Chapter 38: The Importance of Thinking

Chapter 38: The Importance of Thinking

When entering the Black Emperor’s mausoleum, Bernadette had vaguely “seen” a black shadow. Yet after leaving her information-flow state and reassembling her body from pure, complex knowledge, she sensed nothing at all. It seemed as though what she had just experienced had been an illusion.

The Queen of Mysteries did not hurry deeper into the mausoleum. She remained where she was and cautiously examined the surrounding situation.

There was no need to use any Mystery Prying ability. Everything here was clearly presented before her eyes.

The interior of the Black Emperor’s mausoleum was completely empty. Aside from the deep-black walls and the central platform, there was nothing.

Upon the platform stood a chair that seemed prepared for a giant. It looked as though it were made of iron as a whole, and its surface was engraved with complex, twisted, strange patterns. The top of its backrest extended upward into the shape of a crown.

At that moment, no figure occupied that heavy, enormous chair. It seemed to be waiting for its emperor to return.

Bernadette had just been about to test taking a step closer to the platform when she suddenly discovered that her body could not move at all. It was as though invisible shackles had firmly bound her in place.

Immediately afterward, pair after pair of illusory, holy white wings naturally unfolded behind her, as if passively resisting something.

The next second, white feathers fell one after another from those angelic wings. In midair, they grew deformed, thin, furry limbs, while the gaps layered between the feathers opened in succession, seemingly becoming countless eyes.

The mutated feathers then let out clear laughter, making giggling sounds echo through the mausoleum.

They had all come alive, becoming miniature “feather people.”

This made Bernadette spontaneously remember some fairy tales her father had told. In those stories, tiny sprites no larger than a thumb often appeared.

The thought flashed through her mind. Then Bernadette felt her right eye begin to itch.

The eyelashes of that eye grew rapidly, becoming one tiny arm after another. They braced against her face, straining as if to pull out the eyeball.

“I saw it! I saw it!” The blood vessels in Bernadette’s right eye bulged, and it spoke on its own in a childish, cheerful voice, as though it had gained its own intelligence and consciousness.

This, too, was a kind of “rebirth.”

Almost at the same time, Bernadette’s left ear abruptly drooped down, covering her ear canal.

“I don’t want to hear! I don’t want to hear!” that ear shouted in a slightly sharp voice.

Had Bernadette not used spirituality to perceive the situation, she would definitely have thought that a little girl had appeared beside her and was covering her ears while stomping and screaming.

Before she was given any chance to catch her breath, the Sage’s Forehead Ornament in the center of her forehead took the initiative to detach from her body and float into midair.

Across the surface of the vertical eye made of individual “diamonds,” countless cold glints flashed in an instant, as though one miniature eye after another had grown there.

And inside every single eye, Bernadette’s figure was reflected.

The Sage’s Forehead Ornament had also gained a certain living characteristic.

Just as this Grade 0 Sealed Artifact was about to awaken and bring some form of influence upon its target, a pale, slender, illusory hand reached out and grasped it.

The Sage’s Forehead Ornament’s living characteristic swiftly faded, as though it had entered the end of its life.

That hand, clearly feminine and carrying an icy paleness, came from behind Bernadette. At some unknown time, a figure with only an upper body had emerged there.

This figure grew from Bernadette’s back. It was mostly transparent, rather illusory.

She wore the same clothing as Bernadette, the same feathered tricorn hat, and her eyes were blue like projections of the sea. She was clearly Bernadette herself—the portion of spirit that had emerged from her body.

However, this half-body phantom of Bernadette wore a pale mask that flickered with a metallic luster.

The mask had holes only where the eyes were. There were no openings anywhere else, making Bernadette’s phantom seem extremely cold and noble, yet lacking the aura of the living.

This was the third and final Grade 0 Sealed Artifact she possessed. It was an item Emperor Roselle had made after returning from the Southern Continent late in his life. It was called Pale Death.

Its negative effect was to make the wearer die little by little, until they became a corpse and turned into its slave.

At this moment, Bernadette was making use of precisely that point, using it to suppress the abnormal activation happening to her body.

As this half-body phantom emerged, her right eye quieted. The eyelashes that had thickened, lengthened, and turned into arms withered and fell one after another.

Her ear similarly stopped making sounds, slowly opening and returning to normal.

Without this suppression, Bernadette’s five senses, arms, and legs would each have broken away from her and defected to “freedom.”

After preliminarily stabilizing her body, Bernadette tried taking a step forward, but she still could not make any movement. She could only drive the half-body spirit.

After thinking, she had the spirit behind her take out a ritual silver dagger from a clothing pocket and bend down, cutting a circle around the middle of the boot on her right foot.

