"This tomb belongs to the one before the previous priest," Bann said in a cold voice. "He jumped after he had gotten drunk. He had internal bleeding and died the next day. Rest assured, even if the avenging spirit did exist, he'd have gone drinking instead of come looking for you."
"Hey, are you encouraging me to dig the grave of the previous secret protector?"
"Fine, you don't have to," Bann muttered.
"Wait, I will! I will!" Wolf Flute continued digging bitterly. With the surgery and the medicine, his heavy injury had healed but had left him with very serious side effects. He would receive more advanced treatment once he returned to the holy city.
Now he was sweating all over, regretting that he had not done much physical work during his years in the holy city, otherwise he would not be panting already.
Digging and digging, the sound of the shovel became rhythmic. He tried to make it less boring. Wolf flute began to sing, "One little, two little, three little Indians. Four little, five little, Six little Indians!"
Just before Father Bann's tolerance reached his limit and killed him for singing such horrible songs, Wolf Flute finally heard the sound of the shovel hit the sarcophagus.
He was excited and started to dig harder. He had soon cleared a majority of the dirt on top of the coffin.
Seeing that he was almost done, the priest pushed Wolf Flute away. He took out a crowbar from his sleeve and put it under the crack of the opening, struggling to open it. With the sound of the nails breaking, the coffin was cracked slightly, then opened entirely.
Wolf Flute was stunned.
He did not smell anything unpleasant, instead he smelled church incense which made him quite uneasy.
The priest lit the lantern and swept the top of the coffin. Wolf Flute was only able to see the bones, like the blooming stone flowers, but he barely saw much else.
A surge of wind blew in from the sky and swept away the dark clouds. The moon shone above.
In the gloomy moonlight, the body in the sarcophagus appeared to smile at the two guests.
The priest had a cold look on his face, and Wolf flute gasped with surprise, "What the f*ck is that thing?"
-
Inside the hundred-year-old coffin, everything was covered in scarlet.
There were spider lilies in full blossom. They grew out of the bones, with a smell of an extravagant incense, enchanting and seductive.
Underneath the layers of spider lilies, the bones that would only exist in nightmares were finally exposed.
On the seemingly grinning black skull, in addition to the normal two eye sockets, there were two additional gaps, as if there used to be two more eyes in them.
A skeleton over three meters tall was lying in the coffin, six arms crossed. Two hands with open palms on top, fingers crossed, posing like flames. Two hands laid on top of the chest, its fingers closed together like a lotus. Two hands, with fingers crossed like chains with an iron lock.
Under the six arms, something was guarded.
Where the rib cage had been now had many layers of lamellae, the barbs above had all been broken.
A pair of torn wing bones extended from the back to the front. Although it had become bone, it was still covered with a bronze layer .
A frantic feeling filled the coffin like a demon's burial ground. Even when dead, it still felt as if he would leap out of the coffin and fly towards the moonlight.
This was not a human corpse. It more like a monster made of black iron, bronze and silver, only existing in a craftsmen's nightmare!
Wolf Flute took out the shovel, expressionless. He poked the bones which seemed to have been made of alloy. The sound of the metal colliding produced a very low buzz, numerous souls in the darkness echoed in return.
He held the shovel and froze.
As a gust of wind blew, the shovel in his hands silently disintegrated into powder. The iron residue drifted through the air, seeming to have pierced the heart with every breath, giving him chills all over--the Curse of Ravages.
It was a curse created by the musicians of the Modification Department. The music was engraved into the bones. Even the smallest disturbance would cause the aether to backfire, turning all those who touched the bones to ashes.
Wolf Flute tilted his head and looked at Bann, "Hey, Father, when the people of your church were drunk did they all turn into something like this?"
"Ah, I was just trying to scare you. I only wanted to see your expression," the priest casually revealed the truth, as if he had done nothing wrong. He looked at the bones with a cold stare, "Before he died, he was not human. Just treat it as a body of the beast."
"What now?" Wolf Flute asked. "The two of us stay here and wait a few decades until the Curse of Ravages has dissipated?"
"The sarcophagus and the cemetery are connected. Unless the cemetery was dug entirely out of the ground, the Curse of Ravages will not dissipate." The priest turned around to look at him, putting his hands out, "Show me your letter of appointment."
Wolf Flute was surprised for a moment. He scrambled through his bag and took out a piece of paper as red as blood. The paper had a pear watermark from the church as an anti-counterfeit mark. The priest put the paper in front of the lantern, turned it to the side. A few numbers were revealed where the red stains had been.
"S7:6-3242? What kind of code is this?" Wolf Fang asked.
"The Authorized Ciphertext, issued by the Cardinal Hall of the Sacred City. The believers are allowed to use divine power with this.
"S is the abbreviation of the angel Seraph, meaning the first sequence under the throne. Seven is the number representing 'The Burning Snake'--a power to eliminate all evil. This is power given to me by the Cardinal Hall of the Sacred City. Followed by a one-time ciphertext, which can be interpreted by us."
The priest explained this casually, and took out an old clock from his inner pocket.
The clock was a size of two fists, more like a large bell, but much more solemn than a bell. It was very old, engraved with lines of spells, and a crest of the Three Saints.
Under the moonlight, the brass bell shone silently.
