Silent Crown

by Feng Yue

  “You are wrong.” A sigh came out of the crack, which stunned Ludovic.

  The air seemed to be frozen, and a half-naked figure crawled slowly out of the crack.

  The figure was so thin, as if it had been hungry for decades. Although it had drunk the blood river, and eaten the Red Dragon of Doom, it remained as lean as a rake, and only got some color on its face which then got a bit ruddy.

  “I’m not done yet. The cooked duck just flew away. It’s really unpleasant… For so many years, you haven’t changed at all, my ‘old buck,’” it lowered its head and whispered.

  But Ludovic got stiff and his eyes widened, as he stared at the thin figure.

  “Ye, Ye…”

  He uttered a hoarse sound from his mouth with difficulty. “How could you be… here?”

  The figure seemed to know his shock, so it looked up, wiped off the dirt on the corner of its mouth, and smiled happily. “Oh, long time no see.”

  “Ye Lanzhou!!!!”

  At that moment, Ludovic’s roar began to come out of his lungs. The sound was full of anger and fear, sharp and ear-piercing, like the colliding sound of steel.

  His voice resonated with the strange eye in the sky, and then a thunder-like sound burst out suddenly.

  “You… You…!!!”

  Ludovic, no, the Hyakume growled, “How dare you do that!”

  “Eh? Is there anything wrong?” Ye Lanzhou could not help laughing softly.

  “…”

  The laughter made the earth turbulent, the steel shook quaked and echoed between heaven and earth.

  “I did follow the instructions of the Single Heart Brother to give the Hecatoncheir consciousness, and enable him to evolve his own personality and be himself. But you didn’t say where the consciousness, personality, and self should come from, am I right?” Ye Lanzhou whistled. “Well, I admit that I was just curious and wanted to have a try. You can’t blame me for an accidental success!”

  “…”

  Ludovic was silent, his expression changed, and he suddenly turned around and walked away.

  An ethereal figure turned into a dark mist. He abandoned the Holy Cauldron, escaped from Sarroman Temple in an instant, and flew into the sky.

  “You are gone already?”

  Ye Lanzhou looked at the back of the figure. “We are old friends after all, and we haven’t met for a long time. We should at least say hello. Em, now, what should I say?”

  He kept silent for a moment and then snapped his fingers. “What do you think of this?”

  Saying that, he bent down exaggeratedly and playfully, then saluted the evil eye in the sky. “The majestic and honorable lord of darkness, the Hyakume, your majesty, who rules all the vicious spirits and thoughts in the world…”

  When he raised his head, a sense of indifference appeared on his face, instead of the modesty and respect showed through his words. In his dark pupils that looked like a human’s were anger and killing intent.

  He said,

  “F**k your mother!”

  516 The Abyss Was Staring at Me

  The next moment, hundreds of thousands of arms appeared in the huge shadow that was behind Ludovic, and moved to the sky.

  The arms all folded!

  Bang!

  A hurricane appeared and swept across the land. Wherever it went, it tore all the barriers in its way to pieces as easily as blowing away dust.

  Countless palms appeared and cruelly opened the slowly folding abyss to its extent. Then, the palms reached to the huge abyss.

  Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

  Ludovic was tightly held inside the folded palms, like a mosquito that had been tightly squeezed by two hands. He struggled to get out, and his face twisted due to the extreme pain.

  The land was rising, and the Sacred City made of iron and steel collapsed. The ruins of steel and iron were drawn into the air by an invisible force. The light reflected from the steel and iron and lit the hurricane.

  All the steel and iron drew together and formed a metal giant that was hundreds of thousands of meters tall.

  The abyss shook and a piercing sound came out of it. The infinite air of abyss spurted out and shrouded the giant.

  The Sacred City was buried in darkness. The fire burned and the steel and iron collided with each other. A terrifying energy wave was spreading in all directions and destroyed one-third of the Sacred City.

