Ice Vapor Goddess

Chapter 17 I Forgive You
A small squad of soldiers stood before Siren and Joseph, dressed in black and red collared overcoats with gleaming epaulettes, sleeve patches, and belts. Their waists were bulging with ammunition, and they carried metal rifles with wooden handles.

That was a breech-loading metal rifle with a locked chamber. Once the trigger was pulled, the firing pin would strike the primer of the bullet, causing the metal bullet to quickly leave the rifled barrel and then enter the human body.

Joseph's expression was stiff, his desire not to show weakness barely concealing his fear, leaving his angry expression frozen on his face in a comical pose, but anyone could see that he was all bark and no bite.

The soldiers wore proud expressions, and they would seize the opportunity to attack once they sensed the enemy's weakness.

Xilun stepped forward and calmly looked at the squad leader in the lead: "Do you believe in God?"

The soldier looked at Xilun defiantly: "I believe you, but I will prioritize obeying orders."

He was a head taller than Xilen, and his muscular chest and biceps made his black coat look even more imposing. He looked down at Xilen with a sense of intimidation. He took a step forward and positioned himself to look down at the guy.

“Of course, you chose to obey orders.” Xiren looked at him, his eyes devoid of any emotion. “In your eyes, the Church and the Empire are two opposing forces. As a soldier, you rely on strength and loyalty for your livelihood. If the Empire needs you, you will stand on its side without hesitation. So you chose to obey Renn’s orders. Let me think what that would be—guard the warehouse district. If the people from the Church want to go to the Holy Treasury, you tell them that the passage is under the governor’s jurisdiction and is not allowed. You may question the legitimacy of the order, but you are only guarding the passage, not directly preventing me from going to the Holy Treasury. You do not need to bear the responsibility of ‘blocking the Holy Treasury,’ right?”

The soldier's momentum weakened slightly, but he still held his head high, looking down at Xilun with his height of over 1.9 meters: "Obeying orders is a soldier's duty!"

Xilun looked at him calmly: "Whose orders are you obeying? God's or the devil's? Have you asked who issued the orders? Have you asked about the meaning behind the orders? Have you asked about the consequences of carrying out the orders?"

"Do you know that the Holy Treasury stores winter clothes and food for thousands of people? Do you know that Renne left 176 innocent civilians to freeze on the church floor just to defile the Lord's sanctuary with their excrement?"

“You are not stopping me, nor the power of the church, but the lives of people just like you. Can’t you hear it? On the ice and snow, there are people dying, people struggling in despair, husbands who will never see their wives again, fathers who will never see their children again, and people who will never see their brothers and sisters again.”

“God has mercy on all of this, and He sends angels to save those who are suffering. But you stand at the gates of heaven and say: This is the governor’s territory. Please go to hell and then to earth, because it is not under the governor’s jurisdiction. Isn’t that ridiculous?”

"Only the devil stands in the way of heaven's gates. I pity you, so go ahead and block the way! Let your soul belong to the devil and easily give up your place in heaven!"

“You poor thing, deceived and unaware of your sins, you say ‘obeying orders is a soldier’s duty’, pushing all the blame and responsibility onto your superiors, and then you can indulge the devil in your heart and ignore the suffering people and your brothers and sisters who are suffering.”

"Ah! How pure you are! You know nothing, you are just obeying orders. You have handed over your heart and mind to your superiors, turning your divinely bestowed flesh into a heartless machine. No matter how despicable your actions are, you bear no responsibility because you are a machine that obeys orders. Isn't it ridiculous for me to angrily denounce a killing machine?"

Xiren's words flowed out like a torrent, becoming faster and faster towards the end. His face remained calm, like an angel of judgment, but his tone was full of wrath, as if he were denouncing the sins of the devil.

The squad leader's face had already turned pale, and the ordinary soldiers behind him wished they could kneel down immediately. "After the prince was whipped and tortured, those evil men wanted to send him to Golgotha, but he was too weak to walk there with the cross on his back. So the evil men made Simon (Note 1) carry the cross. Simon submitted to that vicious order and carried the prince to Golgotha. He could say: I was just following orders, but didn't he also become an accomplice in the prince's death? Yes—you want to be the gun in the killer's hand. When the governor fired, he was the guilty one. The gun, which is merely an object, is of course innocent, but are you the gun? Tell me, believer! Are you a weapon? Or a person?!"

The squad leader gritted his teeth and remained silent.

"Since you have believed in God and been baptized, you have left your name in the Kingdom of Heaven. You are a human being with flesh and soul given by God. You were born to be a person in this world. Why degrade yourself into a weapon? Abandon your thinking and your holy soul, hand over your flesh and blood to others, bind your beliefs and will to some concept that is claimed to be very great, abandon thinking, abandon life, abandon being human!"

“Tell me your name, soldier. It is the mark of your being as a human being, the symbol you are engraved in heaven. You should not be just a soldier; you are a child of God, and you have a name.”

The squad leader breathed a sigh of relief: "Fafner, Fafnir Kent."

“Very good, Fafnir.” Siren stroked his head. Although Fafnir was much taller than him, no one present thought the bishop was short. He seemed like an apostle from heaven, his eyes filled with compassion and love as he touched the one who had gone astray. “I pray for you, I bear your sins. Remember, you are not a soldier, not a number, not an insignificant cog in a vast system, and not a weapon to be used at will. You are a human being, a child of your parents, a child of God, and my brothers and sisters.”

The tall man wept bitterly, grasped Xilun's hand, and knelt on the ground.

“Merciful Lord! Heavenly Father! I have sinned, I have sinned… I felt troubled when I received the order, but as you said, I imagined myself as a weapon, a tool. I thought I was just a soldier carrying out orders. I almost obeyed the devil's command to stop an angel from coming! I have parents, they are both from the South, I don't know how they are, I don't know if they are freezing in the snow… I worry about my own parents, but ignore the suffering of other people's parents. I am an accomplice of the devil, Your Excellency! Forgive me, forgive me! Please speak to me, forgive me!”

Xiren watched him with tears in his eyes, kissed the ring, and tenderly stroked his hair.

"I forgive you."

He said.

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Note 1: According to custom, prisoners sentenced to crucifixion were required to carry the cross themselves to the execution ground. However, the victim had been beaten to the point of being unable to walk on his own, so the soldiers randomly grabbed a man named Simon from the roadside to carry the cross.

"When they brought Jesus there, a man from Cyrene named Simon came from the countryside. They seized him and put a cross on him, and made him carry it and follow Jesus." (Luke 23:26)

(End of this chapter)