At the same time as the people on the top of the mountain received the intelligence, the witches on the mountainside also learned that the sealing ceremony would begin ahead of schedule.
"A powerful ring sorcerer with a sword?"
The witches did not choose to enter the mountain to guard the seal, but waited on the cliff where the entrance to the passage was located. Miss Aurora held the parchment and looked at Grandma Cassandra beside her in surprise:
"This can't be..."
"It should be."
The old witch sat by the fire, and on the other side was Sister Develyn. The burning flame was the original fire. As long as the bonfire existed, the abnormality in the narrow space could not affect them.
The witch's followers and the nuns of the spiritual order were now scattered around, preparing to face the next round of undead attacks. Sister Develyn suddenly looked up at the sky, and the two great witches also frowned and looked up.
They could vaguely see a huge black shadow above the thick fog becoming clearer and clearer, and then they saw that it was a Titan-like skull made up of densely packed souls, looking at them.
The thousands of wailing souls were shaking irregularly, and as the skeletons gradually became clearer, their terrifying expressions were reflected more and more clearly in everyone's eyes. Even the most courageous people could not look directly at this terrible scene, but the two witches didn't care at all.
A human being with a physical body was vaguely visible between the skull's eyebrows. Miss Aurora squinted her eyes to observe, and then snorted from her pretty nose:
"Joey Barton. How old-fashioned, thinking quantity can beat quality?"
She raised her hands and clapped twice:
"Girls, get ready."
She raised her right hand and snapped her fingers. Twelve golden balls of light spun around her head. Granny Cassandra picked up the crutch on the ground and stood up. A huge and strange shadow trembled under her feet. Sister Devlin reached into the campfire in front of her and pulled out the lime sword.
She stood up, and as the silver cold debris floated in the air, she grabbed the small sickle. If you look closely, the shape of this sickle is exactly the same as the style of the weapon swung by the huge shadow behind Joey Barton when he used the "Death Scythe".
The nun swung her right hand in the air, and the lime crust on the surface of the angel-level relic's ashes peeled off. As cracks appeared on the surface of her body and clothes, the afterglow of the first fire flickered on the two weapons.
The battle on the mountainside broke out earlier than on the top and the foot of the mountain. Perhaps in Joey Barton's opinion, witches were easier to deal with than the Orthodox Church. He was only a first-ring warlock, not even a core member of the "Society of Truth", so he naturally didn't know what the Witch Council represented, and he didn't know what it meant for a 12th-level witch to be a part-time 12th-ring warlock when fighting without scruples.
In the natural church at the foot of the Narrow Mountain, Shad was still carefully exchanging information with Iluna; on the cliff on the side of the Narrow Mountain, the witch who inherited the power of the Fifth Epoch and the nun who guarded the Original Fire joined forces to fight against the appearance of Joey Barton; around the large crack on the top of the Narrow Mountain, with the rumbling sound, the ancient souls hidden in the mountain were awakening under the inspiration of the Narrow Mountain.
The thick fog was like an illusory curtain that was about to be drawn. Shade was staring at the flames in front of him, and in a trance, he somehow thought of the fourth candidate for death mentioned by Luvia.
He originally thought that the unknown candidate was a vampire, and that Armand Bernhardt came to Midhill Castle to help him obtain the identity of the Chosen One. But now that he thought about it, perhaps the vampires' big plan really had nothing to do with the Chosen One and the narrow space. But even so, the fourth candidate who has not yet appeared may also appear in this final decisive battle.
"The fourth candidate has almost nothing to do with the description in the poem, so the power of the ancient god he inherited is almost undetectable. But what is certain is that he or she must have some characteristics similar to the first candidate Joey Barton... Could it be the eyes that see through death?"
If Luvia appeared in Midhill Castle, Shade even thought she might be the fourth candidate. Those purple eyes definitely have the power to see through death. But from the current situation, Luvia is obviously not... ...
"Who could it be? Has the other party been involved in this matter? Does he know the content of the ceremony? And before the ceremony begins, he needs to kill a person who has come back to life..."
Subconsciously turning her head to look at Iluna, the seventeen-year-old girl also looked at Shade and even winked at her playfully.
In the light of the bonfire, Shad saw her left eye was bright gold. This was not Iluna's original eye. Her real left eye had been sacrificed during the ritual of balancing the chosen. Her current left eye was a gift given by Shad with the power of divinity when he "burned divinity and became a god" for the first and last time.
This eye is very beautiful. Because it is a divine creation, it has many complex functions. And because that eye was supposed to be sacrificed to the ancient gods, the replacement eye can actually play a better role in balancing than Iluna's real right eye. Sometimes Shad even feels that maybe one day, Iluna will be able to see the traces that he can only see with the Blood Echo without using spells and magic.
Thinking of this, Xia De frowned:
"The result of Luvia's divination with the coin at that time was that by the time Iluna arrived in Midhill Castle, there were at least four candidates for the chosen one in the city... ... By the time... ... um... ... there would be such a thing..."
He looked at Iluna. Although the 17-year-old girl was not as beautiful as the witches, she was still quite pretty among non-witches. Moreover, because of her youth, she had a special sense of youthfulness that Miss Carina and Miss Aurora did not have.
The stranger still remembered the morning when he first met Iluna. He had just been in this world for a few days and was about to pick up little Mia from "Good Peter's Pet Shop" in Purple Iris Lane, very close to St. Teresa's Square, when he ran into Iluna at the door of the store.
