Chapter 619: An Unstoppable Path (Part I)

The red bricks and gray tiles resolved slowly as the ship came in—the old Holy City materializing from water and distance without drama or announcement.

Isabella studied it without sentiment.

It was unremarkable. The old cathedral sat lower and plainer than the new one on the plateau—no magnificent chapel, no tower to rival the Babel, no architecture designed to diminish a person standing at its base. It might have been smaller than the principal churches of the Four Kingdoms’ capitals. And yet the believers, nearly all of them, held this building as something categorically apart from every other structure on earth. The place where everything began. The palace of deities in the material world.

Isabella rejected that. She had access to the parts of the story that believers did not, and she knew what the old Holy City had actually been built to accomplish: to cover the entrance to what lay behind and beneath it. The cathedral was a facade—elaborate, long-maintained, useful. A structure built to redirect attention.

The ship docked. She came down the trestle bridge alone with light baggage, and the guard sent from the Pivotal Secret Area looked at the empty air behind her with poorly concealed alarm.

“My Lady—where are the other pure witches?”

“Coming. A day or two behind me.” She kept walking. “They needed time to make arrangements.”

“But Lady Zero’s orders specified—”

“That she wanted to see everyone.” Isabella stepped past him without stopping. “She didn’t specify simultaneously.”

The recall made no sense to her. Pulling every pure witch out of the Kingdom of Dawn would dismantle what they had built there—the king’s slow descent into medicated sleep, the careful maneuvering, months of groundwork. She could not imagine a development large enough to justify abandoning all of it. And Zero had provided no explanation. She had simply issued the order, and the order had arrived with the flat authority of someone who no longer needed to account for herself.

She’s grown into the role, Isabella thought, without warmth.

She climbed into the waiting cart and closed the curtain.

“What happened in the holy city?” she asked through the window.

The guard hesitated. “The advance force encountered the army of the Kingdom of Graycastle at the foot of Coldwind Ridge.” Another pause. “You should ask Lady Zero for the details.”

“Did we lose?”

A brief, small nod. Then he mounted his horse and called for the coachman, and the conversation was done.

Isabella sat in the dark of the curtained carriage and let the city pass.

The advance force carried God’s Punishment Warriors. The church hierarchy only reacted with visible urgency when God’s Punishment Warriors died. Zero had pulled every pure witch out of an established operation—that meant the losses at Coldwind Ridge were not ordinary.

But how? She had seen God’s Punishment Warriors fight. She had seen what it took to stop them. Even a mountainous Fearful Beast of Hell would eventually be brought down if you sent enough of them at it—but a single engagement, against a border king’s army, at this scale of loss?

The cart moved through the streets of the old holy city and turned toward the cliffs. She descended at the tunnel entrance and passed through the iron gates one by one, the temperature dropping with each, the sound of the city disappearing behind the rock.

The Pivotal Secret Temple emerged from the prism-light the way it always did—imposing, indifferent, cold.

Zero was in the library at the top of the building, standing at the window with her hands behind her back, looking down at something.

“What’s the situation that’s making you forget Kingdom of Dawn?” Isabella walked up beside her and followed her gaze to the street below—ordinary people moving through ordinary routines, the small constant traffic of lives being lived. “Whatever it is, could we not have left Gentlewoman and Blackveil there to hold the position?”

Zero didn’t answer the question. She pointed at the people below and said, “What do they look like to you?”

“Is that relevant to what I asked?”

Zero continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Humble and ignorant—moving all day without understanding why. Like ants. Perhaps that’s how deities think of us too. We sacrifice ourselves in bloody wars and die on the fields knowing nothing about why it happens. You need height to see the whole picture.” Her voice had taken on a particular quality—the slow rhythm of someone who has reached a conclusion and is now enjoying the view from it. “I’ve moved one step closer to the divine will.”

“What are you actually saying?”

“If I can devour the new king of Graycastle, my probability of winning the Battle of Divine Will will increase significantly.” Zero smiled. The excitement in her eyes was the specific kind that had no outlet—the kind that had been accumulating for some time in a person with nowhere to put it. “I feel, sometimes, as though the deities sent him to me.”

Isabella was quiet for a moment. Then: “How many God’s Punishment Warriors died at Coldwind Ridge.”

Not a question. A demand for the number.

