Silent Crown

by Feng Yue

  Charles froze. “What are you talking about?” His face grew gloomy. “Don’t waste my last shred of patience, Mr. Constantine!”

  Gaius raised his hand and showed him a yellow old picture. It seemed to be from long ago. In the picture was a young Gaius, an Easterner with white hair, as well as the hybrid of demons and all the rest. But Charles’ sight was set in the corner.

  There was a young woman with a vague face. Her hair was flaming red like ancient times burning. Her beauty was so thrilling.

  “Have you ever dreamed of her?” Gaius whispered, “She protected you to her death, even if she was tainted and swallowed by the ogre… Charles, don’t you want to know where you are from?”

  He slowly stepped forward and took down the dagger in Charles’s hand.

  “Come with me, Charles.” He pulled Charles and went to the broken tower. “I will tell you all the secrets… about you…”

  476 Afterimage in Purgatory

  They had only taken a step forward, yet the world was completely different. The blazing light and shadows seemed to have all disappeared. Everything became dark and ambiguous like a blurry dream.

  Under the high tower, before the sealed black metal gate, Charles watched Gaius take out a key. The man placed it into the lock carefully and used all his might to turn it. Gears began creaking and grating and the door opened.

  Charles froze.

  There should have been a spiral staircase in the large room behind the door. Now, the room was still there but the staircase was not. The originally solemn room was eerie as if it had been abandoned for decades. There was a giant crater in the ground.

  Charles stood at the edge and looked down, feeling the eerie breeze from the abyss. The steel staircase extended brokenly to somewhere deeper underground. There were faint lights but had all been covered by dust and cobwebs, making everything dark and subtle.

  “Where…is this?” Charles did not know where they were but he knew this definitely was not the Judgement Tower.

  “Here? Just somewhere abandoned for a long time.” Gaius walked to the end of the room and pushed open the door to the lift. Behind it, metal grated and countless scraps of rust fell down the deep well like dead bugs that were still dancing in the air.

  An ancient lift slowly rose up from the darkness.

  Gaius turned and motioned for Charles to come over.

  There was a corpse-turned-skeleton leaning in the corner of the lift. Half of its body hung outside and its legs were gone. His nametag seemed to still hang from his ragged white uniform. However, the name had faded through time.

  Gaius squatted down. Studying the skeleton’s broken face, he sighed. “Long time no see. I thought you were living under a different name. I didn’t expect that you’d died here.”

  He pulled open the skeleton’s old clothes and pulled a key out.

  “Thanks, old friend. I used to not like you but I didn’t think that you could help me again after so many years.”

  He rose and kicked the annoying skeleton off the lift. He walked onto the panel and inserted the key. He twisted it to the bottom.

  “Such good luck,” he said to Charles. “With this, we can save a lot of effort.”

  Under the grating sounds of the lift descending, Charles looked around in confusion. After a while, it finally dawned on him. “This isn’t a pure material world anymore?”

  “This is a piece left behind when establishing the holy city in the aether world back then. It’s scrap waste…the material and aether world overlapped, creating a stable area.”

  Gaius inhaled the cold and rotten wind. He murmured, “Abstinence musicians of the territory way turned the scrap into this. It overlaps with the Judgement Tower. Or rather…this is the true Judgement Tower.

  “Charles, what you see is the secret that the Sacred City wants to hide under the Judgement Tower. If people find out, they’ll probably send you to the stake to be burned even if you’ve only heard about it.”

  “The Sacred City?” Charles was confused. “What did they do here?”

  “Many things. Human experimentation, mutation surgery, forbidden research… Humans must make immoral sacrifices for the future. This is something a Choir musician told me. Perhaps madmen have more common topics. I always thought he was right until someone woke me from my beautiful dream.”

  Gaius stared at the changing levels outside the lift and said lightly, “Here, they imprisoned the most dangerous criminals, dark musicians, and…natural catastrophes. I had once created this with my own hands. The nations and Sacred City ordered it.

