"This tomb belongs to the former priest."
Ben replied coldly: "He jumped off the wall after he was drunk, fell to the point of internal bleeding, and died the next day. So don't worry, even if there are resentful spirits, they will only drink and won't come to you." "
"Hey, you actually instigated me to dig up the tomb of the previous generation of secret keeper?"
"It's really troublesome, just don't let it go."
"Wait a minute, I want it! I want it!"
Wolf Flute grimaced and continued digging the grave. With the help of surgery and medication, his tragic injuries had been forcibly healed. Although serious hidden dangers were left, he could still receive more advanced treatment after returning to the Holy City.
Now he was sweating profusely while digging the grave. He only regretted that he had not done more physical work in the Holy City, otherwise he would not have started to out of breath in such a short time.
Just digging, the sound of the shovel became rhythmic, and the wolf flute was enjoying the pain, and even sang: "One little, two little, three little Indians ~ four little, five little, Six little Indians~"
Just before Father Ben's endurance reached its limit and he killed the guy who sang the scary children's song, Wolf Flute finally heard the sound of the shovel colliding with the sarcophagus.
He became energetic, dug hard, and soon cleared out a large coffin board.
Seeing that it was almost done, the priest pushed away the wolf flute, took out a crowbar from his sleeve, stuffed it into the crack of the coffin, and pried it hard. With the sound of nails breaking, a gap was opened in the sarcophagus, and the entire sarcophagus was quickly lifted open.
Wolf Flute was stunned.
Instead of smelling a stench, he smelled incense from the church in this decaying cemetery, which made him particularly uneasy.
The priest turned on the lantern and swept it over the coffin. Wolf Flute only had time to see a piece of white bones as rugged as a blooming flower, but could not see the full picture of the thing.
Until a strong wind blew from the sky, sweeping the black clouds away into the distance, and the moonlight shone everywhere.
Under the cold moonlight, the deceased in the coffin seemed to be smiling at the two long-lost guests.
The priest's face was gloomy, and Wolf Flute took a breath of air:
"What the fuck is this?"
…
In the sarcophagus that has been buried for hundreds of years, there is a scarlet color.
That's the Lycoris flower in full bloom. They take root and grow on that lush skeleton, exuding a gorgeous scent like incense, blooming enchantingly.
Under the layers of Lycoris flowers, a corpse that looked like something that could only exist in a nightmare stood in front of them.
On the dark skull that looked like a grin, in addition to the two eye holes of a normal person, there were two gaps on the forehead, where the other two eyeballs were.
The skeleton, which was more than three meters tall, lay on its back in the coffin, with six arms clasped in front of its chest. The two palms are spread out at the top, and the ten fingers are intertwined, like rising flames; the two palms are folded on the chest, and the ten fingers are close together like lotus buds; the two palms, the ten fingers are interlaced like chains, turning into iron locks.
Under the embrace of six arms, something seemed to be guarded.
There were layers of bone plates growing where the ribs should have been, and all the barbs on them had been broken.
A pair of torn bone wings extended from the back to the front. Even though they had turned into white bones, the bone wings were still covered with a film that looked like bronze.
The aura of madness surged in the sarcophagus, just like the burial place of demons. Even though he was dead, he still seemed to be jumping out of the sarcophagus and flying towards the moonlight.
This is not the body left behind after death of a human being at all. It is more like a monster made of black iron, bronze and silver, and it should only exist in the nightmare of the craftsman!
Wolf Flute stretched out his shovel expressionlessly and poked the alloy-like bones. The metal collided with metal, emitting a subtle low cry, attracting the response of countless souls in the darkness.
He held the shovel and froze.
A gust of wind blew, and the shovel in his hand shattered into powder silently. The iron powder floated in the air, and seemed to pierce into the lungs as he breathed, making people feel chilled all over.
-The Curse of Ashes.
