The Granger family believed in the god of the sun and the earth, the Lantern Man, so this chapel, which was built a hundred years ago, was also the Sun Church. Generally speaking, the specifications of churches in cemeteries are different from those of regular churches. This was also the first time that Shade had seen a Sun Church in a cemetery.
Although it has been abandoned for more than three hundred years, and the cathedral in the city of Randall Valley no longer sends priests here, the church in the abandoned cemetery looks to have been maintained, perhaps because the lumberjacks who came to work here repaired it out of respect, or for some other reason, and at first glance it does not look like it was destroyed three hundred years ago.
The great earthquake in 1498 destroyed the most important underground tomb area in the Granger family cemetery. According to Earl Granger, although attempts were made to reopen the closed underground tomb area after the earthquake, they gave up after finding it too difficult.
The underground rock layer in this area is extremely thick. If you want to dig up the ground, you actually dig up large rocks instead of soil. Therefore, there is no need to worry about someone easily stealing those dusty tombs. When the strangers arrived in 1854 of the Common Calendar, the only area worth exploring was the small church in front of them.
"If it weren't for the memoirs that mentioned that Mr. Leman left one of the four gem keys to his descendants for safekeeping, I would really doubt whether today was a waste of time."
Xia De muttered that in the book "Butterfly Family: My Life", only a few chapters were used to introduce Mr. Laiman's arrangements for his own funeral. The book did not mention the location of the cemetery, but mentioned the whereabouts of the four gems.
One was kept together with the memoirs, near the statue of the ancient god; one was entrusted to a good friend to take away from home; one was given to the most beloved daughter to pass on to future generations; and one was thrown into the trading market, letting fate decide the direction in which it would go.
Because the colors of the four gems were mentioned in the memoirs, Shad was able to confirm that the white gem provided by Stone Oxenfurt was the one "entrusted to a friend to take away from home."
That's why Xia De thought that he should get something after coming all the way here today. If not, he could only consider spending precious coins and asking Luvia to help him with divination.
The gray outer wall of the chapel in the cemetery was covered with vines that had withered in winter. All the windows were boarded up, but fortunately the door was not.
The lower end of the rusty metal door had almost merged with the ground. Shade pushed it but it didn't open. He used the key to unlock it but it still wouldn't open. Only then did he realize that the deformation of the door frame had completely blocked the door.
"I apologize for that."
He said softly, then kicked the door open and reminded himself to find a way to seal the door again before leaving.
The interior of the chapel, which had been closed for a long time, was extremely cold and filled with a foul smell. The area of this chapel was quite limited, usually only including the main hall for prayer and the living area for the clergy.
At this time, the main hall was empty, with some construction waste piled up in the corners. The remains of dead rats and spiders fell in hidden corners, and no one knew which side starved to death first.
Xia De bent down and tried to pick up the iron door that he had kicked completely off the door frame and put it against the wall, but after lifting the thick metal door, he found that the lock of the door had signs of being damaged, but he was not sure whether this happened dozens or hundreds of years ago.
Then, he actually saw a barely detectable trace of blood on the rusty metal handle on the inside of the door. There was an extremely sharp protrusion on the door handle, which looked like it was accidentally scratched.
"Interesting, who has been here before—Echoes of Blood."
He narrowed his eyes slightly, and the barely noticeable bloodstain on the door handle immediately began to emit a scarlet glow.
Xia De then looked at the ground under the door frame and saw the dripping blood. It seemed that the wound was quite large.
However, the owner of the wound did not seem to have any intention of treating his wound. Shad looked inside the church and saw scarlet blood dripping on the ground at regular intervals.
He walked inside along the bloodstains, but found that the bloodstains did not spread to the back of the church where the clergy lived, but extended all the way to the stone pulpit and then disappeared.
"He treated the wound here?"
Because the windows were closed, the light inside the church was quite dim. In order to prevent the ranger from following him, Shade did not light up the light on his fingertips. Therefore, in the darkness, he could easily see the lower side behind the pulpit, which was faintly glowing with scarlet light, representing bloodstains.
The amount of blood here is extremely small. If the sunlight at the door could not reach such a deep place, Xia De would not have been able to observe it at all:
"Instead of bandaging and cleaning your wound, you came here in a hurry... What's here?"
Behind the pulpit is where the clergy stand, similar to a podium, and the space below is usually empty. Xia De also bent down and squatted, relying on his own dark vision to observe the location of the bloodstain. He tried to reach out and touch it, and was surprised to find that there was a stone button that could be pressed on the inner side of the stone pulpit, and the faint bloodstain was attached here:
"Is there really a secret?"
