Allen had no idea that the slight flutter of his wings had already stirred up a massive storm.
At this moment, he was sitting in the Inquisition’s cold, morgue-like interrogation room, engrossed in reading a novel.
Oh no, wait—it was the Scripture.
A suspect accused of heresy, eagerly studying the Church’s core sacred text right on the Judgement Court of Heresy’s own turf?
Even the well-experienced Guard Knights twitched at the corner of their eyes witnessing this.
The Church was undoubtedly the deepest hidden core of the world in Starshine Serenade.
It was like a colossal tree whose roots spread across the continent and whose branches reached the stars, and the Scripture was its innermost annual ring.
Between its lines, it likely unconsciously hinted at truths buried by time—truths powerful enough to overturn established knowledge.
In a previous cycle, Allen had heard his academy history teacher mention that the Scripture had been passed down from ancient mythic times, with rich content and multiple supplements, so old that its exact date of compilation was lost to time.
In a sense, the Scripture was less a religious text and more a living history book.
The Starshine Serenade development team, likely considering the sensitivity of the subject matter, had not revealed the specific contents of the Scripture or the Church’s related settings in the game.
This was similar to the real world.
In past cycles, Allen could never find books about the Church in the academy library.
It was obvious that this was intentional censorship by the academy.
He had only found a book titled Lorraine Royal Founding History, which detailed the origins of the Church.
Lorraine Royal Founding History was a historical text written by court historians, not folklore or unofficial history, and its sources were considered reliable.
It recorded that the Kingdom of Lorraine’s history began with a catastrophic disaster, one that almost instantly destroyed all the prosperous human nations on the continent, leaving only ruins and scars on the earth.
Human civilization seemed to hold a collective unconscious memory of some great catastrophe, often using disaster as the beginning of myths or history. How much of these stories were true, Allen could not say.
Over a thousand years ago, Camille Durand, the founder of Lorraine Kingdom, during the height of human civilization, believed the prophecy of a madman who loudly proclaimed the world’s end was near.
Camille Durand began tirelessly building an Ark to survive the apocalypse, pouring almost all his energy and fortune into it, becoming a laughingstock to the world.
The prophesied day arrived on schedule, but no apocalypse appeared.
Camille Durand’s deeds became a complete joke, and everyone mocked his foolishness.
Just as Camille Durand began to waver, the madman found him and said, “The wicked shall not escape punishment, but the descendants of the righteous shall be saved.”
“The deviation in prophecy is God’s chance for mankind, but humanity failed to cherish it.”
As the madman had predicted, after the Ark was completed, humanity fell to new depths of depravity.
People lost the drive to progress and instead wasted their limited energy on internal strife.
With resources dwindling, brutal wars erupted over what remained.
Countless people died, and immense wealth turned to dust.
Until the apocalypse finally came.
In the face of total destruction, Camille Durand sheltered those who had mocked him in his Ark, and they survived the end of days safely.
After the disaster, the madman who had prophesied the apocalypse revealed his identity.
He had been an ordinary, unknown man in the Eschatological Age, the time when humanity had forgotten faith.
But one day, he received divine revelation.
God told him that evil beings hiding deep in the stars had set their sights on humanity, and mankind faced extinction.
He needed to revive humanity’s forgotten faith, use the apocalypse prophecy to awaken their sense of crisis, and find a way to save humanity.
He gladly accepted the mission, becoming the inheritor of the ancient Church’s will and founder of the reborn Church.
He was the last Saint recorded in the Scripture—
Saint Leon.
The first king of Lorraine, Camille Durand, and Saint Leon forged a pact.
Together, they would reclaim the barren post-apocalyptic land, carve out the wilderness, and establish the kingdom, generation after generation guarding the Ark, which had become the Church’s holy relic.
Legend said that a thousand years later, the Ark would carry humanity on a new voyage.
When Allen had first read this book, his doubts about the Church had not lessened but only multiplied.
Eschatological Age…catastrophe…saints…Ark…apocalypse…
What was all this?
A supposedly simple single-player otome romance game shouldn’t have such a deep worldbuilding.
But Starshine Serenade’s world had a complex yet self-consistent logic; every seemingly absurd thing had its explanation.
The answers Allen had no way to discover before might be hidden inside this Scripture the original work had carefully avoided discussing.
For an avid researcher like Allen, the chance to unravel the original hidden settings of Starshine Serenade was anything but boring!
It was three thousand times more exciting than any straightforward novel!
Filled with huge doubts and a faint excitement, Allen took a deep breath and opened the heavy cover.
The ancient text and yellowed parchment pages quickly swallowed him whole.
He immersed himself in it, frowning in thought at times, tapping the edges of the pages unconsciously with his fingertips, radiating an intense focus that was completely out of place in the icy interrogation room.
The opening creation myth in the Scripture hit Allen like a thunderbolt!
“At first, there was nothing, only the void. God awoke from eternal slumber, sensing His solitude, and thus conceived the desire to create. His first act was a gentle push—this was the Original Impulse, the foundation of the universe’s beginning. The sun, moon, and stars revolve from this; the vast galaxies flow henceforth…”
Translated, this meant: The universe was not born from chaos or explosion, but from the “first awakening” of God’s consciousness.
In absolute void and silence, God felt loneliness.
So He decided to create all things.
