From God of Lies to Lord of All Worlds

Chapter 426: The Ghosts of the River Thames

"Crown, aren't you taking things a bit too far?" Alvin's voice echoed in Bai Yang's ears. "Using the population of an entire island as a sacrifice for this Wish Power model... isn't that a bit excessive?"

"We might not need to sacrifice that many, but we must cultivate fear!" Bai Yang said with a smile. "Only the most profound despair can manifest the most abundant Wish Power!"

Perhaps due to the scarcity of Wish Power, or perhaps because the connection to the Dylan Continent made Bai Yang feel a sense of urgency, he did not use his usual subtle methods to shape a Transcendent Being this time. Instead, he simply used public opinion to directly introduce a crisis!

"Go create a little prelude, and then deliver the simplest supernatural prophecy—tell everyone in this country that the curse has arrived!"

Bai Yang chuckled softly, but his eyes held a coldness that could not be dissolved. "It is time for the people of this realm to remember who truly paid the highest price when they reaped the ultimate fruits of the Industrial Revolution!"

"This will also bring satisfaction to those deceased souls, allowing them to better integrate into our system!"

"This can be considered killing three birds with one stone. Aside from Great Britain suffering, the whole world gets a good show and gets to see the future consequences of committing such wicked deeds. Isn't that wonderful?"

Bai Yang said cheerfully, "It serves as a wake-up call for these people. The heavens watch what mortals do. If they truly enjoy committing such atrocities, many more crises await them in the future!"

Alvin understood. "So, Crown, people are going to die, right?"

"Of course people will die. Without deaths, public outrage cannot be appeased. Let these legislators and capitalists enjoy the curse of the dead!" Bai Yang nodded slightly, casually scattering Wish Power from his hand!In truth, when evaluating combat power or energy levels, ordinary Wish Power and even God Power did not boast vastly greater destructive capabilities than modern technology.

After all, humanity's millennia-long research into boiling water and throwing rocks had long since reached the pinnacle of perfection!

Humanity possessed the power to devastate the surface of this planet, which, to some extent, was not much inferior to the power Bai Yang held in his hands. However, Transcendence was never simply about transcendent strength; it was about the transcendence of human nature!

The power he commanded was actually more about deconstructing human nature and controlling souls. As long as these people were not mindless machines and possessed their own independent thoughts, they could not possibly escape Bai Yang's designs.

As the saying goes, he never wagered on humanity's nobility; rather, he wagered on humanity's despicable nature!

And as it happened, he won that wager every single time!

...

A day later, inside the Royal Library, Prince Harry was flipping through a series of documents, examining the historical records.

He was intensely curious about what Cuchulainn meant by the resentment buried beneath this land.

He actually did not know much about the history of this country. In fact, as a member of the Royal Family, there were many who were quite reluctant to let these nobles acquire too much knowledge.

They typically only studied the splendor of the Victorian era and the greatness of the Empire on Which the Sun Never Sets. As for the price of that greatness, very few ever learned about it!

Prince Harry was one of them. While his elder brother was hastily seeking comfort from the old King, Prince Harry had come here to search for the things Cuchulainn had mentioned—the curses hidden beneath this continent!

"The cries of children, the jealousy of deities, and the curse of death..." he muttered, leafing through a massive tome of history.

He had just asked the library staff: during which period did children suffer the most?

The staff member had replied: the Victorian era, of course!

Hearing this, Prince Harry recalled the previous discussions in Congress regarding the retaliation from Ireland, which was also linked to information from the Victorian era. He could not help but feel a surge of curiosity.

What kind of era was the Victorian era exactly? When he was a child, he was told it was the most glorious period of the British Empire. Why did it sound entirely different now?

To ensure objectivity, he avoided books written by the people of England and instead chose historical records penned by the citizens of America.

Because America was powerful enough, their scholars would not fear Great Britain's influence and deliberately omit certain facts.

In fact, due to their profound historical ties with Great Britain, these scholars from America would often do their utmost to mock everything related to Great Britain. The mutually antagonistic yet inextricably linked relationship between the two nations was often just that fascinating.

