by Feng Yue
For hundreds of years, the saints from the nine Dragon Bloodlines were not welcomed into the Sacred City after their deaths. Instead, they became a part of this horrible realm. The Eastern emperor and the nine families had spent hundreds of years creating this weapon of terror to keep natural catastrophes away from.
Then, Ye Qingxuan perceived the direction of Anglo and the faintly revealed Holy Grail. This was the legendary artifact—the destructive Grail covered the country, emitting cold murderous intention, keeping people from approaching it.
Deeper in the void, Ye Qingxuan sensed a broken city… It was the fallen Avalon’s Shadow! The moment he sensed it, a bell rang from the shadowy city. The resonance between the enchantment of Avalon and the sub-originator was clear and unguarded toward him.
If Ye Qingxuan wanted to enter sub-originator with others’ power, he should anchor himself in Avalon’s Shadow. This way, not only could he reach the Resonance level, he could also inherit the Avalon’s Shadow in the future and leap into the Scepter level. Unfortunately, he was not planning to get involved in this rotten legacy from hundreds of years ago. In fact, he intended to keep as far away from it as possible…
At the same time, he sensed another realm that seemed to have lost touch and drifted into the depths of the aether world. When he looked in puzzlement, he saw countless tombstones in that realm, desolate and old like a cemetery. He could see his own name on one of those tombstones! All the lights under the tombstones were extinguished; only a solitary lamp was lit before his tombstone.
It suddenly dawned on Ye Qingxuan when he saw the light. That was where he had pushed open the door of musicians and made a pact with the Originator. It was also the realm that had been passed down the Ye family for the past hundreds of years. The moment he sensed it, he felt his vision spin. His induction quickly blurred. In his hand, the flame of the Skull of Truth trembled like a candle in the wind. It extinguished.
It had to be now!
Before Ye Qingxuan could react, he felt his perception decline rapidly and fall from the sky. As he was falling, he looked back and saw his previous direction.
Light was surging on the desolate land of Romulus! Countless lights flowed under the earth like rivers and gathered in the underground palace where he vaguely saw a door. It was the door that could only be seen through the flames of the saint’s remains!
A door?
Late at night, Ye Qingxuan opened his eyes in the darkness. In his hand, the Skull of Truth had turned to ash and dropped from the fingers. But Ye Qingxuan did not feel down. He was ecstatic! He had completed the ‘completion stage’ in advance and organized his chaotic music theory system. It was worth the price. Moreover, his strength had made great progress with this experience.
He believed that he could enhance his perception to find the origin in the near future, even if he could not break through the Barrier of Knowledge. Now, the most important thing was that he finally found the clue hidden in the underground palace!
“Sure enough, the problem is still hidden in the temple…” Ye Qingxuan murmured to himself. He quickly packed things up and wore the Governor under his coat. Opening the window, he silently ran toward the mine under the dark night.
-
Upstairs, the loudly snoring Angloian grandmaster turned amongst the scattered plastic containers and dirty dishes. He stared blearily in Ye Qingxuan’s direction.
“It’s so late. Why is he running around instead of sleeping?” he muttered. He snapped his fingers and continued to sleep. By his bedside, something flashed vaguely.
-
Ye Qingxuan sped through the silent underground palace, bypassing the musicians who stayed up late looking for clues. He did not attract anyone’s attention and walked into the temple.
In the silent shrine, there was only debris all over the ground.
The statues were shattered by the musicians in anger and the precious artifacts had become fragments. This was also the reason why Ye Qingxuan was unwilling to come here. As a scholar of ancient studies, it made him uncomfortable to see all this.
The eleven statues had all been smashed. The walls were also pitted. They had truly dug three feet under and even the ceiling was full of holes… Ye Qingxuan sighed, slowly shaking his head. A nation’s history and past was completely destroyed.
Some places had been pulverized. Nothing could fix it.
