novelraw Chapter 200 : Evil Cult Leader: What a Bull, What a Bull!
Chapter 200 : Evil Cult Leader: What a Bull, What a Bull!
Chapter 200: Evil Cult Leader: What a Bull, What a Bull!
"I..."
The Evil Cult Leader staggered a step back.
He instinctively wanted to argue, but couldn't form a coherent sentence.
Small Chiliocosm, Middle Chiliocosm, Great Chiliocosm, Unquantifiable Land... those endless, infinitely stacked concepts extended in his mind like a staircase tower in exponential form, causing his thoughts to stagnate.
And then there was the other party's mention—of the grains of sand in the Mitro River.
As the largest river in the Western Continent, the residents of Deep Blue Port saw the Mitro River every day and were intimately familiar with it.
But how many had ever considered just how many grains of sand were buried in the riverbed of the Mitro River?
Hundreds of millions? Tens of billions? Hundreds of billions? Trillions?
The Evil Cult Leader gritted his teeth fiercely.
He realized he could no longer be led by the nose by the other party. If he continued to follow Rast's train of thought, he would remain perpetually passive.
The only way to break out of this situation was to completely deny everything the other party said: "If what you say is true, and there exists a so-called 'Unquantifiable Land', created by the Supreme Lord you believe in—"
"Then I ask you, what lies beyond that so-called 'Unquantifiable Land'? Before the 'Unquantifiable Land' came into being, what was the state of the world, and who reigned before its creation?"
Having said that, the Evil Cult Leader exhaled deeply.
After all, he was the leader of a cult and possessed an extraordinary gift for rhetoric when it came to proselytizing.
Though he had earlier been stunned by Rast’s infinite nested-boxes theory, he quickly regained composure and counterattacked.
He directly reversed Rast's nesting doll logic, adding another layer outside of the "Unquantifiable Land".
You say your Supreme Lord created the "Unquantifiable Land"? Then what lies beyond it? Before it was formed? What is even further outside?
And once he raised such questions, if Rast continued stacking boxes—inventing terms like Small Unquantifiable Land, Middle Unquantifiable Land, Great Unquantifiable Land—
Though the nesting could continue indefinitely, he would inevitably fall behind in this theological debate, or rather, this battle of grandiose talk.
However, in the face of the Evil Cult Leader's questions, Rast merely smiled.
"I don't know."
You don't know?
The other side actually conceded like that?
The Evil Cult Leader was stunned for a moment, but then immediately revealed a look of triumph.
In such a heated debate, to say "I don't know" voluntarily was, in his eyes, equivalent to conceding defeat.
Yet Rast's words didn’t pause for even a moment in response to the Evil Cult Leader's elation—they swiftly continued.
"Your Excellency, have you ever seen... an iceberg?"
"Iceberg?"
The Evil Cult Leader was momentarily confused.
Deep Blue Port was in the subtropics and naturally had no chance of seeing icebergs, but this was already the Steam Age. The speed of information spread had vastly improved compared to the Middle Ages, so the Evil Cult Leader could at least comprehend the word iceberg.
They were massive chunks of ice floating above the oceans in the frigid polar zones.
"Because of density, the part of an iceberg that floats above the surface in the frigid polar seas is only about one-tenth of its full mass."
"Therefore, no matter how hard sailors on the ship's deck may look, all they can observe of an iceberg is just a tiny and inconspicuous corner."
"It may look like just a small piece of floating ice, but beneath the surface could lurk a colossal mass."
"Yet those who can only observe from the deck, no matter how hard they imagine the iceberg's full form, are merely glimpsing a leopard through a tube, touching an elephant blindfolded—they will never know the full shape of the iceberg."
Rast paused slightly: "And the Supreme Lord I believe in is the same."
He coldly scrutinized the Evil Cult Leader before him: "Whether it's 'galaxy', 'supercluster', or 'Great Chiliocosm', 'Unquantifiable Land'—these are terms invented by humans, concepts understandable to humans."