  The hundred-armed giant was roaring. Due to the powerful sound wave, its body made of steel and iron fell into pieces and merged together again and again.

  At that very moment, the scary aether wave was spreading across the sky. The will of Hyakume, all the dark devils, and countless demogorgons’ power together pushed the abyss to its limit, making it exert a magnificent power.

  The air was rolling, as if the real catastrophe was coming.

  The land was falling apart and collapsing, and it seemed that the whole world was shaking. The Pope Palace, the central holy church, the holy praying hall, the inner circle of the city, the central area, and the outer circle of the region all shook.

  Tens of thousands of countries were shaking! Because of the vibrations, the seawater moved rather quickly, creating huge tsunami; the mountains and hills fell into pieces.

  The flying birds were torn apart by the sweeping hurricane; the earth cracked and collapsed; the plain turned into a basin. The whole topography was transformed.

  Everything in the center of the Sacred City was distorted.

  However, the hundred-armed giant was still alive. The shaking had not killed it, in fact, it was immortal. Among the Four Living Creatures, it was famous for its immortality and was addressed as an abomination.

  Even God could not kill it and could only seal it in the ruins, waiting for the day when the last breath left its body. However, it was still alive; it had been imprisoned in the ruins for a few decades, but it was still alive.

  It walked out of the ruins and went back to this world. “Like I have said… don’t hurry to leave,” it said, while staring at the abyss, where the iron and steel giant turned red after being burnt.

  It was sneering and its face was hard to see clearly. The steel and iron giant had grown a few times larger, and half of its body was in the Aether World. It was embracing the abyss. In part of its chest, the flesh made of steel and iron as well as the bone beneath the skin slowly opened like a blossoming flower. There was a heart made of iron stone, and right on the heart was sitting a slim figure.

  The slim figure was Ye Lanzhou.

  “You know what? All these years, I have been thinking about a question…” Ye Lanzhou rested his elbows against his knees and held his chin while staring at Ludovic, who had been sealed by the invisible hands. “When the abyss is staring at me, I am also staring at it!”

  Hearing this, Ludovic’s face twisted. He knew what Ye Lanzhou’s words really meant. His body began to convulse and he screamed, “Ye Lanzhou!!! How dare you…”

  Ye Lanzhou snapped his fingers, and the next minute, Ludovic stopped screaming. It was completely silent. Ludovic’s body became stiff and still, as if he had turned into a mud-made statue. His furious face now became emotionless and numb. Still, his eyes were moving and tracking Ye Lanzhou’s slightly moving finger.

  If Ye Lanzhou’s finger moved to the left, Ludovic’s eyeballs would move to the left and vice versa.

  “I knew it. Hyakume is really something.” Ye Lanzhou sighed slightly. “Your ‘personality’ almost resembles a real human’s, and your consciousness connects perfectly with your body. Apart from your sophisticated thought, your subconsciousness and emotion reflection are almost perfect. In fact, you are just like a real human. I never thought the technique which was designed for Hermes would be so compatible with you.”

  A roaring sound came from the abyss, and a scary blast wave fell onto the steel and iron giant. The giant died on the spot and became alive again.

  Ye Lanzhou sat still, while staring coldly at Ludovic.

  Ludovic was bo
th motionless and emotionless. Beneath his skin, the purple blood veins were swollen, and his heart was beating very fast, as if it was going to explode.

  “Are you angry? Are you feeling regret? Hyakume,” Ye Lanzhou said darkly. “I think you expected this would happen, and you have stored your consciousness in your incarnation. But the consciousness is bound to influence your incarnation, which is Ludovic himself. Besides, the influence is not something like the conflict between the senses and feelings of a human. Rather, it was something more metaphysical—the conflict between divinity and humanity. Creating Ludovic’s personality may have seemed a good way to get into the core of the Sacred City, but you should remember that when you are staring at a human, the human is also staring at you. When you turned yourself into a human, you became easier to understand and defeat… That is why you lost.”

