Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong
Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/
Chapter 142: A Single Bone
Kalen walked through the Blind God’s temple.
He circled once around the various closed-eyed statues, but in the end, he still didn’t venture too close to the enormous pit. Egan was still praying devoutly. The only difference was that he kept his eyes open, his gaze drifting over toward Kalen from time to time as though intentionally, yet not quite.
Kalen had no choice but to remain concealed, revealing only the faintest trace of his voice as he whispered to the Dragon Fae. The temple was terrifyingly quiet. There was only the faint sound of candles and oil lamps burning, along with the occasional drip of water from somewhere unknown.
For some reason he couldn’t explain, Kalen didn’t like this place very much. It made his chest feel tight and his mood increasingly irritable.
“What’s wrong with you?” The Dragon Fae keenly noticed that something was off. He poked his nose out from Kalen’s pocket and nudged Kalen’s waist.
“Nothing. It just feels like… I’ve seen somewhere similar before.” Kalen tried his best to keep his voice low.
He didn’t sense any ill omen. It was simply that the deep pit, the ghostly green flames… the more he looked at these details, the more familiar they seemed. It was as though he had seen them somewhere inside a twisted nightmare. Yet whenever Kalen tried to recall it, he couldn’t remember a single thing.
He forced himself to look away from the massive pit. The longer he stared into it, the more strangely attractive the darkness became, as though if he jumped into it, he could escape this unsettling atmosphere entirely.
“…Praise be to my God for His generosity and mercy. May His Veil shroud you, unseen and unharmed.”
More than a dozen steps away, Egan finally finished the lengthy hymn and prayer. He slowly straightened and smoothed the wrinkles at the front of his robe.
Looking at the expectant eyes of the boy, Kalen felt somewhat awkward.
He had heard the hymn and entered the temple. He could remain hidden here until dawn, or use the passage on this side to investigate the confession chamber.
Although Kalen was still concerned about the prayer involving the “veil,” forcibly keeping innocent Egan here would only cause trouble for the boy. He pursed his lips and forced himself to speak.
“Good child.”
“I will follow all Your instructions, my God.”
Egan smiled. He bowed toward the enormous pit with heartfelt reverence, then decisively turned around and retreated toward the door.
Just as Kalen pressed at his temple and prepared to relax, Egan abruptly stopped walking.
“My God, please proceed to the deepest part of the darkness.”
His voice was extraordinarily gentle, saturated with devotion as sweet as honeyed water. “…That is where Your lost glory awaits.”
With that, the heavy doors opened and closed again. The entire process took only a dozen seconds, leaving Kalen no time at all to formulate a response. He was already bad at this sort of situation, and on top of that he was pretending to be the Blind God. He couldn’t exactly blurt out a foolish, “What?”
The heavy doors of the temple swallowed the boy’s slender silhouette. Kalen stood frozen for a while, forgetting even to release his concealment.
“Do you think he noticed you?” The Dragon Fae squeaked. “I’m telling you, if you didn’t deliberately make noise, even I wouldn’t be able to detect you… That brat is strange. Want me to chase after him and ask?”
Kalen had finally managed to sneak in here without attracting attention. It would be rather inconvenient for him to leave. Still, even a tiny mouse could find a crack to squeeze through.
“Maybe it was just part of the prayer.”
Kalen pressed at his head again. That faint, dark discomfort lingered at the edge of perception, making him uneasy. The Dragon Fae shook his head vigorously.
“Impossible. What kind of prayer orders a god around? I’d sooner believe that brat realized we were fooling him and set a trap.”
“Too bad the magical flow here is so strange. Otherwise I could fly down and take a look for you… Hm?”
The Dragon Fae tilted his mouse head. “Strange. The atmosphere here seems different. Much calmer.”
The priest honestly shook his head. He couldn’t feel any difference at all.
Tass gritted his teeth and tried poking out a little more of his head. Sure enough, the magical vortex that had been building toward birth had stopped at some unknown point.
“My god.” The Dragon Fae sucked in a sharp breath and quickly abandoned the dead mouse corpse, revealing his battered body.
“While that thing has stopped, hurry and take out the gemstones. Once I heal myself, I can go down and take a look.”
The priest worriedly pulled out a small handful of gemstones.
“I think we should wait here for Salaar and Myss instead. If there really is a trap down there, or if the magic becomes abnormal again, your safety…”
“Father Kalen. You don’t seriously think I joined you to ‘avenge my friend’ because I’m especially cautious and value my life, do you?” Tass shrugged. “I already left my people to become an assassin. Of course I do whatever I want.”
