THUD, THUD, THUD...

Clad in a dirty deerskin battle robe and swarming with black maggots drilling in and out, the Bone Gnawing God galloped wildly through the mountain forest on horseback.

Mountains, ravines, bushes, thick tree trunks... no terrain could constrain this Curse Spirit born of Revenge.

It wielded the obsidian saw sword, and the Spiritual Energy of Death erupted violently from it.

Regardless of whether the things blocking its path possessed Life or not, they all developed horrific black spots, rotting away to nothingness at an astonishing speed in an instant.

A Third Order Treasure Hunter of the Wilderness Sequence, holding a still-bleeding Aztec head, leaped between the treetops ahead of it as if flying.

He narrowly evaded the frenzied slashes of the Bone Gnawing God at every turn.

During his mortal stage, he had completed "Surge of Wind," one of the Limit Eight Items, and his resulting Adaptive Evolution was also biased towards speed.

After each brush with death, his own speed would receive a massive boost, making his ability to escape second to none.

As he passed a patch of unremarkable shrubs, he suddenly shouted, "The prey is here!"

The relay-style baiting operation was nearing its end.

The camouflage in the forest was suddenly revealed, exposing a group of Law Mages who had long been lying in ambush.

They were led by two Third Order Chief Justices.

They were uniformly clad in bright red judicial robes and white wigs. This attire symbolized the retreat of Human Nature and the manifestation of Divinity, their hearts holding only impartial justice.

They raised their fasces, symbols of punishment and Power. Drawing upon the might of the Silver Law and the Royal Iron Law - Bull City Code, they wove a vast, silver Law Network.

Towards the closely pursuing Bone Gnawing God, they roared in unison, "Decree: Whosoever kills a citizen of the Kingdom of Castile shall be put to death!"

HUMMM—!

The overwhelming Law Network crashed down violently. It transformed into silver-white chains that tightly bound its body and its skeletal warhorse, which was entwined with old ropes and stone caltrops.

Red lights flashed fiercely in the eye sockets of the Bone Gnawing God's bleached skeletal head. It struggled desperately but could no longer break free from this Law Network.

The two Third Order Hunters, who had taken turns acting as bait, jumped down from the treetops. Looking at their prey, their tones were relaxed.

One of them remarked, "It is said that the Bone Gnawing God possesses the Divine Power of the Death God, able to come and go without a trace like a messenger of death. Once targeted by it, even if you escape for a while, you may still drop dead unexpectedly one day. If, back then at the Aztec Royal City, all the Transcendents from every nation and force had united to besiege it and had been willing to pay a certain price, perhaps it could have been re-interred right after its resurrection. Unfortunately, though there might be Saints willing to sacrifice themselves for others on this vast sea, they are certainly rarer than Giant Dragons. In the end, it became our prey today."

"This was inevitable," the other Hunter chimed in. "The moment it became a Curse Spirit, it lost all the complexities and potential fluctuations of Human Nature. The rules by which it kills would no longer change. Whether thirty years or a hundred pass, it remains the same. Our predecessors killed it once thirty years ago; using the same method, we can certainly kill it again now. Hunting a Curse Spirit comparable to a Fourth Order Transcendent is bound to dramatically increase our Spirituality again."

An old Priest, robed in a Divine Robe and with a head full of white hair, stepped forward.

Holding aloft a small piece of silver that seemed to have been frozen at extreme lows and then violently shattered, he chanted prayers, "God said: 'If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me... Our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin!'"

The seemingly ordinary piece of silver suddenly radiated an extremely intense Holy Light, slowly condensing into a pure white, Cross-shaped Spear as large as a hill right above the Bone Gnawing God's head.

Sacred phantasms of Angels appeared around it, and a mighty hymn resounded through the skies:

"Holy, holy, holy, merciful and omnipotent! All glory and praise be to the Trinity..."

This astonishing scene, like a divine miracle, caused the devout soldiers of the Invincible Fleet in the nearby bay to prostrate themselves one after another, crying out holy names.

Had they not seen it with their own eyes, others might hardly imagine that this small, unassuming piece of silver was none other than the world's once most powerful Zero-Level Sacred Relic: the True Cross!

The widely circulated origin of the story was that the ancestors of the Remit People betrayed the Saint Heir—the Creator's Incarnation in the mortal world—for Thirty pieces of silver, leading to Him being nailed to the Cross.

As His blood flowed down, the wooden Cross transformed into pure silver on the spot.

Since then, this True Cross had become the Creator's Church's most supreme Zero-Level Sacred Relic.

However, in that same year, later referred to as the Silver Era Year, a major catastrophe unrecorded in the annals of history struck the entire world. During this cataclysm, this immensely powerful Zero-Level Sacred Relic accidentally shattered.

In the long Dark Millennium that followed, everyone, including historians and outsiders alike, remained ignorant of what had truly transpired.

Perhaps only the Pope and the Saints in the Council of the Divine Presence at St. Peter's Cathedral knew the details.

But the Power was real and undeniable.

The True Cross, as the most supreme of Sacred Artifacts, was so potent that its power was not limited to its fragments bestowing special blessings; even ordinary Silver Crosses merely fashioned in its likeness could inexplicably receive special consecration.

However, one point puzzled many of the less devout faithful and those outside the Church.

"Speaking of which, isn't this the very torture tool used to crucify the Creator's human Incarnation? How can the Church revere such an object as a Sacred Artifact? What sort of mystical principle is at play here?"