He did not rush to press the button, but cast a silencing spell first. After making sure he was ready, he pressed the button that seemed to be stuck.
As a harsh friction sound that only Shade could hear was heard, the pulpit moved to the right as a whole, revealing a hole leading to the underground and the steps at the hole.
Xia De took a deep breath and was about to light up the light on his fingertips and walk down, but he heard a dull roar coming from the bottom of the cave. Just as he was wondering what this was, a pale green light shone out from the cave entrance.
"Moonlight Greatsword."
The silver sword was pulled out of thin air. Two seconds later, as the pale green light became stronger, Shade also saw the source of the light. An evil spirit with tattered clothes and a skull-like face floated out from the depths of the cave along the steps, holding an oil lamp in his left hand and a shovel in his right hand.
"This outfit... ... a tomb robber?"
The dark interior of the church was illuminated with a bleak green. Shade took two steps back to leave room for himself to fight. The floating undead roared again, raised the oil lamp, and turned into smoke and disappeared at the bottom of the cave.
Left side.
As the roar of the undead came again from the left, Shad hurriedly dodged to the right. Then a pale green light appeared at the source of the sound. The evil spirit wielding a shovel slashed towards the place where Shad had originally stood, and the pale green weapon struck sparks on the ground.
Although the undead looked extremely terrifying, Shade was used to seeing similar things in Midhill Castle.
While the evil spirit was lifting the falling shovel, Shade took a step forward and swung the greatsword in his hand. The greatsword went straight through the evil spirit's body, but it did not destroy it directly, but made its soul color become much darker.
"Um?"
This is the first time I have encountered an evil spirit that is resistant to the Moonlight Greatsword.
The evil spirit opened its arms and puffed out its chest, the mouth of its skull opened, and a rune light flashed on its forehead. At the same time as the piercing scream appeared, obvious shock waves appeared in the air around it.
Xia De, who was nearby, was swept by the ripples and felt that his spiritual recovery speed suddenly slowed down. This was not a permanent slowdown, but it would take at least half a minute to recover:
"No, this is not a normal undead! It is the guard here!"
This method, which is specifically used to deal with ring sorcerers, is the product of a special undead ritual. Knowing this, Shade did not intend to hold back. As the evil spirit holding the oil lamp and wielding the shovel like a sickle quickly floated towards him, he raised his empty left hand and slashed forward with moonlight.
The undead's shovel smashed into the silver arc of light, and then the shovel emitting green light and the Silver Moon Slash perished together, which further confirmed the speculation that this undead was set up by the ring warlock to guard the door.
Xia De continued to retreat, this time with his left hand raised, and a rotating silver light wheel took shape in his hand. The moonlight wheel was thrown at the evil spirit that had lost its weapon, and the evil spirit immediately picked up the oil lamp in his hand that was emitting green light.
The lamp did not provide protection, but it actually absorbed the light of the moonlight wheel. However, as a price, the lamp was unable to contain the power of the holy moonlight and shattered into a point of light.
"Now!"
Xia De still did not choose to approach this evil spirit whose power was unknown. This time, the lightning in his hand exploded. The silver lightning spear left a bright silver light mark in the dim church, and then pierced through the evil spirit's chest and exploded with the evil spirit.
The lightning gun did not produce much smoke and dust from the explosion, but only left some jumping arcs on the ground.
After the smoke and dust cleared and he carefully confirmed that the evil spirit was really destroyed, Xia De breathed a sigh of relief and walked down along the hole exposed under the pulpit.
The stairs were not long, and below the cave entrance was a relatively flat square basement that was about half the size of Xia De's bedroom.
Two skeletons were lying against the wall at the end of the stairs. One of them was dressed exactly like the evil spirit just now. These were the tomb robbers who came together.
In the small underground space, two walls were lined with stone tables, and one wall was lined with cabinets. On the table were flasks, funnels, scales, beakers, and a few books, while in the cabinets were various biological material samples. Because they were preserved with a liquid like formalin, one-third of the contents in the bottles in the cabinet were still intact. Xia De could see frogs, snakes, and something like a tiger whip soaked in them.
As for the ground between the table and the cabinet, there was a huge ritual array painted on it that was already severely faded, but in Shade's opinion, it was still exquisite and complex. He could sense the reaction of the elements left in these traces without even touching them.
"The Ringwitch's laboratory."