Zhou Liye was a meticulous person when playing games. He didn't leave immediately, but instead looked at the ending of Copernicus's story.
It turns out that after Copernicus sent everyone away—including his apprentices and the assassins protecting him—he went to the church and walked right into their trap.
He believed this would buy him more time, so he did it without hesitation.
In the end, he died alone in the church's cell, and his body was disposed of by the church.
It is said that on the night before he died, he looked up at the starry sky through the iron bars, muttering calculations to himself—just like every other night before.
The game then moves to the next stage, where the player must persuade Bruno to continue his research.
Bruno had already withdrawn from this research because he had a wife and a lovely daughter, and he didn't want to be wanted by the church again, which would implicate his family.
Later, Zhou Liye continued with the main quest, and Bluebell went to rescue Copernicus's disciples and many more wizards... Some of these people unfortunately died at the hands of the church, some chose to retire, but many more continued their research.
As more and more blood-stained research data came in, Bruno's attitude changed at a visible pace.
He couldn't resist any longer and secretly slipped out in the middle of the night to look at the documents.
At first, he only looked at a little bit of the research results and then had a sudden realization.
Later, he began to read it all night long, unable to extricate himself, and then hurriedly burned his draft paper at dawn.
Later, he became completely obsessed with it, and even during the day he would often stare blankly at the sky, his fingers unconsciously calculating on the table.
The turning point came one day when Bruno was teaching his young daughter to read. He asked, "Sweetie, do you know why the sun rises in the east and sets in the west?"
His daughter replied, "Because the great God is driving the sun."
Bruno was stunned and tossed and turned all night.
From that day on, Bruno suddenly began to attend wizard gatherings again and study with more like-minded people.
Later, they perfected the heliocentric theory into a complete theory, and even redeveloped pantheism and polytheism, which began to spread widely among shamans and some common people.
The truth will out.
After a mission, Zhou Liye discovered that Bruno had been arrested.
The church finally arrested Bruno on charges of "spreading heresy" and ransacked his house—fortunately, thanks to the Bluebell assassins, Bruno's wife and daughters were protected and sent away.
The church decided to publicly execute Bruno by burning him at the stake—to be burned to death on the gallows.
Although Bluebell Flower had been working hard and Zhou Liye had also tried her best to complete the task, they ultimately failed.
The Knights Templar had secretly moved Bruno away long ago and carried him out by burning at the stake in another city.
By the time Zhou Liye arrived again, it was too late; only a charred corpse lay rolled beneath the gallows…
To be honest, Zhou Liye suddenly felt like crying again.
According to the main quest, Zhou Liye disguised himself as a servant cleaning the place and, together with the others, collected the charred corpse and planned to bury it in a pit outside the city.
While everyone else slacked off, Zhou Liye used a cart to move the body away by himself.
Out of respect for the great scientist, Zhou Liye followed the mission instructions and tidied up Bruno's appearance.
But when he struggled to open the charred, curled-up corpse, he was surprised to find several pieces of paper that had not yet been completely burned under his armpit!
Ancient methods of burning were very primitive and could not completely burn a human body.
Bruno actually tucked the precious research data between his chest and the flames, enduring the inhuman torture of being burned by the flames, slowly curling himself into a ball... and ultimately protecting the few sheets of paper.
Zhou Liye burst into tears, wailing as she hurriedly salvaged the papers.
The edges of these documents were charred, and only the handwritten words of Bruno could be seen in the middle.
Players who witnessed this scene, as well as viewers in the live stream, were all deeply shocked, and many watched it with tears in their eyes.
This knowledge is common sense that everyone in the interstellar age—even every toddler—knows; normally, no one would even bother to read these few sentences.
But in that era, it was both a sin and a salvation.
Zhou Liye buried Bruno's body overnight, and fearing that the church would discover it again, he only took a charred button from his body.
He then took the information back to Bluebell—where the assassins and wizards held a grand funeral.
Like Copernicus, they also built a cenotaph for Bruno.
The tombstone reads: "Here lies a wizard who sacrificed himself to defend the truth; his virtue and wisdom will forever shine in the long river of human civilization."
Chapter 153 The Legacy of the Spark
In the blink of an eye, the camera shifts to "twenty years later."
After Bruno's death, the wizarding gatherings had to be discontinued due to stricter church oversight.
But the wizards did not give up. With the help of the bluebells, they moved to a new city to continue their research.
There, the wizards elected a new leader—Galileo.
At this time, Zhou Liye, due to his outstanding performance in many previous missions, was already an elite-level silver-ranked assassin.
Zhou Liye's main task now is not to protect Galileo as he travels around, but to get Galileo a telescope.
There are some differences between this and historical records, because Galileo was actually born several centuries after Bruno...
However, it's understandable that the game chooses to make the storyline more compact.