  “I created this hell for the future heaven. Later, too many things happened. I betrayed, Ye Lanzhou went crazy, Bai Heng left, and even this place was abandoned. Otherwise, I would probably have to serve a sentence in the institution I once commanded…”

  Charles was silent. He gaped at the levels flashing past. There were signs he could not read and should not appear here.

  Clinical Experiment Zone.

  The Sixth Practice Office.

  Extinction.

  The Fourth Incubation Room.

  Dogma Institution.

  Sacrifice Office.

  Finally, they descended into the deepest darkness. The lift stopped at the lowest level. Dust danced and Gaius took the lantern under his cloak. He lit it and dim light illuminated his face.

  “Come with me,” he said to Charles. “All the secrets you want to know are here.”

  There were six steel gates. Standing before them, Charles looked up blankly. The gates reached into the darkness. Compared to them, humanity was as insignificant as dust. This was like the home of deities that had been abandoned. It had once been as glorious as heaven but now, it was so dilapidated.

  These gates had been created with the Church’s alloy technology. They could withstand sieges without any damage. However, when Charles walked past them, he saw that there was a gaping crack on all of them. Some places had melted and solidified but riddled with holes. Some places had been torn with giant fingerprints still visible. Other places had been crashed through with a crude hole.

  The last door had been yanked out of the wall and crumpled into a ball. It was tossed to the side like a rusty hill.

  “Where exactly is this?”

  As he advanced, he witnessed unbelievable scenes. There was even the skeleton of a demonic whale in the ruined square. But he didn’t understand what this all was.

  “This was the first generation ‘purgatory.’ It’s a prison the Church created to realize God’s punishment in the human world,” Gaius explained. “Even though they made a better one to replace it, its significance is irreplaceable.”

  “The Sacred City created a purgatory themselves?”

  “Why not?” Gaius asked in return. “Didn’t they create heaven themselves? Charles, this isn’t anything shocking. Compared to their biggest mistake, this place isn’t even worthy to be brought up.

  “Here, the world’s best musicians and scholars once grouped. There were prophets from the Rock Institute, cursers from the Mirage Islands, alchemists from the School of Destruction…even Indian monks and Eastern Devas…

  “This was once the highest point of the human world. The Trinity College’s research room can’t even be compared to it.” Gaius halted in the center of the dark empty room. “We’re here.”

  He suddenly stopped, causing Charles to trip and fall backward. Gaius caught his collar and pulled him over. Meeting Charles’s confused eyes, he lowered the lantern and illuminated the mottled yellow lines on the ground.

  “Remember to step outside the yellow lines. Inside it…is a world humans cannot understand.”

  In silence, Charles seemed to understand something. He looked into the darkness before him. His vision seemed to pierce through the solid darkness and see the true appearance of the shadows.

  His face paled.

  Sweat dripped.

  Gaius bent down. He placed the lantern by his feet and reached out. Pulling out a burner, he b
roke it and tossed it into the darkness. Blazing light burst forth, illuminating everything. Beyond the yellow line was the deep abyss! Light bloomed from the burner. It spiraled and fell deep into the darkness, illuminating the terrifying cage before them. It looked like shackles made for a giant. Dozens of thick chains dropped from hundreds of meters above but they were now broken and scattered on the ground.

  The burner fell from the podium Charles was at to the ground. It dropped into the dirty water and dimmed. But the dim light still illuminated the terrifying shadows everywhere.

  The cage was obviously empty but the light still cast a menacing shadow that filled the entire cage. It was just a shadow but it was horrifying. It was impossible to describe the thing. It seemed to be curled up asleep in the cage but its mere existence was an interrogation on a human’s sanity. All beliefs were shattered.

  Three unclear and abnormally shaped heads looked in all directions. Thousands of limbs cast odd shadows, slithering on the metal walls like snakes. As they moved, the metal would sizzle. The shadow was like a beast that radiated with a corrosive aura.

  It was just an afterimage. This was a shadow left behind through the ages. It caused this place to lose control completely, turning into an inhumane territory.

