NABC Chapter 27 Divine Punishment and Oracles
Chapter 27 Divine Punishment and Oracles
Sowin was in a panic because he had no idea what was going on.
At that moment, an irresistible and incomprehensible force enveloped him...
The prayers of the surrounding believers, the chirping of insects at night, the crackling of torches... all sounds were instantly drawn away, not disappeared, but as if he had been thrown into an absolutely soundproof enclosure.
Then came the distortion of vision: the light of the campfire, the blurred faces of the believers, the outline of the bamboo house, and even the entire night sky, all seemed to be grabbed by an invisible giant hand, frantically spun, stretched, and crushed, turning into a rapidly passing, meaningless patch of color and light!
"Master Sowin?!" The old woman kneeling at the front was the first to notice the anomaly. She saw in horror that the space around their beloved teacher rippled like water, and then, as if erased from the scene by an eraser, Sowin became transparent and illusory from head to toe, and then... completely disappeared!
Only the ill-fitting dark robe remained, its support gone, limply falling to the ground and covering the scroll that had also fallen to the ground.
Dead silence.
The campfire burned on its own, making soft crackling sounds, but these sounds were amplified countless times, striking the hearts of every believer who was stunned into silence.
"Great...Master?" someone stammered.
"Gone...disappeared?!"
"Divine punishment! It's divine punishment! The master has angered the judge!" A sharp voice suddenly exploded, filled with boundless fear.
"Run! God is angry!"
Panic erupted like a spark thrown into boiling oil! The once orderly prayer site was instantly thrown into chaos.
People screamed and cried as they scrambled to escape in all directions, as if a moment's hesitation would bring down the invisible divine punishment. Torches were kicked over, igniting the dry grass and adding to the chaos.
In just a few seconds, only a pile of messy footprints, a lonely robe, and a campfire that was still burning but looked particularly eerie remained on the open ground. The nascent faith that had just begun to take shape was about to collapse completely in the face of extreme fear.
At this moment, Sowin is experiencing a horror that is unimaginable in his life, and even in any life on Earth.
After the eerie tearing sensation and the absolute silence that descended silently ended, the first thing that assaulted the senses was the biting cold that could freeze the soul!
cold!
The cold penetrated his thin inner clothing, instantly stealing all the warmth from his skin, leaving him as if he were naked in the heart of the harshest blizzard in Siberia!
He began to tremble uncontrollably, his teeth chattering, each breath feeling like inhaling countless ice needles, the stinging pain spreading from his nasal cavity to the depths of his lungs.
He looked around, his pupils shrinking to pinpoints in horror.
Dark red! An endless expanse of dark red!
Beneath his feet lay hard, rough, and porous dark red rock, stretching to the horizon. The sky was not any color he was familiar with, but a deep, almost inky, purplish-black velvet, like congealed blood. Against this suffocating backdrop hung a huge, dark red sun, its light pitifully faint!
Yes, the dark red sun, like a dying, bloodshot, enormous eyeball, coldly gazed down upon this desolate world. Its rays brought no warmth whatsoever; instead, they stained everything with an eerie, ominous dark red, casting long, twisted, ghostly shadows.
There was no wind, no sound, nothing but rocks.
Absolute desolation, absolute deathly silence.
The air was terribly thin; he felt chest tightness, shortness of breath, and dizziness.
Extreme Cold Hell... This must be Extreme Cold Hell!
The judge really exists...!
Because I blasphemed the judge, I was cast directly into the deepest part of hell!
Sowin's thoughts froze, shattered, and reassembled in fear. In the extreme cold, it took him a good ten seconds to deduce such an "obvious" conclusion.
At that moment, he remembered the fabricated sacred words...
Recalling his own innermost thoughts, boundless fear and despair overwhelmed him...
He wanted to kneel down and pray, but his knees were so cold he could barely bend them; he wanted to shout for mercy, but his throat could only utter hoarse sounds.
Just as he thought he was about to be completely swallowed by this eternal cold and deathly silence, and his consciousness was gradually fading—
Light!
A glimmer of light suddenly appeared behind a rock not far ahead.
That light... was so bright!
So...warm...!
Compared to the lifeless, dark red sun in the sky, this light was as dazzling as the real sun...