“That Egan is far too strange. I want to know what he’s after.”
“Then I’ll go down instead.” Kalen stared at the huge pit. “There’s no warning from my sense of ill omen, and I have healing abilities. I’m not that easy to kill.”
“No warning doesn’t mean you can skip investigating properly. And you’re so huge that cleaning up after you would be a pain.” The Dragon Fae cheerfully drained four or five gemstones. Amid the dust left behind by the gems, his body rapidly recovered, his scales turning glossy black.
“Relax. If he sets some magical trap, I’ll spot it immediately.”
“I am Tass Ga the Unfailing… except that one time!”
The priest struggled with the decision for a while but ultimately agreed.
The temple had been cleaned spotless in preparation for the Eye-Opening Ceremony. There was simply nothing here he could use as a clue. Combined with that faint sense of aversion, Kalen knew he wouldn’t uncover anything important himself.
Thinking ahead, he took out the mouse corpse and tied several gemstones around it. Then he dug out the spool of thread he used for mending clothes and suspended the mouse corpse from a length of string before handing it to Tass.
“Take this with you. If the worst happens, use the gemstones to heal yourself, then reclaim the mouse corpse. Tug the string three times. I’ll pull you back up immediately.”
“Pretty thoughtful.” Tass picked up the rigid mouse. “I’ll be right back.”
Fortunately, everything went smoothly enough. The priest waited anxiously. Instead of feeling the thread tremble, he eventually saw Tass himself return.
“It’s pitch-black down there, and there’s nothing.” Tass looked completely baffled. “Forget some ‘glory.’ There isn’t even a basic altar. It’s just an empty pit. Well… maybe whatever was supposed to be there isn’t there anymore.”
The whole thing sounded even stranger.
Normally, Father Kalen would have abandoned the attempt to explore that darkness and gone back to finding ways to help Salaar and Myss.
But he stared almost obsessively at the enormous pit overflowing with shadow. The thought “That’s enough,” never arose in his mind. Not from himself. Not even in the form of one of Hermit’s old warnings.
“Let’s go down together,” he said.
Tass studied him for a moment. “All right. This time, you carry the mouse.”
Kalen passed between the various snow-white statues. Dressed entirely in black, he stood out starkly among them. Eventually, he stopped at the edge of the giant pit. A soft, warm breeze drifted up from below, as though something in the darkness were breathing gently.
Outside the pit, the temple was cold and oppressive, but the pit itself felt like the warm embrace of a mother, making it all the more tempting.
Kalen closed his eyes and jumped.
As expected, the bottom of the pit was completely empty.
It was so dark that he couldn’t see his own hand in front of his face, yet there was no sense of confinement. Kalen felt as though he were standing in a wilderness beneath a moonless night.
But there was an aura here… An extraordinarily familiar aura. It resembled the Lord of Shadows’ divine power of concealment almost exactly.
Walking through the darkness gave Kalen the comfortable sensation of soaking in warm water.
“See? There’s nothing here.” The Dragon Fae flicked one hand and raised a magical light no larger than a bean. “I was hoping to see some exciting ruins, or… Hey, where are you going?”
Kalen strode through the darkness as though he could see straight through it. The Dragon Fae had to flap his wings furiously just to keep up.
There was something here.
The entire bottom of the pit was wrapped in the Lord of Shadows’ divine power. It was perfectly normal that the Dragon Fae couldn’t sense the divine power of concealment.
But as a follower of the Lord of Shadows, Kalen could feel the subtle variations.
The divine power here varied in strength.
In one place, for example, there was a moderately sized gap. Something should have been there. For now, it had left, leaving behind something like an indentation.
Elsewhere, however, the power was terrifyingly dense. It gushed out divine power like a spring, ensuring that this small portion of the pit’s floor remained perfectly hidden within darkness.
Kalen stopped in front of that “spring.”
The source of the power was a bone.
More precisely, it was a long human thighbone. It lay quietly in the darkness, undecorated and unwrapped, like the most ordinary piece of exposed human remains.
Yet the bone was clean and smooth, without the slightest trace of dirt. Its surface was as fine as polished jade.
Kalen’s scalp prickled. The texture was so familiar that it made him slightly nauseous. Its sheen was almost identical to that of the rings on his hands.
Except the power contained within this bone was far stronger than that of his two rings, the sacred relics of the Lord of Shadows.