It was a curse set up by a musician of the transformation system, carving music into the bones. Just a slight collision would trigger the backlash of the ether, causing everything that touched it to be shattered into pieces.
He tilted his head and looked at Ben: "Hey, Father, do all the people in your sect become like this after they drink too much and get over the wall?"
"Ah, what I just said was just to scare you. I just wanted to see how deflated you were."
The priest nonchalantly revealed the lie just now, with a calm expression as if he had no ill intentions. When he looked down at the corpse, his eyes were as cold as looking at the dust: "When he died, he was no longer a human being, he was treated as the corpse of a beast. Just watch."
"Then what to do now?"
Langdi asked: "The two of us squat here and wait for a few more decades for the Ashes curse to dissipate?"
"The sarcophagus is connected to the entire cemetery. Unless the entire cemetery is dug out from the ground, the curse of ashes cannot be dissipated." The priest turned to look at him and stretched out his hand:
"Bring out your appointment papers."
Langdi was stunned for a moment and hurriedly took out the piece of paper that looked like it was stained red with blood from his satchel. That piece of paper was printed with the pear-shaped watermark exclusive to the sect, which was a natural anti-counterfeiting mark. The priest put the paper in front of the lantern and looked sideways. Several numbers were vaguely revealed in the blood-stained area.
"S7: 6-3242? What is this code?"
"The 'Authorized Secret Text' issued by the Holy City Cardinal Office allows believers to use it to exert divine power. S is the abbreviation of Seraph, which means the first sequence under the throne of God, and 7 is the number, which refers to the 'Burning Serpent' - Destruction The power of all disasters and demons. This is the authorization given to me by the Council of Cardinals. What follows is a one-time cipher text, and we have our own way of interpreting it."
The priest explained calmly and took out an ancient clock from his arms.
The clock, which was about the size of two fists, was more like a large bell, but the bell was not so solemn. It is very old, with lines of incantations densely engraved on it, and the emblems of the Three Saints surrounding it.
Under the moonlight, the brass bell silently reflects silver light.
Then, the copper bell was struck by the priest with a complicated rhythm.
There was obviously no sound, but it was like someone suddenly sighed softly in the void.
In the silence, the screams of countless bats suddenly rang out. They flew into the sky in a hurry, crashing aimlessly, and even crashed to death on tombstones and walls in horror.
The sound, inaudible to human ears, spread like a drop of water falling into a still lake, so the ripples spread in all directions. Suddenly it reached thousands of miles away, and in the holy city thousands of miles away, a huge pitch-black bell responded loudly.
Immediately afterwards, the clock in the priest's hand shattered, turning silently into iron sand under the moonlight. The iron sand poured down from the priest's hand like water and scattered in the air.
Wolf Flute's expression suddenly changed.
Light emerged from the iron sand, and a huge amount of ether gathered and poured into it, causing countless dust particles to fly and causing holy objects to emerge from the iron sand.
It was a rare broad-edged sword, made entirely of green gold, and the blade was full of chips and cracks.
There are still traces of forging on the spine of the sword, like layers of wrinkles like blooming peonies. If you look carefully, the layers of wrinkles are actually composed of countless holy names and scriptures. At the end of the sword hilt, the fourth generation of popes left their names and the three-ring overlapping holy emblem, proving that God has the power to grant this weapon. When it is cut down, everything will break like a clay pot. .
The holy emblem and the scriptures were filled with endless power, making the sword body red, causing the blade to vibrate endlessly, turning into a blurry shadow.
- Came in response to the call of prayer, and divine power descended from there!
"I will fill the river with its waters and make it flow without ceasing."
The priest chanted softly, grasped the hilt of the sword, and let the power of the flames burn him: "—My Lord, for you."
He gripped the blade tightly and held it high.
Everything was silent, as if solidified and frozen by invisible force.
Immediately afterwards, the sword blade pointed downwards!
The silence was shattered, because the heat and explosion were contained in the chopping, and it only flashed for a moment, tearing apart all the light and shadow, making it impossible to look directly at it.
