Chapter 234: Portrait

Chapter 234: Portrait

After another round of fierce bombardment, the corridor leading into the main burial chamber appeared before the eyes of the Machinery Hivemind members.

Broken rubble lay everywhere across the ground. Another diamond-like Beyonder characteristic reflecting human faces lay quietly at the base of the right wall, shining together with the other two glowing objects.

Across the entire corridor, including the walls on either side and the stone slabs above, pits and scars had appeared. But there was one object that remained perfectly intact.

It was a picture frame hanging seven or eight meters ahead. It was yellowish brown, with clear wooden grain. For the moment, only its side was visible.

Without needing any reminder, every Beyonder present recognized its strangeness.

At that moment, Horamick Haydn, the archbishop of the Church of Steam and Machinery who had barely made any major movements so far, stepped forward and said in a gentle voice, “It should be the Ghost Picture Frame belonging to the Amon family that was recorded in the materials. As long as one walks into its range and is reflected inside it, one’s spirit body will instantly separate from the flesh and become a portrait, forever sealed within it. In that state, even if the portrait is replaced, without the corresponding method, one cannot be rescued.

“If too much time passes after being sealed and the body has already died, then even if the correct method of removing the seal is grasped, the spirit will soon dissipate.”

As he spoke, Horamick walked forward step by step, approaching that strange picture frame.

Klein instinctively felt worried and dared not watch the exact process of the half-god, half-human resisting a Sealed Artifact. But he quickly realized that he was merely watching a holographic image provided by the magic mirror Arrodes. What was there to be afraid of?

Perfectly normal, perfectly normal. It is just like the immediate feeling of watching a horror movie or playing a dark game… Klein consoled himself and quickened his steps, following Horamick Haydn.

The half-god, half-human archbishop quickly entered the range of the mystical item that needed to be sealed. His figure, wearing a white priestly robe and a cleric’s soft cap, appeared little by little in the glass on the surface of the picture frame.

Glass… The Fourth Epoch already had glass? It seems so. At least in Fifth Epoch history, glass has always existed, and there was no mention of who invented it… Klein waited with interest for the “battle” between the half-god, half-human and the strange Sealed Artifact.

Horamick’s upper body was fully reflected within the Ghost Picture Frame, but his eyes did not lose their light!

He walked toward the picture frame face-to-face.

The figure within the frame began to ripple, as though it had been trying to shrink inward, yet could not succeed.

Horamick stopped. He took out a large piece of black cloth he had prepared beforehand, one that almost let no light through, and covered the Ghost Picture Frame with it.

The picture frame trembled a few times, but was finally completely covered by the black cloth and returned to silence.

Horamick seemed utterly unaffected. He easily removed the Ghost Picture Frame, finished wrapping it in the black cloth, and tied a knot at the back.

This… This is not mysticism… Wasn’t it said that it would suck the spirit body into the picture frame and turn it into a portrait? Why is nothing happening to the archbishop… Is this because he is half-god, half-human, or is there another reason? Klein was puzzled, looking Horamick Haydn up and down, but found not the slightest abnormality.

His eyes have light, his expression is benevolent, his flesh and blood are full… What a pity. I am not actually on site, or I could activate spirit vision and study him… Klein withdrew his gaze and waited in place for Ikanser and the other Machinery Hivemind members to arrive.

Horamick handed the Ghost Picture Frame to one of the team members, then proceeded forward alone, walking toward the entrance of the main burial chamber at the end of the corridor.

There stood a black stone door full of patterns that looked hacked out by knives and axes. At its center was embedded a grayish-white disk.

The disk’s surface was divided into twelve sections, with a black hand, just like a clock in the outside world.

However, those sections were not evenly distributed across the disk. Some were large and some small, extremely disharmonious, and half of each section was smeared with shadow.

“The Amon family crest,” Archbishop Horamick briefly introduced.

He did not explain the crest’s symbolic meaning in detail, because only Deacon Ikanser Bernard was qualified to know that here.

Relying on his own accumulated mysticism knowledge, Klein attempted an interpretation.

The combination of disk, twelve sections, and hand clearly represents time. This matches the Worm of Time left behind after the Amon avatar perished. The twelve sections that should have evenly divided the disk are uneven in size and shrouded in certain shadows. Does this indicate that the Amon family is the dark side of time? And where is their title as Blasphemers reflected?

As Klein’s thoughts turned, Archbishop Horamick pushed open the stone door without taking any protective measures.

The heavy stone door swung inward, revealing an extremely spacious burial chamber.

At the very center of the chamber was a raised platform, on which rested a deep-black coffin.

On the surrounding walls, iron-colored lamp brackets jutted out one after another, each holding a white candle that was still burning quietly.

None of the candle flames flickered. They were so still that they seemed to be part of a frozen image, completely untouched by the erosion of one or two thousand years.

Along the straight path from the stone door to the coffin lay one corpse after another. Some wore black wool coats and half-tall silk top hats, while others were dressed like ordinary workers and had duckbill caps to match. One glance showed that they had entered here only in recent years.