Zero didn’t hesitate. “One hundred fifty killed in the field. Eleven died on the return to Hermes. And the enemy lost nothing. No casualties. Their defensive line held against both the great shields and the spear volleys.”

The number landed like a stone into still water, and Isabella felt the rings of it moving outward.

More losses in a single engagement than in two full years of sending warriors against the Months of Demons. More losses than the combined operations to take the Kingdom of Everwinter and the Kingdom of Wolfheart. Against a prince who had been a marginal figure twelve months ago.

How?

Not witches. Not knights. Not numbers. A mountainous Fearful Beast of Hell had fallen to God’s Punishment Warriors before.

“A new kind of snow-powder weapon,” Zero said—as though she had watched Isabella’s thinking and simply told her where it ended. “Something mortals can operate without training. It fires without pause, reaches a thousand steps, and cuts through iron plate and iron shields both.” She paused. “Our warriors had no answer for it.”

Isabella exhaled slowly.

The silence between them stretched.

“So you’ve lost,” she said at last.

“The battle, yes. Soli Daal was—”

“I don’t mean the battle.” She turned to face Zero fully. “You told me once: only the winner is the deities’ chosen one. That is no longer you, by your own measure.”

Zero’s expression did not change. “You believe Roland Wimbledon has earned the Divine’s Smile instead of me?”

“Forget the Divine’s Smile.” Isabella heard her own voice rise and didn’t stop it. “Our goal—defeating the demons, preserving humanity—is what matters. Not who earns the church’s theological validation. If you exhaust yourself attacking Roland, his army and his witches get destroyed, your God’s Punishment Army suffers catastrophic loss, and the Bloody Moon arrives in less than six months with the battlefield gutted.” She held Zero’s gaze. “What exactly have we accomplished then?”

She waited. She genuinely was not certain, in that moment, how Zero would respond.

Zero did not react for a long time.

When she did, her voice was completely even: “So what do you want me to do?”

Chapter 619: An Unstoppable Path (Part Ⅰ)

Translator: TransN Editor: TransN

The red bricks and gray tiles of the cathedral gradually came into Isabella’s sight, as her ship was slowly approaching the old Holy City.

It looked fairly prosaic. Unlike the new cathedral on the plateau, it did not have a magnificent chapel or a lofty building similar to the Tower of Babel. It might even be smaller than the churches located in the capitals of the Four Kingdoms. Despite that, in the heart of most believers, this old cathedral together with the cloisters, the Hall of Military Affairs and the Hall of Arbitration formed the palace of deities on the ground.

They considered this old cathedral the source of the church and the beginning of everything.

Isabella, however, rejected this saying.

She knew that the real place of origin for the church located inside the high mountains behind the old cathedral and that the truth was always kept as a secret from the believers.

As for the old Holy City?

It was just built to cover the secret.

After the sailing ship was anchored off by the dock, Isabella walked down the trestle bridge alone with light bags. Seeing this, the guard who came from Pivotal Secret Area to fetch her was taken by surprise and asked, “My Lady, where are the other pure witches?”

“They’ll come one or two days later. I know His Holiness is rushing for us to return, but they still need some time to make some arrangements,” she

shrugged and replied.

“But Lady Zero said…”

“She wanted to see everyone.” Isabella interrupted the guard. “I knew, but she didn’t say that she wanted to see all of us at the same time.”

She was puzzled by the recall order. Requiring all the pure witches to come back to Holy City would apparently ruin the plan to control Kingdom of Dawn. Without the medicine, the king would die in endless sleep. She could not think of a reason for Zero’s abrupt change of plan, nor did she receive any explanation in the order.

“She’s getting more and more like a real pope,” Isabella thought, feeling a little unhappy.

Nevertheless, she had to still hit the road as soon as she had received the command. It had taken her a whole week to rush back to Hermes.

She turned around to ask the guard while boarding the cart, “By the way, do you know what happened in Holy City?”

“The advance force of the church fought a battle against the army of Kingdom of Graycastle at the foot of Coldwind Ridge,” the guard hesitated for a while and answered, “and I think you’d better ask Lady Zero for the details.”

“Did… the advance force lose?”

The guard slightly nodded to her without saying anything. He quickly left to mount a war-horse and then shouted to the coachman, “Let’s go!”

Inside the carriage, Isabella let the curtains down and she was lost in her thought.