His first action was to “lightly push.”
It was this original, incomprehensible “push” that gave the silent void initial motion, bringing the sun, moon, and stars into being and setting the vast cosmos in motion.
“The First Impulse…”
Allen whispered to himself, his voice trembling with uncontrollable shock.
His pre-crossing knowledge clearly told him that the “First Impulse” behind the universe’s birth remained one of the most fundamental unresolved mysteries in 21st-century physics and philosophy.
Newton had late in life attributed the ultimate cause of the universe’s movement to “God’s first push,” and even modern Big Bang cosmology was stuck on the ultimate question of “what existed before the singularity.”
Yet this Scripture, worshipped as a cornerstone by medieval believers, accurately struck at humanity’s ultimate cosmic question right at the start?!
The opening alone was overwhelmingly profound!
Allen forced down the storm of emotions and continued reading.
God created the universe but found it too cold and empty, so “He scattered the seeds of life among the boundless stars, wishing the lonely cosmos to teem with vitality.”
“Pfft—”
Allen nearly spat out a mouthful of blood.
Scattering life among the stars?
Filling the universe with life?
This understanding was…far too advanced!
This wasn’t just advanced cognition; it was like riding a rocket to launch the worldview straight into an interstellar colonization era!
The Church’s implication was clear: humanity was far from the only life in the cosmos.
Life was God’s “standard package” for the universe?
This was completely different from those provincial faiths that claimed “God only cares about us and the land beneath our feet!”
Cold sweat trickled down Allen’s temple.
For the first time, he realized the book in his hands wasn’t a mere religious placebo but a terrifying instruction manual on the origin of the universe and humanity, encrypted in mythic language.
For people of this era, they only saw this creation story as grand and mysterious, unaware of its subversive implications.
God’s work was not yet done.
He discovered these new forms of life seemed to lack souls.
“God divided His will, enveloping beings beyond the material realm and placing them within life. Humanity, thus, was born.”
“Existences beyond the material world? Will encasement?”
Allen’s brows twisted in confusion as his mental CPU worked overtime.
“This smells…awfully like Gnosticism.”
Fragments of knowledge he had lazily picked up in philosophy classes suddenly shone brightly.
Gnosticism claimed the material world was a prison created by an evil demiurge, and humanity’s true essence—the divine spark—originated from a sacred realm beyond matter.
Only by attaining “true knowledge” could one escape the prison and return to their source.
This Scripture’s description was practically an official endorsement of Gnosticism!
No wonder the Crimson Spiral Cult madmen shouted, “The world is a cage, death is liberation,” performing human experiments like performance art.
They had derived their twisted teachings from the Church’s own orthodoxy!
The Church branded them heretics rather than apostates precisely because of this.
Allen suppressed his racing thoughts and continued reading.
The Scripture then moved into familiar territory.
After humanity’s birth, God created a perfect paradise for them—a gift to His creation.
God was pleased and needed rest.
Before sleeping, God warned humanity repeatedly: never listen to the whispers from the stars!
They were malicious voices excluded by His will, tempting humans toward ruin.
Naive humans initially heeded God’s words and prospered in paradise.
But ease and the passage of time caused them to forget the warnings.
Eventually, a “wise one” was tempted by the alluring whispers from deep stars.
He betrayed God’s teaching, guiding those evil beings toward humanity’s paradise…
Then, disaster struck.
Under the invasion of evil forces, paradise was reduced to scorched earth.
The surviving humans were forced to flee, drifting through the dark universe.
Eventually, they arrived at the current planet and began an arduous eternal struggle against the Cosmic Evil.
The latter half of the Scripture recorded how, through generations of exile and conflict, Saints led the remnant humans to survive and resist the starry threats in this new home.
Yet the evil forces were overwhelming.
Human civilization repeatedly reached glorious peaks only to be shattered by catastrophic calamities.
Human history was caught in an eternal cycle of light and darkness, justice and evil.
The Saints firmly believed that one day, the Sleeper God would awaken again.
His supreme will would dispel the darkness among the stars and bring final salvation to suffering humanity, guiding them back to the lost divine paradise.
At the Scripture’s end was a crucial prophecy: In the final dark age, God’s Messenger would awaken within a Blank Shell.
He would end the endless Cycle of Destruction and lead lost humanity back to God’s paradise.
When the Messenger fulfilled his mission, God would fully awaken, His radiance illuminating the universe and banishing the evil lurking in the starry depths forever.
Allen slowly closed the heavy Scripture, cold sweat soaking through his patient gown.
The interrogation room was deathly silent, save for the thunderous pounding of his own heart.
Absurd?
Bizarre?
Terrifying upon closer thought!
What kind of religious text was this?
It was clearly a “Human Origin Report” and “Exodus Record” layered with religious encryption!
Its information was staggering: Gnosticism, cosmic ubiquity of life, threats from the stars, cyclical destruction of civilization, and a sleeping God plus a prophecy of a redeemer…
What chilled Allen the most was that nowhere in the Scripture was “Earth” or “Sun-centered” concepts mentioned.
Instead, it explicitly used “planet,” “universe,” and “stars”!
This meant those who compiled the Scripture—or its knowledge source—knew clearly that humanity’s home was a planet suspended in a vast cosmos!
That was a cosmic worldview no ignorant ancient humans could possess!