"Is this a proverb? The road ahead is a passage leading to death. It is indeed a dead end."
Xia De reached out and touched the stone tablet, confirming that it was just an ordinary object. But based on Xia De's understanding of the Witch Council, it was estimated that after this matter was over, the stone tablet would be taken away and collected by the great witches.
“That’s really interesting.”
He went around to the back of the stone tablet and found that there were also words on the back. But unlike the neatly written letters on the front of the stone tablet, the words on the back were like the traces left by a slovenly mathematician on the corners of a piece of paper while calculating.
Even the text on the front and back is not the same:
"This is... ... "
He squinted and looked closer, and saw that this was a sentence break:
"... Go deep into the borderland and kill the resurrected. Before you die..."
He read out these words, thought for a moment, and frowned:
"A fragment of a poem?"
Although the texts were very short, the grammatical structure was very similar to what Shad had seen on Mr. Pasoro's funerary stone figurines.
"This doesn't sound like a sentence that determines the identity of the chosen one. Instead, it sounds like a requirement for the chosen one's ritual... The ritual must be held on the border between life and death, and the person conducting the ritual must have killed someone who had been resurrected from the dead. Then, before the actual death, something else needs to be done..."
He wrote down these words, maybe they would be useful.
Continue walking inwards, and after leaving the platform, there is another long and narrow passage. The howling black wind containing the power of death is now almost at the same level as the depths of the narrow natural church.
Obviously, there had been a fierce battle here. The ground was covered with a layer of black bones, and silver powder and holy water were sprinkled on the bones to ward off evil spirits. It looked like the traces were left half an hour ago. Although Miss Aurora and the others entered earlier, it seemed that it took a long time to solve the troubles that Shade did not encounter.
When I first entered the passage, it was very narrow, but after walking a few dozen steps, it became wider. Unlike the passage outside, the passage here was surrounded by flat stone walls with vague unrecognizable marks on the walls.
The wind that contained the power of death forced Xia De to stretch out his right hand to block in front of himself. He vaguely saw a light in front of him.
After quickening their pace, they soon saw the witch's followers stopped in the passage. Two-thirds of them were casting spells to resist the howling black wind. Among them, a lady with a ninth ring level even held a gem emitting misty green, using the power of nature to resist death.
Mia the cat will probably like these round beads.
The remaining one-third of the people used the special black ink with cinnamon and rose scents that they had prepared in advance to paint the mottled ritual symbols on the walls.
Even the black wind couldn't blow away the strong smell, at least not at close range.
After more than two thousand years of baptism, the ancient runes and murals on the walls have become very blurred. These are the ritual arrays at the outermost edge of this seal, equivalent to the silver lines and the spells and bells on the silver lines that Shade saw in the Natural Church.
"Miss Swift! Where are Miss Aurora and Granny Cassandra?"
Shad asked, and the crowd moved aside to allow him to reach the wall.
Grandma Cassandra's young apprentice, Miss Rita Swift, was directing the sorceresses to restore the ritual traces on the wall according to the Council's records. She replied:
"Mr. Hamilton, how did you get in? The teacher and Miss Aurora walked forward. The core of the ceremony is in front."
"I want to go take a look inside. Is there anything you need me to tell you?"
Seeing that Xia De wanted to move forward, the flaxen-haired young girl hurriedly stopped him and said:
"Please don't go any further. The teacher said that the place ahead is not a place we can get close to. It is really only a thin line away from death."
"It doesn't matter."
Shade shook his head:
"Granny Cassandra showed me the seal on the top of the mountain. I can handle it."
He wanted to go inside not out of curiosity, but because he thought that since he had seen the passages at the foot and top of the mountain when rescuing Father Augustus and reuniting with Helen and Grace, if he went to see the passage on the mountainside, it would not be considered that he had wasted most of the autumn in Midhill Castle.
"Well, please be careful."
Seeing that Xia De was very persistent, the young girl threw him an oval, smooth gray rune.
There are huge glowing runes on both sides of the rune stone. The front one looks like a tree spiral, and the back one looks like the veins of a leaf.
These are runes in the Elvish language, meaning "life" and "health" respectively. This rune can help resist the wind of death. Based on the elf knowledge obtained by Shad, he believes that if the materials are complete, he can make similar alchemical products himself.
