"Yikes!"
Norton lay in the grass, sucking in a sharp breath of cold air.
It's frightening how much you realize when you actually stop to think!
If these two aspects were truly as he suspected, mutually corroborating each other's validity, then wouldn't that mean this place really did have God, and really did have hell?
Moreover, the God who created the world was now dead, and the primordial death god Jonah was imprisoned within the sun!
Oh right, the vampire progenitor Kuba had also been executed.
Didn't this mean three out of the four major deities were dead at once?
Norton suddenly felt a chill run down his spine. He kept feeling like something was watching him from behind these bushes, giving him the creeps.
If things were truly as he imagined, then this was utterly terrifying.
First, the mere existence of a creator god was enough to drive anyone to despair. Even if the creator god was dead, it still meant something in this world possessed the power to effortlessly annihilate existence.Second, this creator god seemed too human. He could be swayed by desires, giving birth to all sorts of monsters, which undoubtedly meant he had his own thoughts, joys, and angers. It also meant the gods weren't aloof, emotionless cosmic machines looking down upon the world.
But rather, they were homelanders with infinite power who could be easily tempted by emotions!
Exactly - wasn't this the classic homelander template? And a super-enhanced version at that.
Besides, there was still the god Divine Cause who governed living beings. With the church committing so many evils yet remaining standing all these years, could Divine Cause be supporting them from behind?
Or perhaps Divine Cause was the Pope himself?
Quite possible! Because the gods here had human desires!
This was why Norton found it so terrifying.
Who knew when a god with human desires might suddenly snap?
And what if God resurrected? After all, his consciousness had revived in Heaven according to Resurrection...
Norton didn't dare think further. The more he thought, the more oppressive this place felt.
But when he looked, he discovered that the mother and daughter who had been crying earlier had somehow obtained a small knife and were now dissecting the old man's body and the ox.
The girl was using the small knife to cut up the ox carcass, hanging the pieces on drying racks outside the house, while the woman was draining blood from the old man, collecting it in a clay pot - apparently not wanting to waste even the blood!
With Norton's greatly enhanced hearing, he could even faintly catch their conversation.
"The blood can congeal into blood cakes, and the dried meat can last us half a year. Sob... what will we do after six months?"
The woman's voice, still tinged with grief, reached Norton's ears, leaving him utterly stunned.
"Holy shit, you two are truly hardcore!"
He hadn't even considered eating the old man, thinking just a few mouthfuls of ox blood would suffice, but they were taking it even further than him!
During great famines, people resort to cannibalism. Though he'd learned about this during the previous Mass, witnessing the mother and daughter holding the old man's body, placing his head over the clay pot, and cutting his throat to drain blood - this scene of humans treating each other like livestock - couldn't help but evoke profound sadness.
Though Norton hadn't fully transitioned from normal human thinking, and drinking blood from living humans would require psychological preparation, he felt much less resistance to drinking from the dead.
After all, humans always find it easier to compromise downward.
But saying that, he'd already started fantasizing about raising humans like livestock to cultivate his own food supply.
"This damned church really deserves to die! If they starve all the people to death, what will I eat then?"
Though Norton hadn't yet become the so-called vampire progenitor, he'd already spontaneously begun viewing these humans as his personal food reserves.
The greatest flaw of Chinese descendants was suffering from severe insufficiency anxiety disorder - whether it's firepower insufficiency anxiety or food shortage anxiety. Essentially, when something couldn't be sustainably renewed and developed, it triggered their deep-seated fear: what would I do if this runs out!
It's practically written into their genetic code!
Time passed slowly as the woman and girl built a fire and began smoking the meat over it.
In these times, salt was also a luxury commodity. They obviously couldn't use large amounts of salt for preservation, so they used smoking to dehydrate the meat enough for proper drying.
The clay pot containing blood was carried by the woman into their wooden house. Norton removed his steel armor in the grass, then stealthily circled around.
Vampires truly were creatures of the night - they could fully utilize their bones and muscles to significantly reduce movement noise.
The crackling of burning firewood covered any sound, and the mother-daughter pair focused on roasting meat completely failed to notice a naked man approaching behind their house before silently slipping into their home.
The scent of blood filled Norton's nostrils, overwhelmingly potent.
Yet despite its intensity, he could still easily distinguish the source of this aroma through his heightened sense of smell.
The rich metallic scent made Norton feel unconsciously thirsty, even giving him a restless, scratchy feeling of discomfort.
The wooden house contained no light source - commoners of this era didn't even possess candles.
But Norton's vision remained perfectly clear, immediately spotting the clay pot placed in the corner.
Norton frowned slightly. Honestly, he felt tremendous resistance to this behavior - after all, he'd been a normal person not long ago.
But if he didn't drink, he couldn't survive.
Personal psychological cleanliness versus starvation wasn't much of a choice.
So Norton chose to drink.
And he planned to drink deeply!