Anyone still in the great hall would’ve dropped in shock, like a candle blown out by a sudden gale.

The Pope—the most exalted person in this World—lay full-length, cheek on ice-cold stone, the most humble, reverent, and… lowly. He gladly took a baptism of silver moonlight, cold as frost.

Only the Deity—only It—could make such a mountain kneel and kiss the floor.

It listened in silence to Xiuzhe’s account and kept “looking” at him. Not just with eyes, but by feeling his heartbeat, his blood’s rush, his blink’s rhythm, his breath’s rise, reading him like ripples on a still pond.

“So I sent Long and the others. They killed the current four companions and took their place, to keep the Cycle steady.”

Xiuzhe finished and waited, reverent as carved stone, for Its command.

Moonlight drenched him and drew a pale circle. His chin rested on the floor. His gaze slid a meter forward into pooled darkness. No moonlight lay there.

Then the light over him shifted like a slow tide. A few strands drifted out and wrote upon the dark. A single word formed. Xiuzhe’s pupils tightened.

“Lie.”

Boom—!

Gentle moonlight turned mountain-heavy and slammed his spine. Raw force roared in unguarded. The white-haired elder flushed, and the cold stone took him whole. He couldn’t move an inch.

It was like molten lead sluiced over him. Not just his robe—his very hair plastered to his scalp, not a strand daring to lift.

Strong as the Pope is—he rules the Church of the Divine, a colossus spanning the continent. He outranks the Four Horsemen. He’s the Church’s truest spear.

But before It, he’s fragile as a child.

With a whim, It could swat him into a beaten cur.

Like now. Xiuzhe’s robe hung askew. His breath came fast. Blood silvered his lip. His majesty and sanctity lay in shards, yet he still wore a humble smile.

No better than a stray at the roadside. Even a stray, when kicked, can whimper if it dares not bark.

Xiuzhe still had to smile.

“Please—” Blood leaked at his mouth. The humble smile stayed perfect. He forced the words out, one by one. “May the Deity judge clearly.”

Light twisted before him, coiling and shifting.

“Presumptuous.”

Presumptuous isn’t praise. Yet seeing that verdict, Xiuzhe’s smile only grew more humble, more sincere, like frost bowing under dawn.

Presumption feels like a human blight. People care too hard about others’ eyes and stumble; it’s vanity by another name, smoke on a mirror. Truth is, you aren’t watched as much as you think.

For those below, guessing at a superior’s mind is the same presumption.

It needs tools. It doesn’t need tools that seize the reins.

Xiuzhe guessed Its displeasure with this Cycle’s stability. He guessed right.

But he moved without orders. That displeased It.

Beyond that, It saw the little schemes he thought buried, like fish beneath clear ice.

He made the Four Horsemen forever the Hero King’s Companions. That bolstered the Cycle. It also kept those knights breathing.

With no limit of years, those knights grow stronger the longer they live, like trees thickening their rings.

It doesn’t need tools too strong. For It, excess strength in a tool is wasted metal on a blade.

If such “impurities” stir betrayal, they become “viruses.” Then It must waste effort to purge them. Better to erase early, like weeding before seed.

Xiuzhe read It well, again. Before It acted, he returned the Horsemen to the Cycle. He handed their life and death to the Cycle, and to It.

It can roll the Cycle like a millstone and crush the Four Horsemen at will. Then they aren’t a threat.

You have to admit it. Xiuzhe worked in secret, seasoned and sly. Under the banner of stabilizing the Cycle, he did this. Even if you saw it, you couldn’t call it wrong.

Because it was done well. It, too, found it not bad.

But that wasn’t the point above. Rather, It saw weaknesses in Xiuzhe besides death. That pleased It.

It doesn’t need the most powerful. It doesn’t need flawless tools. People are people because they have cracks and soft spots, handles It can hold.

Otherwise, seamless and without weakness—that’s a Deity.

It has seen human ugliness and frailty. Yet It doesn’t hate them. After all, It was born to shield these humans. And this World needs only one Deity.

So It gladly accepted the weakness Xiuzhe offered. He handed over his old companions like a man offering his throat.

And It saw through it all. On one hand, he meant to spare those companions’ lives. On the other, he meant to ease Its mind about him.

Strip it down, and it’s the same wish: to live.

“Humans.”

There’s Augustine, who lies to himself to survive, a moth pretending it’s ash.

There are the ones unafraid of death, who charge for a belief and challenge It, and die one by one like sparks stamped out—viruses, still.

And there is Xiuzhe, with no dignity, no freedom, no creed to speak of, bowing openly to It and begging to live.

“Truly complicated,” It said, voice edged with a thin mockery like a cold blade.

“Truly—fragile.”

Witchwood Forest.

Heavy footfalls sounded like mountains cracking. Thud, thud, thud rolled through the vast, dense wood, clear as drumbeats.

The black knight didn’t step fast. Yet every stride spanned dozens of meters. In the dark, trees swayed and the gale beat its wings. He was a galloping beast of night.

Long could go faster. Even here, in the Witchwood Forest, the shackles that bind ordinary humans barely touched him, like cobweb on armor.

Yet, for some reason, memories sealed for millennia began to stir, like silt rising in a stirred well.

When a man looks back, his steps slow on their own, like a cart dragging through mud.

Thousands of years ago, he wasn’t the chief of the Four Horsemen. He wasn’t this strong. He had no name that made people blanch like windblown ash.

He was a knight—just a plain knight, iron and bread, rain and road.

A knight who, in the future, met the Hero King and became less plain.

And that future Hero King is the Pope now.

Xiuzhe.