A black cat sat astride a golden retriever, staring at a performance hall currently under renovation. Workers moved in and out, continuously hauling in materials and cement dust. Bede stood there in person, overseeing the work.

Not far away, three water carts were parked.

“So why does it have to be like this!!!” Pu’er muttered to herself as she grabbed the golden retriever’s ears with her paws, treating them like reins and yanking back.

The golden retriever immediately turned around, carrying the black cat back toward the manor. It then ran straight up to the third floor, and gently bumped open the study door to go inside.

Karon was seated behind the desk, reading something, with Borg standing in front of him.

Karon was not looking at the Allen family’s business operations. In fact, after finishing going through all of the Allen family’s reports in the early hours of morning, his conclusion had been simple: maintain all operations as they were. He did not understand management, so there was no reason for him to change anything, nor did he possess the ability to turn stone into gold.

Most importantly, the Allen family did not lack money. What they lacked was the power to protect themselves.

The materials in front of him were something that Borg had just delivered. Part of it was written testimony. Borg had gone to ask several elderly members from the Allen family’s side branches asking for details concerning burial rites, and had then visited the family archives to look up relevant records and photographs taken during past burials.

From the photos, it was clear that when the previous patriarch had been interred, the body had been treated beforehand. This matched what the elders from the side branches had described.

In addition, the choice of coffin and the design of the burial chamber had both been extremely meticulous.

The Allen family’s patriarchal tombs were not extravagant. The space was not large, since they were buried near the main fortress. It was impossible to construct some vast underground palace. However, the materials used were exceptionally refined.

A good coffin and a well-built chamber ensured that the body inside would be preserved to the greatest extent possible.

Calling it ‘fresh’ would be an exaggeration, but it certainly wouldn’t collapse into a pile of rotten bones the moment the coffin was opened. The baseline expectation was that when the coffin was opened, what lay inside would be a complete, intact corpse that still retained a recognizable human form. Essentially, a mummy.

Even that might not be entirely accurate. After all, the Allen family was not an ordinary family, so it was possible Karon’s experience from working at a funeral home might not apply. There was also the possibility that the Allen family had set up some kind of ritual array inside the tomb.

After all, Tiz had once said that when registered clergy of the orthodox churches died, the church would send specialists to retrieve their bodies. The bodies themselves were considered materials.

Then, were the bodies of those who followed a family faith system equally valuable? Even setting aside respect for the deceased, treating and preserving the corpses of past ancestors as a form of wealth was entirely reasonable.

There was, however, another issue. The Allen family did not belong to the Church of Order, and the family itself was a local supplier of church materials. Their demand for using ancestral corpses as materials should not have been particularly strong.

Karon lightly tapped his forehead with his fountain pen.

Unfortunately, this was not a question he could conveniently ask Pu’er, nor was it appropriate to ask Master Anderson. First, Karon was not certain he could successfully awaken an existence of that level. Second, this was, after all, a matter of digging ancestral graves. You could quietly try to do it, but until it succeeded, it was not something to talk about openly.

Woof!

Pu’er had already been in the room for some time. Seeing that Karon had not noticed her at all, she tugged on the golden retriever’s ears to make it bark.

Karon looked up, glancing at Pu’er. He waved a hand, dismissing Borg.

The young man bowed and withdrew. As he passed Pu’er, his gaze unconsciously drifted toward the black cat portrait hanging in the study. After stepping outside, he closed the study door. Once the door shut, all sounds were cut off.

Hands folded in front of him, back straight, Borg stood properly, but a trace of doubt arose in his mind. The cat that Young Master had brought back seemed a little too similar to the black cat that the ancestors had supposedly turned into in the portrait.

Borg immediately shook his head. What nonsense am I thinking?

***

“Why does the performance hall need to be remodeled!” With no outsiders present, Pu’er immediately demanded.

“Master Anderson told me there’s no swimming pool in the manor, so to meet the deadline, it is simpler to remodel the performance hall and use it as a small reservoir,” Karon replied.

“But that was my youth, my memories!” Pu’er protested. “It’s a building I left behind for future generations, something with commemorative meaning!”

“Then I’ll call Master Anderson over right now and have him stop construction and restore it to its original state. Or maybe renovate it again?”

Pu’er did not agree right away. Instead, she said, “Next time something like this happens, can you discuss it with me in advance and let me be the one to give approval?”

“If there’s a next time, it’ll probably be removing your portrait from this study.”

“That’s so cruel!”

“Master Anderson seems to have always been bothered by the fact that a cat is hanging in the study among the ancestral portraits.”

“I knew it. That old thing— no, that little thing is really awful!”

“The renovation of the performance hall will be completed today. After that, water carts returning from various places will fill it with holy water. If nothing goes wrong, all preparations should be complete in three days.”

“Meow, meow. They’re really enthusiastic,” Pu’er laughed, letting out a distinctly feline sound.

“What I mean is, are you ready for the purification ritual?” Karon asked.

“I’m ready.”

“No other additional preparations?”

