Chapter 78: Whose Church?

Chapter 78: Whose Church?

A cluster of churches… Same as my judgment…

Klein looked at the ruins ahead and silently muttered to himself.

At that moment, the thin crimson moonlight penetrating the accumulated fog spilled over those half-collapsed buildings. Compared with before, it had grown much richer, drawing closer to the color of blood.

Klein maintained Gehrman Sparrow’s signature coldness and spoke without the slightest emotional fluctuation.

“Which area did you explore previously?”

As he spoke, Klein glanced at the battered but unbroken lantern in the Hanged Man’s hand. His muscles and skin instinctively tightened when he saw the light cast by the flame.

Although the flame was always isolated by thick glass and a metal grille, it still made him somewhat afraid.

Alger did not notice Gehrman Sparrow’s subtle change. He raised his right hand, the one holding his short blade, and pointed at the most intact and grandest building among the ruins.

“There.”

Only the main body of that structure remained. It was impossible to know what its original floor plan had been like. One could only judge from its surviving sections that it had thick walls, was magnificent and enormous, had narrow windows, and had once possessed a tower and a bell tower. Its exterior was plain, and its style ancient.

“This is an architectural style from the early Fourth Epoch. It is recorded in the Church of Storms’ scriptures. It is said that during that period, the various Churches widely used similar forms to construct churches,” Alger said. He had a deep impression of these ruins and, over the years, had searched through many books, gaining a certain understanding. “Its greatest feature is that the upper level is a temple, while the lower level is a tomb. Life and death are unified together. However, I cannot be certain that the interior of this ancient church matches my description, because I have never gone deep inside.”

Perhaps this architectural style was inherited from the Third Epoch…

Klein formed a tentative guess and led the way toward the ancient church ruins with an unusually tall doorway, leaving the lantern behind him—enjoying only the light without bearing the flame.

The two quickly followed the exaggeratedly tall gray-white stone steps to the entrance. There, they saw surviving classical stone pillars and concentric, multi-layered arches.

Klein did not rush inside. He reached into his pocket with his left hand and took out a gold coin, making it flip and leap between his fingers while seemingly muttering something.

Suddenly, he flicked the gold coin into the air with a clang. While spreading his palm to wait for it to fall, he turned his head toward the Hanged Man and said, “What did you rely on to judge that in the depths of this church, there was an item no less valuable than a Card of Blasphemy?”

After speaking, he glanced at the coin that had fallen into his palm and casually put it away.

Alger pointed inside.

“As I said, my strength at the time was inferior to Qilangos’s. Naturally, I did not go as deep as he did, and I could not know exactly what he saw. I could only judge from some of his words that there is something very precious and very important inside, and that one would need at least the level of a true Sequence 5 to have any chance of obtaining it.

“However, the murals near the entrance and the traces on the ground may explain some things.”

Klein nodded and stepped into the deep, dark doorway that the crimson moonlight could not directly reach. The black trench coat draped over him fluttered faintly backward. Alger, meanwhile, followed behind him with the lantern in one hand and his short blade tightly held in the other.

Passing through the entrance, Klein borrowed the red moonlight falling from gaps in the dome to see the area ahead. It was a fairly deep hall, supported by classical stone pillars, a small half of which had already collapsed or broken.

At its far end, there was no altar and no ascending stairway. Instead, everything was pitch-black, making details difficult to see. It seemed to lead deep underground.

Not upper temple, lower tomb… Are both the temple and tomb underground? It is impossible to judge. We have to go down to know…

Klein instinctively looked left and right and found a side door on each side. However, the regions they led to had already completely collapsed, leaving no path forward.

The murals near the entrance and the traces on the ground…

Remembering what the Hanged Man had just said, he took two diagonal steps, released the invisible Wraith, Senor, and borrowed his night vision to examine the remaining murals on the walls.

The background of the mural was a towering, magnificent mountain. At its peak stood an enormous cross covered in layers of radiance.

Before the cross stood an abnormally majestic figure, surrounded by angels with two, four, and six wings.

This…

With only a rough glance, Klein felt an intense sense of familiarity.

He had seen a similar mural before, inside the mausoleum of the Blasphemer Amon!

Focusing again, Klein quickly identified the differences. Here, there were no two infants representing Amon and Adam. There were no twelve-winged angels either. The majestic figure before the cross, covered in divine radiance, held both hands at His chest, bearing a simple, ancient stone slate.

The slate was drawn in an extremely blurry manner, yet it gave off the feeling of being both ancient and young, both sacred and evil. Its symbolic meaning was deeply contradictory.

A slate…

Klein’s pupils slightly dilated, and a proper noun flashed through his mind:

Blasphemy Slate!

This should be that ancient Sun God—the Lord who created everything, worshiped by the City of Silver… As expected, the Blasphemy Slate has a close connection to Him… I wonder whether this is the first Blasphemy Slate or the second…

Klein roughly understood which existence this cluster of churches belonged to, and he also began believing that the depths of these ruins might hide something extremely precious and important.

He withdrew Senor’s gaze and had the marionette look toward the ground instead.