  “Scared, Charles?” Gaius studied the blurry afterimage with nostalgia. He reached out as if wanting to embrace it. “Here, we achieved something that could never be bested. We defeated, captured, imprisoned…and even dissected a natural catastrophe!”

  Charles gaped at the black shadow. It felt like his head would split apart. He stumbled back. After a long while, he murmured, “Hecatoncheir?”

  “Charles, this was the cage for Hecatoncheir before it fell.” Gaius looked up at the large shadow as if meeting the eyes of the natural catastrophe that had long gone.

  “Humanity captured it while it was in its century-long slumber and placed it here. We racked our minds and put in our blood, sweat, and tears…Finally, we put in all the effort we had, paid every cost we could, to understand something of a natural catastrophe’s nature.”

  477 Showroom

  In the silence, Charles finally recovered from his shock. He looked around in disbelief.

  “You…made this?”

  Gaius laughed at himself. “Me? I was just a logistics supervisor in this, a supplier. If they wanted blood, I’d give them blood. If they wanted a knife, I’d give them a knife. If they wanted everything, I’d give them everything.

  “My job was to satisfy all their requests with all costs. The nations opened the paths for me and the Sacred City vouched for my soul. Everything I was doing was for humanity. That’s what they all told me.”

  Gaius smoked his pipe and said quietly, “The one who truly controlled and was responsible for this program was known as the best of the School of Mind in this millennium. He was once one of the nine Eastern royals, a complete Deva. You might have never heard of his name before—Ye Lanzhou. He was the most terrifying creature I’ve met.”

  “Ye…Lanzhou?” Charles murmured. This name was familiar but Ye Qingxuan’s face kept appearing in his mind.

  “From the surface, his job was to test if it’s possible to communicate with natural catastrophes and give Hecatoncheir a human language,” Gaius said. “He did it well, both his surface and true work.”

  “What was he really responsible for?”

  “Through communication, humanity learned how to use languages. Through languages, we created souls…” Gaius laughed. “Ye Lanzhou’s goal was Hecatoncheir’s soul. His mission was to instill humanity in Hecatoncheir and bring a natural catastrophe’s power to humanity. He did a good job. He completed something no one could in history and made a huge breakthrough. That was how we stole inhuman power.” He paused and glanced at Charles. “Telling you like this is not direct enough. Follow me.”

  He raised the lantern and walked deeper into the darkness. Charles followed behind him. After who knew how long, they entered a long hall.

  “Where is this?”

  “You can say it’s the showroom for the failures.” Gaius smoked and pushed the door open emotionlessly. “All the failures are displayed here to serve as a warning.”

  Behind the first door, a giant corpse was sealed behind transparent albino steel. The odd corpse was like the combination of beasts of the sky and land but it looked more like a human. Ashes remained on the bones as if it had just been taken out of the fire and tossed in the molten steel to be sealed here after solidifying.

  “This was the first test product created from the manmade natural catastrophe plan,” Gaius muttered. “With Ye Lanzhou’s genius mind, we created this from Hecatoncheir’s flesh. Unfortunately, demonic things are too hard to control. It went crazy and killed hundreds. Finally, Knights Templar pushed it into the furnace with no regards to cost. The flesh evaporated and all that remained was this skeleton that had turned to steel.” He put down his pipe and glanced at Charles.

  “You can see it as…your predecessor.”

  Charles froze.

  Gaius continued forward and opened the second door. Behind it, there were thousands of embryos. Immersed in antiseptic liquid, they still looked alive and every detail was so lively. However, it could not change…their demonic nature.

  They were all demons.

  Innumerable demon embryos.

  Even Charles only recognized one-third. He had never even heard of the rest.

  “The second plan used lessons learned from the first. We gave up on using demons similar to natural catastrophes as a breeding ground. Instead, we used the bacteria forging furnace of Choir musicians. With no need for foreign mediums, we developed Hecatoncheir’s flesh directly to find its original appearance.”

