Seeing the appearance of the holy statue, Zhang Ge frowned slightly. Although he did not feel physically nauseous or uncomfortable, this act of desecrating humanity... at least for a normal human being, was still repulsive.

  After surveying the internal environment, Zhang Ge also entered the church and approached the nearest nun's corpse. Witnessing this other act of desecration, he pulled the chaotic scripture from her already cold and stiff hands.

  Of course, he did not intend to open it and take a look; instead, he took a cross out of his bag and pressed it against the cover of the book.

  Although it did not emit the exaggerated light of several meters as before, once it was placed on the cover, the cross caused the surface to ignite violently. This burning did not harm Zhang Ge's palm, nor did it produce any heat; it simply spread gradually across the entire book.

  Soon, the chaotic scripture was purified back to its original form—a regular imperial scripture.

  “I’ll go take a look deeper inside.”

  Noticing that Sister Amelia was clearly in a distressed state, Zhang Ge forcibly stuffed the cross into her clenched palm, not intending to further disturb her. After signaling her, he turned and entered a side corridor.

  At this point, saying anything comforting was meaningless; perhaps at least allowing her to purify her former sisters with her own hands would make her feel a bit better.

  Upon reaching the door, he fumbled to turn on the light.

  Sure enough, the enemies that had fought against the nuns had not repaired any locations other than the main hall, which served as an "art canvas." He could see numerous blood-stained craters and bloodstains, as well as scattered pieces of armor and chunks of flesh, along with many corpses of ordinary people or star realm soldiers.

  Approaching one of the craters, he could see that this explosive weapon had an extremely high rate of fire and precision. Without any deliberate control from the user, several explosive projectiles had embedded themselves in the same impact point.

  After further searching, Zhang Ge also discovered three charred marks on the ground in this corridor, as if something had fallen straight down from above. However, looking up, there were no openings in the ceiling.

  Chaos elites, distorted scriptures, deliberately repaired environments, charred marks, high-velocity explosive weapons.

  Suddenly, Zhang Ge recalled something that could leave such a scene in his mind.

  A tactical squad of chaos terminators, along with at least one accompanying chaos sorcerer. After obtaining the coordinates of the church and conducting preliminary reconnaissance, the terminators directly teleported into the main body of the church, and after the battle ended, the sorcerer immediately entered.

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  The fatal wounds on the nun's corpse seen earlier in the main hall were all in front, corresponding to the breaches in the armor, while the back was basically unharmed; even those nuns who were not primarily combatants were the same.

  In other words, the nuns at that time were aware of the enemy forces and were in a state of high alert, to the extent that they were ready to don their armor at any moment, able to launch a counterattack the instant these enemy troops breached their defenses, without turning their backs to the foe.

  However, after intense gunfire, even in the case of fighting in a confined area, the nuns' resistance was still shattered.

  It is said that powerful demons cannot directly appear within a sanctum thick with faith; if they were to lie in wait, the nuns of the order are not as cumbersome and slow as state church institutions, especially not in a frontline chapel that is undergoing further streamlining and personnel selection.

  But if a Chaos Terminator were to teleport directly into the chapel, that would make sense.

  Moreover, for the forces of Chaos, the Terminator power armor is nearly impossible to reproduce, so those who possess such powerful equipment are either veterans of millennia-long battles or the strong who have taken the place of the former after their deaths, making them highly valuable.

  A tactical squad, consisting of three Chaos Terminators, could easily teleport into various parts of the interior and have the capability to wipe out the hundred or so nuns and a small number of astral troops.

  However, such powerful warriors would only serve the most formidable legions or warbands within Chaos, which implies that the situation is worse than imagined; at least a Chaos Lord-level enemy has arrived in this combat zone.

  As Zhang Ge continued to delve deeper, aside from discovering more corpses and blood in other areas, he found no new suspicious spots and did not encounter any enemy attacks. If nothing unexpected occurred, it should be about what he had guessed, and the enemy had indeed left.

  Zhang Ge felt regretful for not encountering those enemies directly, but since they had already left, there was nothing he could do. He needed to return to the main hall and discuss with Sister Amelia what to do next.

  Upon reaching the door, he opened it a crack… wait a minute, why is it so bright?

  Zhang Ge pushed the door fully open, but his steps forward halted.

  Inside the main hall, the bodies of the nuns had been gathered into a pile, and fierce flames were burning. He could see Sister Amelia kneeling before the pile of corpses completely engulfed in flames.

  But what caused Zhang Ge to stop was not this.

  It was the cross that was transforming the scorching pillars of fire into a brilliant golden hue. The bodies of the nuns were being burned away, yet their bones were turning silvery in the radiant golden flames.

  This inferno was not gentle as Zhang Ge had felt before; instead, it was extremely violent. Even from the side door, he could feel the unbearable heat. Although the flames seemed not to have consumed anything beyond the physical bodies, they were gradually roasting Sister Amelia, who knelt before it.

  Yet she remained motionless, maintaining her posture of kneeling and praying until the last nun's body turned to dust.

  As two lines of tears streamed down from the eyes of the "scorched corpse" in front of the fire, the more than one hundred silvery bones gradually turned to dust, flying toward the nun, slowly coalescing into a giant sword entirely made of silver.

  It was at this moment that the "scorched corpse" suddenly began to grow silvery hair at an alarming rate, reaching chin length in the blink of an eye.

  The charred shell on her body began to fall away piece by piece, revealing a pure, unblemished body with no scars.

  As the last piece of char fell, Amelia slowly opened her eyes, which had lost their white cloth covering, and her golden pupils overflowed with brilliant light.