Torture the hero, why has the Demon King's castle collapsed again?

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"Mino has always liked older women!"

A tempting blush began to rise on her delicate and charming face. Lena, like a shy little girl, rubbed her plump thighs together, her eyes revealing a deep shyness.

Mino has been so steadfast in liking me since our first meeting, all the way up to adulthood... just like in the stories.

No, this has even surpassed the realm of love at first sight or love that grows over time.

"This is pure love!" Lena's eyes sparkled with hearts.

The sound seemed to be received by the pure, icy heart within.

The gemstone trembled slightly, and then, with a sense of relief, it shattered completely—

……

The basement of the church.

As the ritual magic infused the essence of the herbs into the Ice Heart, Brad's forehead was covered in sweat, and he smiled with some relief. Finally, the mission was completely accomplished.

He staggered a few steps back, not from activating the magic circle with all his might, but from standing for too long; his uncoordinated human left leg was starting to go numb.

"Your Holiness!" Archbishop Hope rushed forward to help him up, and looking at the perfectly completed ritual array without a trace of power leakage, he revealed a look of joy: "You succeeded! Your control is so precise that I couldn't even smell a trace of the herbal power!"

"Hehe, this is the precision of machinery..." Brad was somewhat satisfied and subconsciously wanted to boast, but he immediately stopped himself and said with a serious expression:

"This is the self-control of someone who's been single for 150 years; my fingers don't tremble at all!"

"As expected of His Holiness the Pope!" Hope said with genuine admiration.

The two DTs present, whose combined age is nearly two hundred years, were genuinely proud of this skill.

"Your Holiness, will Saintess Lena recover quickly in this way?" Hope asked curiously, glancing at the ice puck in front of him from time to time.

Although the magic circle's movements were dazzling, the herbal energy being transmitted involved a vague level of being transformed into emotional power and linked to dreams. Therefore, Hope was unable to discern the specifics from the unchanging saintess inside the ice sphere.

Brad calmly pressed his palm down, reassuringly saying:

“The ritual was flawless. I could vaguely sense that the Ice Heart had discovered the emotional power I had infused.”

Although it was only for a brief moment, when he controlled the power of emotion and injected it into the dream, his sacred body of the artifact did indeed keenly sense a trace of the pure heart and a strong emotional fluctuation.

This gave Brad even more confidence. He patted his hunched, somewhat stiff back with one hand and said with satisfaction:

"Ice Heart must be incredibly grateful to me right now..."

"That's good, that's good." Hope breathed a long sigh of relief, like an old father.

He was worried about more than just Saint Lena's personal safety. Unlike Pope Brad, who was indifferent to affairs, he was also carrying the weight of the Holy Church, a massive organization with Saint Lena as its core business and a cult dedicated to promoting God and humanity!

The fact that Saint Lena has been unconscious for so long has a minor impact on the faith of believers and ordinary people... The key issue is that it prevents us from conducting advanced research on Lena's aesthetics, filming daily vlogs of Saint Lena, and releasing new types of Lena figurines!

The most popular Lena figure recently, featuring a greatsword held between her thighs, has already passed its peak popularity. The Holy Church urgently needs to release new Lena figures to maintain the enthusiasm of its believers.

However, the inspiration had already formed in his mind. Hope looked at the ice ball containing the frozen Saintess Lena in the basement with some anticipation: the "Lena - Ice Heart Backlash - Crystal Ball Version" in front of him was very promising!

The only problem is that it's not a good time to release it. If believers ask where the inspiration came from, why the official updates on Saint Lena have been so long, or if she's really being corrupted by the Ice Heart, then it'll be hard to answer!

And… looking up at Lena sleeping inside the ice puck, Hope felt that even if it were really made into a crystal ball, something was still missing…

However, these are all things that need to be considered after Saintess Lena awakens.

In short, the more important the awakening of the saint is to the Holy Church, the more eager Hope is for Lena to awaken.

Helping Pope Brad to sit down on a white sheet that was slightly less cold, Hope paced back and forth like someone with ADHD, staring at the ice hockey puck that hadn't changed in just a few minutes.

"Calm down, Hope." Brad smiled, adopting a pope-like demeanor to soothe her.

