Due to the shortage of dormitories, Ethan and Samuel were placed in rooms in the Puji district, which were used to help the poor or the homeless. The room that can accommodate six people is simple but complete, with refrigerators and other furniture almost built into the walls, and even an automatic drink synthesizer. Taniser never came to see them, but sent another apprentice to bring them over.
The four desperate-looking Eve Wanderers in the room gathered to talk about the huge Requiem that will take place in the Temple two days later on Holy Spirit Day. Ethan heard them saying that this Requiem Ceremony was not open to the public, and only invited priests, royal nobles or officials could participate, which was very mysterious. Ethan seemed to overhear them talking about Tanithel, saying it was a pity not to see the lyre played by the White Priestess, and how wonderful and even wonderland the performance last year was. It's just that these conversations came to an abrupt end when they saw them come in, and the homeless people dispersed, seeming to be very afraid of them as apprentices.
Ethan greeted them kindly, and others greeted him with an almost humility.
It seems that priests are indeed a high-status profession in this country. Even apprentices can follow suit.
And Ethan was even more curious. He imagined what it would be like for Tanissell to play the Lyraine, and he was also looking forward to it.
When it was time for dinner, Taniser appeared and led them to an octagonal building. Obviously, this is where all the priests and apprentices dine. The long tables are arranged in rows, while the blue-clothed priests, the white-clothed priests, and the only purple-clothed priest in the temple, the chief priest, Sionil, sit at the front of the hall. Long table. As soon as he entered the door behind Tanisel, a bunch of curious eyes were cast over. Taniser is notorious for not accepting apprentices, but now he has accepted two for the first time in the world, and one has to wonder how sacred those two apprentices are.
Ethan suddenly thought it was a stupid idea to come in with Tanisel. At the same time, a sense of taste made him a little uncomfortable...
Tanithel was still there smiling at all the priests or apprentices who passed by him, and he smiled so charmingly, is this person always so casually discharged
For the third time, the urge to hide him from the sight of others swirled in his mind.
The dinner was a buffet, and Tanissell took his two "apprentices" very intimately to familiarize themselves with the place where the meal was served, pointed to where the bathroom was, and thoughtfully added a few more pieces to Ethan's plate. The meat of a kind of animal that looks like a deer and a horse, which is a specialty of Eve, said "You are too thin" like a half-complaint, causing the priests who slapped them in front and behind to throw waves of strangeness. look…
Then, Taniser actually planned to sit with them at an ordinary long table to eat, instead of joining the three priests in white at the same level as him in front of the long table. The priests, even the high priests began to look their way. Ethan hurriedly whispered, "Hey! Hurry up and sit where you should be!"
"I'm eating here today." Taniser Shishiran replied.
Samuel still pretended to be deaf and mute and did not speak, just looking at the show.
"Ethan, I'll take you to a place during Vespers for a while. As for Samuel, you can wander around as you please. By the way, this is for you." Ball stuff, "If you want to leave the temple and go outside, take this with you, and you can get in touch with me at any time."
Samuel put the ball away and nodded at him.
During vespers, almost all the priests and apprentices gathered in the prayer hall. Tanisel led Ethan through the empty and magnificent corridors, entered the underground along the revolving stairs, and turned along the winding corridors. a few turns. A tall stone gate is crisscrossed with many tortuous straight lines. The pattern is somewhat similar to the line on the egg of the prelude. Taniser drew a few patterns on it, and a beam of light irradiated it and scanned his pupils. It opened slowly.
The pure and pure blue suddenly overflowed, and the originally dark underground corridor suddenly became bright. At the same time, a clean and clear breath turned into a breeze, making people unable to open their eyes for a while.
It's just that I don't know why, although it is a light breath, Ethan feels very uncomfortable, like the kind of nausea he will have after eating something disgusting.
Ethan squinted his eyes and gradually adapted to the sudden light, and saw the hall in front of him clearly.
There is a tall statue of Eve in the empty hall. She has a dignified and holy look, a graceful figure and a plate in her hand.
In that plate, there were three eggs of the God of Preface.
Ethan was astonished, "This is... the place where you specialize in collecting the eggs of the gods?"
