Chapter 103: Karen's Route

Chapter 103: Karen's Path

It was a deep, heavy slumber, uninterrupted by a single dream.

Upon waking, Karen sat up in bed, staring blankly for a moment at the colored patterns on the blanket before him.

He climbed out of bed, walked into the washroom, stripped off his clothes, and began to shower.

Pur, who had been sleeping at the foot of the bed, was startled awake; she yawned with the help of a paw, then leaped onto the nightstand and pressed the service bell.

Too lazy to wander back to the foot of the bed, she slid straight into the covers Karen had left behind, indulging in the lingering warmth to drift back to sleep.

By the time Karen finished his shower, Kevin the golden retriever trotted in with a white towel in his jaws; Karen took it to dry himself, while the dog used his paws to neatly smooth out the non-slip mat at the washroom door.

Dressed and stepping out, Karen watched the bedroom door swing open as Alfred entered, bearing a breakfast tray.

Karen sat on the sofa, eyes falling upon the meal arranged on the coffee table; driven by hunger, his usual fastidiousness vanished, and he began to eat in silence.

This time, he left almost nothing behind.

"Master, shall I prepare some more?"

"No need, I am full." Karen took a damp towel from Alfred, wiped his mouth, then folded it to wipe his hands.

At that moment, Pur finally roused from her second slumber, stretching her feline limbs in a grand yawn before leaping off the bed to stand before the sofa, her amber eyes locking onto Karen with earnest intensity.

Karen rose from the sofa, stepped up to the billiard table, and pushed open the window; a chilly morning wind swept inside, though having just eaten, he did not feel the cold much.

Alfred moved to set up the billiard balls.

"No need to arrange them, I just wanted some fresh air."

"Very well, Master."

"Yesterday, I completed my divine revelation, and I heard the voice of the God of Order."

Alfred remained silent.

"Woof!"

"What was the revelation given to you by the God of Order?" Pur pressed curiously, sounding much like an aunt fussing over a graduate's job placement.

Karen shook his head, replying softly:

"I did not listen."

The dog's eyes went wide.

Pur tilted her head in confusion.

Alfred, however, assumed an expression that took it entirely for granted, silently squaring his shoulders with pride.

"Because I felt that what he said was wrong." Karen did not wish to explain further, pointing instead toward the bed. "You may go look at my notebook."

"Woof?"

"Truly? We may read your notes?" Pur asked.

"Right away, Master." Alfred walked to the bedside, fetched the notebook, knelt down, and spread it open, flanked by a cat's head peering over his left shoulder and a dog's head over his right.

"Divine revelation is, in truth, a deception..."

Having finished reading,

Alfred began to pray, though he was an anomaly of a demon devoid of religious faith, despite having briefly attached himself to the Church of Order.

Pur looked at Karen in utter disbelief, asking:

"So, Karen, I want to know... well... no, I want to hear it from your own mouth: what exactly do you intend to do next?"

If this notebook were ever leaked, Karen would inevitably face a collective execution by the orthodox churches.

If the downfall of the Church of Light stemmed from a tacit understanding among the various ecclesiastical circles—after all, the supreme might of the Church of Light in the previous era had exerted far too much pressure on everyone—then the thoughts Karen revealed in this notebook were a direct challenge to the very foundation of the churches.

He was questioning God!

And God was not to be questioned.

Sitting on the billiard table, Karen gazed out at the distant lawn, speaking with utter composure: "I will continue to walk the path of the Church of Order."

This was unalterable, for he was already standing upon this road.

"And then?" Pur inquired.

"And then, as I walk it, I shall scrutinize and evaluate it."

The golden retriever sat down, looking at Karen with eyes full of deep reflection.

Pur leapt onto the billiard table, coming to a halt right before Karen.

"Perhaps I ought to persuade you now not to think so much, and not to tread such a heretical path, for it will bring you far too much uncertainty and danger."

"Perhaps?" Karen echoed.

"But I do not wish to do so." Pur wagged her tail. "Because I witnessed with my own eyes the agony Diss endured all those years. More than once, he said he had taken the wrong path, yet possessed no chance to turn back.

Thus, I think this is grand.

You have already proven that your talent is hardly inferior to Diss's; in my eyes, you are almost the spitting image of Diss in his youth.

Therefore, I do not wish for your future self to repeat Diss's agonizing cycle, nor do I want to see you resolute in youth, bewildered in midlife, and despairing in old age.

This must also be what Diss intended, and his greatest expectation for you."

Pur silently crouched at Karen's feet, resting her head against his shin.

"If you believe it to be wrong, then correct it; if you believe it to be right, then stand firm. I can understand you, and I am willing to support you..."

At this point, Pur could not help but glance at Alfred, the words he had spoken yesterday echoing in her mind.

The radio sprite had indeed been correct; he had always believed blindly in Karen, and thus, he was the one truly capable of forming a resonance with him.

"In our lives, we always begin simply for the sake of beginning. Only halfway through the journey do we ponder the purpose of our steps, which is actually just fabricating a reason to sustain our onward momentum.

