Ice Vapor Goddess

Chapter 97 Delusion
"What do you mean by 'there are clues in the case'? What do you mean by 'the public reporting illegal proselytizing'?" Ryan held the megaphone, wondering how simple letters could form such complex sentences.

Sir Milton had just left when he learned of the matter a few minutes earlier and was treating it as a major case. But then he was told that there was already news.
"Have they caught him?" Ryan asked.

Xilun said in a strange tone, "He was caught. He was caught on the spot by five residents and then taken to the church."

"..." Renn paused for a moment, "You wait, I'll send someone over. You don't have any interrogation experts on your end, do you?"

"No," Xilun said indifferently, then the other end of the call rang and ended without a word of greeting; the matter was over once it was finished.

However, over the past month or so, he has gotten used to Ryan's way of doing things.

This month is both the busiest and the most peaceful in West London. After the tumultuous Portuguese Moon, the ensuing Bulge is filled with a positive and uplifting atmosphere.

The site originally reserved for the monastery was transformed into the framework of a new school, and many other areas that had not yet been completed were put on the agenda thanks to people's efforts, who vowed to finish building the shelter despite the harsh winter.

The sound of typewriters rang out day and night from the Gospel Church's office. Although he couldn't get his hands on the difference machine area, Xilun managed to get a basic difference machine through his haggling with Sheena and placed it in the Gospel Church to assist in filing and recording the needs of the residents.

This basic model has very limited functionality; it can only perform polynomial function operations and basic addition calculations, and automatically print to paper.

Its sole purpose is to prevent human error when faced with a large amount of tedious calculations.

But the real large difference engines in Speyer were from a completely different era. They had workshops capable of performing all kinds of calculations, warehouses for physically storing data and programs, offices for reading and processing programs, and ports for inputting and outputting programs via punch cards.

Aside from its shortcomings in terms of space requirements, response speed, wear and tear, and ease of programming, it is virtually indistinguishable from future electronic computers.

The "programming language" of punched cards is created using a jacquard loom and fed to the reader of the differential machine. The reader then manipulates brass number wheels according to the instructions on the card to provide the required answer, and even supports conditional branches and loops.

Xilun had long coveted this item, but unfortunately, Sheena kept a very tight watch on it, and her repeated requests all ended in failure.

However, even the basic Difference Engine can already help the community a lot. The gradually expanding influence means more and more data and greater and greater computing needs.

Green has been going to the Gospel Church a lot these past few days to debug their difference engines and has even held a training course specifically to teach how to use them.

However, it is said that he is interested in Miss Lucy, a new typist who recently joined the company. Last week, he even invited her to dinner at Field Restaurant in the residential area and gave her a rose carved from ice. Therefore, the teaching class may also have ulterior motives.

Thinking of Green, Xilen immediately contacted him using a megaphone and then walked into the side aisle of the church.

Several men from the residential area had just brought the man here—they didn't trust the newly established police station and didn't know where to send the criminal, so they took him straight to the church, where the deacon on duty quickly told them to take him to the side aisle.

"I'm here." Xilun strode in, and his steady voice immediately put everyone present at ease.

Over the course of this month, his personal prestige has risen to a new level, as if he provides a pillar of support for everything.

Xilun looked down and saw that the "prisoner" was a middle-aged man with gray hair and wearing coarse woolen overalls, dressed like a worker.

The moment he saw Xilun appear, his eyes widened, and he yelled as if he wanted to devour him: "Liar! The liar is here! He's going to deceive everyone!"

But before he could finish speaking, the man next to him punched him, knocking his face crooked and causing his bloody teeth to fall to the ground.

“How did you meet him?” Siren asked. “Tell me again.”

“Uh… it’s like this…” The men seemed a bit timid in front of Xilun, and after exchanging glances several times, they chose one of them to speak. “We were playing cards in the tavern when this guy suddenly came over and said he wanted to play a few rounds with us. He cheated and won several rounds against us. Then he said he was exceptionally intelligent and was an evolved member of the Familia. He asked if we were interested in being like him.”