"Not bad." Tanisel took a step forward, and the door behind him slammed shut. He came to the statue of the goddess, "If you can stay here for an hour every day, maybe you can suppress the development of mutation in your body. It's just that this method can cure the symptoms but not the root cause, and even the entropy in your body will increase to a certain extent. It may hurt you later, you have to be careful."
Ethan nodded gratefully and approached some looking at those blue things. For some reason, he didn't feel very excited, and even felt a little disgusted with that blue color.
At this moment Tanisel suddenly asked, "Ethan, do you really want to be healed?"
Ethan glanced at him, and many memories flashed through his mind.
He remembered Roland's cold eyes, the condemning eyes of the Moral Court, the insults people gave him, the alienation of his father, the ignorance and betrayal he saw in the Forbidden City, and the way people faced the crisis of death. cruel. He also remembered the near-blissful thrill of killing and devouring, the feeling of being liberated from body to heart, and what the black man had said to him.
If you accept it, you can have everything, have Taniser.
Ethan hesitated, he whispered, "I don't know... I just... want to live..."
"But the so-called 'alive' is just an illusion. A group of DNA is temporarily combined to generate embryos and cells, temporarily forming a fragile creature, the purpose is to continue to reproduce and replicate its own DNA. All this is short-lived, Only death is eternity." Tanithel reached out and took out the flawed egg of the Prologue from the tray, "You know, that's why I became a priest. I thought as long as I got it, Can save my father, because at that time I believed so much in the power of Xueshen, and I thought they were as kind as written in the classics. But in the end, it can't change anything, no matter how much Xueshen energy absorbed, my father's body is still Withered day by day, I could almost see how entropy devoured his body bit by bit. That's when I knew that life and order were nothing but an illusion."
Tanithel's voice was very calm, but Ethan could see a lingering sadness in his lowered eyes. His heart also ached, and he thought of the haggard face his mother described.
His mother's once beautiful face had become his deepest nightmare.
"But, if you die, you have nothing left?" Ethan said sadly. "No matter how much you worship the God of Entropy, they still won't show you any kindness? Wouldn't they lead to death faster?"
"The God of Entropy and the God of Order are two sides of the same body, and there is no way to separate them. If there is no order force in the body of the God of Entropy, it cannot exist, and if there is no force of entropy in the body of the God of Entropy, it would have been polarized long ago. They are just more advanced than us. Living beings are just creatures who understand the rules of the universe better than we do. As long as they have a purpose, as long as I can use them for them, they will have the opportunity to profit from their confrontation and even achieve their own goals. This is actually what we believe in. Nature."
"Then..." Ethan looked at the priest seriously, "What is your ultimate goal?"
Taniser was silent for a moment, and said in a soulless tone, "I hope that all order and rules are broken, that the boundaries between life and death are blurred, and that everyone, whether alive or dead, can Fusion into one, everyone is not separated from each other, there is no hatred, there is no past or future, and we will always be together. That is the real immortality."
Ethan stared at the priest dumbfounded, as if shocked by his words and didn't know what to say.
The priest suddenly laughed, "I was joking, did I scare you?"
Ethan breathed a sigh of relief and patted his arm, "...Don't make such a joke!"
*********
On the day of the Holy Spirit Festival, the gate of the Red Moon Temple was closed, and there were even royal guards surrounding the temple layer by layer, and martial law was imposed on the blocks within a radius of one mile.
The soul ritual begins at 25:00 at night (Eve has 28 hours a day). Ethan and Samuel were lucky enough to be chosen to wait in the prayer hall with a dozen other apprentices. There are about a hundred priests invited to participate today. Except for the chief priest who has not yet appeared, all the white priests and blue priests are there. Taniser is wearing the same formal sacrificial robe as the other white priests, but he still The most dazzling one in the crowd. In addition to the high-ranking priests, there are also about fifty priests in blue clothes. Hadil, whom he had seen before, was also among them, and Ethan greeted him, but the other party seemed to pretend not to see and did not return the salute.
Samuel smiled and said that at first glance, people had a crush on Tanisel for many years, and regarded Ethan, the sudden appearance of the "room disciple", as a thorn in his side.
