Chapter 429: A Deity Living in the Backyard

Chen Yu plummeted straight down from the sky, landing in an open area where wheat grains were being dried in the sun.

"What was that?"

"A slime?"

The nearby farmers were startled at first, then put down their farming tools one after another, kneeling on the ground and muttering prayers for bountiful harvests and good fortune.

Chen Yu bounced out of a pile of wheat husks, shaking off the debris stuck to his gel surface. He had originally planned to leave directly, but after looking at these farmers, he thought for a moment and decided to give each kneeling farmer a bit of honey scone and candied fruit brought from Slime City.

The farmers held these little snacks they had never seen before, their expressions shifting from reverence to surprise.

"Oh, it's His Majesty?"

"Thank you, Your Majesty."

Chen Yu wobbled his gel body as a response, then hopped back onto the ridge of the field, landing on Louisa's shoulder.

"What are you all doing here?"

Louisa tilted her head, her tone unusually relaxed. "It's near the end of the year. We finally finished dealing with all the palace affairs, so I took advantage of the good weather to come out for a walk."

"I think His Majesty can forgive me for this little moment of laziness, right?"

"Of course. You need to balance work and rest." Chen Yu wobbled his gel body, his gaze passing over her hair, which was being tousled by the wind, and landing on the wheat fields illuminated by the setting sun in the distance.

Several oxcarts were slowly moving along the ridges. Farmers stood on the carts, using wooden forks to stack wheat bundles neatly, their shouts carrying across half the plain.

He watched for a while. Only after Louisa waited for him to come back to his senses did she continue walking along the ridge, speaking as she went.

"A couple of days ago, some mages brought back news from the Forge Region, saying there have been some strange movements there lately."

"Based on their experience, there might be something inside those ruins that has been sleeping for nearly a year, and it's starting to wake up."

She tilted her head, her gaze falling on the Little Majesty. "I think Your Majesty should go and take a look in person."

The Divine Kingdom was reviving?

Chen Yu crouched on the ridge, his small eyes looking toward the lead-gray horizon in the north.

The Divine Kingdom of Ignis, the sun deity, had fallen in the Forge Region who knows how long ago. He had originally thought it was just a completely dead ruin, an empty shell left behind after a deity's fall.

But if what those mages observed was true, and there really were movements coming from deep within the Divine Kingdom, then it meant that after that divine war, Ignis hadn't completely perished.

At the very least, a portion of its will still lingered within that shattered kingdom.

What intrigued him even more was another matter: what exactly was hidden within that Divine Kingdom that could push the White Horse Kingdom to the brink of collapse?

Almost all the nobles and knights who had experienced that collapse of faith, in order to save their own souls, had sold both their loyalty and their blasphemy to the demons.

What kind of scene, beyond the limits of endurance, had they witnessed that made those knights who had believed in the sun their entire lives unanimously turn toward the Abyss?

"It seems something is wrong with the Sun Divine Kingdom. I plan to go and take a look."

"Didn't they have any interest in accompanying you on this trip?"

Louisa swept the long hair that had fallen onto her shoulder back to the front of her chest. "The Royal Capital is right next to the Northern Territory. If something really happens over there, I can't pretend I don't know."

Celeste smiled lightly, lifted her skirt, and gave Chen Yu a quick curtsy. "I'd be honored to serve His Majesty. The Lady of Contrariety guided me here."

Just as she was about to transform into a giant eagle, Chen Yu raised his small hand.

The moment green light rose, they were lifted off the ground, breaking through the clouds and flying northward.

Louisa looked down at the snowfields and sparse forests rapidly receding beneath her feet, and couldn't help but sigh. "So this is Legendary."

But she understood even more clearly that this mysterious power was even sharper than magic. It was like a sword kept in its sheath, carrying them as it flew.

They chatted at high altitudes about the exploration of the Astral Realm.

In fact, even Louisa and Celeste, who had studied at mage towers, didn't know much about that unknown starry sky and were quite curious about it.

If it weren't for their duties, they might have wanted to go to the Astral Realm themselves, to recapture the feeling of adventuring in the forest back then.

As Chen Yu talked about the construction progress of the Farvoyage Port outpost and the exploration situation of the Adventurer's Guild, a blizzard struck without warning, swallowing the view ahead into a vast white chaos.

