Reincarnation or Destiny?

The second King of Wisdom, Yesael, was dead, but the killing had not yet stopped.

More and more sinful people were driven back from distant waters into this stretch of the Demon Abyss, shape after shape slipping through the depths.

The soldiers of the Yinsai Kingdom did not yet know their king was dead, and fought on with all their strength against these monsters, hunting down the sinful people God had condemned.

In the name of God.

Only the hundred or so guards in the nearby waters had seen Yesael die. In that instant every one of them froze where they stood and turned toward that stretch of sea, every motion perfectly in unison.

A skull-less corpse floated on the surface of the sea, and from it had sprung a strange golden flower, dazzling and radiant.

"The King... is dead?" One royal court guard after another could not believe the sight before their eyes.

"The King is dead!" Someone let the bone spear fall from his hand. A sinful person surged in from behind and ran him straight through the chest, and he seemed not to feel it at all, staring blankly at Yesael's corpse.

"How is this possible?"

"This cannot be!"

Everyone there went mad, as though the very pillar of faith within their hearts had come crashing down.

After a brief moment frozen still, everyone burst into frantic motion.

Even with Yesael already dead, they threw themselves forward heedless of everything, desperate to reclaim his body.

Hiss!

The Sun Cup let out a piercing hiss, and a wave of mythical power, the kind that belonged to a senior priest, swept outward, freezing every Yinsai soldier and sinful person within dozens of meters in their tracks.

Upon the tall, skull-less corpse, the strange flower bared its fanged teeth, its stem twisting and writhing.

The Sun Cup had failed to swallow Yesael's skull and the Crown of Wisdom, and in its wrath it bit the sinful person who had killed Yesael to pieces.

And the roots it had sunk into Yesael's body drove deeper into flesh and blood, grinding through carapace, until it had devoured his entire body and every drop of his Blood of Myth, leaving nothing behind at all.

In that moment, the Sun Cup transformed completely into an entirely different species.

It...

had come fully alive.

At that very same moment, in scattered waters elsewhere, the Sun Cups inside several other senior priests of the Sky Temple began, all at once, to rebel.

They had dared to take into their own bodies this strange thing caught somewhere between animal and plant, and had gained power that was never truly theirs. This was the moment they had always been destined to pay for it.

First to bear the brunt of it was the High Priest of the Sky Temple, Schlode.

At that very moment he was out on the distant sea, mounted upon a fusion monster, leading an assault against several hundred sinful people. It was he who had again and again called for divine punishment to fall upon the sinful people, and it was he who was now drunk on the slaughter.

He laughed wildly, raising his hand high. "You lowly, hideous creatures, never should you have existed in this world at all!"

"God took pity upon mortal beings, and granted you the land of the Demon Abyss for your dwelling."

"How dare you defy the will of God and crawl your way up out of the Demon Abyss!"

Beneath his feet, the fusion monster, worm-like and monstrous, opened its blood-red maw and swallowed a dozen or more sinful people down in a single bite.

He made ready once more to begin his performance, proclaiming before everyone his noble standing as one who had received God's revelation.

But the Sun Cup inside him had begun to stir restlessly, root after root piercing through his breastplate and bursting free of his body.

"Sun Cup, do you dare rebel against me?"

Schlode was stunned for a moment, then let loose a furious rebuke.

He called upon his wisdom ability, trying to reach out and take control of the Sun Cup.

"It was God who granted you to me. I alone am your master." The first sentence he spoke down from on high, imperious as ever.

"It was God who granted you to me, you cannot rebel against me." The second was already thick with panic and dread.

The Sun Cup inside him was not nearly as powerful as Yesael's own had been. He could still barely move, though he could no longer call up any divine technique or mythical power at all.

The Sun Cup Flower's roots devoured his flesh and blood without end, bursting through his shattered carapace as they grew.

He clawed desperately at the Sun Cup Flower's stem with his hands. "No!"

"No!"

"I am one who has received God's revelation!"

"God would not abandon me!"

"God would never abandon me!"

Amid a shrill, agonized scream, the Sun Cup split apart into several petals and swallowed his head in a single bite.

But the mutated Sun Cup met no better an end. The moment the priest of God nearby saw what had happened, he drove his fusion monster to tear it to shreds.

But nothing anyone did could save High Priest Schlode now.

He followed close on the King's own path, dying in this war that would be written into history.

Everywhere, one senior priest of the Sky Temple after another fell into a hopeless plight.

"Ah!" Their screams rang out without end, and none of them could understand why the Sun Cup had suddenly turned upon them.

"God, is this Your punishment upon us?"

Amid the spreading chaos, swarms of monsters broke through the encirclement and fled into the depths.

The killing gradually came to an end.

Of the sinful people, only a thousand or so remained, and these fled back into the Demon Abyss.

Royal court guards wrested back the skull of Yesael, the second King of Wisdom, from the hands of a few sinful people, but could not find any other part of his body.

Worse, they could not find the Crown of Wisdom.

"Your Highness Eli, this... this is..."

The guard kneeling on the ground did not dare finish the sentence, and in his shame took his own life on the spot, before the eyes of Eli, Yesael's grandson.

Eli, standing atop Nini the fusion monster, lifted Yesael's skull in both hands and clutched it tight against his chest.

He threw back his head and let out a long, anguished cry, the tears streaming down without end.

"My King!"

This war had no victor.

The sinful people had been slaughtered, and driven once more back into the Demon Abyss.

And the Yinsai Kingdom had lost its King of Wisdom.

And more than that...

the power of the royal authority of Wisdom God had granted them.

《Yinsai Epic》

Mortals, lost in slaughter, cruelty and desire, had used the power God granted them to kill and to act however they pleased, and so God withdrew the supreme authority He had once granted to King Redlichia.

Mortals who carried original sin were not worthy to wear the Crown of Wisdom.

From that day on, neither earth nor sea would ever again have a King of Wisdom. There would only be a King of Yinsai.

The Sun Cup felt that it was no longer what it had once been.

The sun shone down upon it, and it felt wonderfully at ease.

It had even come to understand what joy and happiness were, and it knew now what danger was too.

The other Sun Cups swayed and unfurled their blossoms, only to be torn apart one by one by the priests and fusion monsters of the Yinsai Kingdom. It alone hid itself away, and drifted off with the waves toward some distant place.

In the distance the shadow of an island appeared, and a thought rose up in its mind.

Perhaps it could put down roots there.

The island drew closer.

Closer and closer.

To its delight, it discovered there were others of its own kind here.

A golden sea of flowers stretched from the shore all the way into the distance, swaying gently, as though welcoming their arrival.

It would make its home here.

It drifted up onto the shore, its tangled roots twisting together like legs, and it crawled its way up.

Rustle, rustle!

Rustle, rustle!

Something seemed to be moving through the sea of flowers.

Before it could even react, a hand closed around it.

A pair of green eyes froze its very consciousness, and an aura of terror, like some demon god's, stirred memories buried deep within its bloodline.

It was too terrified even to move.

Long, long ago, in years beyond counting, its forebear had been held in that very same hand, just like this.

Gurgle gurgle?

They had left the God-Given Land, and wandered the open sea.

From one end of the Yinsai Kingdom to the other, and then back again from that far end, circling the whole of the known world once over.

And now, at this very moment, they had returned once more to Shelly's hand.

It all...

was like a wheel of reincarnation, turning full circle.