Father Augustus found the location of the tomb through the gravekeeper's records. When the two were searching in the cemetery, the occasional startled snakes and mice hiding in the ground became the only things that could bring them surprises.
Because the cemetery was not big, the two quickly found their target.
It was an inconspicuous little tomb located on the west side of the stone building that served as both a "church" and an "entrance to the crypt," close to the fence of the cemetery. The tombstone, slightly above the ground, said that the person buried here was named Mushir Lee Naim, and that the poor guy had died half a month ago.
Apart from this information, there is nothing on the tombstone, no date of birth, no cause of death, and no comments on the life of others who paid for the burial. But considering that this is just a small cemetery in the countryside, this situation is understandable.
After all, being able to have a formal cemetery where one will not be disturbed after death is a treatment that many poor people cannot even imagine.
"That's it, Shad. Come on, dig it up with me."
Father Augustus spat twice into his palms, then rubbed his hands together and prepared to work.
"Priest, do you have a grudge against this gentleman?"
Shade asked hesitantly.
"Of course not. I have been doing good deeds all my life. Even if there are some acquaintances with whom I have an unfriendly relationship, I would not disturb their graves."
The priest replied and told Shad not to waste time and that the ceremony must be arranged before two in the morning.
"So what are you doing..."
"Oh, you are wondering about this."
The priest laughed as he shoveled the dirt. Shade put the cat on the fence and prepared to work. He wanted to warn the cat not to touch the rats that must have infectious diseases, but seeing Mia squatting on the fence stakes, squinting her eyes and looking up to bathe in the moonlight, she probably wouldn't bother chasing the rats.
After all, the city cat Mia doesn't look like the kind of cat that is good at catching mice.
"A few days ago, I met a believer who came all the way from the countryside to the church to confess. She was a peasant woman from a nearby village. She confessed through a small window in the prayer room that she had not given her husband a proper funeral."
"Isn't this a nice cemetery?"
Shad took off his coat and dug with Father Augustus, piling the soil under the fence with shovels.
"She and the deceased gentleman were outsiders, and they had no acquaintances in the village to help with the funeral. So the peasant woman asked a man who happened to be staying in the village and claimed to be a scholar to help with the funeral. Everything went well, but after the funeral, the peasant woman kept dreaming about her husband, and the dead man claimed in his dreams that his soul was tortured."
The priest struggled to lift the dirt from the grave and told the story in a halting manner:
"The scholar who was paid to help with the funeral had already gone to the city, and the peasant woman suspected that the scholar had desecrated the body, so she went to the church to pray to the gods to forgive her for her disrespect for the funeral. The woman never thought of digging up the body to see what was going on."
It seems that there is something fishy about this matter.
"So why don't you let the church handle this?"
"This is not a matter of the city, and there is no clear evidence to prove that the ring wizard has anything to do with it. Even if the church accepts the case, it will take several weeks to send people to investigate the matter. After all, there are many truly important things in the city."
The priest explained, and Shade understood what he said. The three commissions that Iluna gave him last week were the backlog of things that were not taken seriously in the Blackstone Security Company.
The results also proved that although those things sounded strange, there was no need to deal with them urgently.
"Then how did you determine that there was something wrong with this matter? If you had to check it yourself every time you encountered something similar, I think you would have too many things to handle."
The priest nodded, panting and looking up at Shade:
"From this angle, how come your skin has become so good? What happened to you recently... Oh, I probably haven't told you that I have a peculiar ability. When a person is confessing, I can vaguely tell whether he is lying. This vague feeling allows me to easily distinguish what those believers want to express. This is not an easy task. When I listened to people's confessions, I saw countless dark stories."
Shad was very glad that when he prayed to the priest in Coldwater Harbor for "falling in love with multiple girls" in order to report Darkness, the distant priest did not have the ability of Father Augustus.
"But is this the special ability of Father Augustus' 'other self'?"
Boom!
The shovel in Xia De's hand hit something. Because it was hollow inside, the dull sound was completely different from the sound of digging soil hitting stone.
"etc."
The priest immediately knelt on one knee and pushed away the loose soil. As expected, he saw the wooden coffin lid that had not yet rotted:
“Found it!”
The priest was very happy that the old man came out so late and even invited Shade in the name of angel potion, just to confirm what was inside the coffin, not for any reward.
From this perspective, although Father Augustus always believed that people's hearts were dark, he was probably one of the most noble people that Shad had ever known.
The body was not cremated. After opening the coffin lid, the pungent smell made Shade and Father Augustus frown. After the summer, the body buried deep underground was severely decomposed, and the insects nourished by the body were even surging in large groups under the moonlight.