Only when we near the journey's end do we look back with melancholy, wondering if it would have been better had we taken another path back then.

So,

why must we leave such melancholy and sorrow for the very end, when it has already lost all meaning?

Just like when I advanced to the ninth rank of my family's faith system, I was filled with regret—regret that I hadn't chosen the path of an ecclesiastical faith system, for only upon reaching the end did I discover that the Progenitor could no longer carry the weight of all my thoughts."

A faint smile graced the corner of Karen's mouth. He reached out to stroke Pur's head, and the cat closed her eyes, silently basking in the affection.

The golden retriever rose at that moment, trotted to the cabinet, and took the Ace of Spades in his teeth—the very card set aside during the meeting that day. He returned to Karen, wagging his tail with eager anticipation.

"Playing frisbee?" Karen asked.

The retriever nodded.

Karen took the Ace of Spades from the dog's mouth and flung it directly in the opposite direction.

The retriever turned, chased the card for a few paces, and leapt into the air to catch it securely in his jaws, landing to display the face of the Ace of Spades toward Karen.

"Heh." Karen chuckled, then asked, "You are an evil god, do you have nothing to say?"

The golden retriever froze, then shook his head.

Pur explained: "When true gods decline and are defeated by more powerful true gods, they are redefined as evil gods. Yet there are also those who never established a church of their own, but once possessed power rivaling the divine, or had wrought terrible crises and disasters; they, too, are defined as evil gods."

"That stupid dog must belong to the latter category."

The golden retriever nodded.

"Oh, is that so?"

"What do you want to ask him?"

"Just asking casually. I have only validated the path of the Order, and I haven't even walked it yet, so I have no right to comment on how the other paths truly are."

"Then have you thought about how you will walk it?" Purr asked curiously. "Yesterday, the look in your eyes was very clear."

"One must walk it personally with one's own legs, and see it personally with one's own eyes."

"Isn't that just saying a whole lot of nothing?"

"Woof!" The golden retriever barked at Purr.

Purr immediately glared at the golden retriever and cursed, "Stupid dog, how dare you look down on me!"

Among all the systems, the family faith system had always been at the very bottom of the chain of contempt.

Those in other systems looked at those in the family faith system like looking at a bunch of worthless freeloaders living off their elders.

"The specific approach is..."

The image of the threads wrapping around the people beside him, which he had seen when he first received the divine revelation, flashed across Karen's mind.

Of course, that image at the time might have only been to validate the words of the divine revelation: [Order is: what I decree, and what you must obey].

However, one could only say that the conclusion it reached was wrong, but one could not say that its method of demonstration was incorrect.

"After the matter of the Queen staying at the Allen Manor is settled, I plan to move out of the Allen Manor."

Purr moved her neck but did not speak.

"I want to buy a small apartment in York City and live there. Didn't my uncle and aunt prepare a mortgage contract for me to buy a house? It happens to come in handy.

Of course, it's not that I feel uncomfortable living in the Allen Manor. In fact, living here is far too comfortable. But the more it is like this, the further away I am from the path I want to see and walk."

Karen reached out and pointed at the copy of "The Light of Order" sitting on the bookshelf.

"If I continue to live here, I can only walk forward step by step by reading it. This is what I am unwilling to do. I want to use reality to validate my thoughts, and then use my thoughts to try and echo reality.

At the current stage,

I feel that the areas where ordinary people live are more suitable for me to observe and contemplate, and can give me a greater sense of immersion.

Gods are higher than humans but originate from humans. Therefore, if one wishes to demonstrate the existence of gods, one must first look for the traces of gods and the rules of gods from among the crowd.

This is the method I have thought of:

To come from the crowd, and then go back into the crowd."

Karen lowered his head and looked at Purr.

"Of course, it's not that I won't come to the Allen Manor anymore. Just as you said, the Allen family is very useful. It can help us solve many problems and provide a lot of convenience

In fact, Pu'er and the cat in the portrait could be said to be identical;

but in the eyes of ordinary people, one black cat and another black cat actually held no distinction, and besides, over this past century, Pu'er's temperament had undergone a profound transformation.

Most importantly, although the Allen family possessed their own system of faith, the notion of an ancestor returning after being away for over a century would still strike them as utterly absurd; so long as their minds did not wander in that direction, they would naturally harbor no suspicion.

Conversely, Borge, who had only recently arrived at the Allen manor, was far more prone to ponder along those lines.

"You'll get used to it in the future," Karen offered perfunctorily.

"Does the young master wish to paint?"

"I do not paint well."

"You may describe it, young master, and I shall do the painting."

"That would be wonderful, then; I appreciate your trouble."

"The young master is too polite, and I must thank you for the paint you gifted me yesterday; it is very precious."

"Can we begin now?" Karen inquired.

"Of course." Bede set down his water glass, assuming an attentive posture.

Karen did not directly describe the imagery to Mr. Bede,

but instead asked:

"Mr. Bede, have you ever been deceived?"

"Deceived?" Mr. Bede smiled. "What kind of deception do you mean, young master?"

