Chapter 244: The Blooming Flower of Malice (1)
The gate to the heavens slammed shut. Ferderica, too, was driven from the Mortal Realm, cast out as suddenly as they had appeared. The aftermath was a hush, a stunned stillness that hung over the land. For a while, not a soul dared to return to the holy land. However, as the silence lingered, as the echoes of the god’s departure finally faded, the faithful began to creep back, one by one, into what had once been their sanctuary.
However, what they found was not the sanctuary they remembered. What awaited them was ruin—utter, desolate, irreparable ruin.
The holy land had decayed so thoroughly that only a handful of seeds might ever take root in its soil again. The earth was gray and ashen, lifeless except for the faintest hint of potential. Yet that wasn’t the only thing that greeted them. A much greater horror awaited.
Screams tore through the air.
“Ahhhhhh!”
“Ferderica! Please, look down upon us!”
“Do not abandon us! Please, don’t leave us behind!”
The place where they stood, once Ferderica’s Holy Land and the center of their faith, where the power of the god had saturated the ground itself, was now nothing but a ruin. The divine energy that had once wrapped the soil, the stones, even the air in its embrace was simply gone. The ever-watchful gaze of the god, the comforting presence they had always felt upon them, had vanished without a trace.
Their holy land was no longer sacred. As that realization spread, the congregation plunged into despair. However, it didn’t end there.
“Ferderica! Ferderica, please!”
The faithful threw themselves into frantic prayer. In the past, even the simplest invocation would have been enough to stir a trickle of divine power, to let them wield some measure of Ferderica’s strength. Now, no matter how they prayed, no matter how they screamed the god’s name, nothing happened. Not a spark, not a whisper of power answered their pleas.
They had lost their divinity.