Ye Qingxuan wandered in the decadent temple, staring at the eleven statues. They were proved to be the holy spirit Aeneas, the father of Thunder; Aeneas’s wife who was later worshipped as the mother of the gods; and several of their children including the God of Light, Cupid, Goddess of Hunt, Two-sided Ares, the God of Secrets, as well as the God of Wine and the God of Wealth…
Ye Qingxuan walked around while counting the statues again and again… In the end, he was finally sure that his guess was correct.
There were twelve deities in the ancient book that Caligula gave to himself but there were only eleven here! Ye Qingxuan stopped between two statues. There should be another one here. It should be Mercury, the messenger of the gods and the spirit of the traveller.
In Romulus’s pantheon, Mercury’s domain was of traveling and messengers. In the ancient language of Romulus, both musicians and messengers were known as ‘Dark Duke’.
On the day of his introduction, Abraham once told him that musicians also served as messengers.
In ancient Romulus, musicians were loyal to the temple and conveyed the will of the gods. The aether was the messenger that led those who had gone astray back to the Originator. Therefore, Mercury also served as musician!
The missing deity’s archetype came from the oasis in the Desert of Thebes, the origin of mankind centuries ago. People called it Thoth, the god of wisdom.
Although Mercury’s position was not very high among the gods of Romulus, he was obviously still very important. It was not possible to omit his existence in order to save space. So, this meant that his statue was ignored deliberately! In order to hide something…
Ye Qingxuan thought for a moment, looking at the gap between the two statues. The longer he gazed, the more familiar it was. He had seen this somewhere.
All of a sudden, something flashed through his mind.
He took out a crumpled map. Comparing them, he became confident in his guess. He had seen this place amidst the graffiti he had bought from Elsa. On the back of the map, Elsa’s graffiti clearly depicted this corner of the image but the graffiti looked vague and strange so he could barely recognize it. However, the space was not empty in the graffiti. There was a door!
Ye Qingxuan walked forward, touching the potholes on the wall. He could only feel the cold and solid rock. How could there be a door? There was not even an empty hole!
He looked down at the back of the map to look at the scribbles. After a long while, his expression became helpless. Elsa’s drawing was too messy. She was really a ‘soul painter.’ Everything was crooked and nothing could be figured out.
There was something strange drawn on the door as well. Ye Qingxuan struggled at it for a long while. Suddenly, something dawned on him. He pulled out his pocket watch and compared them. He was almost shocked to death.
The two squiggly lines was the double snake emblem!
Did she draw it here to test his imagination?
357 Goodbye
If it was not midnight, Ye Qingxuan would have definitely rushed into Caligula’s home to interrogate Elsa on how she had entered. However, Elsa only had five minutes of memory so she probably could not explain clearly, right? But why was the double snake emblem here? There was one on her wrist too…
Ye Qingxuan stared at the pocket watch and thought for a long time but he still did not understand. He grew depressed. The worst thing in the world was when the door was right there but one could not find it.
He sighed. Looking back at the shattered statue, he shook his head slowly. “It’s been so many years. The Romulusians have probably all forgotten about it. Otherwis
e, it wouldn’t be this damaged.”
Shaking his head, he turned to leave. But then he froze.
The holy fire…
The holy fire!
When the Romulusians left the oasis, they established seven City of Wolves and created their own empire. Many races had come from all over and assimilated into Romulus. They also brought their own gods which was why Romulus’ temple was known as the ‘thousand god temple.’
However, the Romulusians maintained their worship of their most primitive ancestors. They believed that the souls of their ancestors lived inside their family flames. Thus, the family flame must always be lit. A family must worship the same flame. The connection was closer than blood relationships.
The elder of a family was also the priest of the family flame. Every family had a unique prayer and ritual. When a daughter married, a musician needed to witness the marriage before the family flame in place of the ancestor’s spirit. This way, the girl could leave the family flame and enter another family’s flame. Therefore, the holy fire that represented the many gods in the temple would never be extinguished. Even in the temple, the saint’s relic acted as the fire watcher. When he resurrected, he absorbed the fire and transformed it into his own power, and the fire was no more.