“I’ve handled all the details of the operation, and I can assure you that, ideally, the ice hockey’s frozen state will ease soon, and Lena may be able to wake up from the ice hockey in just tonight.”

“I’m not questioning your superb ritual magic skills, Your Holiness,” Hope said worriedly. “But you also said that’s the ideal situation… what if there are less than ideal situations?”

Looking at Saintess Lena inside the ice hockey puck, Hope asked with some apprehension:

“Your Holiness, what if Saint Lena’s backlash is different? What if she is not affected by negative emotions but by positive emotions… then what we are doing might have the opposite effect?”

As soon as he finished speaking, Brad paused slightly, then his body became even more hunched, his head bowed to the ground, and he began to cough violently.

Hope was shocked and rushed forward to help Brad up. He felt an unprecedented tremor from Brad's semi-mechanical body and was about to ask him something when Brad suddenly raised his head and let out a trembling, old laugh.

"Heh, heh heh heh... Hope, you really are... Don't you want to listen to what you're saying?"

Although Brad still looks like an old man, his mechanized body has long since made him forget about age. After listening to Hope's words, he relaxed and burst into laughter, wiping away tears from his left eye.

"Even though I, the Pope, have been traveling the continent and far from the capital for nearly ten years, I have still heard of the name 'Ice Rose of the Kingdom of Kur.' You mean... that ice sculpture beauty who never shows any emotion to anyone, as aloof as an iceberg, the legendary 'Ice Saintess,' can be moved by positive emotions???"

Raising his head, Brad's throat trembled as if something was stuck in it or metal was rubbing against it. His laughter was so distorted that it echoed in the basement.

"If such a thing were to happen, then the position of 'Iron-Blooded Pope'... could be given to someone else!"

Chapter 160 The Death of the Pure Heart

Hope was taken aback, then somewhat awkwardly withdrew her hand, lowered her head in shame, and finally realized what she had said wrong.

You should know that anyone in the Holy Church can say such ignorant things, but he, as the Archbishop of the Holy Church, should not have said such nonsense—this is tantamount to overturning all of the "Three No-Nos of the Ice Saintess," and he will be attacked by the believers!

"Good to know." Brad was about to smile and nod.

At this time.

Behind them, inside the ice sphere where the saintess was, a series of cracking sounds suddenly came from.

The commotion drew Brad and Hope's attention. Brad's stiff face twitched, a hint of joy flashing across his muscles, and he instinctively walked towards the hockey puck.

"Oh? It took effect so quickly? It seems the herbs you bought, Hope, are very potent. Otherwise, they wouldn't be so effective..."

Brad was genuinely overjoyed. Judging from the looks of it, he might not even need to wait until late at night; he would soon be able to completely devour the Heart of Ice!

At that point, whether he leaves the capital after achieving his goal or quietly eliminates Hope and Lena in this basement, it will all be done in the blink of an eye. Even more... he might even try to awaken all the holy artifacts underground in the Holy Church, assemble that thing, activate all the holy artifacts, and then devour them all at once!

However, the conditions for that thing to take shape were too demanding, otherwise he wouldn't have set his sights on the Ice Heart. Brad licked his lips and slowly walked step by step to the ice sphere at the center of the ritual circle, his greedy gaze fixed on the center of the ice sphere...

My body felt like a machine that had stopped working, and I froze on the spot.

Brad's left eye, as if questioning the meaning of life, froze on his face along with his prosthetic right eye.

"It's a success? That's wonderful, Your Holiness..."

Hope, who caught up later, came up behind Brad with a hopeful look, looked up at the hockey puck in front of him, and suddenly froze.

A chilling cold, like the arrival of winter, accumulated deep and heavy in the basement...

Rubbing his eyes, Hope was still unsure, so he cast a holy spell to dispel illusions before finally looking intently at what was in front of him again.

Inside the transparent ice sphere, frost spread across the frozen body of Saint Lena, her pale pink cheeks resembling Sleeping Beauty lost in a beautiful dream, her body radiating an aura of contentment and happiness, seemingly unconcerned about the outside world.

