could neither reveal the truth nor allow Ashe to uncover even the slightest clue, as any discovery would weaken the Authority of Secrecy.

She had to weave a massive web to completely conceal both Ashe and the Watcher. She had to maintain the guise of a little girl and keep the changes in the Divine Spirit hidden.

She could not let Ashe know she was the Witch. She could not let Ashe know Lys had sisters. She could not let Ashe know that a person he had never met, whose existence remained completely unknown to him, had been saved by him time and again.

What an utter irony. If Dia stopped hiding, her existence would cease. If Dia continued hiding, he would never know she existed at all.

If fate pushed her one step forward, she could confess everything to Ashe and depart without lingering regrets. If fate pulled her one step backward, she could carry this secret into the Virtual World and quietly fade away. Yet fate had stranded her in the middle, unable to step forward into the abyss, nor backward into hell. All she could do was gather her courage, bear this burden, and search for a future no one had ever reached before.

Yes, a future. Perhaps one day, Ashe would discover a method for her to contain the Divine Spirit without relying on the Authority of Secrecy. Perhaps one day, after ascending to be a Legendary sorcerer, she would unlock another way to control the Divine Spirit. Perhaps one day, she could even become an Angel.

Reflecting on how young they still were, how much future lay ahead, and how many possibilities remained, Dia finally managed to stem her tears.

She hiccuped twice, a bubble of moisture appearing at her nose. Lowering her head, she realized her tears and runny nose had thoroughly stained Ashe's clothes.

Hearing what sounded like Ashe's quiet laughter, Dia felt far too embarrassed to lift her head. Deep down, however, a sudden wave of relief washed over her. Lucky that he still views me only as Lys.

She suddenly recalled the famous quote of the Belldets. "Grant others what they desire, give them what they need."

From the moment she escaped the tower, her eventual return to it had seemed preordained. Everything appeared to have been arranged long ago. Dia could not help but direct her gaze toward the Gospel Divine Spirit within her soul. Gospel, did you plan everything from the very beginning?

The Divine Spirit wore an eye mask, taking the form of a quiet young girl clad in a purple dress.

In its arms, it held the Conjuring spirit. As if sensing Dia's gaze, it suddenly gripped its eye mask and slowly lifted it upward. Beneath the mask lay not a pair of eyes, but a... door?

In an instant, a door manifested from Dia's body and swallowed them both. When Ashe and Dia regained their senses, they found themselves in an unfamiliar, surreal place.

They were resting upon a massive spider web. Space stretched endlessly all around them, with no visible end in sight. Their entire field of vision was occupied by spider webs of countless colors, shapes, and sizes.

Every single web was unimaginably vast, so colossal that only the word magnificent could capture their scale. They resembled the sky and the earth itself, woven directly into the fabric of space.

Layer upon layer overlapped, with web wrapping around web, boundless and infinite. Despite the absence of any visible light source, the realm was neither dark nor glaringly bright.

Compared to these cosmic webs, Ashe and Dia were as tiny as insects. It felt as though any creature inhabiting this realm could easily prey upon them. Then, a voice broke the silence. "This is the first time I have seen two Gospel's First."

Ashe and Dia turned around sharply. A stunning woman hung upside down from a spider web above them. Or rather, she appeared upside down. Defying gravity, her long hair did not fall toward the ground, nor did her skirt flare out. Unless she was actively manipulating her posture, it implied that the concept of up and down here depended entirely on whichever spider web one stood upon.

She bore an indifferent expression, wearing glasses that framed a pair of amber eyes. Her most striking feature was an opulent set of headphones made of obsidian, adorned with a bell hanging on each side.

Even in the Gospel Kingdom, where fashion was remarkably advanced, such avant-garde headwear would have stood out. It lent her a surprisingly approachable aura, until she spoke and shattered that impression entirely.

"Welcome to the Heaven of Omniscience," she said. "I am Rin, the Bell-Attuned Angel serving Lord Omniscient Weaver. You may call me Rin."