Then the priest sounded the bell with a complex rhythm.
It was quiet at first, then suddenly felt like someone let out a breath.
Suddenly, countless bats started screaming, shattering the silence. They flew toward the sky in panic, aimlessly flying about, so frightened they died running into the tombstones and the walls.
The sound, unbearable to the human ear, had spread like water dropped into a quiet lake. Ripples spread in all directions. Suddenly it reached tens of millions of miles away, so many miles away in the holy city, a huge dark bell sounded in response.
Then the clock in the hands of the priest broke, silently turning into iron sand in the moonlight. It poured down from the hands of the priest like water and dissipated into the air.
Wolf Flute suddenly turned pale.
The light from the iron sand had emerged. A huge amount of aether formed together. Amid the dust swirling, the holy object revealed itself in the iron sand.
It was a rare sword. Its body was made of lapis lazuli, its blade full of gaps and cracks.
On the back of the sword remained traces of forging, almost like layers and layers of the blooming peonies. If you looked carefully, each layer was filled with numerous holy names and scriptures. At the hilt of the sword, four generations of popes left their names and the emblem of the tricyclic, proving that God had the power to grant this weapon. When it was used, it would break everything like shattering a china pot.
The emblem and the scripture were filled with endless power. The power turned the body of the sword scarlet red. The edge of the sword shook nonstop, and a fuzzy shadow was revealed.
"Upon calling of the prayer, the divine power shall arise!
"I will fill the river and let it run endlessly," The priest recited, holding the hilt, letting the flame's power burn himself.
"My Lord, for you."
He clenched his sword and held it high.
There was silence, as if they were frozen by an invisible power.
Then the blade came down!
The silence was broken. The sword came down with a burning burst, like a quick flash that tore apart the lights and the shadows, impossible to look at directly.
The bones in the coffin were shaking violently. On top of the bones, the scarlet red spider lilies quivered. They blossomed, danced, and in an instant, turned into dust and flew away.
Dust mixed with the petals, red as blood in the moonlight.
They continued to fly out of the sarcophagus and spread into the cold wind like a group of blood-colored butterflies.
And yet the sword continued to stab downward against the bloody butterflies!
Finally it collided against the bones.The blade and the bones started shaking and screaming, as if they were being burned in a furnace together. The sounds were terrifying yet harmonious.
Soon the sound disappeared, as did the blade, then the butterflies.
Everything was like a dream. It was as if nothing had happened.
Wolf Flute had his head down, but could not keep his eyes off of the bones in the sarcophagus.
-
Inside the sarcophagus, the six arms slowly stretched open. The chest bone plate expanded like flower petals, revealing what was hidden inside--a box made of black iron.
The Curse of the Ravages was broken by the sword from thousands of miles away.
Remembering the light, Wolf Flute felt goosebumps all over him. It was a power extracted from the source, daunting even if it was just a mirror image of what was left of it.
"That sword....is it the 'kingdom of heaven' forged by four generations of the popes?"
"Yes." Father Bann withdrew the empty hand. "The ciphertext was the real key. Without it, you can't open the cage of the bones."
"The technique of the church was really amazing." Wolf Flute sighed and pointed to the corpse in the sarcophagus, "And this? What is this?"
"Did I not tell you? The secret keeper from the one before the previous generation."
Bann had no expression. "He was sent a hundred years ago to the north to find the whereabouts of that thing, and he found it in the territory of the 'dark gaia'."
"The pope led a crusade against the natural disaster?"
"Yes. It took the secret keeper three years to plan. He sacrificed six of his men to bring that thing back. He himself was eroded by the power of the natural disaster and began to go mad-- he turned into this monster and forgot who he was. In order to kill him, the mission dispatched six knights of the Holy Temple. He finally died by the hands of my father...
"He had become a vengeful spirit but he still recognized his own children. He saw my father and relaxed and curled up by the fire, had some food, then fell asleep.
"He might have already known that there was iron sand in the food. The iron sand turned into a blade and stabbed his heart from the inside. In the end he did not resist, preserving his own dignity. "
"...It was a hefty price to pay."
Wolf flute was silent for a long time and sighed softly.
Father Bann drew a holy emblem on his chest. His eyes were still cold. "It's just one person's life and death."
"The fear of life and death was enough to respect. Why should the numbers matter?" Wolf Flute bent down and held up the black box among the bones respectfully. He blew away the dust and ashes on top.
Under the moonlight, he opened the lock on the box and reached inside. The expressions on his face kept changing. Finally he took a deep breath and nodded, "Yes, it's the same as what the teacher has described."
He put away the box and slightly bent over to the priest, "Thanks to the church, my mission is done."
"This is my mission as well, and I thought I would die here from old age. I did not expect to be free today." In silence, the priest looked down at the sarcophagus. He stretched out his hand toward the bones and drew a shape of the Holy Emblem in the air, "You are free. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, time to go, no longer stay."
Then the wind came from the sea, passed by the tips of everyone's nose, erasing the lingering rotten smell from the cemetery.
In the tender wind, the hideous bones seemed to have calmed down, finding their eternal peace. Under the moonlight, the bronze wing bones reflected a glimmer of silver, sacred and solemn in its own way.
"It's beautiful." Wolf Flute took a final look, shoveled the earth on the ground, and covered its body.