Thus, in a book authored by an American scholar, Prince Harry found the most explicit description:

"The Victorian Era: The Empire's Splendor, the Populace's Darkness." Looking at the nearly pitch-black cover of the book, Prince Harry knew it would not contain any "normal" praises for his country. He opened the book and read the records within.

"During the Victorian era, the only noble who paid attention to the plight of ordinary people was The Queen's husband, Prince Albert. Aside from him, every other noble was completely indifferent to the populace of that time!"

"Dickens once wrote: London is a starving beast, devouring everyone who enters."

"The Industrial Revolution made this city the heart of the British Empire, but every single beat of this heart required the lives of countless ordinary people as offerings!"

"The smoke from burning coal coiled in the sky, dyeing the entire city black. These exhaust fumes, combined with the stench of rotting corpses, the bacterial pollution from a lack of bathing, and the fishy odor from the sea, formed the foundational atmosphere of the City of Fog. This city lured people in, only to kill them!"

"Factory workers had to toil for sixteen hours a day just to earn a meager wage that barely kept them from starving to death, and this was the total income generated by the labor of their entire family."

"The workers had no homes of their own, let alone beds. After their grueling labor, they would usually go to a dingy local inn and rent a rope to sleep on. When dawn broke, the innkeeper would cut the rope, causing them to fall to the floor—this served as their wake-up call."

"The average working lifespan of a female worker in a textile factory was only five years. This did not mean they quit after five years; rather, it meant very few were still alive by then."

"Another hallmark of the Victorian era was the rampant spread of opium. In order to reap massive profits from selling this poison, the entirety of London became an ocean of opium!"

"Sometimes, mothers who had to work and lacked the time to care for their infants would feed them opium, leaving them to lie at home all day long."

"They would also send their children into factories, residential areas, and onto ships to do jobs that adults could not do, such as sweeping chimneys, running errands, or working as coal boys on vessels. Children under the age of five had already become skilled laborers."

"Because they were so small, they would sometimes die of exhaustion or starvation at their workplaces—their corpses often went undiscovered until the chimneys or factories were torn down."

"The child mortality rate during the Victorian era reached a staggering 50%, and this was exactly how it happened."

"Many years after the Battle of Waterloo, when the British government wanted to collect the skeletal remains of the fallen warriors, they discovered that the bones on the battlefield had long since been excavated by those factory owners. They had been ground into fertilizer and sold back to the people of England."

"As for immigrants, foreigners, or any kind of slaves, they were never an issue in this realm. After all, they never managed to survive in the first place!"

Seeing all of this, even Prince Harry, who had mentally prepared himself, could only take a deep breath to ease the suffocating sensation welling up in his lungs!

Such historical facts were simply too stifling to bear!

He could not fathom it. Was the legendary, most glorious era of the British Empire actually such a nightmare?

"Is this the origin of the curse?" Prince Harry muttered. He knew of the sins of the nobles, and he knew of the coldness of high society, but he never dared to imagine that a nation's government could sink to such depths!

This was entirely contrary to the kindness, benevolence, compassionate mercy, and pity preached throughout the European region!

He had always believed that nations like his were fundamentally virtuous. How could it be...

"It seems you have discovered the truth of this world, Harry!" Outside the door, Prince Edward's figure appeared, prompting the deeply troubled prince to lift his head.

"Uncle, is all of this true? It is just a smear campaign by the Americans, right?" Harry asked urgently, his worldview seemingly collapsing at this very moment.

Prince Edward shook his head. "No, this is the truth, my child! It is merely that you never realized it before. But now, you know!"

"I came here to tell you an even more terrifying reality. Just moments ago, one hundred and seventy-five murders occurred across London. The deceased are all legislators, merchants, government officials, or nobles!"

"According to our investigation, their families fundamentally built their fortunes during the Victorian era. And now, every member of their households has become a corpse!"

"Beside their corpses, what remained was water from the River Thames. I am afraid Cuchulainn was right—the ghosts of the River Thames have come to claim lives!"