Book 14: Chapter 138
I Shall Bless You (Part 1)
G.o.d had a happy family in his early years. Everyone in the town knew a special child was born when they saw the house glow golden on the day of his birth. Some claimed the golden glow left eight nannies blind, while some claimed he ate all the food in the city in a single day. Some claimed he was impervious to blades and had to have a dozen warriors take turns chopping his umbilical cord to sever it. A blacksmith in town claimed G.o.d was able to speak fluently from the moment he was born and used it as an opportunity to claim G.o.d sung his praises. Needless to say, all the nonsensical rumours didn’t stop the truth from spreading.
They never had the money to hire a nanny. The boy’s parents were concerned over the fact that he didn’t breast feed. Their town had a bountiful harvest, so they enough to feed their family for up to four years thanks to the town administrator’s gifts. The golden glow almost made their neighbours trip. His father was quick on his feet, but he and his wife were apologetic when he accidently scratched his son’s forehead. The blacksmith who tried to advertise himself was the worst blacksmith in the town. People only believed what they wanted to believe, though. They didn’t care about priorities.
While the infant wasn’t as incredible as the rumours claimed, it was a fact that he was different. He looked as though he had self-awareness and was searching for answers from the second he was born. His curiosity was so obvious that his parents were shocked. He virtually never cried; instead, he laughed heartily. He was physically stronger than infants by far; he was strong enough to twist his parents’ thumbs into pain. Nonetheless, there was no more defining proof of his uniqueness than the golden glow that accompanied his birth.
Even though they were shocked for a moment when their child was born, none of it mattered when he was in their arms, and none of it reduced their love for him. His mother was sure he’d grow up to be as handsome as his father. They could sense his high intellect from the look in his eyes. Though he didn’t cry much, they preferred his smile. When he hurt his father with his unnatural strength, he frowned, seemingly apologetic and aware that he made a mistake.
The town administrator, wealthy merchants and religious members gave their son t.i.tles as they pleased, acting as if the sky would fall down without him. People who viewed him as something ominous complained that difficulties and tragedies in life were his fault, while those who viewed him as a blessing put their happiness and fates in the hands of the infant who couldn’t speak yet. No matter what they tried and said, though, his parents turned them down. They then turned around and hated the family as if they were in the right for taking someone’s child from their family, cursing the family for tarnis.h.i.+ng a miracle. If it weren’t for the fact that they couldn’t publicly kidnap a child, supporters would’ve implemented some sort of underhanded tactic.
All of a sudden, the world became a complicated world where everyone was talking about them. The young couple didn’t ask for hardly anything in life, yet everyone wanted to take their newborn from them. Inside their property, nevertheless, the family led a simple life. It wasn’t their son’s fault that people suddenly started heckling them after he was born.
The young child smiled brightly around his parents until a group of bandits barged into their home on the child’s second night in the world of man, striking before any of the other factions had made a decision.
All the other factions after the infant were flabbergasted as they were sure they kept the infant’s existence and significance a secret. Living in heavily-guarded fortresses, mansions, palaces and whatnot, they never expected bandits, who actually had more ears to the ground than anyone, to find out. If they never heard about it and never predicted it, then it was reasonable for them to be slow to respond, right? They were law-abiding citizens, but bandits performing unlawful acts was nothing surprising, right? There was nothing and n.o.body greedy bandits wouldn’t target, right? So, it was perfectly logical if bandits kidnapped an infant to sell, right?
Whatever the case was, there was no debating that bandits raided the home. It was such an easy job that the bandits themselves were surprised how smoothly it went. The infant couldn’t understand why his father clenched his teeth, grabbed a machete and went outside. He couldn’t fathom why his mother screamed and broke down in tears when she heard the horse hooves and screaming outside. Still, the infant cried, triggering his golden glow once again, covering the property and protected his mother the same way his courageous father tried to protect them before being stomped to death.
As a result of the infant killing everyone present but his mother – an outcome n.o.body foresaw – his status as a sacred infant gained even more support. The ruler of the city treated him with the utmost respect. The shrines sent members to arrange new housing for the widow and orphan. Surprisingly, it was a joyous outcome.