With a ripping sound, that leather boot rapidly shortened by half.

Immediately afterward, Bernadette used the half-body spirit to tear open the trousers at her left knee, cut off a corner of her coat and shirt, and pull out several feathers on one side of her tricorn hat.

This attempt appeared to have nothing to do with the supernatural, as if a willful, rebellious girl were trying to dress in a way that deviated from normal aesthetics.

Yet once Bernadette completed that series of actions and carefully tried to step forward, her body actually could move. She no longer felt bound in place.

The invisible suppression vanished all at once. The Black Emperor’s mausoleum seemed to have accepted this version of Bernadette.

Who could have thought that the method to deal with this abnormality was something any ordinary person could accomplish?

Moreover, Bernadette suspected that the more one used Beyonder powers to resist, the deeper the influence would become.

This was because she had just experienced a feeling of facing an invisible deity. Only by “pleasing” the other party’s sense of aesthetics could forgiveness be obtained. Otherwise, one could only rely on Sequence 0-level authority to bypass it.

Another fortunate point was that Bernadette had not only once been an erudite Mysticism Magister, but also possessed considerable understanding of the Black Emperor pathway. She knew roughly what domains its authority included and understood that it represented the shadow of order, the distortion of normal order.

Therefore, Bernadette began with her own attire, preliminarily distorting the normal order upon herself. Then she obtained the invisible deity’s recognition and acceptance.

“Mm. In mysticism-related incidents, knowledge and a line of thought can sometimes be more useful than abilities… In that earlier situation, any resistance would have been regarded as a provocation against the order inside the mausoleum, triggering unpredictable and absolutely terrifying changes. Yet once the crux of the problem was found, the negative influence could be resolved in an extremely simple way…” Above the gray fog, Klein nodded lightly, learning quite a bit from the Queen of Mysteries.

Although he was already one Sequence higher than her and, inside Sefirah Castle, was even equivalent to a King of Angels, and although he had experienced many major events, he had advanced too quickly after all. In many detailed matters, he still had shortcomings, and this observation happened to let him make up for a few of them.

After taking one step, Bernadette began following her spiritual intuition toward the central platform, toward the empty enormous chair upon it.

One step. Two steps. Three steps. Suddenly, a faint breeze blew across the back of her neck.

The wind was gloomy and icy, making Bernadette’s body go numb.

At that instant, she seemed to sense a black shadow appearing behind her.

Silently, at the back of her head, her chestnut hair parted on its own, revealing a pair of eyes growing from her scalp.

They were nearly transparent, cold and emotionless, and had no eyelashes.

Eyes of Mystery Prying!

The pair of eyes moved slightly and saw that the shadow-like curtain in the mystical world had undergone obvious distortion inside the mausoleum.

However, they did not discover that black shadow, nor did they find the source of the earlier chilly wind.

Just as Bernadette tried to close the Eyes of Mystery Prying and reduce the possibility of an accident, that gloomy, icy wind abruptly blew through her mind.

Her thoughts became active one after another, growing more and more uncontrollable as they developed toward a state where she could no longer think.

This seemed to be a trend—irreversible, rapidly descending into chaos.

Without hesitation, seizing the few seconds in which she could still think, Bernadette had the half-body spirit behind her remove the pale mask.

Then she placed the Pale Death mask directly onto her own face, while the half-body spirit shrank back into her body and merged with her.

From that second on, Bernadette’s thoughts would gradually die along with her body. Yet her thoughts were also uncontrollably active, becoming chaotic bit by bit.

These two contradictory states canceled each other out, forming a fragile yet delicate balance that helped Bernadette recover the ability to think.

For Bernadette, compared with Pale Death’s own Beyonder effect, its negative effect was more useful at this moment.

Maintaining that balance, Bernadette took several more steps forward.

During this process, she kept sensing a black shadow wandering around her, yet she could not discover it no matter what.

After thinking for several seconds, Bernadette’s sea-blue eyes deepened again and lost focus.

She was attempting to prophesy the consequences of a certain choice.

Very soon, a corresponding scene appeared before her eyes.

Having put on the Sage’s Forehead Ornament again, she once more transformed into a pure, complicated flood of information, using this method to bypass the obstruction and head toward the central platform.

But just as she approached, the flood of information suddenly collapsed and lost order. With different cores as their foundations, it reassembled into several Bernadettes: a little girl wearing a cake dress, a tall and slender young girl, a girl full of melancholy and confusion, a woman with a twisted and painful expression, and a steadfast queen who had become composed and calm.

The prophetic scene vanished in an instant, and Bernadette’s eyes regained focus.

At that moment, she saw that black shadow.

It was standing right in front of her, less than a fist’s width away.

Its face, made purely of shadow, completely filled her vision.