This signaled that they had entered the Northern Territory.

This vast snowfield had returned to its original cold stillness ever since the orcs left, with almost no signs of human habitation.

A few scattered bonfires flickered in the wind and snow, and even more faint lights hid in the deeper darkness, almost completely obscured by the thick snow curtain.

After flying past the middle section of the Northern Territory, the blizzard gradually thinned, and the temperature ahead began to rise.

The snowfield below slowly receded, first revealing withered grassland, then the grass sprouted green, and finally turned into a plain full of wildflowers.

In the farmlands, farmers could be seen bending over to harvest the last season of wheat, and smoke rose from the chimneys of the villages.

Chen Yu brought the two of them down to the top of the Sun Tower at the center of the Forge Region.

This tower had once been the most important site of the Sun Church in the Forge Region. Now, the gilded dome at the top was blackened by flames, and the damaged rose window was hastily boarded up with planks, but the main structure was still intact.

The interior of the tower had been temporarily converted into an observation station, where several court mages were on rotating duty.

The person who received them was the mage on duty here, wearing a light summer robe.

He gave a slight bow to Chen Yu and Louisa. "Your Majesty, Your Highness the Queen, you've finally arrived."

"In recent days, the Sun Afterimage has been showing abnormal tremors from time to time. Yesterday evening, we observed cracks appearing in the afterimage, but we didn't dare act rashly. We could only wait for the Grand Mage to come."

Chen Yu hopped onto the stone railing and looked up at the sky.

Ever since the battle between the orcs and the demons ended, the Sun Afterimage had still hung in the sky, looking no different than usual.

He narrowed his small eyes and swept his Divine Sense upward, but found nothing unusual either.

The mage beside him added, "Those cracks almost only appear stably at noon, when the sun is at its most intense. We've tried waiting at other times, but it's very much a matter of luck."

Louisa nodded to the two mages, letting them go rest first, then turned to Chen Yu. "Your Majesty, what should we do next?"

Chen Yu thought for a moment. "I plan to send a clone in to investigate."

Even though Ignis's divine miracle was no longer present, no one could say for sure what was inside. No matter how cautious they were, it wouldn't be too much.

He secreted a gel clone to stay by his side, and together they waited for noon to arrive.

During the wait, under Louisa's direction, several court mages set up emergency magic formations on the flat ground below the tower, just in case.

Time moved slowly, from early morning to noon.

During this period, the sunlight in the Forge Region gradually grew more intense, and even the air began to carry that stuffy heat that only appeared in high summer.

Just as the noon bell tolled from a distant town's church, the sky changed.

The golden afterimage hanging in the sky began to tremble, then contracted inward like a slowly closing eye, triggering a solar eclipse.

In that instant, he sensed the opening of a tiny crack.

Louisa's voice came from beside him. "Your Majesty, be careful."

The gel clone wobbled its body, turned into green light, and charged straight up toward the crack opening in the sky, slipping inside in the last moment before the crack closed.

The process of crossing the crack was longer than he had expected.

He only felt a dizzying spin, completely losing his sense of direction while passing through the crack. It was like being thrown into a rotating deep well, falling for quite a while before the surrounding space suddenly lurched and spat him out.

He landed on a pitch-black, desolate wasteland. The ground beneath his feet was cracked into countless irregular fragments, with dark red magma flowing in the fissures, casting a dull red glow on the bottom of his gel body.

There were no clouds in the sky, nor any stars. Only the now-dim Sun Afterimage hung at the very center of the sky.

This was completely different from the Sun Divine Kingdom he had imagined.

He had originally thought this place would be a fertile land bathed in golden light, with temple complexes surrounded by sun clouds, and rivers flowing with light.

The dwelling place of a sun deity should at least be bright and magnificent, something that inspired longing.

But all he saw before him was scorched earth, magma, and a land slowly suffocating.

If those nobles and knights of the White Horse Kingdom had witnessed this apocalyptic scene back then, it was only natural that their faith would collapse.

The sun they believed in, the Divine Kingdom where they had placed the final resting place of their souls, had shown them its true, brutal face.

But one question still puzzled him.

The collapse of faith should only have impacted believers of the sun. Why did those knights who had nothing to do with sun worship also suffer spiritual collapse and get easily corrupted by demons?

Unless there was something he hadn't discovered yet.