“Then…I’ll light it up for you again!” Ye Qingxuan returned to the altar and cleared away the ashes. He broke the rusted chair and tossed the parts in. He created a spark of fire and tossed it in as well. Fire lit up in the darkness.
Ye Qingxuan took off the Eye of Silence and studied the temple. Under the weak firelight, a solemn aura appeared around the broken statues. Centuries ago, the Romulusians had come here to create a cemetery for their heroes. They also built a residence for their gods and sacrificed slaves and beasts to them.
With the fire’s return, the gods seemed to have returned from darkness. Their broken faces gazed at Ye Qingxuan, the foreign worshipper.
Before the weak fire, Ye Qingxuan felt his pocket watch vibrate. Taking it out, he saw the double snake emblem lit up slowly before dimming. Even the dark design disappeared. The mirror-like outer shell reflected the holy fire’s glow. There seemed to be small contours on the surface, producing rectangular shadows on the wall.
The light floated on the wall as Ye Qingxuan moved his wrist. It finally moved between two statues. It looked like a door.
A door…
Ye Qingxuan gaped at his pocket watch and then looked at the door of light and shadow. He put his watch away but the door’s contour was still there.
“This is possible?”
Doubtful, he walked over and pushed. The door opened.
It really was possible!
He stared blankly at the open door and the bright space behind it. After a long while, he stepped through.
In the secret room behind the door, there was a statue holding flames. There was a line of dark gold words carved on the statue’s foundation. Made of green gold and copper, it did not rust.
Under the firelight, discipline from ancient priests shone brilliantly.
“Dis te minorem quod geris, imperas.”
Thou rulest because thou bearest.
Before the words, someone had abandoned a ragged robe. It was covered in dust but Ye Qingxuan could tell immediately that it was from the King of Yellow. He had abandoned it here as if abandoning the glory and position that countless people dreamed of.
Before Ye Qingxuan could take a closer look, the thing beside the robe caught his attention. He suddenly wished he had never come here.
He’d rather have never discovered the secret behind the door, wishing he had never come here in the first place. It was pure regret from the bottom of his heart! He wanted to run away.
Staring at the thing, it felt as if he had fallen into an icy gorge. He shook violently and practically collapsed.
He had never hesitated, even as he faced the strongest enemy, the most terrifying beast, or natural catastrophes. Ye Qingxuan had once thought that there was nothing in the world that could shake him up like this. But looking at this, Ye Qingxuan felt raw fear.
“What in the living f*ck is this?!”
-
Late at night, a heavy yet sad bell rang from the peak of the Sacred City and spread in all directions.
Outside the Holy Spirit Temple, a few solemn archbishops clad in red stared at the flickering firelight within the faraway temple. They sighed under the bleak bell and lowered their eyes.
The Holy Spirit Temple was the most important place of the Sacred City. It was the core and even more important than the pope’s palace. However, it was not heavily guarded. Rather than knights guarding it, there were only priests clad in gray.
This temple enshrined the saints who placed their consciousness into the aether after death and transformed into holy spirits. The spirits slept inside the temple and slowed down their decay, waiting for the time they needed to step onto the battlefield. However, a man’s consciousness was so insignificant and temporary compared to the world.
When the slow death finally came, the bell would ring to announce the passing of a holy spirit. This was the sixth this century. The archbishops outside the temple murmured amongst themselves.
“It must extinguish in the end?”
“He is a saint but it is the sixth hundred year, after all. No living thing can escape it.”
“But he’s different.”
Someone sighed then they fell silent.
The one that would soon extinguish was the powerful musician who had started the age of Romulus six hundred years ago, the eternal emperor of the Romulusians—holy spirit Aeneas.
Someone entered the temple. The traveler from faraway walked past the stone coffins on either side and stopped before the altar. There, the unclear face of a holy spirit looked up from the weak flame and looked at the comer.