No, it's as dazzling as the sun!
If you turn your phone's flashlight up to the maximum and then visualize it in a higher dimension, wouldn't that be a sun?
It hovered low, emitting a steady and soft light, dispelling the dark red shadows of a large area and forming a hazy halo.
The instinct for survival overcame the fear.
With all his might, Sowin dragged his almost numb legs toward the light.
Every step he took felt like walking on a knife's edge; the cold rocks hurt his feet, but he dared not stop.
He painstakingly navigated around the massive, dark red rock and approached the light.
The light... seemed to be a soft source of light floating there out of thin air, bright at its core and spreading outwards. It quietly illuminated the dark red earth.
Then, something even more terrifying happened to him.
A voice suddenly reached his ears.
The voice was very faint, even somewhat fragmented, with a peculiar, inhuman quality, but the language used was... a somewhat stiff and not very fluent local dialect with his hometown accent!
"Shuttle...Warm..."
Sowin shuddered violently, frozen in place, seemingly forgetting even the cold for the moment.
"Your...prayer...is too noisy..."
The voice was intermittent, as if the speaker was unaccustomed to speaking in this way, but the meaning was clearly conveyed.
"I...have awakened...from...a long slumber...and need...quiet..."
Sowin's heart pounded, not from fear, but from an indescribable mix of awe and shock...
Does a judge really exist?!
Does God really exist?!
Just woke up?
This……
Heaven have mercy, he's just a small-time hoodlum, a country bumpkin who's seen a little bit of the world.
He didn't know if gods existed in this world, nor did he ever care whether gods existed in this world; all of this was irrelevant to him.
He did all this just to swindle money and women.
But what the hell?
How did we end up directly confronting the gods?
This……
This must be the first time someone on Earth has truly confronted a deity.
At that moment, his mind was in complete chaos—shock, ecstasy, excitement, disbelief…
Everything was mixed together, like a lump of paste.
"...The ritual...is inaccurate..." the voice continued in his ear, sounding to him as if carrying an ancient, unquestionable quality, "Chaos...noise...futile...waste..."
"Searching for...the original...rituals..."
"...Remain...silent...and pray at sunrise..."
"........."
What followed was a series of chaotic, incoherent babbling...
The original ritual? A sunrise prayer? Remaining silent?
Sowin's mind gradually cleared, and the confusion and fear were gradually replaced by a frenzied, overwhelming joy!
He realized that the greatest opportunity of his life had arrived!
"I obey...the divine decree!" Sowyn roared with all his remaining strength...
The next moment, that familiar feeling of space being torn apart and shattered returned. The sunlight and the dark red rock hell before my eyes rapidly faded and receded...
An open space in the village.
The campfire was almost out, leaving only a faint red glow and wisps of smoke.
Most of the believers had already fled and disappeared without a trace. Only two or three brave ones, or elderly people with mobility issues, hid in the shadows of distant bushes or bamboo houses, peering at the fallen robe with a mixture of fear and curiosity.
Sudden--
The open space rippled with patterns like water once again.
To everyone's utter astonishment, Sowin's figure materialized and suddenly appeared on the spot!
He was still wearing that thin undershirt, barefoot, his whole body covered with a strange layer of white frost, his face was bluish-purple, his hair and eyebrows were covered with ice crystals, and his body was still trembling violently uncontrollably, as if he had just been pulled out of an ancient ice cave.
But he's still alive!
Moreover, the eyes...
What kind of look was that?!
Utter awe, utter fear, overwhelming shock, boundless fervor...
"Hah...hah..." He opened his mouth, making a sound like a broken bellows coming from his throat.
The humid air and hot temperature of Southeast Asia gradually restored his almost frozen body.
The hiding believers were stunned and forgot to run away.
Sowin took a few deep breaths of the warm, humid air, barely managing to suppress his trembling. He glanced at his robes and scriptures on the ground, then slowly knelt down, his body trembling slightly, prostrating himself on the ground…
A full ten minutes passed before he took a deep breath, raised his head, and looked at the villagers and a few believers watching him from a distance, hesitant yet eager to approach. With all his might, he roared, "There is... a divine oracle!"
A hoarse voice echoed through the quiet night.