  Hearing this, Ludovic convulsed, and the purple veins crawled up to his face. His body was controlled by Ye Lanzhou and he could not move at all. There was a powerful energy flowing all over his body, and the energy controlled Ludovic’s vocal cords. He began to speak in a very ancient and strange tone.

  It was not a human language but a murmuring of the abyss. It sounded like a strange symphony and the symphony’s notes had overlapped all together. This sound was the mind of God, a bunch of bizarre syllables that no one could understand.

  Ye Lanzhou smiled. “Don’t you think it is already too late for you to grant me some good stuff in exchange for sparing you?!”

  517 Holy Relic

  Boom!

  The abyss raged.

  The majestic might blew out of the cracks and hit the body of the Hecatoncheir.

  No one had seen this before—the scene in which “life” was ignited. Thousands of means of death overlapped at this moment, and then were imposed on the Hecatoncheir.

  If death could be quantified, then the death which came for the Hecatoncheir would have been enough to turn all humans, birds, beasts, and even plants in an entire country into ashes.

  Death, rebirth, death, rebirth, death, rebirth…

  It was a cycle of hellish tortures.

  Ye Lanzhou was expressionless.

  “Rawr!!!”

  Ludovic roared, and the abyss shook with him.

  But this time, the intention of Ludovic was easier to understand than before.

  Let go of him!

  Ye Lanzhou smiled and shook his head slightly.

  “You just figured it out. Isn’t it a bit late?”

  There was light.

  -

  On the North Ice Field of Asgard.

  At midnight, it was as bright as midday.

  In the sky, clouds that had lingered here for thousands of years, glowed like iron and lit a fire in the sky.

  Endless shards of ice and snow, like blades, fell from the sky with the coldness that could sting a human’s soul.

  The snow and ice whirled and drifted in the hurricane and fell to the ground again.

  Sp only a fragile white land was left between heaven and earth .

  Only the faint flames above the barriers danced, burning, with a thread of black smoke rising upward. But with thousands of flames, there were thousands of threads of black smoke. The smoke stretched in the hurricane and interwove together, then disappeared in the air.

  Like a burning soul that disappeared in the wind.

  In the white world, it was scarlet everywhere on the smoky ground. Those frozen blood layers piled on top of the snowfield and overlapped with each other. After centuries, they were still as scarlet as before.

  The dead people left their blood and souls here, which turned into the frozen blood layers.

  Now those scarlet layers were moistened with new blood, as if they turned alive. They were like ashes that had been rekindled, flames with the glorious light of death.

  It was breathtaking.

  By contrast, the innumerable dead bodies that had lost their lives on the snowfield were insignificant.

  Those dead bodies belonged to the innumerable demons.

  As soon as those demons set foot on the snowfield, they encountered an unpredictable power of terror and were destined to die.

  It was the same even to those terrible heaven catastrophes.

  Right in the middle of the snowfield, at the deepest part of the cobweb covered by ice and snow, a giant monster that was half-human, half-spider still kept its original standing posture.

  But it was dead for good.

  Still burning.

  With the blood as fuel, the blue flames danced over its head, but there was no temperature or even light.

  It was like an illusion.

  The monster was the Son of Spider, a heaven catastrophe.

  The big threat had slept deeply under the North Ice Field for hundreds of years, and only once broke through the outer barriers.

  But it had been dead for a long time, together with its countless children and descendants since the instant it came above ground. Even the innumerable spider eggs hidden in the frozen earth were burnt to death by those blue flames.

  At the moment, soldiers and musicians were busy running around to clean up the mess on the battlefield. But here it was silent, and everyone avoided the place in awe.

  “No wonder you are the King of Blue.”

  In front of the burning spider stood two figures.

  The young man in an eagle emblem cloak whispered. The light and pure white robe he wore blended with the snowy ground.

  His slender fingers, covered with black iron rings, pressed on the directing knife on his waist that had never been drawn.

