Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Ye Qingxuan didn’t know how Old Phil felt so long after they last saw each other. But surely, Old Phil was not an ordinary dog, so it didn’t show much emotion. There was still a look of loathing in its eyes, however.
Being warmly welcomed by Ye Qingxuan, Old Phil just nudged him away with its nose and rubbed mud all over him. It acted like they had not been away from each other for so long, but rather that it had just gone next door to steal a cucumber for lunch.
However, a lot of people had gone since then.
Too much had changed.
A long time ago, they came to this city for the first time—a young man and a dog.
Ye Qingxuan had been worried that the virus might make Old Phil ill, yet it only sneezed once and shook some hair off. It didn’t feel anything at all. This was really astonishing to some, yet Ye Qingxuan was used to this He always believed that Old Phil was no ordinary dog; it was smarter than any man.
“Where have you been all this time?” Ye Qingxuan squatted down and said jokingly, “You found a wife, had a bunch of pups, and didn’t want to come back, right?”
Surprisingly, Old Phil didn’t bite him this time. It just looked at him as if to say your old man is really disappointed with you, which made Ye Qingxuan feel ashamed of making such boring jokes.
Old Phil opened his mouth and threw something on the bench. It was a piece of a broken chain. The decoration on the chain was gone, leaving only the chain, which seemed so familiar.
Ye Qingxuan blanked for an instant. After a long thought, he picked up the chain. It was so heavy that it must have been made of some sort of precious metal. The design was highly sophisticated and the chain was handmade. Even an experienced craftsman would find it difficult to make such a chain. There were not many good craftsmen in Avalon, not to mention someone who would bother to make such a nice chain.
Yet, he quickly remembered something. When he went to the Stein Chamber, he saw a necklace with the same design on someone’s neck.
“Marry?” Ye Qingxuan asked in astonishment. She was the second daughter of the king who went missing when Leviathan broke the second layer of seal; the princess of Avalon, the future Queen of Anglo.
He stared at Old Phil and asked, “You’ve found her?”
Old Phil peered at him and said nothing. It turned around and whipped him with its tail, meaning follow me.
Ye Qingxuan followed Old Phil and after some turns, they were suddenly on the street. Then they went through some streets and valleys. The further they went, the more unfamiliar everything became.
Ye Qingxuan felt a headache coming on. According to the map in his mind, they had been going in circles for a while and should be where they set off from. Yet, there was a deserted valley in front of them. When he lowered his eyes, however, he found that there was a stream of blood flowing along the way.
The path of blood!
When he raised his head again, a wave of mist came over and devoured him.
The mist was gone; everything was different. Old Phil had also vanished, like a phantom.
Ye Qingxuan was in the shadow of Avalon.
In the silence, he raised his head, looking at the dark sky. There must be something wrong! What was wrong?
The shadow of Avalon was different from before. Everything was shattered as if it had been twisted and folded by some great force. Numerous ruins flew up into the sky, stretching in every direction.
It seemed the city had jumped up into the sky and stayed there. The buildings just floated in the air, frozen in time forever.
In the second that the city was ruined, the sky must have collapsed and the earth cracked.
In the sky, the king’s palace was left in the center, releasing horrible aether waves like a dark sun. There was surely something terrible brewing there.
The city had been destroyed, yet some monsters occupied the ruins of the city and seemed to have given the city some sort of evil life.
There seemed to be a sort of terrible power dominating the whole city. It had devoured the city and made the city part of it. They were crawling out of their tomb and would be alive again soon. Numerous sounds of worms and insects crawling, and beasts howling were hidden in the silence, making the place even more terrible.
In the empty streets and the deepest darkness, something was staring at Ye Qingxuan with its blood-red eyes.
One, two, three… There were so many of them
“It seems I have been targeted,” Ye Qingxuan murmured. Then a bronze emblem slid out of his sleeve and into his hand. The music theory of Jiu Xiao Huan Pei flew out from the Symphony of Predestination and wrapped around the emblem. When the music was played, swords of moonlight were released, which was intertwined with red fire, burning the sins of the humans and lighting up the world.
This was the most useful skills he had learned in his classes at the Religious Court of Inquisitors, which covered all musical instruments and alchemy devices and hundreds of purifying music movements created since the establishment of the Religious Court of Inquisitors.
Besides the four most essential music movements, including the Night on Bald Mountain, 16 for supporting utilities and 34 for purifying, the more than 70 other music movements were all created to kill all creatures except for humans.
This was my exercise class, then? He went forward at his normal speed and felt that the pressure was becoming more and more tense.
