The Story Never Ends

"I.." Davion didn't know what to reply.

"It looks like I can't stay here any longer. So, should I just disclose my identity?" While he was pondering, one of the people near him shouted, "Holy Father, I think he is here to make trouble. He was even causing some disturbances earlier." 

'It was a misunderstanding," Davion quickly denied it.

"Shut up!" The people around him yelled at the same time. They neared him and wanted to bring him out of the hall with force.

The Pope saw this and said, "Stop."

They halted and respectfully looked at him, "Holy Father, he.."

"I know what you all mean to say. But this is a holy place and we cannot resort to violence." The Pope said in a calm voice.

"Holy Father is wise. We were blinded just now and even forgot our teachings. Please forgive us," They bowed.

"It's good that you all understood." The Pope nodded.

Then he set his sights on Davion and shook his head, "Child, you have been led astray. Someone needs to guide you." 

He pointed towards the statue and said, "Come here and pay respects to the Almighty. He will show you the way."

"Eh!" Davion was caught by surprise as the situation unfolded in a different direction than he had thought. However, would he even pay respect to this weird statue?

It was absolutely no. But he still went to the platform and wanted to see what the Pope would do. The moment he reached the platform, he felt some force sweeping in his direction.

"Oh! It should be from the Pope. Although he seems to be very cautious, he won't be able to find anything suspicious about me," he chuckled inside.

"I can't feel any aura fluctuation around him. I thought that he might be someone from the Thunderbolt Sect after seeing his outfit. But it seems like I thought too much," the Pope sighed in relief.

Then he said, "Child, you should know your wrongdoings. Now pray and ask for salvation from the Almighty."

Davion thought for a while and resolutely said, "No. This statue appears to be of some kind of evil deity. So, I will never worship it."

Then he looked at the crowd below and yelled, "Wake up people. You are being fooled. Don't believe this fake Pope. He is lying to you. He is also behind the.." He hadn't even finished speaking when the subordinates of the Pope dragged him towards the door hidden behind the platform.

"missing children.." However, he completed his sentence and hoped that there would be some reaction coming from the people. But he got disappointed when he saw that the people didn't believe him and rather cursed him.

"How dare he say this to the Almighty?"

"Kill him."

"Burn him alive."

He shook his head and didn't resist. He allowed them to do whatever they wanted as this was not the right time for him to strike. In a few seconds, he was already taken inside. 

"Damn, who is he? He nearly blew me out." The Pope looked solemn.

"Although the crowd didn't believe it, some people might be having some doubts. So, I have to hurry and complete the prayer. As for that person, I will interrogate him later on."

***     

Behind the door, there was a circular room. There were beautiful paintings hung on the walls and small sculptures wearing jewelry made of gold standing everywhere. Not only that, there were lots of chests containing gold coins. This room seemed to be a storage room where the wealth was kept. 

"Rhett, we will leave them to you."

"Hehe, don't worry. I will make sure he speaks everything."

"Ok! but don't go too hard on him. Who knows if the Pope might get angry?"

From a corner, Davion was looking at these subordinates with interest. He really wanted to know who they were. When leaving, they glanced at Davion and snickered. 

"So, who are you? You know a lot of things that you shouldn't." Rhett asked.

"Who knows if I'm someone you know? Why don't you remove my mask and see?" Sarcasm could be heard from Davion's voice.

"Oh! It seems like you are quite confident," Rhett was surprised. He neared him and gripped his mask. When he was about to pull it out, he felt a strong hand grasping his neck.

"You.."

"Are you scared?" Davion lifted him up with his right hand and mocked him.

Rhett attempted to break away from his hands by using his Qi. However, it was useless as strong energy was restricting his Qi inside his body. So, he tried to yell and ask for help but due to the strong grip on his neck, he couldn't produce a single sound.

"Tell me who are you all and whom do you work for?" Davion slightly loosened his grip so that he could speak.

"I don't know," Rhett replied.

"Ahh.." He felt a strong pain in his neck.

"Don't waste my time over here. You know that you cannot escape. Just answer me and I might consider you letting you live," Davion threatened.

"We are only a group of civilians hired by the Pope to work for him," he said.

"Humph, did you think that I would believe this bullshit? This won't explain how you can all have such a strong cultivation base," Davion had a cold look on his face.

"It was the Pope that made us powerful. He gave us a strange thing that we couldn't resist." He started speaking the truth.

"What is it?" Davion asked.

"I can't tell you…Ahh"

"Stop…" He begged.

"It's not that I don't want to tell you, it's just that I have a faint feeling that I would die if I say it," he said.

"Is this true?" Davion didn't believe it.

"Yes." He nodded.

"So, what about the children? Where are they?" Davion asked.

"We don't know. Once we capture them, we bring them to the Pope. Who knows what he did with them?" he replied.

"Is that so? Then what about the missing disciple?" Davion was getting impatient as he didn't get any useful information from him.

"Only the Pope.." Before he could complete his words, Davion snapped his head and threw him to the ground.

"Damn, what a waste of time. He blamed everything on the Pope," he cursed while looking at the dead body of Rhett.

"Eh! Why didn't I get any experience points from him?" He was confused and suddenly remembered a familiar incident.

"Don't tell me.." As he had thought, a dark-colored aura came out of his body and slowly formed a small boy with horns and wings. The face looked similar to Rhett's.

It looked at Davion and ran away towards the wall as it could pass through it. 

"Humph, you think that you can run?"

"Thunder Stomp"

Davion jumped and reached infornt of it in an instant. He then generated lightning in his right hand and caught it effortlessly.

"Bang."

It exploded and disappeared into thin air.

"It was relatively easy this time," Davion smiled as he felt his experience points increasing.

*** 

On the platform,

"Eh! Did I just hear an explosion?" The Pope looked back and used his senses to check if everything was normal.

"Everything looks fine. It seems like the earlier incident is making me quite sensitive." He thought and then continued with what he was doing.

A few minutes later, the door behind the platform opened and a white-cloaked person came out of it.

Seeing this one of the subordinates of the Pope asked, "Rhett, did you already interrogate him?"

The person nodded his head and went towards one of the corners of the platform and stood still while observing everything.

"Why is he acting strange?" The subordinate pondered and shook his head.

"Maybe he felt disappointed as that person couldn't last long."

"What is happening here?" Davion had his mouth wide open as he observed what was happening here. Indeed, the white-cloaked man was Davion who had disguised himself as Rhett.

He saw devilish energy coming out from the statue. Not only this statue but from all the large statues in every corner of the hall. It appeared to be a large-scale formation that was influencing the mind of every person in the crowd. 

Everyone was kneeling on the ground and praying to the statue on the platform as their lives depended on it. However, this was not the most surprising but among the crowd, a few children were slowly walking and leaving the hall from the other side. He used his Mind-Eye and found that one of the subordinates of the Pope was stationed outside the hall. That subordinate would then take away the children and nobody would notice it.

"My God. This is really scary. Now, I finally know why nobody couldn't find any information about how the children went missing. Every person in this crowd would get their mind-controlled due to this formation. As a result, they couldn't catch sight of their children getting away. Not only that, this formation looked powerful enough to be able to affect them even after leaving the church for a certain period of time. So, finally, when they would come back to their senses, they would just realize that their children were missing.. And it would become too late for them to do anything."