At that moment, he felt as if all the lights around him dimmed, with only one beam of light shining on Iluna. After that, the first candidate for the Chosen One he met, whether it was Darkness or Joey Barton, did not have this strange feeling.
“Is there something weird on my face?”
Seeing that Shade was staring at her, Iluna asked a little embarrassedly. Shade shook his head and continued to stare at the flames in front of him:
"I thought of some strange things, but they are just guesses... In any case, we should solve Joey Barton's problem first."
Twenty minutes of rest was enough for Shade to recover his physical and mental strength by the campfire. When he stood up again, he felt as if he had endless energy.
He wanted to take a look around the church while there was still time. He was thinking about how to convince the high-level warlocks in the church to allow him to take a look at the basement, but at this moment, he heard a dull but clear bell sound coming from the depths of the white fog outside the church.
Everyone put down their work and listened carefully. There were nine consecutive bells. After the bells rang, all the ritual items and ritual traces prepared for the sealing ceremony inside the church flashed with golden light. The holy emblem of the God of Nature, two overlapping leaves, hung on the wall at the end of the main chapel, spread the elements of miracles into the church, and outside the church, the white mist became agitated.
"here we go... ... "
Iluna said softly.
Shade frowned and looked at the church entrance. His keen senses allowed him to sense further changes in the narrow space. The whispering element almost overwhelmed the miracle element even in the church. And in the distance, he heard a sound like the roar of an ancient evil beast, and the rumbling sound of the ground indicated that something was coming.
In the real Midhill Fort area, the earthquake that had been reported in the newspapers came as expected. With the rumbling sound of Mount Sikar as if it was about to collapse, Midhill Fort, shrouded in white fog, was under the destruction of the great power of nature. Huge rocks collapsed on the top of Mount Sikar in reality, and billowing black smoke emerged from the Yamaguchi Lake. The lake water was boiling, and the extinct volcano was being reactivated.
Luffy Lane, Home for the Blind.
Sister Michelle stood in front of the second-floor window, holding the window frame and feeling the vibration of the building. There were many people standing behind her. After Shade left, many ring sorcerers came to seek help. Sister Michelle knew everyone's concerns, and she was also worried. Sister Defulin had predicted what was going to happen, and she knew better than anyone how terrible the next night would be:
"This dormant volcano is finally about to erupt."
Cassandra Auctions, Santa Carla Avenue.
The old witch's young apprentice, Miss Rita Swift, was in the lobby on the first floor, comforting the staff who had not left the auction house, and organizing the ring warlocks left by the witch to prepare to face the undead that might appear next. The violent earthquake made everyone look bad, and at this time, three strange figures appeared outside the auction house. They were three middle-aged men with pale faces, one holding a thorny scepter inlaid with rubies, one wearing six gemstone rings of different colors, and one holding a black and white double gun. They all looked like nobles:
"Excuse me, are Miss Grace White and Miss Helen Black here... Here are their invitations."
Spider's Tail Alley, in the south city slums.
The flower girl whose flowers were bought out by Xia De at one time, together with her parents, brothers and sisters, squeezed into a dilapidated and leaky house, shivering with eyes closed in the earthquake. There was a howling wind outside the door, and something huge was moving slowly in the depths of the white fog, leaving a huge black shadow on the window.
This is the Midhill Castle slum, where the poor and the propertyless people living in this city live. No one can help them tonight, except themselves. Suddenly, there was a knock on the door. The middle-aged man with a scruffy beard and not very tall, holding the only kitchen knife in the house, stopped the family:
"Don't be afraid. I will protect you, Mary, Jenny, Dennis and little Harry."
Xikar Mountain, with dense forest at the foot of the mountain.
The Draerion Royal Army stationed in the Xikar Mountain area has already found the positions that each team needs to guard in the forest. The 50-man team led by Captain Rades is building fortifications to protect a silver stake erected in the forest. The silver stake is inserted into the soil like a nail, and the complex and fine patterns on its surface make the young corporals constantly guess its value.
Captain Rades, wearing a cold-proof cloak and stepping on his leather boots, looked at the foggy forest at night, then looked down at the rotten corpse with a blown head on the ground.
In his hand he held the amulet sent by Xia De. Even the sudden earthquake could not disturb the middle-aged man's thoughts:
"I have a feeling that something incredible will happen tonight... Will the dead be resurrected? It turns out that the story is not a lie, and the legendary magic really does exist."
Church of the Five Gods.
The earthquake did not interfere with the ceremony that had been planned for a year. All the ring magicians who stayed in the real world went out to the city to wipe out the undead who had become powerful again. Inside the church, as the old priests summoned from all over the old continent and the local ring magicians participated in the prayer in the magnificent main hall of the church wearing uniform white robes, five golden light pillars broke through the white fog from the church and extended to the sky above, representing the holy emblems of the five righteous gods, appearing under the starry sky in the thick fog at night.
The golden glow enveloped the entire city, making the real world's Mount Sikar seem to be illuminated by the city below. The sealing ceremony "The Trace of the Sacred Tree" officially began.
In the narrow natural church, the ordinary clergy who were protected to enter the narrow space were now praying in low voices around the bonfire in the center of the main chapel. The hurried ring warlocks, holding spell materials and their own relics, stood in front of the door and window, watching the constantly stirred white mist.
Hundreds of brass life rings appeared at the same time, but the steam mist did not affect the vision too much. No one spoke, and everyone waited quietly.
The main part of the sealing ceremony was in reality, and the narrow church did not need to perform too many additional ritual steps. All they had to do was to resist the attack of the undead on the Death Gate before the ceremony was officially completed.
The final battle is about to begin.
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