"But a being as grand and vast as the Supreme Lord—how could we mere, insignificant humans ever fathom or comprehend such a being?"
"Even though everything I said earlier was in the most exalted praise possible, it is still akin to sailors seeing only the tip of the iceberg, never knowing its full expanse—what I described is but a minuscule facet of the Supreme Lord's true might."
"It is a notion degraded and distorted by our shallow human insight, forcibly twisted, misinterpreted, and taken out of context... into something barely comprehensible to us."
"The true Supreme Lord is a being humans can never grasp."
Rast paused once more.
"He transcends all matter, all meaning, all concepts, all spirit and language."
"He is the cause of all effects, and the effect of all causes. He has already rewound time, stepped into the most ancient origin, and thus has never had a moment of weakness."
"He contains within Himself all possibilities, encompasses past, present, and future, the beginning and the end... all-knowing, omnipresent, omnipotent—even contradictions in logic and causality simultaneously exist in Him."
"He is unobservable and immeasurable... neither can He be perceived, nor described—any attempt to speak is a mistake, any thought is erroneous."
"The true Supreme Lord needs no belief, no worship from us, not even the so-called blood sacrifices."
His tone rose slightly: "And the Supreme Lord in our mundane, real world is merely a minuscule facet and projection of His true form—"
"Thus we can sense the presence of the Supreme Lord, pray to Him, and have so-called holy relics and divine revelations... and even this small projection of the Supreme Lord in the mortal realm is enough to exhaust the life-long wisdom and effort of humanity's most enlightened sages in pursuit and contemplation."
[666, I didn’t expect this event could be played like this.]
[How did he design this whole speech? Small Chiliocosm, Middle Chiliocosm, Great Chiliocosm... I’m almost dizzy just listening.]
[He probably stitched together religious terminology, but I’ve honestly never heard of a religious theory quite like this before.]
[Look at those cultists next to him, their eyes—like they're staring at the son of their god.]
[If this continues, this Little Ferret Gummy might really end up with an extremely high rating—he’s turned himself into a cult leader! That’s got to be a massive Plot Deviation.]
[Only issue is, Little Ferret Gummy has been operating within cult territory the whole time, constantly under pollution from that contamination item—he could be forcibly logged out of Shoreguards’ Ballad at any moment due to low mental stability.]
[Even if the Plot Deviation is high, if he doesn’t survive long enough, he probably won’t make it to the top ranks.]
Lines of bullet comments flew by rapidly.
And in the stream room footage—
"I-I-I-I..."
The Evil Cult Leader stumbled back several more steps.
He had originally thought he had finally grasped Rast’s tactics and rhetoric, and that the two would continue to chase each other along the track of nesting dolls and layered boxes—you place a doll on top, I stack a box over it.
But what he didn’t expect was that Rast’s earlier concession had been deliberate—only to unleash this devastating move at the perfect moment.
It was like two people arguing over who had greater power. Initially, they were comparing who could cause more destruction—you blow up a street, I a city, he a country...
But halfway through the argument, one suddenly claimed that his might could no longer be described in human terms, that it was unknowable and indescribable. Therefore, any further debate was flawed, and all speculation absurd.
How was one supposed to respond to that?
There was no way to continue the discussion at all!
The opponent had completely killed the match.
And the most critical part was—listening to Rast’s exposition on the Supreme Lord,
Even the Evil Cult Leader himself felt like his entire worldview had been thoroughly cleansed.
His previous understanding of the Supreme Lord now seemed so shallow—how could he have dared to use human language and words to describe such a being, a great existence that transcended all concepts and causality?
Compared to the Supreme Lord described by Rast, the god he had worshipped all along—suddenly seemed lowly and unworthy of that supreme, all-transcending divinity. It no longer matched the definition of a true Supreme Lord.
For a moment, even the Evil Cult Leader began to doubt his own life.
He was contemplating a possibility—
Was it possible that the other party truly was a Chosen of the Supreme Lord... and he himself was merely a fraud, deceived by a despicable false god?