"Then we beat him up!" another man shouted, his breath clearly reeking of alcohol. "He was too arrogant; my brothers and I couldn't stand it."

“I stopped them,” an old worker said. “He was acting strangely, so I thought he was from the church. I asked him a question, and he said something about ‘Snowfield Home’ and that anyone who stayed here would die. So I punched him a few times.”

He grinned and shook his blood-stained fist.

Xilun nodded to indicate that he understood, and then looked at the person being held on the ground.

Although he was kneeling on the ground, he held his head high with pride. He hadn't spoken since being hit, but he maintained a firm and unyielding posture.

"Evolved Families, does that mean they're good at cheating?" Xilun deliberately adopted a flippant demeanor, chuckling from a superior, condescending perspective.

A vein bulged on the man's face, but it quickly subsided, as if he had forcibly suppressed it, and his expression changed to one of disdain for explanation.

That attitude clearly stemmed from a sense of superiority that he arrogantly displayed—he even deliberately wore an arrogant expression on his face, as if afraid others wouldn't know "I look down on you."

Paranoia? Delusions? Xilun guessed, watching him with great interest, but he didn't know whether it was neurosis or mental illness. The former is generally manifested as refusing to acknowledge the flaws of the Other (the existing order), frantically trying to patch them up, and maintaining his own complete fantasy; the latter is generally manifested as "I can hear divine revelation, I am the only spokesperson".

Of course, there is another possibility: that he actually has real knowledge and a complete, practical, and instructive set of ideas.

But we'll have to try it first.

So Siren smiled and squatted down, his face level with his: "Aren't you planning to proselytize? Here, I'll give you a chance to try and convince me—if you can convince me, the whole of Speyer will be yours."

The man glanced sideways at Xilun, a slight smirk playing on his lips, as if this attitude of equality gave him immense satisfaction and pride. But he quickly suppressed that smirk and said in a disdainful and arrogant tone, "You've missed your only chance. I won't save you anymore. You'll be buried along with this city!"

Xilun smiled again.

Although that sentence sounded arrogant and aggressive, it was infuriating, and I didn't know what to say.

But that was a typical defensive statement.

First, he rejected Xilun's invitation to "persuade" him, because the word "persuade" implies that he must acknowledge that language is common and rules are shared, and he was unwilling to enter the universal symbolic system used by Xilun.

This means that his language is not "dialogue" but "revelation"; he does not "use language" within the symbolic system, but is used by language. The following sentences are even more typical of a paranoid defense system.

His statement, "You missed your only chance," represents his attempt to shirk responsibility.

He suddenly absolved himself of the responsibility for refusing communication and refusing redemption, placing it on others and the entire external world—

It was your "missed opportunity" that led to your destruction, not my "incompetence" or "the invalidity of truth," which perfectly protected his delusional system and core identity from the test of reality.

The following line, "I will no longer save you; you will be buried with this city," is a curse.

Curses are a very interesting thing because they are a last resort defense mechanism. He chooses to use "curses" instead of "dialogue" perhaps because his own language threatens his fantasy, so he uses this curse to end the dialogue in order to protect his fantasy structure.

This is a patient with a psychotic structure... In fact, Xiren has never treated such a patient, because if they reach this stage, they usually wouldn't come to see an analyst; they would have been locked up in a mental hospital long ago.

However, this is not a typical doctor-patient relationship. He is suspected of having two innocent lives on his hands—two lives in the eleventh and seventh wards of the third floor, as well as Tess, who suddenly disappeared last night.

Although it's unclear whether he was responsible, there's a high probability of a connection. After all, the Gospel Church's network and the police's surveillance network cover the entire city. Everything had been calm until this mysterious and unknown religion suddenly emerged.

Compared to doctors and patients, they are more like interrogators and prisoners.

Suddenly, Xilun's expression turned solemn, as if the words he had just spoken had enlightened him.

Suddenly she went over and grabbed his hand, gripping it tightly, her eyes so resolute it seemed she was about to sacrifice herself.