The group of Beyonders who recruited helpers before? How did they pass through the earlier regions? Monsters like the Human-skinned Shadow were clearly still alive… With his mind full of questions, Klein focused on the corpses.

This look startled him at once.

Every corpse had sparse white hair, dry and wrinkled skin, and obvious spots, like eighty- or ninety-year-old elders.

There were no obvious wounds on their bodies. It seemed as though they had simply died naturally of old age, and only recently at that, since they had not yet had time to rot.

Clearly, there was no way so many aged Beyonders had come to explore the mausoleum. Even if the person who discovered the place had been decrepit, they would have done their best to recruit young, strong helpers… Something is wrong here! Klein frowned slightly and again swept his gaze around.

He quickly connected it to the Worm of Time left behind by the Amon avatar, and to the Amon family crest on the stone door that carried the meaning of time.

Causing people to rapidly age is one of the Amon family’s Beyonder powers? The dark side of time… the loopholes in time… Could it be that, while making others swiftly grow old, members of the Amon family can regain youth and obtain longer lives? Wait. These Beyonders easily forced their way here. Perhaps the tomb owner deliberately let them in because he wanted to plunder others’ time to maintain his own existence… Klein looked speculatively toward the black coffin on the high platform.

At that moment, Horamick Haydn, this half-god, half-human powerhouse, raised his left hand and pressed it downward.

“You will stop here.”

“Yes, Your Excellency Archbishop,” Ikanser and the others answered without the slightest hesitation.

As members of an official organization, they had all read large numbers of files on supernatural incidents. They knew that in such circumstances, they had to absolutely obey the will of a High-Sequence Beyonder and absolutely could not make decisions on their own or act bravely without permission. Otherwise, they would not even know how they died.

Horamick looked ahead, his gaze stopping on a picture frame placed face-down at the base of the platform.

His expression unchanged, he began walking forward, not too quickly and not too slowly.

No preparations at all? Is the special trait of a half-god, half-human being “reckless”? Klein watched in considerable astonishment.

He could almost imagine Horamick’s teeth falling out, his white hair thinning, his skin drying and wrinkling, and his body swiftly aging.

One step, two steps, three steps. The originally normal Horamick suddenly shuddered, and a sharp, grating friction sound that made one’s teeth ache came from within his body.

His pace began to slow. His movements became somewhat stiff. His skin visibly dried.

Something is a little wrong… This is not normal human aging… What was that grinding sound just now? Klein muttered inwardly.

Four steps, five steps, six steps. A tearing sound came from Horamick’s body, and something fell to the ground with a clang.

Klein instinctively looked over and saw a gear.

A rust-covered gear!

Horamick continued forward. From time to time, things fell from him: rusty screws, melted wax, yellowed bone, loosened springs… His figure grew thinner and thinner, swaying as though it might fall apart at any moment.

This is just like a robot… No, in this era’s terminology, like a living puppet… Klein abruptly understood.

He remembered that before Old Neil died, he had said that Sequence 4 of the Church of the Mother Earth was adept at Life Alchemy, and that the Sequence corresponding to the Savant pathway could also barely accomplish it.

Horamick was precisely a High-Sequence powerhouse of the Savant pathway!

The Horamick in front of me is not the true him, only an alchemically crafted puppet. The reason the Ghost Picture Frame was ineffective earlier was because the puppet has no spirit body at all! The real Horamick should still be controlling it from very far away… As expected of a demigod… While Klein came to this realization, the archbishop had already reached the high platform, bent his knees, bowed his back, and turned over the picture frame placed face-down.

Normally, when exploring a mausoleum with supernatural factors, one had to avoid turning similar items face-up. This time, however, Horamick made the opposite choice.

As the picture frame turned over, wind suddenly blew through the sealed burial chamber, dispersing an invisible confinement and silence.

The white candles on the iron-colored lamp brackets rapidly burned, becoming unusually bright. But very soon, they reached the end of their lives and melted completely.

The aged corpses on the ground swiftly rotted, filling the air with a foul stench.

In only a few seconds, the main burial chamber became dim, leaving only the lanterns carried by the Machinery Hivemind members to barely illuminate the way ahead.

Horamick picked up the picture frame from the ground and staggered up the stairs toward the raised platform.

He arrived before the black coffin, stretched out his right palm, and pushed hard.

Creak. Amid the sound of friction, the heavy coffin lid opened a crack. It seemed that it had never been nailed shut.

Horamick lowered his head to glance inside and said in an unchanged voice, “There is no corpse.”

The image immediately zoomed in. Klein saw that the inside of the coffin was completely empty. Only a layer of pale-golden soft cushion covered the bottom, embroidered with a worm that had twelve circular rings on its body.

At that moment, Horamick turned around, and the picture frame in his hand entered the eyes of Ikanser and the others.

With only one glance, Klein’s gaze abruptly froze.

It was a portrait painting, depicting a young man with a smile at the corner of his mouth.

He had black eyes and black curly hair.

He had a broad forehead and a thin face.

He wore a crystal monocle.

He wore a black pointed soft cap.

Amon!