In his chest, the once clear and pure heart of ice had become dim and somewhat turbid, as if his soul had cracked, causing the cold air to leak uncontrollably from within the ice ball...

Pure white ice flowers began to bloom inside the transparent ice sphere, reinforcing the frozen seal of the sphere inch by inch, making it even more impenetrable to strangers.

The dense snowflakes were growing wildly at an almost euphoric pace, making it nearly impossible to see Lena in the center through the ice of the hockey puck.

"This...this is really thawing?"

Hope's eyes widened. It didn't seem like it at all. Rather than thawing, it resembled the legendary double barrier that the Ice Heart would activate only when facing a human extinction crisis—a barrier that, it was said, even the Demon King couldn't shake!

This scene is almost like the backlash from the Ice Heart has worsened... wait, worsened?!

A sudden inspiration struck Hope, and he realized what was missing from his "Lena - Ice Heart Backlash - Crystal Ball Version"—a freely changing background! The barrier that caused the Ice Heart Backlash to recede within layers of dense ice flowers, finally revealing the stunningly beautiful face of the Ice Saintess slumbering deep within the icy depths—this was simply the most ingenious design!

However, the current situation seems to be exactly the opposite, doesn't it?

Snapped!

The next moment, Hope slapped himself hard. Big Head finally regained his composure and, realizing the situation was dire, he looked to Pope Brad for help, his expression astonished: "Your Holiness, what... what's going on?"

However, Brad had long since stopped listening to him.

He stared blankly at the ever-deepening ice layer around the puck, his mind blank, unable to process what was happening for a long time.

"Ice, a pure heart, my pure heart..."

As a master of artifacts and the most diligent researcher of sacred artifacts and relics, he could roughly understand the backlash situation just from the appearance of the ice ball in front of him.

Unlike Hope, who naively believed the backlash was merely worsening and, in her ignorance, still held onto hope of reversal, Brad's lips twitched in despair, knowing the situation was far more complex than that—

If the self-freezing state of the Ice Heart could be relieved naturally in one or two years, allowing Saintess Lena to recover from the backlash, then...

At this moment, this situation of adding ice to ice is no longer a simple case of "shattered heart," but rather "cracked heart"! It's almost a death sentence with only a breath left!

It's no longer a question of whether Lena will wake up in a few years or decades; she may never wake up from her frozen state!

"Who?! Who has done such a vicious thing to Iceheart?!" Brad clutched his chest, his face contorted in a state of mental collapse.

Like sacred artifacts, once a relic "dies," it will turn into a pile of loose sand and become a piece of scrap metal with no power left!

Even more fatally, the Ice Heart has frozen itself and Lena inside the ice layer. All the power of the relics has been used for the protection of the ice ball. Not only can it not devour the relics, but it can only watch helplessly as the Ice Heart dies. Once the Ice Heart dies, the power carried by countless relics will slowly turn into the cold air of the ice ball and dissipate into the air, unable to be absorbed by the essence of the "decaying artifact".

"Why? Why is this happening?"

Brad took a few steps back in disbelief, completely baffled as to why the ritual magic had not only been ineffective but had also caused Lena to sink completely into a dream: "Where exactly did things go wrong?"

To ensure the effectiveness of the ritual, he even perfectly transformed the medicinal power of every herb into emotional power!

With his over 100-year-old single, precision-level A control!

"Could it be... that I remembered wrong? It's not that I need to use herbs with opposite emotions, but rather herbs with the same emotions?"

In an instant, Brad began to have deep doubts about his century-long knowledge of studying sacred artifacts and relics, and about the sacred body of the artifact that had never been given away for free.

People shouldn't, at least not, become this senile.

"Uh, Your Holiness, what are you doing?"

Archbishop Hope watched in utter bewilderment as his Pope, after a period of chaos, suddenly cast various divine spells on different parts of his body, including the most basic and ordinary "purification" spell.

Brad looked up and said solemnly:

"I'm performing a full body disinfection..."

Chapter 161 It must have been the goddess who did it!!!

However, every response from his body proved that Brad showed no signs of "brain lapse," whether in his physical body or his mechanical mind.

So where exactly did the problem lie? Brad's aged face looked somewhat helpless at this moment.