  With no color of blood in his face, he seemed to be ill and weak. He looked as beautiful as a girl, and spoke slowly.

  He didn’t look like an Asgardian, nor the third prince who had been safeguarding the North Ice Field for a decade, and was extremely ambitious to conquer the throne.

  Instead of being arrogant and frivolous as usual, he became modest, gentle, and full of awe as he stood behind the gray figure.

  The King of Blue.

  He was the guardian of the world and people, the pioneer of the dark world, so he deserved to be the strongest and the king of musicians!

  “It’s cold.” Bach looked at the burning heaven catastrophe in front of him and suddenly whispered, “Even though I have already been here a few times, the coldness still make me sad. Terrible wind and gray sky are so unpleasant. It must be very hard to live here for the Asgardians, right?”

  “Although the soil on the wasteland is frozen, it can still support people,” the third prince said. “People can grow crops on the soil under the frozen mud. If they are lucky, they can keep on farming for three months each year before the arrival of the cold front. Although it is a hard way to live, it is still better than to die.”

  “Unfortunately, every time we exploit new lands, what we find are wastelands… Next time we will go deeper and may find a warm place for you.”

  Bach turned his head back, revealed his white beard and eyebrows, and whispered, “What time is it?”

  “It is eleven thirty, almost midnight.”

  “It is the time.” Bach nodded. “Be ready to get started, waiting makes me flustered.”

  “Yes, your majesty.” The third prince lowered his head, and waved behind them, then two priests in gray coats who had been standing in the distance stepped forward.

  The two priests were different from ordinary ones, because they didn’t wear the emblem of the church, nor look nice or gentle.

  Although they were wearing robes, there were armor pieces sewed on the lining of the robes and locks that linked the hems. It was not so much a robe as a heavy armor.

  They kept short whiskers, and had scripture tattoos on their heads instead of hair. The tattoos extended upward from the neck and back from their ears.

  On the back of their heads, there were gear emblem tattoos, the variant form of the sacred emblem.

  The Chainsaw Fraternity.

  “They are the h
olders of the holy relics in the Chainsaw Fraternity.” The third prince introduced them to Bach and bowed to the them. “Thanks to the sacrifice of the Chainsaw Fraternity, the Asgardians and the Sacred City will always keep that in mind.”

  “You don’t have to, because both of us can take what we need through this.”

  The elder one nodded. He was not humble to Bach, nor flattering to the third prince. He just said indifferently, “The holy relics that can only be worshiped are meaningless. After all, it is still a weapon that should be used on the battlefield. We are happy to see if it can make any difference.”

  The third prince nodded. “So, did you bring the holy relic here?”

  The two priests looked at each other. The one behind nodded to the other. Then he took off his robe and revealed his naked upper body. He knelt on the ground and bowed to the elder one.

  There were scars on his back and the spine had long been replaced by steel.

  The elder one pulled out a dagger expressionlessly, stabbed the other priest and pulled away his flesh. His blood spewed out, fell on the snowy ground, and drifted into the scarlet blood layers.

  The elder priest pulled out a black iron box from the semi-mechanized body.

  The younger priest was guided away after being roughly bandaged.

  Everyone’s sight fell on the palm-sized iron box in the hands of the elder priest.

  “This is…?” the third prince asked.

  The elder nodded his head.

  “In order to avoid leaking the news, we disguised the characteristics of the holy relic, and Yevgeny carried it along the way.” The elder delivered the iron box to the third prince. “The sealing wax on it was set by the patriarch to prove that it is intact. We followed the order of the patriarch and delivered it to you. Our mission is completed.”

  In silence, the third prince took the dagger, levered up the sealing wax, and opened the black iron box. He took out something wrapped in silk and unwrapped it carefully.

  Finally, he saw the dark iron piece sleeping in the box.

  Feeling the air of the demons, it woke up, glowing with faint golden flames that stung people’s eyes. The iron piece quivered slightly and made a gentle whistle, echoing in people’s ears like a long sigh.