There is not a single light in the lobby, all the light comes from thousands of candles on the walls, reflecting the entire grand hall. From twenty-four o'clock, some Eves in noble and gorgeous clothes entered the lobby one after another, and Hadil humbly led them to the rows of seats behind the priests. Ethan noticed that all of them, male and female, ABO, were covered with black veils, and they rarely talked, and the whole hall was filled with an eerie silence.
About half an hour to twenty-five o’clock, someone suddenly shouted, “Eve and the King of the Star Kingdom—His Majesty Kronais is here—”
Everyone stood up to greet him, and Ethan quietly raised his head curiously. A few guard soldiers came in first, and then the tall man who entered didn't look much older than him. He was wearing a pure black long coat that was dragged to the ground. The same blond and silver eyes as Tanisel's were probably a family feature. Even the eyebrows and eyes seem to be somewhat similar, except that Tanisel is more refined, while King Eve is more masculine and handsome.
While everyone bowed and saluted, the king went straight to the front without looking sideways. At this time, the priest had appeared in person to greet him. King Eve exchanged a few words with him, then turned to Taniser behind him, and even hugged him, talking to him like an elder.
Ethan heard several apprentices near him whispering.
"The king really cares about Tanisel's sacrifice!"
"Of course, the king has no children so far, and the outside world has been rumored that he may not be able to bear children. If this continues, Tanisel is his heir."
"But he is already a priest in white, how can he be his heir?"
"It's not easy. When that time comes, just find an excuse to let him leave the temple."
Ethan was shocked, there was such a reason...
No wonder Tanisel was so lawless before, and even dared to steal the egg of the Prologue without authorization.
Now he was even more suspicious. With such a noble status, why did Taniser take the risk to go to Earth? Why risk your life for him again and again? Is his ultimate purpose really what he said
The time has come, and the festival begins on time. The door also closed with a bang.
At that moment, Ethan suddenly felt a little uneasy.
It was so quiet that the air seemed stagnant. In the huge hall, no one spoke. All the priests and visitors were silent, they couldn't see their faces under the layers of black veils, they didn't know who those people were, and what was going on in their minds. The sky outside the window, which should have been dark, was a strange crimson red. I don't know if it was an illusion. Some kind of faint smell of rancidity permeated the sandalwood scent of the burning candles.
Ethan suddenly began to wonder, is this really a routine festival to commemorate the dead
Silently, Theonier stood on the pulpit, placed an old and heavy book on the platform, and opened it gently.
He said in Eve, "Eternity is about to end, and the sleeping king is about to wake up."
Ethan's body shuddered suddenly, and his breathing seemed to be suddenly choked by an invisible hand.
Did he hear it wrong
Are the people on stage really reading this
He turned his head and looked around, but the people around him just looked forward with a pair of eyes that were so focused that they were a little frantic, and they didn't seem to feel anything wrong.
Theonier continued, "When order collapses, worms mourn in the hollow earth, and shadows devour entire galaxies, the extradition of the gods will open the gates of Chaos. That is the end of the old world and the beginning of the new, and the sea sleeps Lonely islands will awaken with sleeping prisoners, forgotten gods will devour all rational hallucinations, sources of ignorance and blue will nourish the universe, and we will witness heaven!"
There was some kind of yearning passion in his cadenced voice, which caused a sudden cheer of joy from the crowd.
How is this going? Ethan suddenly stood up from his seat and wanted to leave, but at this time he saw Tanisel slowly walking towards the "stage" in front of Liyinqin.
Almost at the same time, a soldier stood in front of their row, staring at him with indifferent eyes, "Please sit down."
The deterrence in that voice made Ethan know that if he did not obey at this moment, there might be more coercive means to force him to sit down. He suddenly felt that his reaction was too big, but he just heard what the black man in the dream told him in reality. Maybe he just saw this passage accidentally somewhere, and then stored it in his subconscious. such a dream...
Thinking that Tanissell was still there, he hesitated and sat back.
The handsome white priest stepped on a disc in the center of the stage full of pedals. It seemed to be a platform used to balance the weight of the body, and it did not make the sound of the Tianyin itself. He paused on it for a moment, then turned to look at Theonier.
His mentor said loudly, "The great Chaos Chaos has already sown the seeds of chaos in the world, and this seed will begin to take root today, and eventually he will throw more seeds everywhere in the universe, and he accepts the core of the universe. The gift of it, becoming its incarnation in the universe of the gods, will lead us to eternity!"