However, the Evil Cult Leader had been in contact with the Contamination Item for the longest time, and the corruption of his mind ran the deepest. He would not so easily waver in his faith in the Evil God.
Therefore, that moment of self-doubt flashed briefly through his mind before vanishing.
The Evil Cult Leader glanced at Rast’s face, which bore an expression of pity. Then he looked at the traitorous cultists behind him, glaring menacingly, and at the loyalists beside him—whose expressions were beginning to waver at Rast’s words—with a grave expression.
He knew he had lost this theological debate—utterly and completely. There was no hope of a comeback.
If he allowed Rast to keep sowing confusion like this, it wouldn't be long before even these formerly unwavering loyalists might begin to falter and defect.
But he still had one final chance to prove his identity.
"You just said that I’m a fraud who stole the Supreme Lord’s Sacred Relic and paraded it around under the Lord’s name, didn’t you?"
The Evil Cult Leader glared viciously at Rast. "In other words, my Chosen status might be fake—but the Sacred Relic of the Supreme Lord is real, isn’t it?"
"Of course."
Rast nodded calmly.
"Good, those are your words."
The Evil Cult Leader’s expression turned ruthless.
He pulled a small box from his chest and flung it open.
Inside the wooden box was a black iron sculpture.
This was the Contamination Item of the Evil God—and the root cause of the Iron Cross Plague in Deep Blue Port.
[No way, he really brought that thing out.]
[As far as I remember, in all past Time-Limited Event challenges, no one has ever successfully obtained this Contamination Item—even after storming the cult’s base, the Evil Cult Leader would always destroy it before it could be taken.]
Lines of bullet comments streamed past.
All the players knew that this Evil God sculpture, as the Sacred Relic of the Evil God, was also the origin of the Iron Cross Plague, making it an extremely important quest item in the Deep Blue Port event.
If one could obtain this key item, their final mission rating would certainly receive a massive boost.
But unfortunately, up to now, no one had ever managed to get their hands on this Evil God sculpture.
Firstly, the sculpture was kept close by the Evil Cult Leader. To acquire it, one had to break through the cult’s headquarters.
Even if players succeeded in rallying Deep Blue Port’s police and used their power to achieve this, the moment the Evil Cult Leader realized he was defeated, he would surely destroy the Contamination Item himself, rather than let it fall into enemy hands.
So, despite knowing its importance, in three months of the Time-Limited Event, among tens of millions of Shoreguards’ Ballad players, not a single one had successfully obtained it.
And now—
That very Evil Cult Leader had actually taken the Contamination Item out himself—right in front of the player named "Little Ferret Gummy".
"The Sacred Relic of the Supreme Lord is also the embodiment of the Lord’s will."
"Therefore, we don’t need to debate like before—just let the Sacred Relic make the choice, and we’ll know who the true Chosen is, and who the deceiving fraud is."
The Evil Cult Leader’s expression was fierce.
He placed the sculpture on the ground, then drew a short dagger from his chest.
Without the slightest hesitation, he flipped his wrist, the arc of the dagger flashing briefly, drawing a spurt of blood.
Blood dripped onto the Evil God sculpture, raising a hiss of white smoke. Stimulated by the blood, the sculpture began to awaken—it vibrated and buzzed, regaining its own activity.
This was the Evil Cult Leader’s last resort—but also his final attempt at a comeback.
A glimmer of confidence returned to the Evil Cult Leader’s eyes as he glanced at Rast.
See? No matter how eloquent your words, as long as the Sacred Relic awakens, the truth will reveal itself!
Time passed slowly, and the blood-red patterns on the sculpture grew clearer, fully activated, as if it had a life of its own.
Until, in a single instant, the sculpture suddenly rose into the air, pulsing with waves of crimson light.
And then—
Under the Evil Cult Leader’s hopeful gaze, that fully activated, levitating Evil God sculpture drew a graceful arc of blood in the air—
And soared right past the Evil Cult Leader.
Finally, it landed directly in Rast’s hand, lying there obediently.
Just like a goddess, leaping into another’s embrace, under the hopeless eyes of a loyal simp.