The faction that claimed the infant was a demon could no longer argue he was a demon. What sort of lunatic would it take to claim that an infant who saved his mother and slew bandits was a demon? Thus, no second soul suggested harming the infant. It all seemed nothing short of a miracle. n.o.body cared how b.l.o.o.d.y the backstory was. n.o.body cared that his mother lost her husband. n.o.body. The infant who slept soundly in her arms was oblivious to the fact that he had lost his father.
She raised her son on her own in the small town he was born in.
The factions that fought over owners.h.i.+p of the infant struck a fragile balance between them. The monarchs, territorial rulers, n.o.bility and representatives of the shrines fought with each other over the issue many times. Although the shrine was the guardian of the infant, they had to permit the territorial ruler visits from time to time and couldn’t monopolise the infant. As much as it aggravated the shrine, they were unable to stop the visitations. All of them tried to pry and orbit around the infant, hoping to see his future based on his behaviour. Sadly, that disappointed them.
The infant never deployed his miracle again ever since the tragic night. To the contrary, he resembled an ordinary human being more and more over time. He learnt to speak, walk and play with the other kids the same way every other kid did. As a matter of fact, he was even more ordinary than the bossy daughter of the terrible blacksmith.
It was obvious where the believers would place their anger if the legend that had garnered the support of thousands of people was proven false. The shrine went from feeling confident in their investment to feeling they were walking a tightrope above a fire pit – no guarantees, no gains and only potential destruction in sight. To counteract their potential destruction, they futilely tried to keep the believers at arms’ length and instated ridiculous visitation stipulations.
Innumerable people visited the shrine and asked to see the child who inherited heaven’s blessings, believing the child was someone worthy of their wors.h.i.+p. According to Divine Moon Cult’s records, anyone who was cla.s.sified as a miracle upon birth was wors.h.i.+pped later in life. Some even believed the miracle bringer was G.o.d manifesting himself as a human in the human realm, the host of the generation’s Lord San Shen. Meanwhile, the shrine knew that all those fantasies were just compounding the interest they’d have to pay.
The believers who managed to see the child had started to have their suspicions. Despite coming from thousands of miles away, they didn’t see how the child stood out from among other children. Being a tad smarter than the average child wasn’t enough to warrant their wors.h.i.+p. The fact that the child played with the other children in the town roused even more debates. Over time, the child didn’t exhibit any different traits or growth compared to the other children. As the shrine predicted, the seed of disappointment grew.
Try as they may, the shrine was unable to convince people that the child was from heaven. While they were busy with that problem daily, they had no means of dealing with verbal attacks from the monarchs, rulers and so forth. They occasionally took him out to play with animals to publicly shame him. As the shrine’s power plummeted, they could only hope for a glimpse of the golden glow, but n.o.body caught a glimpse of it. Once the pressure mounted to a breaking point, the shrine remembered that the glow appeared on the night the bandits attacked the family. n.o.body from the shrine witnessed the event; none of them saw the miracle. Plenty of people spoke about it; however, words were mere words without proof. Whether they continued pus.h.i.+ng the narrative or turned their back, they would’ve ended up damaged. They managed to hang in there for more than two years before they hit their limit, when an opportunity presented itself.
A mysterious group in the golden city going by the collective name of “Elders” were a high-ranking group within the cult. As searchers of miracles in the human realm, they were symbols of the cult’s “divine mission”. Since they were taking a big risk, what harm was there in experimenting? If they were successful, then they would be unstoppable. In the case they failed, then losing their leverage would get them out of a pinch. One explanation for how G.o.d died was returning to heaven via immolation, after all.
During their preparations, the shrine kept hinting that the child’s G.o.dhood needed to be put to the test, implying that fire triggered his power so that radicals among the believers would do the dirty work. Thus, a big fire broke out when the boy was close to three years old.
The windows and doors to the house his mother and he lived in were locked from the outside. The followers themselves had never seen a fire spread so fast. His mother, who woke in the middle of her sleep, used every ounce of strength she could master to try and break out. Alas, she was unable to break the wooden board outside despite bas.h.i.+ng it until she was bleeding from her head. She eventually realised that the territorial lord who visited a few days ago and insisted on renovating their house for her son no matter how she rejected was in on the plan. Desperate, she pushed her son under the bed, but a big pillar squashed her underneath it before she could do anything else.