Karen ceased circling the matter, reaching out his hand to point toward the ceiling:

"God."

Mr. Bede pursed his lips, though his expression betrayed no great surprise.

Karen watched him,

for a long moment,

before Mr. Bede shifted his gaze back to meet Karen's. "I think I can approximate that feeling now."

"You have a sense of it?" Karen asked with a smile.

"Yes."

"Actually, I have no desire to describe too specific an image; what I wish to manifest in the painting is that particular feeling, rather than merely the recreation of a concrete form and scene, which would hold no meaning for me."

"Must pain be expressed?" Mr. Bede asked.

"No," Karen said. "Exclude your pain."

Exclude your pain...

Mr. Bede's frame shuddered slightly,

and he asked:

"Can it truly be excluded?"

"If one harbors wariness from the very start, if one carries doubt, then the pain is not so immense—indeed, it hardly qualifies as pain. It is just as if I were to walk down the street and ask a strange gentleman for a loan of two Reals to ride the tram; if that gentleman refuses me, why should I feel pain over such an occurrence?"

"But in the eyes of most people, it is not asking a stranger for two Reals, but rather asking one's own father."

"I believe that is not my problem, but the problem of the majority."

"I understand."

Mr. Bede took up his brush and began to paint; the speed of his hand remained swift, and to some extent, watching him paint made it difficult to find the aesthetic beauty inherent in the process of "artistic creation," appearing instead somewhat tedious and mechanical.

Karen sat there for a while before standing up to stretch his limbs.

"It will be ready shortly, Young Master Karen," Bede said.

"Very well," Karen said, then asked, "So, Mr. Bede was also harboring doubt from the very beginning, was he not?"

"Why do you ask this, young master?"

"Because I thought I would need to say much, much more, yet in the end I did not; the only line that truly mattered was that one."

Exclude your pain.

"It is just like the door to an art studio; if you wish to enter and paint, you must first obtain the key from the custodian. If you cannot get the key, you will never be able to sit before the easel.

And the prerequisite for obtaining the key is to first align with the custodian's style of painting."

"Then has Mr. Bede never doubted the custodian's aesthetic taste?"

"I have doubted it."

"And now?"

"I doubt it still."

"Then how did you manage to get the key?"

"When receiving the key, I am the self receiving the key; once inside to paint, I am the self who is painting."

Hearing these words, Karen looked at the man before him, his own "prospective father-in-law."

So this was why Diss would meet with him, and why Diss would be willing to cooperate with him.

Anyone whom Diss deemed worth spending time to sit down with and speak to at his desk could never be simple; that High Priest, Lord Rasma, had never managed to secure such an opportunity.

Of course, no one could guarantee whether Bede, during the very beginning—that is, when he first arrived in the City of Loga—had also been subject to an influence from Diss.

Within his mind, the images of Piaget and Linda surfaced once more, followed by the sight of Piaget living alone in that house, yearning for Linda.

A part of my inner self believes in God, yet another part is preserved in doubt... no, it is persisting in a certain kind of selfhood.

"Mr. Bede."

"Yes?"

"Have you ever visited a psychiatrist?"

"Me? A psychiatrist? No, I have not."

"Do you feel you need to see one? I feel you might suffer from schizophrenia."

"Those obsessed with art all seem to have a bit of it."

"True enough."

"Yesterday..."

"Yes?" Karen smiled. "Whatever you wish to ask, you may ask."

"Yesterday, I saw the young master looking in great pain; were you asking the custodian for the key?"

"The custodian proactively handed the key to me, but I did not accept it."

"You did not... accept it?"

"Because I discovered that the door I wished to enter was never locked to begin with."

Mr. Bede halted his brush, his gaze shifting from the easel onto Karen.

For a long while,

He smiled and said, "There was once someone I respected deeply, who spoke in the very same manner as you, young master."

"I imagine that person you respect must be quite familiar to me," Cardon replied.

"Hehe, indeed."

"Are you not going to continue painting?"

"It is finished, young master."

Mr. Bede turned the easel to face Cardon.

The canvas was split down the middle from left to right; though there was no distinct dividing line, the artistic styles presented on either side were entirely different, even starkly antithetical.

On the left, lush green grass flourished beside a flowing stream where numerous small animals frolicked.

On the right, a world of ice and snow lay frozen, littered with many horrifying skeletons.

In the center sat a young man, bearing a passing resemblance to Cardon, though rendered without meticulous detail.

The youth sat precisely on the central dividing line.

The left side of his face bore a warm, gentle gaze and a soft smile; the right side grew dark and sinister, twisted into a fierce grimace.

Above the young man,

Right at the very center of the composition,

An angel hovered.

Yet, the angel's left half possessed a body of decaying flesh with bones starkly visible, blackened and fallen; the angel's right half held pure white wings, radiating a holy and divine light.

The entire painting pushed this sense of contrast to its absolute limit, especially the symbolic angel hovering above, whose internal opposition ran completely contrary to the balance of the rest of the piece.

"Young master, what do you think?"

"Perfect."

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