Chapter 39: The Wrath of God, Unlocking the Shackles of Wisdom

Found you, Chong Qiqi.

Quite good at hiding, aren't you?

Scanning the western mushroom racks carefully, Liu Jun finally spotted this mushroom that seemed to possess a hidden ability.

The reason he hadn't noticed Chong Qiqi during the last sorting was simple: Liu Jun could not multitask infinitely. He was merely a newly promoted Tier 3 hack with very few tricks up his sleeve.

There was no way for him to meticulously inspect every single one of the massive quantity of mushrooms.

Secondly.

In terms of appearance, she still looked identical to an ordinary round little angel, so she naturally got overlooked.

Yet, upon careful observation now.

One could see that nestled inside that round little winged sphere was a beautiful, dark-winged archangel maiden hugging her knees.

"Are you in a slumber?"

Liu Jun watched this scene with a slight frown.

A suspicious question arose accordingly.

How had she faked her death?

Back then, as the creator god overlooking that battle from high above, he had witnessed with his own eyes that she had died!

Only after observing this Chong Qiqi sleeping in the black coffin did he learn the truth of the whole incident.

Chong Qiqi had indeed died.

She had not prepared any means to fake her death and escape; she truly intended to accompany her husband and several close friends in martyrdom to end her life.

She genuinely harbored no despicable or malicious schemes.

Back then, he had even felt a twinge of guilt.

Yet, the accident had happened just like that.

At the very instant of death, having spent a lifetime of scheming and calculating, Chong Qiqi had unconsciously resonated with another [High Wisdom].

Her lifetime of adept scheming constituted a sort of alternative "extreme brilliance brings self-destruction," and she had merged into it.

If any other [Divine Object] had merged into a corpse, nothing much would have happened.

However, it was different for [High Wisdom] to merge into a corpse.

The Wisdom series possessed the mysterious ability to grant lifeless objects "enlightenment," "awakening," and "demonization."

Previously, [Low Wisdom] had enlightened a soul-less cloned brain, the amber phoenix butterfly, gradually giving birth to a low-level sentience!

The principle was identical now.

Chong Qiqi had died, but her corpse was merged with High Wisdom, re-enlightened, and sparked with sentience once more.

This was the truth of everything!

Upon realizing this, Liu Jun felt a sudden sense of relief:

"It seems I did misunderstand Chong Qiqi after all. She has strong bottom lines, is clear about gratitude and resentment, and only wanted to take revenge on Die Hongjun while fearing to implicate her other kinsfolk."

Liu Jun suddenly felt that he should place more trust in the little mushrooms he cultivated.

He should trust his own educational standards even more.

His thoughts then shifted:

"No wonder I couldn't find High Wisdom anywhere. It turns out that back then, I scooped up one, and the two of you as a couple scooped up the other."

"Two butterflies wanted to die for love, but in the end, one went to the future through [Deep Love is Short-Lived], while the other lived a second life through [Extreme Brilliance Brings Self-Destruction]."

Liu Jun found destiny to be so wondrous.

Wisdom was an intangible and formless thing, and Liu Jun previously had no idea who had stolen and consumed it.

Unless Liu Jun reached the next 100% and selected [High Wisdom] when choosing a talent, he would never have been able to fish out this mushroom hidden in the mushroom soup.

"However, did [High Wisdom] prefer to choose Chong Qiqi rather than our gods of wisdom, [Low Wisdom] and [Medium Wisdom]?"

Liu Jun felt a pang of sorrow for some idiot.

...

In a subterranean cavern.

The child of the Angel King and Angel Queen, the next-generation angel heir, Raphael, stood quietly before his mother's coffin.

Today was the death anniversary of his father and mother.

"So many years have already passed."

Raphael braided a mourning ribbon with his own hands while recalling the events of these past years.

Back then.

When his mother let them fake their deaths to escape, it wasn't a deliberate act.

If they had been assassinated under the Wutong tree, only to reappear among the angel race shortly after, what would the gods think?

Therefore, they could only live under assumed names, waiting until their father, mother, and the entire older generation passed away before they would appear.