Xia De suppressed his nausea and looked up at Mia. The timid cat also saw this scene, but it didn't seem scared at all. Maybe in the eyes of the cat, it was just an ugly thing.
"Padre, don't tell me we're going to move this body out... Do you have gloves? I need three layers."
Xia De frowned and asked. The old priest also held his nose and replied in a low voice, suppressing his nausea:
"Don't worry, if we're lucky, we won't have to touch the body at all. I'm going to set up a ritual to appease the body and let the soul be free. Before I set up the ritual, detective, use your moonlight to help illuminate the body and see if there's anything wrong with it."
As he spoke, Father Augustus also picked up the lantern he had borrowed from the gravekeeper, illuminating the disgusting scene above the tomb. The moonlight on Shade's fingertips also lit up, and the silver light shone on the corpse, and a faint black mist rose up. This at least meant that there was something evil on the corpse.
"Look at this!"
Father Augustus pointed to the corpse's clasped hands. The rotten hands were so rotten that one could almost see the bones. The flesh and blood inside the skin seemed to have been emptied by insects. And in the hands, there was actually a black dagger.
No matter where in the Kingdom of Drarion, there is no custom of burying the dead with a dagger in their hands.
"It's not a relic. There's no trace of sensory elements."
Xia De covered his nose and said in a muffled voice.
"That's good news. Look, I got it out."
The priest wisely did not reach out his hand, but used magic to move objects, carefully moving the dagger out of the corpse's hand.
However, just when the black metal dagger had just completely left the corpse's hands, the hands actually reached up, grabbed the dagger again, and then restored it to its original position.
The cemetery fell silent for a moment, and Shad and Priest Augustus looked at each other in surprise.
"Detective, I guess I wasn't dazzled just now, was I?"
the priest asked in surprise.
"I saw that, too."
Xia De said, thinking for a moment and asked:
"Priest, if you don't mind desecrating the corpse, then I will cut off the corpse's hands."
I thought the priest would disagree, but he actually nodded after thinking about it:
"Okay, we'll sew it back together later."
Shad sincerely hoped that "we" meant the priest and the cat, not the priest and the detective.
He did not summon the Moonlight Greatsword, which was too sharp and could easily pierce through the corpse. Shade took out two Rhodes cards from his arms and flicked them lightly, sending the sharp cards flying towards the wrists of the rotting corpse.
call out!
The card cut through the relatively cool air in the second half of the night, but the next second, it was pierced from the center by a sharp dagger.
"Oh, I knew it wouldn't be that easy!"
Shade and Father Augustus retreated at the same time, and the cat waiting on the fence swiftly jumped onto the big tree beside the tomb, opened its eyes wide and looked down. In the dark night, the cat's eyes seemed to be glowing.
The corpse, holding a dagger, sat up from the grave.
"Priest, is this also what you expected?"
Shade asked, preparing to fight, but after the corpse crawled out of the tomb, it actually pounced on Priest Augustus.
The old priest dodged awkwardly, then kicked forward. His original intention was to kick the corpse, but he didn't expect that his kick would penetrate the fragile abdomen of the corpse.
Rotten flesh, worms, and pus flowed out of the corpse, and it silently raised its dagger and stabbed at the head of Priest Augustus.
The old man pointed with his finger and quickly spoke out the ancient spell words representing the power of elements:
"wind!"
The invisible wind wrapped around the corpse's hands like a ribbon. Then Xia De ran from behind the corpse, raised his sword in both hands, jumped sharply, and neatly chopped the corpse into two pieces from top to bottom.
The black dagger fell from his hand and stabbed into the ground. The land that was originally covered with green grass immediately began to turn black and stink with the dagger as the center.
Father Augustus ignored the dagger and quickly took out a bottle of brown liquid that was very familiar to Shade from his pocket. After falling on the corpse, the old hand pointed again:
"fire!"
A raging flame immediately broke out on the corpse.
The bottle of liquid was the strong kerosene that Xia De and the doctor had used once when they shot and killed people, set fire to people and scattered money.
"Priest, is this considered desecration of a corpse?"
Shad was amazed at the priest's skillful movements.
"This is a ghost, not a corpse. Detective, don't make this kind of basic common sense mistake."
The old priest said, and then, in front of Shade's even more surprised expression, he squatted down and pulled out the black dagger.
The dagger that corroded the earth immediately had a more terrible effect on the priest's right hand. The arm, which was already somewhat thin due to the aging of the body, immediately shrank and turned black and dry.