As soon as the voice fell, Taniser suddenly took the first step.
A sound of ethereal and distant music gushed out along with his flowing steps, and huge glazed discs were intertwined in the air to form a dazzling round dance. Tanisel's white robe opened into a beautiful lotus flower in the air. His steps were nimble and relaxed, and his posture was stretched and elegant, like a white swan dancing on the ice lake. With his dance steps, the moving music trembled in the frozen air. Ethan had never heard such music before, as if it did not belong to the human world, but floated down from the eternal sky.
The music is undoubtedly beautiful, but in this beauty, there is still something wrong. After listening to it for a long time, I felt that my whole body was being sucked in by something, I couldn't concentrate my consciousness, and my thoughts seemed to be captured by the melody.
The dance steps of the priest in white became more and more dense, with a pious smile on his beautiful face, and the rhythm was woven like fine spider silk, driving everything in the hall to tremble with its frequency. Ethan noticed that the people around him, including Samuel, seemed to have some kind of hypnotized expression on their faces, staring straight ahead, not knowing what they were looking at, right? focal length.
Those empty expressions that seemed to have no soul made him a little scared, and at the same time, the back of his neck suddenly started to itch and hurt.
Oops…
How could this be? Ethan didn't understand, he wanted to escape, but found himself unable to move. It turned out that the rhythm had entered his brain at some point, and he couldn't control himself not to listen to the mandala-like music with a fatal temptation.
Buzzing in his head, he seemed to be responding to the endless Tianyin music. The more I listened, the more I felt that everything around me became unreal, like a dream.
"Ethan."
The gentle voice he heard suddenly made Ethan's body shake violently.
He turned his head slowly and stiffly, and saw the beautiful woman sitting beside him.
She is about thirty years old, with dark brown long curly hair that seems to be chocolate-colored silk satin, a pair of beautiful green eyes like emerald lake water, a kind of breathtaking beauty, staring for a long time as if even the soul will lost in there. Her skin was so white that she could almost see blue blood vessels, so white that it seemed to reflect the faint candlelight. Her lips were so bright red, as if she had been bitten and oozing out of Qi Yan. Her hands are so white and slender, how suitable for pressing and rubbing the strings of a cello. Her ankles were so slender that they seemed to be able to fly.
"Mom... Mom..." Ethan choked.
The mother in front of her is exactly what she looked like in the most beautiful three days after she passed through adulthood.
"Ethan, my darling." She reached out and stroked the corner of his eyes, which were weeping uncontrollably, her fingers so cold that he shivered slightly. There was a rotten smell coming from her body, but Ethan didn't feel the smell bad at this time.
On the day he entered the forbidden city, he knew that he might never see his mother again in this life. Later, in the dream, the man said that his mother was dead, and he was also very numb, as if he thought that would happen sooner or later.
But it wasn't until now that he knew how much he missed his mother. Missing the feeling of being touched by those gentle hands on his cheeks and the top of his head, missing the blueberry pie she baked for him, missing the melodious sound of the piano coming from her house.
"Mom, I miss you so much..." He murmured this sentence on her shoulder when she reached out to hug him. His mother could no longer smell the faint perfume of the past, but the familiar touch still told him that this was his mother, the beautiful woman who gave birth to him.
"Ethan, your father has been waiting for you." His mother stroked the back of his head gently.
"Wait for me...?" Ethan shook his head with a miserable smile, "No, he has cut ties with me..."
She chuckled softly and whispered in his ear, "Silly child, I'm not talking about my husband, but your real father."
Ethan's body froze.
However, her whispering continued, that rustling voice made Ethan fall into an ice cave, "I was just engaged to my husband at the time, and then he came to my dream. He was so beautiful, so gentle, begging me Give him an heir. I can't refuse him."
Ethan broke free from his mother's arms, ignoring the tears on his face, "Mom, what are you talking about!"
"At the moment when the gods died, he has walked alone on the earth for thousands of years, deceiving and seducing the foolish lambs." She chanted, the originally fair and young skin was rapidly aging and wrinkled, and the rosy lips It quickly became shriveled, showing yellowed teeth, and the bright green eyes also rotted into maggots in an instant, leaving only two holes, "You are his pride, my baby!"