“Yes. I told them to deliver food and drinks at mealtimes, and have the radio demon— oh no, have the stupid dog bring them in.”

“Have the dog do it?” Karon asked. He looked at Kevin, the golden retriever currently being ridden like a pony by Pu’er.

She grabbed the golden retriever’s ears and yanked back. The dog yelped in pain, its front legs lifting as if a warhorse rearing up. “It’s a heretical god, you know! A great heretical god!”

“And what does that have to do with anything?” Karon asked.

“Of course it matters,” Pu’er said, releasing her grip as the golden retriever carried her back and forth across the carpet in front of the desk. “I told you before, purification is about cleaning the house.”

“Mhmm.”

“It’s like this; Before you sell yourself, it’s best to take a bath, scrub yourself clean, and then stand at the door and wave, saying, ‘My lord, come in and have fun.’ If they’re filthy, would you, as a guest, be willing to go in?”

“I understand what you’re saying, but couldn’t you use a normal metaphor?”

“Oh, fine. In the church, the ones who guide newcomers are called guides. Holy relics are auxiliary tools. Low-level purification is just washing the body clean and getting it ready, while high-level purification is when the god has already noticed you, clean, pale, and smooth. He’s seen you, and once he’s seen you, will he be willing to walk over to your door and talk to you? That’s Divine Seeker.

“When he talks to you, sees your smooth skin and smells your fragrant soap, won’t he naturally want to come inside and sit for a while? That’s Divine Shepherd.

“So a good purification can directly pave the way for the next two stages. It saves you the time of hard practice, and the results won’t be shoddy just because it was fast.

“During purification, the guide and the holy relics play guiding roles, but you can also think of it this way: the guide is an experienced madam standing at your door, while the holy relics are the pastries displayed at the front of your shop. Better relics mean better pastries. Others put out moldy sweets, while you’re displaying freshly made mousse cake.

“The gods will notice you more easily.”

Karon lifted his teacup and took a sip. “If you described things like this outside, you’d definitely attract a lot of church assassins.”

“Hahahaha, meow...” Pu’er laughed so hard her whole body shook. “That’s the only way to make it simple and easy to understand, so you’ll cooperate better with what comes next. Because, Karon, you don’t believe in gods. Tiz doesn’t believe in gods either. I’m just expanding and elaborating on Tiz’s comment that the god of Order was raised by a whore. ”

“Is your holy relic— oh no, you, eye-catching enough?” Karon asked.

“Trust me, absolutely. I don’t know how many people will be undergoing purification and calling for the god of Order’s attention tomorrow night, but believe me, because of me, you’ll become the most dazzling one.”

“And what about that?” Karon pointed at the golden retriever. “Guides are usually elders within the church, or, according to your analogy, experienced madams.”

“It’s a heretical god!” Pu’er exclaimed.

“Yes, and?” Karon pressed.

“A heretical god becomes heretical because in the last era, during the wars of the gods, it lost and was suppressed, but that also is enough to prove that it once personally drew the hatred of true gods. Why else would those powerful true gods have bothered to deal with it?

“So in terms of drawing attention, when a god walks down the street and looks at shops on both sides, no matter how reputable or experienced the madams standing outside are, they can’t compare to seeing an old enemy that you hate or that provokes your rage. No matter how much others preen, it’s useless. The god will walk straight toward you, wanting to beat it!”

The golden retriever whimpered.

Karon pointed at himself. “Then won’t the god want to beat me too?”

“That situation doesn’t exist. The Church of Principle conducted special research on this,” Pu’er said, finally jumping off the golden retriever. The dog sagged to the floor in relief, panting.

The cat leapt onto the desk, but before she could land, Karon flipped over the report about the burial of her family members, covering it with another document.

“Here, draw a circle,” Pu’er said. She failed to notice Karon’s small movements. Instead, she believed that Karon understood what she wanted, and was quite pleased. She saw it as him being cooperative.

Karon drew a circle on the blank space.

“The Church of Principle loves researching strange things. You could say ninety-nine percent of what they come up with is useless. At least, that’s what I used to think. But when you actually need it, you realize those lunatics are genuine geniuses.”

“Get to the point,” Karon said.

“The point is, now poke a dot inside the circle.”

Karon poked a dot with his pen.

“The dot can represent a god. The circle can also represent a god. Believers like to anthropomorphize gods, giving them human emotions, while at the same time expanding gods into abstractions, seeing them as faith and rules incarnate.

“The Church of Principle’s conclusion is that gods can be anthropomorphized, gods do have temperaments, but most of the time, gods have no emotions at all, like cold gears turning. For example, when gods fight during wars with other gods, the god is a person. When issuing divine revelations, the god is a person. But when a god is handling the work a god is supposed to do, it enters another state, operating like a machine without emotion. In that state, it is absolutely omniscient and omnipotent, yet without emotion or thought.

“Mm... it’s like many people in this world. When they’re working, they feel nothing. When work ends and they go drink at a tavern, or take a vacation, and they become themselves again.”

