Chapter 103: The Uncanny Assassin, Death's Tolling Bell?
Beyond infiltrating divine pantheons, they had also covertly manipulated the human world.
Perpetually stoking human conflicts and strife, their goal was to erode the gods' faith in humanity.
For when the gods initiated the Final Judgment upon mankind, enacting the procedures—that would become their golden opportunity.
The so-called Final Judgment didn't entail humanity's complete extinction, merely the obliteration of current civilization.
Thereafter, a new humanity would begin anew.
The reason for sparing the species outright was humanity's intrinsic connection to the divine.
Should humans vanish entirely from the cosmos, the gods too would inevitably decline toward twilight.
After a certain era, new gods had become nearly impossible to birth.
Simply put, divine reproduction grew increasingly difficult.
However, unions with humans could produce demigods bearing divine blood. Alternatively, humans who ingested divine blood—though such cases were rare due to extreme mortality rates—could undergo trials to ascend as true gods, joining their ranks.
Thus, humanity could never be wholly erased from this universe.
And their goal was to directly and decisively annihilate the human race while executing the program to destroy human civilization.
Even if complete destruction is impossible, it could still deal a massive blow to the current gods.
In future battles against the gods, their legions would struggle to replenish divine soldiers.
But wouldn't they worry that their own gods might face the same predicament as the current ones?
That's not a concern, because the fertility issues plaguing the present celestial gods are actually a curse cast upon them when they were exiled.
They have no such worries themselves.
Returning to the matter at hand—if the plan had proceeded normally, humanity should have disappointed the gods to the point of triggering the apocalypse a thousand years earlier.
But their plans were disrupted. One particularly troublesome figure kept beheading their operatives, appearing and vanishing like a ghost.
To this day, no one knows his true identity—because everyone who has seen him has died without exception.
Still, some information has been uncovered, though it seems utterly absurd.
The killer… might be human?
They've tried using the Akashic Records to replay history and identify him, but all attempts failed.
Was it because accessing the Akashic Realm was too difficult?
Not exactly. They could have sent an insider to investigate.
The problem was, every insider who went in ended up dead—returning from the past as a lifeless corpse.
This forced them to halt further investigations.
Not out of fear, but because such anomalies might alert the current gods. If they also began observing history through the Akashic Realm, they could accidentally expose their own agents—and even a few rogue gods hiding among them.
But wouldn't the gods notice when someone returning from the past turned into a corpse?
They weren't stupid, of course. A lookout was always stationed to immediately remove and dispose of the body.
So, if no one has ever witnessed this elusive assassin firsthand, where did these rumors come from?
Rumors say a strange bell tolls each time someone is killed—a death knell heard by those nearby.
With just this sliver of information, they pieced together a lead.
Legends spoke of a human assassination cult dedicated to purging sin.
Every beheaded victim would hear the bell—a proclamation of death.
Cross-referencing human historical records, the cult's active period aligned with the deaths of several gods hiding in the human world.
It was absurd.
These records weren't from the modern era but from a later period, long after the events.
Later, they sent humans to infiltrate the organization, only to find its leadership had changed hands multiple times.
Through ideological corruption, the cult abandoned its original purpose, no longer posing a threat to their plans.
But before they could celebrate, the traitorous leaders were all beheaded.
Did that mean the cult's first leader was still alive?
Unclear. No one witnessed the killings firsthand.
Subsequently, there were multiple attempts to corrupt this assassination order, but similar situations arose each time—they were beheaded and killed.
Thus, to this day in the human era, this assassination order still exists.
Who would have thought that the enemy would now directly invade their stronghold?
Such audacity!
"You search that area, and you take that side!"
The divine soldiers sprang into action. Among them, one captain's face turned ashen.
To allow the enemy to infiltrate their stronghold directly was a resounding slap in the face for him, the guardian of this place.
He could not afford another failure. He had to find the intruder quickly and subject them to the harshest punishment, lest the great being grow angry.
Otherwise, his fate might be to be cast aside.
"Damn it!!!"
Upon arriving at a small hall, he saw over a dozen divine soldiers who had been beheaded.
Judging by the blood still flowing, the enemy had just killed them and left—they were nearby.
Where?
Suddenly, the captain's pupils contracted violently, and a chill shot up his spine to the crown of his head.
Death was right behind him!
Without hesitation, he drew his divine weapon and swung it backward, but then he noticed his vision tilting strangely.
Next, he saw his own body—which should have been swinging backward—stagger and collapse.
His pupils shrank. The tilting vision revealed that his neck was now headless.
So that was it. He had been beheaded, his head sent flying, which was why his vision was spinning so bizarrely.
At the same time, he caught sight of the assassin.
The figure was quite different from what he had imagined...