Chapter Ninety-Three: A Traitor Among Humanity

"How could this happen?"

"It shouldn’t be. It should never have turned out this way!"

Lovell was visibly agitated, plainly unable to accept that the oak had put out the fire.

Yet the facts lay before him; what could disbelief possibly change?

"Put your hands up!"

The town constables had arrived. Several officers raised their pistols, aiming them at Lovell and at Leyman, who stood there with a terrified, vacant look on his face.

Lovell turned to face the police, then looked at the crowd around him, some praying toward the oak, others hurling abuse at him.

At last, with a miserable expression, he slowly lowered the pistol in his hand.

But even after laying down his gun, he was still unable to accept the fact that the oak had extinguished the flames. The officers rushed him and forced him to the ground.

"Impossible! This is all a conspiracy! This oak is a demon! A demon!"

Pinned to the earth with his hands cuffed behind him, Lovell shouted in fury, almost beside himself.

But for all his cries, the crowd answered only with spit and cold disdain.

"Young man, we told you not to act on impulse. Now go and repent in your cell."

The middle-aged leader among the workers looked down at the youth on the ground and said this in an even tone before turning away.

The constables were swift and efficient.

After taking Lovell into custody and asking the workers a few questions, they led him away from the park.

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Inside the park.

After watching the two young men being escorted away by the police, several people with uneasy expressions exchanged glances and slowly withdrew from the crowd.

"Allen, I think we should cool our heads for a while."

In a room rented from a farm owner, three men now sat together, all wearing troubled expressions.

"Cool our heads? And watch those heretics grow stronger?" Allen sneered. "Those ignorant fools will never understand that those sham politicians have been deceiving them all along. In this world, only our god can truly save mankind."

The man named Allen looked extremely cold, and in his blue eyes a faint scarlet gleam flickered now and then.

"Of course I know that, but our god still cannot descend from the divine realm into this world, can he? So a necessary restraint is the best choice for now."

"If we destroy that heretical oak at any cost and then expose ourselves, the politicians will certainly discover the divine realm very quickly."

"Besides, heretics are not limited to this one town in Orsay. In the Barna Federation, in that unknown rainforest, that is where our secret assembly should be directing its investigation."

"Our secret assembly is still very weak. A temporary retreat is not cowardice; it is the choice and preparation required for greater victory in the future."

A bald man, nearly six and a half feet tall and nearing forty, spoke in a patient, persuasive manner.

"Indeed, I agree with Tristan."

"The radiance of the Purple Moon will one day descend fully upon the world. When that day comes, it will naturally be time for us to act."

Another man, somewhat younger in appearance, said as much.

Listening to his two companions, Allen remained unwilling, but in the end he slowly nodded.

The scarlet light in his eyes faded, and his mind gradually settled.

"Fine, then I’ll listen to you for now, Tristan. But since we are out here, we can’t spend this time doing nothing."

"The secret assembly is truly short of people right now, and the god’s mercy wishes to embrace and save more believers. This trip at least has to bring in some additional hands for the divine realm."

"Naturally," Tristan said with a light smile and a nod. "Though this kind of thing is still very simple."

"People of this world are ignorant; with money alone to guide them, manpower will never be lacking."

"Once they enter the divine realm, they will naturally be moved by the god and, together with us, devote everything they have to the birth of a new world."

"For now, we can’t keep staying in Orsay. The heretic’s abilities are unknown. If it has already discovered us, things will be troublesome."

"Indeed. Then let’s pack quickly and leave at once."

"Yes, that would be best."

After speaking and making their decision, the three did not linger. They packed up their things and left soon after.

More than ten minutes after they had gone, a large number of police suddenly burst into the room they had previously occupied.

But by then, the police had clearly come too late.

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In the Barna Federation, deep within the Asyon tropical rainforest.

At this moment, Jiyu’s mood was extremely poor, and he also felt an even more pressing sense of urgency.

Everything that had happened at the White Oak in Orsay could be clearly observed by him, as the upper species and resident oak Adam.

Indeed, Jiyu had even descended in the first instant upon White Oak’s body through the oak’s resonant guiding nature, in the manner of a superior being.

At that moment, Jiyu saw everything around him, and he also noticed three unusually conspicuous humans amid the dense crowd.

Through a spiritual field of vision, Jiyu clearly saw the familiar fluctuations of Purple Moon energy within those three people.

When he saw the strangeness of those three humans, Jiyu even paused for a moment.

After all, as far as he knew, every human contaminated by the Purple Moon fell into madness and all manner of other aberrations; none of them looked as normal as those three did.

Because of this, Jiyu had even initially thought that the three might have developed some resistance and undergone a mutation.

Jiyu’s own acquisition of the game, and his avatar’s acquisition of his favor, was itself a miracle.

So the appearance of a smaller, similar miracle in those three was hardly incomprehensible.

But as Jiyu pondered it, he soon sensed something different.

If White Oak’s recent ordeal had merely been caused by the personal actions of those two brainless young men, then when he saw those three, why did they leave so tacitly and so hastily at the very moment the two were arrested?

This had been premeditated.

And behind it, there was very likely some connection to the lifeforms of the Purple Moon world.

Jiyu did not reach this conclusion without cause.

After all, the intelligence displayed when the succubus appeared had already made Jiyu realize that Purple Moon lifeforms were not merely chaotic and bloodthirsty; they also possessed intelligence.

Like demons, they could tempt mortals, and by such means it would not be impossible for them to develop their own reach into this world by other methods.

Thus, once he arrived at this most serious possibility, Jiyu immediately understood how grave the matter was.

Then, adopting the attitude that it was better to believe such a thing existed than to assume it did not, Jiyu at once sent divine revelation to the park workers, that is, the believers of the druids, and transmitted the image of those three men to them.

Only then did the scene of the constables bursting through the door take place just moments ago.