Suddenly, something like a dying beast howled from afar. It sounded so familiar. Ye Qingxuan was so surprised that he raised his head to see what it was. Numerous monsters with blood-red eyes jumped at him, howling. There were also waves of little bugs in the air, extracting aether from the air, which created a temporary vacuum around Ye Qingxuan.
Ye Qingxuan heaved a sigh and waved a sliver of moonlight from his fingers. Numerous music notes were played in such a short time that the sound was not even distinguishable. Then, fire and light spread around very quickly and quietly. All the monsters and bugs were burned into nothing, leaving not even ashes.
In the fading light, Ye Qingxuan looked to the direction of the howling.
It was Firebird. And he was familiar with that.
“Mary?”
…
In the ruins of the church, black blood spurted and fell on the mask. A giant monster was cut in half. It fell on the ground, twitching and howling. Yet more monsters were coming.
Surrounded by layers of monsters, a knight shouted angrily. He waved his sword again with his great power, generating a gust of strong wind which cut through the space.
The wind tore everything apart on its path and chopped up all the monsters within a hundred-meter radius. With the blood of the monsters sprayed on the ground, the smell of blood was even stronger.
Behind the knight was a girl who was crying bitterly. “They are here, Christine. They are here. They are here. They are right here.” Her gown torn, her arms were shown. Ye Qingxuan could saw there were red scales showing and disappearing on her arms. Her pupils changed forms as if she were a beast one moment and a normal girl the next. She was struggling between being a beast and being a human.
“It is looking at me.” Mary murmured, “Christine, give me the sword. Quick! Give me the sword. It was inside me. I saw it. It is tearing me apart.”
“Your Highness!” Christine half-kneeled on the ground, shaking her violently. “Don’t give up! Don’t be defeated by it!”
“It is killing me, Christine.” Mary raised her head. Her eyes were full of emptiness. She could no longer see the knight but the felt the beast inside her.
“Give me the sword, Christine, give me the sword.” She held Christine’s arm and begged. Her strength was so mighty that she crushed the steel of Christine’s armor and left her indentations from her fingers on it.
She looked at Christine, red-eyed as if she were a demon. “Give me the sword! I can kill it!”
Christine became silent. She was so sad that she couldn’t help but shed tears.
“My princess, it is you that you will be killing.”
Then, the armor suddenly split apart. The girl knight reached out to Mary and grabbed her. Pressing Mary’s neck down, she injected a shot of tranquilizer into her artery. At the same time, her arm was broken by Mary. The bones in her arm were fractured and her arm began to bleed.
The tranquilizer was injected into Mary’s body, yet the beast in her veins wouldn’t surrender; it was still fighting and howling. After several seconds, though, it calmed down.
Mary lost her strength and fell into Christine’s embrace, gasping.
“Don’t fall asleep, Your Highness.” Christine carried Mary on her back. “Hold on for a moment. It will pass soon. Remember the song you liked most when you were a kid?”
Mary seemed to answer her. She murmured something as if singing.
“Solomon was born on Monday, baptized on Tuesday, got married on Wednesday, became ill on Thursday. His illness became serious on Friday, he died on Saturday, and was buried on Sunday. This was the end of Solomon. This was the end of Solomon.” In her murmuring, Christine straightened her arm and put it back into the armor. Then she put the mask on.
The tranquilizer would become useless very soon. In the beginning, the effect of the tranquilizer could last a whole day, but now it could only calm Mary for ten minutes. Christine knew well that Mary must be treated to cleanse her blood, otherwise, she would collapse under the Blood of Curses and turn into a blood-thirsty monster.
Time was running out.
“Don’t be afraid, my princess.” Suffering great pain, Christine raised her broken arm to stroke Mary’s long hair. “I will protect you. I will.”
Yet in the silence, the melody came again from afar. It was the Requiem—Requiem VI—which was played during the funeral of musicians to pray for the spirit of the dead so that he or she could ascend to the Originator. Yet now, it was so dark and savage.
Ashes came with the cold wind, forming a vague shadow which was torn apart from the inside, revealing pale skin and hollow eyes. The musician in white stepped out from the shadow. Wearing a crystal crown, the musician had dark and cold aether movements around him, surrounding Christine like snakes.
The spirit of the dead musicians came back from the realm of the deceased in such an ugly appearance.
On the white clothes was an emblem of the royal musician group, and the body, which had been petrified due to the effects of the drug of Penglai, came forward, step by step. The petrified neck of the middle-aged dead musician cracked irritatingly when he stared at Christine. Then he locked his sight on Mary.
“I sacrifice myself to the great emperor.” The musician stepped forward again, his hollow voice full of enthusiasm which made people sick. “May God bless the kingdom and my king bless me!”