Aside from being covered in cracks, the stone slabs also bore strange traces. They were dark red, roughly the size of a human forehead, sometimes overlapping one another, and they extended all the way toward the end of the hall.

At that moment, a scene naturally formed in Klein’s mind:

One devout believer after another crawled prone on the ground, advancing forward. Every few steps, they would slam their foreheads heavily onto the floor, striking until blood flowed.

Seeing Gehrman Sparrow’s gaze return, no longer examining the surroundings, Alger probed, “The ancient Sun God?”

At the same time, for some unknown reason, he felt a cold wind blowing from beside Gehrman Sparrow and suspected that there might be hidden shadows or Wraiths nearby.

Connecting it to how the mutated curly-haired baboon had been strangely controlled, Alger vaguely guessed something, but did not say it aloud.

Hearing the Hanged Man’s question, Klein originally wanted to laugh softly and answer, “You may also call Him the Lord who created everything, the omniscient and omnipotent God.” However, he immediately realized that this tone and wording were closer to the Fool than to Gehrman Sparrow. He restrained himself and merely nodded slightly.

“This is not hard to see.”

Alger silently breathed out in relief, looking forward even more to the item buried deep within this church.

The two made the decision simultaneously and walked together toward the end of the hall.

When they drew near, Klein finally saw layers of steps leading downward.

“Underground area?” he asked succinctly.

Alger shook his head.

“I cannot be certain. I have not gone down.

“Although Qilangos attempted to go deeper, he returned here in less than ten minutes, his aura having become quite weak.”

Klein thoughtfully nodded and casually said, “You and he seem quite familiar.”

If someone else had said that, Alger would certainly have pretended not to hear and avoided answering directly. But in his mind, the World, Gehrman Sparrow, was Mr. Fool’s Blessed. His question might represent that existence’s will, and therefore had to be treated seriously.

After considering for several seconds, Alger said in a low voice, “He and I were from the same hometown. We served as attendants in the same small church.

“The pastor there was irritable and hot-tempered, and liked punishing attendants. Qilangos could not accept it, secretly escaped, and became a pirate.”

So there was that kind of past… Mr. Hanged Man is also a man with a story…

Klein did not continue asking. Inside the incomparably silent ruined church, he followed the stairs downward, step by step.

Although his footfalls were already very soft, in such an environment they still sounded distinct, spreading far into the distance.

Very quickly, the two finished the stairs and saw another arched doorway.

On either side of the doorway stood a black shadow, silent, unmoving, forever unchanged.

Klein and Alger stopped at the same time, looking toward the two shadows, and discovered that they were two stone statues.

Both were male and entirely gray-white. One wore barrel-shaped full body armor, while the other wore a jacket with a more modern style. Both faces were filled with pain, their eyes bulging as though glaring at something.

Seeing this, Klein abruptly shuddered, recalling their previous encounter outside:

He and Alger had also shown signs of petrification. Fortunately, they had escaped the influence in time and had not truly become statues.

This… They wouldn’t be humans who had the same encounter, would they? If we had been petrified just now, would we also have been “moved” into the underground region of this ancient church, guarding a doorway for hundreds or thousands of years without changing? Didn’t the petrifying power fear these ruins?

Klein inexplicably felt a chill. His scalp faintly tingled.

He controlled the fluctuations in his expression and glanced sideways at the Hanged Man. He discovered that this rough seafarer’s pupils had similarly dilated, and the hand holding his short blade had tightened visibly.

Mr. Hanged Man has the same guess. I don’t need to explain anything…

Klein pointed at the doorway.

“There may be more stone statues inside.”

Alger nodded and said in a tone half worried, half joking, “I only hope we do not see our own.”

If we were both firmly convinced that we had escaped the petrifying effect, only to see our own statues in the underground region, then that would be a horror story…

Klein thought for two seconds, then asked the Hanged Man, “Do you have night vision?”

His true meaning was that the lantern’s light was extremely conspicuous in the pure darkness of the underground area and might trigger unnecessary changes. Therefore, if Alger had night vision, it would be better to extinguish the flame.

And Klein trusted that Mr. Hanged Man could understand this hidden implication.

Alger answered frankly, “I do.”

A Sequence Beyonder of the Sailor pathway who could dive deep into the sea inevitably possessed night vision.

Klein looked at him without speaking, but what he meant was already extremely clear:

Then why are you still using the lantern?

Alger responded solemnly, “First, to mislead enemies. When they see me using a lantern for illumination, they will instinctively believe that I lack night vision. Once they destroy the lantern and work to create a dark environment, I can give them a surprise.”

How sinister…

For a moment, Klein could not find words to respond.

Alger continued, “Second, to guard against situations similar to the City of Silver’s. Perhaps absolute lightless darkness hides the ultimate danger.”

That makes sense…

Klein no longer hinted that the other man should extinguish the lantern. He took the lead, passed between the two stone statues, and entered the doorway leading deeper underground under the frozen agony of their eyes.

Because he did not know what the petrified statues truly represented, nor whether those petrified people had completely died, Klein did not attempt to shatter them and harvest any Beyonder characteristics or mystical items that might exist.