He, Raphael, would personally go and confess to the gods upon the tree, recounting the evil deeds his mother had once committed!

Originally, after the battle against the Creator God, this batch of young angels who faked their deaths should have already surfaced.

Regrettably, an accident occurred.

His mother, inexplicably, had been resurrected by obtaining the treasure of the Divine Trial!

This made them too afraid to execute the plan of returning to the family.

He still remembered that day when his deceased mother was resurrected with darkened wings.

Upon awakening, his mother seemed to have undergone a complete personality shift.

His mother became smarter, wiser, and those eyes seemed to be saying:

—In this foolish world, is there anything worth me pondering?

Intelligence.

Ultimate intelligence.

In a trance, Raphael had a feeling.

This must be the true God of Wisdom.

He remembered the prophet popularizing the knowledge that there existed a type of life in this world extraordinary from birth: born saints.

They were early-wise sages from birth, great pioneers capable of leading civilization forward single-handedly!

After her mother resurrected, she looked at them with a gaze of pity:

"Now, enclose me in the sturdiest blocks of wood, bury me deep in the soil, and never come into contact with me again."

"You must stay away from me now, because you are already about to be infected by my... wisdom."

"Perhaps this is the Creator God's punishment for us surface dwellers."

"We yearned for power, and He granted us power sufficient to destroy the world and destroy ourselves."

"Never open my coffin again; that will release a destructive disaster. It will make you obsessive, fixated, and mad..."

His mother lived.

Yet she believed she was dead and had to die for the sake of the entire Butterfly Clan.

She immediately demanded that all core members bury her in the most rigorous manner, vowing to personally suppress this [Divine Object] with her entire life.

Compelled by the accumulated majesty of this Archangel, all the angels strictly abided by the events of that year and buried their mother.

Furthermore.

Because their mother had resurrected and bizarrely obtained the divine treasure, they never dared to show their faces in front of the world afterward.

They remained hidden, genuinely faking their deaths, and secretly branched out an angel tribe of their own.

Until this very day.

He still could not help but reminisce about the feeling of seeing his mother that day.

Whenever he drew near his mother, his consciousness became unprecedentedly clear and pure.

It was as if some shackles had been unlocked, and he had truly come alive.

It was just like the blessing of wisdom bestowed by the God of Wisdom in years past.

"Mother seemed to have become exceedingly beautiful after her resurrection."

He had continuously reminisced over these years; the more he recalled, the more he felt an inexplicable sense of addiction, and the curiosity in his heart simply could not be stopped.

A mysterious voice kept urging him:

'That is the most beautiful thing in the world.'

'It is the ultimate pursuit of our Butterfly Clan's existence.'

'Take a look, just take another look at the world's most beautiful...'

'Haven't I always longed to become an archangel? Insufficient wisdom prevented me from researching a new knot-evolution method to take that step; now, just by taking one look, I would possess sufficient wisdom...'

Driven by an irresistible impulse, he could not help but gently pry open a small gap in the coffin before the tomb.

"Just a tiny bit."

He opened a small slit and became utterly enchanted.

His consciousness spun, the entire world grew clear, various thoughts collided at high speed, and countless inspirations erupted!

Blissful.

This feeling was far too blissful.

He knew not how many days had passed, nor how much time had elapsed.

When he opened his eyes again, he found that he had already taken that step, completing his transformation from a little angel into a handsome humanoid archangel.

"I, Raphael, shall be the third archangel of the angel race!"

When he returned to the cave dwelling filled with boundless excitement, he found that the innocent, foolish, and clear-eyed gazes of the little bugs in the tribe were gone.

These bugs had turned into scholars.

A green-worm scholar was using a transparent magnifying glass polished from tree resin to study the structure of microscopic cells.

"With the multi-layered structure of the cell, can our silk threads be made even finer to penetrate the cells?"

"Can life cocooning be transformed into a multi-layered, infinite model?"

Another green-worm scholar wore a monocle, observing the biological flesh and blood in his hand.

"What are you all doing?" Raphael cried out in terror.