Karon nodded. “I understand.”

“You... really understand that?” Pu’er asked. “Do you want me to extend the explanation using Tiz’s theoretical framework?”

“No need. I get it.”

A god needs churches and faith, and this was the operational process. This was work a god could not shirk, so the god split off its consciousness. When dealing with work, the god’s consciousness was essentially like an AI.

The true god would not notice the fine details of the work. It was the one doing the work, yet it had no awareness of what that work actually was.

At this point, even Karon could not help but be amazed. The people of the Church of Principle truly were geniuses. They were practically probing the gods for exploitable flaws.

And what Pu’er planned to do was to bring Karon along to exploit that flaw. He had grown accustomed to simplifying the complexities of this world. Just as when Master Anderson had reported on the situation between the Allen family and the Raphael family, Karon had reduced it to gangsters fighting over turf.

Strip away the mystical veil, and the underlying patterns were the same.

Pu’er continued, “So it’s just reenacting what I said before. A god walks along, sees a heretical god standing at your door, and comes over on its own. That’s purification.

“Then the god asks you how this enemy came to be. That’s Divine Seeker.

“You put a heretical god at your door and call the god over. Isn’t that asking for a beating? The god chases you into the house to beat you. That’s Divine Shepherd!”

Pu’er slapped the desk with a paw. “A perfect accelerated process! Meow, meow, meow!”

“I haven’t read the Church of Principle’s research materials,” Karon stated.

“Oh, I once borrowed Sithe’s credentials and spent a long time in the Church of Principle’s archives. Back then, she was attending events there as a representative of the Church of Order. She found out later and tried to have me killed, the old bat.”

Karon thought to himself, You’re over a hundred years old yourself, and you still call her an old woman?

“The most important thing is that this was arranged by Tiz. He had me come back with you naturally because he wanted me to help you with purification.

“Actually, children in church schools or within churches are exposed to divine cleansing and sensing godly aura very early. Human lifespans are limited. Karon, given you age, this isn’t late, but it’s also not early. Tiz clearly wants you to grow and become strong as quickly as possible, so we need to accelerate things.

“Do you really want to engage in arduous practice, becoming like Mr. Hoffen, who didn’t want strength or rank and only wanted to spend his life wandering the sea of knowledge and doctrine?”

Karon shook his head.

“That’s right. And you understand this too: I’ve placed all of the Allen family’s hopes on you. I would never harm you. The one who most wants you to grow safely is me, Poelle Allen.

“Who knows when that damned Raphael family will finish its internal strife, or whether they’ll continue encroaching on the Allen family afterward.

“If Tiz weren’t already in a coma, I’d really want to ask him why, when he could have casually wiped out the Raphael family’s entire estate with a forbidden spell, he only killed their patriarch. Maybe Tiz wanted the Allen family, meaning me, to maintain a sense of hunger and urgency?”

“I think Grandpa—”

“Do you really have the nerve to say Tiz isn’t the kind of person who plans and schemes like this? It’s fine. If you dare say it out loud, I’ll allow you to lie to me to my face.”

Karon smiled.

At that moment, there was a knock on the study door. Karon pressed the bell on the desk.

The door opened, revealing Alfred stood outside. “Young Master, the queen has sent a special envoy to the Allen family. Master Anderson hopes you can meet them as well. Not in the study, but in the common reception room on the first floor.”

“Alright.” Karon reached out and patted Pu’er on the head, then stood and left the desk.

After the study door closed, Pu’er jumped down from the desk and moved to the center of the room. Her furry head slowly scanned the portraits of the family’s ancestors that hung on the walls.

She first pointed at the portrait of the family founder, Allen, above the desk. “Ancestor, your bloodline has thinned to the point that it can no longer protect our family. My greatest regret back then was choosing your faith system instead of the church’s. Reaching Tier-9 brought me no sense of achievement, only disappointment. So even you, high above all, were nothing special. You were weak, and you even delayed me.

“But rest assured. I, Poelle Allen, will forge a new beginning for the Allen family!”

Pu’er raised a paw again and pointed at Earl Rekar. “Holding a queen was your claim to greatness? I will raise the family to heights your ambition never reached!”

Pu’er skipped over her own portrait to instead look at a stern-looking man in another painting. “Father, I know you hated my actions to the end, but if I hadn’t cut short your mad plan, the Allen family wouldn’t have merely fallen; We would have been wiped out long ago.

“You wanted to turn the family faith system into a church faith system. Did you really think the great churches are harmless herbivores? Your ambition exceeded your ability and the family’s capacity to bear it.

“Now, I’m back. And I’ve brought that thing back with me.

“Tiz must have planned all of this long ago. The Allen family, Eunice, even me, and that thing with me. All of it was calculated.”

Pu’er let out a long breath, then straightened its feline chest and spoke. “Ancestor, my forbears, my descendants, if possible, then three days from now, open your eyes and look. Watch how the most dazzling genius in Allen family history, I, will... make a god!”