"Please be careful with it!"
"rest assured."
Xia De waved his hand and continued to move forward against the strong wind.
The area where Miss Swift and her group were located was the widest part of the passage. As they walked forward, the passage narrowed again, and the power of death became stronger.
When the cold wind left the first wound on Xia De's face, and the golden light inside the wound was like stars, dragging the glow backwards, he knew that he was almost reaching the end.
The appearance of the divine afterglow made Xia De even more powerful at this moment. Therefore, when there was a rustling sound in front of him, and a pile of bones that had obviously been broken up not long ago were reassembled into a pitch-black skeleton, Xia De did not feel panicked:
"Can the dead be resurrected?"
Any monster that can exist in this extreme and near-death zone must be taken seriously. Shade frowned, holding the Night Watcher in his right hand, looking at the black bone sword in the black skeleton's hand.
The two charged at each other almost at the same time, and the two swords touched each other at the moment of collision. After a crisp sound, the Night Watchman and the black bone sword were bounced away at the same time.
The black skeleton spewed a black mist towards Shade, but before the mist touched Shade, it was dispersed by the glow of the afterglow of the divinity.
He thrust forward with the sword in one hand, accurately hitting the skeleton's right hand bone. After knocking the black bone sword away, Xia De took a step back, held the sword in his right hand and slightly pulled it toward his left chest, took a deep breath, then burst out all his strength and thrust the sword forward quickly.
Relying on his strong physical qualities and the power that had leaped up at this moment, the three swords that were thrust out instantly almost turned into afterimages in the black wind. The golden marks on his arms, at this moment, formed a thick golden light column in the air.
With the help of the Blade of Disordered Space and Time, six swords appeared almost simultaneously within a second. The Night's Watcher showed his power to fight against evil. As Shade put away his sword and pressed his wrist, six points on the surface of the skull showed signs of shattering, and then it scattered into a pile of dry bones again.
He walked quickly against the wind to the side of the black bone sword and found that the bone sword had also broken into pieces, which disappointed Xia De who thought he could get a bargain. He continued to move forward, and as the golden marks on his body became brighter and brighter, there were even spots of light like flame embers dragging behind Xia De:
"Ms. Aurora and Granny Cassandra, how did they get here?"
Even he felt it was very difficult to move forward.
After walking for more than twenty steps, the temperature of the witch detection badge on his chest finally overcame the temperature of the black wind, allowing Xia De to sense its presence. Continuing forward, the passage continued to narrow, and finally ended in front of a stone door that only allowed one person to pass through.
There was a seal on the stone door, but it had been cracked by the witches. At this moment, the door was pushed open, and there was a symbol on the door that looked like a holy emblem, with the main body like an upside-down question mark. Shade suddenly had a feeling that this symbol was the holy emblem of the ancient god Chaos Witch.
After walking out of the stone gate, outside the passage is a circular space about the same size as the Witch Council venue.
The dark wind was wandering in it, and Xia De had to squint his eyes to see that there was a well in the center of the space. The well was located in the center of the circle, and violent black winds were gushing out of it. This was the passage located on the mountainside.
It was very empty here. Apart from the well and the opened stone door, there were only mottled traces of rituals on the walls, garbage beside the walls, and a bronze skull on the wall opposite the stone door.
Miss Aurora and Granny Cassandra were standing in front of the metal skeleton. Because of the sound of the wind and the strong power of death, they did not notice Shade's arrival. It was not until Shade approached that they were surprised to see the dense golden cracks on Shade's body.
"Devlin also showed this, but it was fiery red. Did she share the flame with you?"
Granny Cassandra asked, and Shade shook his head.
He then noticed that both witches were wearing jewelry that could directly open the passage to the parliament. Miss Aurora's was the ancient witch's golden ring, the first on the right, and Granny Cassandra's was the golden button on her chest. This must be the ancient witch's golden button among the thirteen witch jewelry.
It was these two pieces of jewelry that helped them get here successfully.
"Shad, why are you here? No, how did you get in?"
"Since Miss Carina likes me, I must have something special."
He stretched out his fingers, and even the silver light on his fingertips seemed to be swaying in the wind. The rusty bronze skull in front of him looked very familiar.
"Shad, this is..."