  Gaius looked indifferently at the embryos immersed in the glass tubes. “The result is what you see now. As one of the four living objects, Hecatoncheir represents the living organisms of the world. Its blood is also the source of all.

  “With his blood, we can observe the nature of demons. Even with a replicate, it can help humans improve tremendously on transformation technology. It was at that time that people realized human and demon blood could be fused after birth to create superhuman soldiers.

  “The research information was divided by the nations. Perhaps you have heard of what Anglo took.”

  After a pause, Charles asked quietly, “…the Dragon Riders?”

  “That’s right.” Gaius nodded. “Under my command, the armies all over the world chose the six hundred most suitable soldiers. After the experiment, two hundred and one survived. Twenty-five percent. With the sacrifices, we received the first legion that could move freely through the Dark World. They did not need to be resupplied or even commanded. But unfortunately…”

  Gaius did not finish saying what was so unfortunate. However, Charles could guess what it was. The Dragon Riders were abolished and all members were imprisoned, still not free even today. It was also the start of Abraham’s tragic life.

  “Let’s go.” Gaius pushed the door open and stepped into the hall. “Next one.”

  The third room was empty. There was nothing in the silence but there was a hot sour smell in the air. It was like the cave of a beast but he saw nothing. Gaius stood in the corner and studied the hole in the wall while smoking. After a while, there was the faint sound of sticky trickling water. Dark sap rushed out of the crack in the wall. The shapeless liquid radiated with a sour smell and writhed on the floor like a living thing.

  Under the dim lantern light, Charles saw what it was and tried to stop himself from throwing up.

  It was a pile of…ground meat.

  Like mud, the flesh rolled on the ground. It circled Gaius like a pet, making weird chirping sounds. When it writhed, faint ripples would go through the dark red body. It flowed and crawled on the ground.

  Gaius studied it. After a while, he sighed and petted it. “Little thing, you’re still alive. How’ve you been?”

  The writhing flesh made a noise in reply.r />
  “This was the third plan,” Gaius said to Charles. “It’s the only successful one.”

  Charles stared at the meat and shuddered. “What…is it?”

  “The first and most important step of the manmade natural catastrophe plan,” Gaius said. “We turned man into demon and gave it strong vitality like Hecatoncheir. It has weakened these years. You haven’t seen what it used to be like. Blades, ice, acid, even decomposition had no effect on it.

  “In low temperatures, it could grow a shocking insulation layer. In molten steel, it can grow a thermal shell. In a vacuum, it can survive more than four years…It won’t die. As long as it’s alive, no one can kill it.”

  “But it…used to be a human…” Charles’s teeth clattered from fear and disgust. He almost threw up. Gaius laughed mockingly and didn’t reply.

  “It’s been alive all these years?” Charles asked.

  “I’ve said before that it won’t die.” Gaius pointed to the empty room. “There used to be many things here. And the hole in the wall, it must’ve eaten it, right? It’s very obedient. It won’t eat what you tell it not to. Which means, it’ll eat everything else.”

  Charles studied the chirping flesh. He could not imagine how it used to be a human… Whenever he thought of this, he wanted to vomit. Goosebumps pricked at his skin.

  “Let’s go.” Gaius rose. Looking away from the flesh, he walked out the door.

  “Just…leave it here?”

  “Let it live here.” Taking one last glance, Gaius murmured, “Other than these ruins, nothing in the outer world will accept it anymore.”

  The fourth plan was a withered brain. Apparently, it once contained boundless intelligence and the sparks of inspirations. It could enter a state that humans could not know.

  But seven days after its death, it died.

  The fifth plan was a strange box…

  The sixth plan…

  Charles followed Gaius numbly until the man opened the seventh door.

  “Charles, this is the seventh plan,” Gaius said. “And the first one that your mother participated in.”

  In the darkness, he raised his hand and illuminated what was before him. Behind the large glass wall was some sort of decayed liquid. It was filled with moss and parasites, turning it dark green. They seemed to be standing outside a giant bottle. Through the glass, Charles could see the giant that had been transformed by the liquid.