The other angels had also turned eccentric, as if studying some brand-new lifeform; their round bodies had begun to distort.

"What has happened?" Raphael grabbed a clansman.

"Do not disturb my comprehension of this world; I am pursuing a higher level of beauty." That clansman squatted in a corner, imitating a flower, and cast a cold glance at him.

"It's over, it's over." By this time, Raphael had already thought of going to seal the gap in that coffin.

Yet he was blocked.

Several angels sighed with disappointment: "You're crazy. The god of wisdom is imparting to us the doctrine of beauty, and you are trying to stop us from pursuing beauty."

"You are coming into contact with terrifying things." Raphael shouted loudly.

"No, we are studying knowledge, approaching truth." Childhood playmate Cheroop stepped out from the room, eyes blazing with fanaticism.

That yearning, fanatical gaze made Raphael's blood run cold.

He suddenly recalled the records in history: the prophet taught the Butterfly Clan to recognize plants, pointing to one and telling them:

Drugs are addictive.

She had unleashed a terrifying drug; every life that approached the mother's coffin was changing rapidly.

Wisdom is contagious.

They forgot to sleep and eat, their eyes sparkling!

That was a thirst for knowledge.

An endless... thirst for knowledge.

They beheld the most beautiful thing in the world: knowledge.

Knowledge was simply too beautiful; it was the most magnificent thing in the entire heaven and earth.

They were exploring mysterious matters beyond comprehension.

Several angels surrounded him:

"Why reject knowledge?"

"If you do not like this kind of beauty, do you like this kind instead?"

"What about this?"

Raphael shook his head frantically, until he laid eyes upon a project studying how to add wings to angels. That pierced straight into his heart:

How wondrously beautiful.

I yearn to research this wing-addition project.

Just to study it, if it's just for a moment...

Gradually, his gaze grew hazy, and his wings began to darken as well.

...

Clack.

When Chong Qiqi awoke from her slumber, pushed open the coffin, and walked out of the subterranean tribe,

She saw the scent of sulfur in the distance, gunpowder, rocks, mine carts, and even some mechanical creations.

Furthermore, she even saw them using silk threads to stuff a giant heart into a power furnace, dubbing it: the Demon-Heart Power Furnace.

Madness.

This world had gone mad!

She could not help but sigh: "O great God of Wisdom, wise God of Longevity, I am profoundly sorry; the uncontrollable infection has begun after all."

A terrifying disaster was spreading outward.

Wisdom was contagious.

And this share of wisdom, centered around the subterranean cavern, continuously expanded outward.

The cavern angel tribe had already evolved into the steam and iron age.

Moreover, this batch of fallen angels had constructed the supernatural life-creation technology powered by demon-hearts.

The eastern tribes had begun to touch upon the possibility of physical martial arts cultivation.

The southern tribes had begun researching astronomy, a flock of butterflies investigating the potential morphological forms of celestial bodies.

This world had been infected by some unimaginable virus.

In the sky, the stars twinkled.

On the ground, the butterflies yearned to rival the stars.

"High Wisdom is contagious."

"All life is transforming into the legendary pseudo-saints."

"A single peerless talent will lead mediocre children to change the era and chant fiercely."

"What about a whole group of peerless talents? When the entire world holds no mediocre people, but only madmen, what will our world become in the future?"

"I feel like they will destroy themselves..."

Filled with dread, she recalled those innocent and romantic children and wished to seal herself away.

At that moment, her child Raphael stepped out, his face filled with yearning:

"O Mother, great Mother of Wisdom, origin of all angel wisdom, please bestow upon us greater wisdom, more knowledge."

Chong Qiqi continuously retreated: "You have fallen, fallen due to obsession."

"You will die. Don't you see it? Your consciousness has begun to go mad, you are growing obsessive, you are no longer the kind and loving beings you once were..."

Yet, before she knew when,

she was surrounded on all sides by black-winged angels with burning red eyes, gazing at her as though looking upon the most beautiful thing in the entire world.

"If attaining the beauty of knowledge is falling, then we are willing to fall."

"O Mother, please become the king of us fallen angels."