Chen Yu's Divine Sense extended across this broken wasteland, and then his perception was enveloped by a viscous resistance.

The suppression of Divine Sense here was stronger than in any domain he had ever experienced. His will could only extend to less than a few tenths of its normal range, and the farther it went, the more difficult it became.

He swept his gaze around and suddenly sensed movement in the darkness on one side.

At first, he thought it was just a flicker of light and shadow caused by the flowing magma, but when he looked more closely, he noticed something unusual.

That darkness didn't stop as he stared at it. It was slowly writhing, like a living shadow slowly sitting up from the depths of the earth, turning toward where he was.

A pair of enormous eyes slowly opened, gazing at him from within the shadow.

A wave of destructive energy rushed toward him, and the next second, he felt his vision go black.

——

On top of the tower, Chen Yu's main body suddenly snapped open its small eyes.

An abnormal layer of dark gray patterns surged across his gel surface in an instant, as if some kind of power was trying to spread into his main body through the clone's connection.

He quickly condensed a golden sword and, using the Primordial Origin Sword Dao, severed the curse that was encroaching on his main body in a single strike.

The residual gray power twisted futilely in the air before being evaporated by the sword's light.

Even so, he was still shaken.

There was another creature hiding in the sun's Divine Kingdom?

The others were also startled by his movements and hurried over to check on him with spells.

It was only after Chen Yu revealed the truth about the Divine Kingdom that Louisa spoke with a grave expression. "That might be a deity, a deity born on the remnants of the sun."

"The concept of destruction born when Ignis fell was vast enough. It might have influenced the faith of some believers, allowing a god of death to be born within the Divine Kingdom."

"It might not be a complete deity yet, but if left unchecked, in a few hundred years, once it has completely devoured the Divine Kingdom, no one will be able to stop it."

Chen Yu immediately felt a headache coming on.

He had originally thought it was the residual will of the sun that was reviving. He never imagined the situation was far worse than that.

If this death deity born on the corpse of the sun were to leave the Divine Kingdom, no one knew what it would do.

Once it touched the Material Plane, Zeyarila would likely fall into a disaster far greater than the Undead Calamity.

Celeste seemed thoughtful and ventured a suggestion. "For now, we can only try to maintain the faith in the sun. As long as there are still people who believe the sun's light hasn't completely gone out, that brewing will of death won't be able to fully occupy the ruins of the Divine Kingdom."

Chen Yu nodded. That was the only course of action for now.

As long as the flame of the Sun Church wasn't extinguished, that death deity couldn't easily take over the entire Divine Kingdom. Even if it only bought a few more years, it would buy the Empire time to prepare a response.

But the price was that budget sheets for rows of new churches would fly to the Royal Palace like snowflakes.

Every church required land, building materials, priest salaries, and daily maintenance. Just these alone would require a massive investment of gold coins.

At the thought of all those gleaming gold coins flowing like water from the treasury to churches all over the place, his heart ached.

Damn death deity.

How dare it underestimate a slime's pettiness.

But for now, besides burning money to rebuild the Sun Church, there didn't seem to be any other feasible solution.

He would rather let another sun deity reignite on Ignis's ruins than let that shadow of death be born.

He stayed with Louisa and Celeste in the Forge Region for another two days of observation.

The solar eclipse appeared on time every day at noon. Chen Yu sent a new clone through the crack each time, but the result was always the same.

The clone could only survive for less than a moment on that dark wasteland after passing through the crack before it was discovered and crushed by some unseen boundary.

It was only after confirming that this death shadow hadn't yet grown strong enough to leave the Divine Kingdom that he decided to leave for now and return to Slime City to think of a plan.

Before leaving, he arranged for a team of Slime Artisans to set up a permanent observation station in the Forge Region, equipped with gel communicators, and left a gel clone behind for rotating duty.

After doing all this, he handed over the remaining work to the accompanying court mages and returned to Slime City.

Chen Yu crouched on his throne, staring out the window at the winter sky, which had turned back to gray tones, and fell into melancholy.

He was just thinking about whether he should ask Oros for help when Little Flower bounced in from the side door, telling him that someone was waiting outside the palace for an audience.

Chen Yu was somewhat surprised.

Because he had already seen who it was.

It was the three bishops of the Great Slime Religion.

Casimir, Lya, and Rem.