There were certainly many God’s Punishment Warriors in the advance force, as top leaders of the church only reacted when there’s a heavy loss to God’s Punishment Army.

God’s Punishment Warriors aren’t immortals. They’ll also suffer from heavy casualties, facing the harms more than they can bear. Since the church launched the attack at Kingdom of Everwinter, Holy City has already lost nearly 100 of them. I thought Zero had already got used to this situation, but maybe I was wrong. What a heavy loss could it be in this battle, which led to Zero’s decision to recall all the pure witches.

The coach traveled through the busy streets of the old Holy City and came to a battalion near the cliffs of the Impassable Mountain Range. Like the cathedral, this place was also heavily secured. Isabella got off the coach and stepped into a tunnel which was cut into the cliffs. She passed through many iron gates, walking into the mountain.

In the cold light of the God’s Stone prism, the towering silhouette of Pivotal Secret Temple was presented in front of her.

Guided by the guard, she directly went up to the library on the top floor. When she opened the door of the circular hall, the present pope was standing by the window and looking out, who seemed lost in thought.

“What’s this sticky business that makes you forget about Kingdom of Dawn?” Isabella came up to Zero and whistled to her. “No matter what it is, why don’t we leave Gentlewoman and Blackveil there to stabilize the situation?”

Zero did not answer her question. Instead, she pointed down to the people, asking, “What do you think they look like?”

Isabella frowned and asked, “Is that related to what I’m asking?”

Zero ignored Isabella’s question again and said, “Those humble, ignorant people are on the go all day long without knowing what for, just like ants. Maybe that’s also how deities think of us… We devote ourselves to bloody wars and then die on the battlefields, knowing nothing about the cause of this situation. Only standing on the top will give one a view of the whole world. Fortunately, now I get one more step closer to Divine Will again.”

“What… is your point?”

“As long as I can devour the new king of Kingdom of Graycastle, my chance of winning the Battle of Divine Will will significantly increase.” Zero smiled, her eyes were shining with an unusual excitement. “I somehow feel that… it’s deities who send him to me.”

After a moment of silence, Isabella said in a deep voice, “I just want to know how many God’s Punishment Warriors were killed in the battle at the foot of Coldwind Ridge.”

“150 were killed on the battlefield and 11 died on the way back to Hermes. However, the enemy hadn’t even got a scratch. Neither big shields nor spear throwers could break through the defense line of Roland’s army,” Zero said while staring at Isabella with her gleaming eyes.

Isabella’s heart vibrated in a sudden and her mind was in a tumult. “How come the God’s Punishment Army suffered even a heavier loss in this single battle than it did in the battles during the Months of Demons and the actions of capturing Kingdom of Everwinter and Kingdom of Wolfheart? What makes the Prince of Kingdom of Graycastle so incredibly powerful?”

The witches? The knights? No, not them. Even a mountainous Fearful Beast of Hell will die when it’s besieged by God’s Punishment Warriors. How did he manage to do this?

“A dreadful snow powder weapon,” Zero said as if she saw through Isabella’s mind. “Even mortals could operate this kind of weapons. They could shoot targets a thousand steps away. They broke the armors plates and iron shields, and they’re firing non-stop. Our warriors became easy targets for them.”

After hearing the process of the battle, Isabella took a deep breath and the look on her face was uncertain. After a long while, she said, “So, you’ve lost.”

“It’s indeed a defeat for the church, and Soli Daal took the enemy too lightly…”

Isabella suddenly interrupted and said, “No, I didn’t mean the battle. Do you remember? You told me only the winner was the deities’ chosen one, and now you’re clearly not the one.”

“You think… Roland Wimbledon is the one who can win the Divine’s Smile instead of me?” Zero peacefully asked.

Isabella could not help but raise her voice, arguing, “Don’t forget about our goal! We must defeat the demons in order to enable mankind to survive. I don’t care whether the church is the one to realize that goal! Given what happened during that battle, it’s clear that even if you pool all your strength to defeat and devour Roland, it’ll do no good to our goal. His army and witches will be slaughtered, God’s Punishment Army will also suffer a heavy loss and in less than half a year Months of Demons will arrive again!”

For one split second, Isabella thought Zero was going to kill her, but Zero did not react until she finished.

“So what do you want me to do?”

The pope asked softly after a long silence.