"Please, sir, save me!" he cried out, tears welling in his eyes as people looked on in astonishment.

“You…” The man was stunned, his mind going blank for a moment.

But Xilun moved even closer with more enthusiasm: "I'm still young and don't want to die so soon. We've become friends through this fight. I'll treat you if necessary!"

After he finished speaking, he actually cast a holy healing spell, which healed most of the injuries on his face.

"Hey, do you think I can redeem myself through meritorious service? Great guide, what kind of work do we usually do? What's the first step? Organize a book club? Or should we go out and hand out flyers on the street first? Do we need a uniform? What's our slogan? Follow... uh, what's your name again? Anyway, follow you, bury the old world? What do you think of this slogan? Is it not attractive enough? How do we get promoted internally? Has anyone else received divine revelation?"

Xilun asked enthusiastically, acting like an activist, but the man grew increasingly agitated, his expression gradually contorting. Suddenly, he shook off Xilun's hand and shouted, "Madman! Let go of me!!"

But when he looked up, he found that Xilen's eyes had turned cold and slightly smiling at some point, as if he had never said those words.

He felt as if he had fallen into an ice cave.

“Your level is too low, little guy.” He patted his shoulder gently. “You must have just been developed not long ago, right? After hearing a few words of divine revelation, whether true or false, and learning some so-called secrets, you think you’re a savior who bears the responsibility of the world. You don’t even have any practical steps. You’re just maintaining your sense of superiority through fantasy. Once your fantasy is threatened, you start to defend and avoid it… Does your family know about this?”

He felt the gentle pats on his shoulders, like the loving scolding a parent gives to a child, but the more he felt this, the more he broke down.

“No…you will all die…you will all die! God…God…” he murmured to himself, half fantasy and half curse, frantically trying to maintain that fantasy and resist the invasion of Xilun.

He knelt on the ground, trembling as if he were having an epileptic seizure. The intense emotional fluctuations and the collapse of his self-delusion directly led to physical reactions. The two men pressing him down on either side looked at each other, not understanding why he had become like this after just a few words.

Suddenly, Xilun quietly circled around behind the man, gestured and looked at him to signal the two men to let go, then personally pressed down on his shoulders and leaned down from behind him.

“Yes, they will all die,” Siron whispered in his right ear, the warm breath making it hazy like a hallucination. “God is with you. Those who disobey God’s revelation will die, and they will perish with this city.”

He tensed for a moment, then his trembling subsided slightly: "Yes...they are all going to die, I heard God..."

“You are a prophet of God, you have heard God.”

"Yes... I heard it..."

Ryan's interrogation experts happened to arrive from outside and stared blankly at the scene.

Dressed in a black robe, Xilun lay on his back, whispering in his ear with a loving smile, guiding the distraught prisoner with the gentlest voice.

He blinked, signaling the expert to be quiet.

"Those who laugh at you and beat you are truly pathetic, walking aimlessly through the world like blind people. Only you know the truth of the world, and only you bear the mission alone."

"Yes...yes! They're just pathetic lambs, they'll never understand what I'm doing, never...never..."

“Go back and tell everyone that this city is no longer worth saving, and that God’s wrath should destroy it.”

“Yes, yes… they don’t deserve to be saved. They’ve missed their last chance. They’ve missed a merciful shepherd like me…”

"Go back...go there..."

"Go there...tell everyone...tell the leader..."

"Tell the leader what's going on here."

"Tell the leader...tell him...Aa ...

His eyes suddenly widened, and just before he could speak, countless ice crystals burst forth from his body!
Icicles pierced his body, and countless drops of blood instantly flowed from his riddled wounds. Eyeballs and internal organs were attached to the spikes, which pierced his vocal cords and tongue, and even his brain.

The magnificent ice sculptures bloom with red bouquets of death, displaying twisted ice crystals and dead human bodies in a slender, sculptural pose. Broken organs and chunks of flesh hang from the branches like gifts on a Christmas tree, carrying an eerie beauty.

(End of this chapter)