The dead bones in the coffin were shaking violently, and on the dead bones, the scarlet Lycoris flowers trembled. They bloomed, danced, and then withered into dust in an instant, flying all over the sky.
The dust was mixed with petals, and it was a blood-like color in the moonlight.
They flew out from the sarcophagus endlessly, spreading in the cold wind, like a group of awakened blood butterflies.
And that sword continued to thrust downward against the almost endless blood butterflies!
Until finally, it collides with the skeleton. The sword blade and the dead bones vibrated and screamed, as if they were in a furnace of molten steel, so the sounds when they resonated with each other were terrifying and harmonious.
Soon, the sound dissipated, the blade dissipated, and the butterfly dissipated.
Everything is like a dream and has never happened.
But Langdi lowered his head blankly, staring at the bones in the sarcophagus but unable to move his eyes away.
…
In the sarcophagus, the six arms of the ferocious corpse slowly opened. The chest bone plate unfolds like petals, revealing what is hidden in the core.
A black iron box that is completely integrated.
The curse of calamity was silently cut apart by the sword that came from thousands of miles away.
Thinking of that kind of light, Lang Di felt like his whole body was hairy. It was the power extracted after interfering with the great source. Even the mirror image and the remaining power were heart-stopping:
"That sword... is the 'Gate of Heaven' forged by four generations of popes?"
"That's right."
Father Ben took back the hold's palm: "That cipher text is the real key. Without it, the cage of bones cannot be opened."
"The technology of the Order is truly breathtaking."
Wolf Flute sighed and pointed at the corpse in the sarcophagus: "What about it? What is this corpse?"
"Didn't I tell you? He was the secret keeper of the previous generation."
Ben was still expressionless: "He was ordered to go to the north to find the whereabouts of that thing a hundred years ago, and then found it... in the territory of the 'Dark Earth Mother'."
"The natural disaster that the Pope defeated?"
"Yes. The secret keeper spent three years making a plan, sacrificing six members of his team to bring that thing back. But he himself was also eroded by the power of the natural disaster and began to go crazy, turning into this ghostly appearance. , forgetting who he is. In order to kill him, the Order dispatched six Templar Knights, and finally he died in the hands of my father... He has become an evil ghost, and the evil ghost also knows his own child. He saw My father relaxed after that, curled up next to the fire, ate dry food, and fell asleep peacefully. He may have known that there was iron sand in the dry food, and the iron sand turned into a blade and pierced his heart from the inside. In the end, he did not He resisted and preserved his own glory.”
"...It's really a huge price."
Wolf Flute was silent for a long time and sighed softly.
Father Ben drew a holy emblem on his chest, his lowered eyes were still cold: "It's just a person's life and death."
"The fear between life and death is enough to awe, so why distinguish by quantity?"
Wolf Flute bent down and held up the black box among the bones with awe. Blow away the dust and broken bones.
Under the moonlight, he unscrewed the secret lock of the box, reached in and rubbed it, his expression changed. At the end, he took a deep breath and nodded: "Yes, it's exactly the same as what the teacher and I described."
He put away the iron box and bent slightly towards the priest: "Thanks to the cooperation of the order, my mission has been completed."
"This is also my mission. I thought I would die of old age here, but I didn't expect that I would be liberated today."
In silence, the priest stared down at the sarcophagus, stretched out his hand towards the bones, and made a virtual sign of the Holy Emblem: "You are free too. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Those who should go, don't stay anymore."
As a result, the wind blew from the sea and blew over everyone's noses, dispelling the rotten smell lingering in the cemetery.
In the gentle wind, the ferocious corpse seemed to have become quiet. It was no longer manic and remained silent forever. Under the moonlight, the bronze bone wings reflected silvery light, giving it a different kind of holiness and solemnity.
"It's so beautiful."
Wolf Flute took one last look at it, shoveled up the dirt from the ground, and covered its body.