Granny Cassandra wanted to introduce it, but Shade had already recognized the thing in front of him:
"This is the Soul Forging Skull, a forbidden alchemical weapon made by the people of the Second Era using ancient knowledge. Like the 'Giant God Soldier' found in the underground ruins of Tobesk, it is a servant of the ancient supernatural beings. Oh, the Witch Emperor at the end of the Fifth Era was able to come up with something like this?"
Although the details were slightly different, the object in front of him was the same as the skeleton guarding the Jaeger Scroll that Shade had seen in the Dead Valley of the Fifth Epoch. However, this time the skeleton was holding a stone box instead of a stone slab.
"You know this too? Then there's no need to explain. My mother-in-law and I believe this is a gift left by the Witch Emperor Violet Marshall for those who come after her."
Miss Aurora didn't look very well. She couldn't stand being in such a place for a long time.
"But we are all living people. If we take the box away, we will definitely fight with this skeleton. In a place like this, none of us want to get into a fight."
"It's okay. I'll do it."
Shade said as he held out his hand.
In the Fifth Age, Miss Orlanod let Shade touch the skull once, saying, "You are not yet born, so you are not considered a living person." At that time, Shade knew that this thing had no ill will towards him, and it was definitely not because of time, but because he had entered the land of death.
Sure enough, after reaching out his hand, he was simply stopped by the skeleton instead of being attacked:
"Answer me, in the nothingness before the birth of the world, what else was there besides those ancient gods?"
The witch queen probably reprogrammed the language for this skeleton, and it spoke the ancient language of the Fifth Epoch. This time, the question was different from what Shade had heard last time, but he also had an answer:
"The original flame."
Mr. Edmund of the Guiding Light Priory said that the primordial fire was used by the ancient gods to illuminate the world before the birth of the world.
The skeleton retracted its arm that was blocking Shade, and the bronze hand bones held the stone box and lifted it towards Shade.
"See, it's easy."
He said to Miss Aurora with a smile, and then the three of them saw the stone box turned into powder in the black wind.
Only three items were left on the skeleton's hand bones: a comb that glowed with an iridescent glow and looked like ivory; a wooden key that looked very familiar to Shad; and finally a roll of parchment that looked longer than the manuscript of the Pink Book that Desire had given Shad.
None of the three items were corrupted by the black wind, but only the wooden key was a relic.
"Time Key?"
Xia De was slightly surprised. Judging from the sparse wood grain on the key's surface, this key was still the time key leading to the Fifth Age.
"Since it's the Time Key, it's yours."
Miss Aurora reminded, reaching out to take the comb:
"What is this? It doesn't look like a relic, but... it's beautiful."
"It's a replacement for the ritual core left behind by the guardian of Witton."
Grandma Cassandra took the parchment and unfolded it. The old witch stood beside Shade, squinting in the wind and reading the contents of the parchment with the light from his body:
"Here is the letter from the emperor to the later generations. It contains some historical information, some knowledge, and... yes, at the end, it is the complete content of the seal. In order to make it easier for later generations to repair the ritual, she condensed the core of the ritual into this comb. Throw the comb into the well and use the witch's power to guide the ritual, and most of it can be repaired. But if you want to repair it completely, I think we are not prepared enough."
"So what other materials are needed for the ritual... Are you going to repair such a large ritual with nothing but this comb?"
Shad asked.
"Of course not. We prepared some things in advance. Besides this, there is also this as the ritual material."
Miss Aurora lifted her long hair:
"The hair of the Great Witch is enough to be used as a spellcasting material, especially in the witch system. Hair is often used as a ritual material. Although the ring warlocks of the Sixth Age don't know this, it is common knowledge in the Fifth Age."
Seeing that Shade hesitated to speak, the lady with long curly brown hair added:
"I know what you are thinking, oh, young knight. Controlling the growth rate of hair is the most commonly used secret technique by witches. Except for the vicious 'baldness curse', nothing can prevent us from having beautiful hair."
Seeing that Shade was fine standing in such a place, the witches gave Shade the blue lizard blood ink and special nimu silver alloy wire from the ritual materials, and asked Shade to help restore the damaged ritual site. Some of the knowledge in the witch's reverberation, Feliana, also helped Shade better understand the work to be done.
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