The newcomer was completely different from before. He was no longer eerily handsome, but his long hair was still as golden as before. Within a few short months, he had aged to a middle-aged man. He looked timeworn but was still fat.
The double snake emblem on his cane still shone. Seeing the holy spirit in the fire, he smiled.
“Hermes?” In the fire, Aeneas looked at him. His eyes filled with recognition. “Long time no see.”
“Yes, long time no see.” Hermes sat beside the altar and rested against the pillar. He said softly, “I’m here to see you off.”
“Thank you.” Aeneas nodded. Hermes lowered his head and pulled a pipe from his pocket. Sadly, the lighter was wet and would not ignite. After struggling for a while, he sighed helplessly and cursed.
Aeneas pressed a finger onto the pipe. The weak embers lit up the tobacco.
“Thanks.” Opening his mouth, Hermes sucked in deeply and let out a long breath. “I sat on a carriage for days. I’m so tired.”
Aeneas looked at him. Hesitating, he asked quietly, “Are they…okay?”
“Of course,” Hermes answered. “It’s good enough to be alive nowadays, right? And anyway, it’s good enough for them to have a place to stay as a group of homeless wanderers. What about you? You stay here like it’s a prison. Want me to take you out for a walk?”
“I had a dream before you came,” Aeneas. “And you were here when I woke up. What a coincidence.”
“It’s good to dream. What did you dream? Tell me about it.”
“I dreamed of my family flame.” He sighed. “I dreamed that I left this place and returned to the family flame, reuniting with my ancestors. But when I woke up, I felt scared. I’ve done so many things wrong. I don’t know what they will say to me.”
“Don’t worry. You did many things right too,” Hermes said. “If there’s an afterlife, you’ll definitely be rewarded there.”
“Is there really an afterlife?”
“No.” Hermes shook his head. “You’ve lived for so long, Aeneas. Do you still not understand? Humans are just as you can see—seventy percent water, calcium in the bones, blood in the body. They breath
e when they’re alive, and when they’re dead? There’s nothing anymore.” Pointing at his head, he said softly, “There’s no ‘soul’ here, Aeneas. I’m sorry, but there’s no afterlife.”
“I see.” Aeneas sighed as if he had settled down. “Thank you.”
“No need to thank me. This was my duty. You were the first man I ever met. I have the responsibility of witnessing your death. I just didn’t think that this day would be six hundred years too late.”
“Soon, it’s coming soon… In the blink of an eye, it’s already been six hundred years.” Smiling, Aeneas closed his eyes. In the fire, the holy spirit half knelt on the altar and lowered his head to the person before him. “I once stepped onto the path of destiny as guided by a god and accomplished something great. Now, six hundred years have passed. The traces I’ve left on the earth have disappeared and I will disappear as well. You’ve witnessed all of this.”
Hermes lowered his eyes. “Aeneas, you’ve witnessed me as well.”
“For people like me, we had strength while we were alive and did some things so we were known as heroes and kings. Sadly, I have my limits. After living emptily for six hundred years, I wish I could do something for those lost folks. But sadly, I can’t do anything. Hermes, I hope you can guide them just as you guided me before.”
“Everything has a life, Aeneas. Fate guided you,” Hermes said softly as he smoked. “I will take care of them for you. Don’t worry. There’s still an old man with a good head. They won’t live badly in the future.”
“That’s great.” Aeneas smiled in content. His dim figure flickered in the flames and gradually dissipated, turning to ash. Amongst the ashes, the old face slowly shattered. He uttered his last farewell, “Goodbye.”
“Yes, goodbye.” Hermes closed his eyes.
The flame extinguished. The ashes scattered like birds flying in the sky.
Hermes reached out. Catching some falling ash, he clenched his fist. “Goodbye.”
358 The Fire Will Soon Extinguish
Only the dim family flame burned in the dark room. According to legend, this flame contained the spirits of the ancestors. Now, it flickered unstably like a candle in the wind.