The boy blankly stared at the flames and listened to his mother’s harrowing cry, unable to comprehend why a fire broke out and what he should’ve done. The more he panicked, the less golden energy he harnessed. He desperately tried to lift the pillar off his mother. Sadly, he couldn’t budge it no matter how burnt his hands ended up. He cried, screamed, pulled, and tried to b.u.mp it off his mother, but she kept gasping one mouthful of blood after another. His blood-curling cries were fruitless.
“Blessing.” His mother pushed him away and then, with her last ounces of strength, forced a smile. As the flames evaporated her tears, she uttered, “Live well, okay? Take care…”
When the flames almost consumed him, too, when the sting of the flames registered, and when the mental anguish gnawed at his soul, he finally summoned a golden dragon that swept the fire away, resulting in an explosion with him at the epicentre. His last home and his second home both disappeared in an instant.
He strolled out from the inferno with an expression on his dust-laden as empty as his heart. He was akin to broken crystal, nice on the eyes but dangerously sharp. That was what the wors.h.i.+ppers wanted to see. In that moment, the faith that had almost faded returned and peaked. They believed their misery would finally turn into bliss. Howbeit, their fantasy ended there for the golden energy indiscriminately obliterated everything in its path. Every time he took a step, another dozen corpses would be left. He just continued putting one foot in front of the next without sparing anyone any attention or displaying any emotion, yet everyone who saw him would think he was a t.i.tan from heaven. He didn’t dare how many corpses he created on his way out of town. That night, he cemented the legends and vanished from the witnesses.
The entire town was slaughtered to censor all information on him after that night. The believers who left the town prior to the extermination became the first people to spread the story and its only witnesses. Those who controlled the spread of information spared no pains to ensure the story was told. In no time at all, the existence of an authentic G.o.d in the Western Regions became the hottest topic they all celebrated. They saw value in their faith again when they saw a miracle and had confirmation of its authenticity. Nevertheless, n.o.body realised the significance of the fire nor did they care about the three-year-old boy lost in the sandy, treacherous Western Regions.
The boy had lost too much before he could understand the concepts of losing and had having stolen. Following the first few years of his departure, he grew up alongside the animals in the forests up on the mountains. He didn’t have any problems because the animals feared him. Unlike the foolish humans who had an appet.i.te too big for their heads to satisfy, animals could discern what made him special. They didn’t conceal their hostility or dislike for him, wouldn’t harm him or do what humans did, so he didn’t feel apprehensive around them. Whenever he showed up, the animals would automatically make way for him and avert their gazes.
Being as smart as he was, he constantly contemplated about himself. He never forgot his past experiences, all of them from the moment he was born, even if he couldn’t understand them. Even the shape of the clouds he saw out the window remained vivid in his mind. He didn’t forget the first lady to hold him, which was their neighbour, almost dropped him. He remembered every moment with his mother and every look she ever wore. He never forgot how his father rushed over to catch him and crashed into the cupboard in the process. He was still a fan of his father’s hair that resembled the warm sunlight on his bed. He was aware that none of his family and their family friends were around. He remembered the songs his mother sung every night during their three years together, the games he played with the other kids, the daughter of the terrible blacksmith bullying him and the nod he gave her when she said she’d marry him when they were older. He was aware they were no more. He was aware he was the only survivor. Notwithstanding all the vivid memories, he was unable to understand what happened.
As he grew in height, so did his hair grow in length and his physical strength. Additionally, he gradually learnt to control the golden energy. After several years, he returned to a human town. He definitely looked the part of someone living in a jungle when he first entered a small town. Nevertheless, he quickly learnt their way of living and speaking. He remembered everything said, how to start conversations and how to spend money. After seeing people exchange animal fur and bones for money, he followed suit and earnt a decent living.
The town life was indescribably more complex than life on the mountains, but he let himself go with the flow for he wanted to blend into the complex world. He sought the knowledge to understand what the pain he felt when he watched his father leave meant, what his mother’s final words meant.
The three years he spent at the town to become one of the rich residents were three very important years in his history. Business was the activity that allowed him to collect the most experience possible, which motivated him to choose the route. He got to know a lot of people, worked an abundance of jobs and visited a variety of places.
Upon turning twelve, he had an epiphany and comprehended all the emotions he had experienced. That moment gave birth to the demon that spread mayhem across all seven states of the Western Regions.