Lost glory?
…Whose bone was this?
“What is it?” The Dragon Fae asked curiously. Even though the bone was directly in front of him, he seemed unable to see it.
Kalen’s fingers clenched into fists, then slowly relaxed.
He could not take it, he thought. Whatever connection this bone had to the Lord of Shadows, there had to be a reason it was here.
He could not question God’s…
“To think we have visitors.” A childish voice sounded from the darkness not far away.
Kalen and the Dragon Fae whipped around and saw… a child.
The child looked only five or six years old and was wrapped in bright red cloth. Kalen looked twice before realizing that it resembled torn flesh membrane or wet afterbirth more than fabric.
There were no ornaments on his limbs. His feet were bare, he carried no weapons, and there wasn’t the slightest trace of hostility about him.
Yet Kalen had a strange intuition. This child was extremely powerful. Definitely no weaker than “Payton” from the Middle Finger Tower.
Strangest of all was the child’s appearance. His gray-white hair was identical to Myss’s. His lapis-lazuli eyes looked exactly like Salaar’s, while his facial features faintly carried Myss’s likeness as well.
If Kalen hadn’t known that both men were male, he would almost have believed this child was Salaar and Myss’s biological son.
The Dragon Fae slapped himself across the face.
“Father Kalen, I think I’m hallucinating. I can see Salaar and Myss’s child talking to me.”
Kalen swallowed with difficulty. “I can see him too.”
The Dragon Fae turned pale with shock. “My god. Was Myss actually a woman disguised as a man? Or is Salaar actually… wow…”
The child’s expression twitched, as though he had swallowed ten thousand things he wanted to say. In the end, he still spoke politely, or more precisely, he spoke to Kalen.
“You’ve come.”
Kalen stared at him blankly. He could sense a faint trace of concealment divine power on the child. But judging by the child’s size, he didn’t quite match the empty indentation from earlier.
Seeing both of them frozen, the child paused, then smiled. “You may call me ‘Sogné.’ I won’t do anything to you…”
His gaze swept around before settling on the bone nearby. Sogné looked at the bone, then at Kalen, who was still trying to process the situation.
He seemed to understand something. He bent down, picked up the thighbone, and offered it to Kalen with both hands.
“Take it. You could say I’m returning it to its original owner.”
The moment Sogné finished speaking, the surging divine power within the bone faded, like a switch had been turned off.
The Dragon Fae’s jaw dropped.
“A bone suddenly appeared in his hands! I didn’t even sense a magical fluctuation. Kalen…”
At that moment, Kalen had no attention to spare for the Dragon Fae. “You said ‘returning it to its original owner.’ You know where it came from.”
Hot blood surged through Kalen’s head in waves, making him dizzy. “…Have you1, no, have You1 ever heard of the ‘Order of Shadows’?”
1[Ni](你) vs [Nin]( 您). The former is an informal way to address someone, usually used among peers, friends, or someone younger than you, while the latter is a formal more respectful way, usually used for elders, people of higher rank, or showing deference.
……
The dream world.
Myss lay limply in the bathtub and let out an enormous yawn.
He was lying on his favorite Hero Cushion while warm water swayed around his body.
This was a dream. The water in the bathtub would never cool and his skin would never wrinkle from soaking too long. Everything was just right.
…Provided one ignored the room outside the bathtub, which looked as though a storm had swept through it.
They had tangled their way from the bathtub into the dim, ambiguous bedroom, “fought” from the bedroom into the sunlit living room, then eventually returned to the warm bathtub.
Day and night never changed here. Myss couldn’t remember how long they had been at it. He only remembered that neither of them had been willing to surrender first.
In the end, thirst and hunger became too much for either of them, and they had no choice but to call it a draw.
Myss’s legs were terribly weak and Salaar was exhausted too. He had forced himself to toast some bread with butter, spread it thickly with raspberry jam, and place it beside the bathtub.
“Your stamina leaves a lot to be desired.” Myss muttered between bites of the bread. “It was the same before. You never fought me for very long. Before even a day passed, you’d run off to chew on your mushrooms…”
“Can’t be helped. Humans are that fragile.” Salaar’s cheeks were stuffed full too. “If you don’t like it, you’re welcome not to eat and enjoy the charm of ‘hunger’ to your heart’s content.”
As he spoke, he unceremoniously reached out and pressed Myss’s flat stomach.
Myss instinctively wanted to slap the hand away. Unfortunately, both hands were occupied with bread, so he had to endure it.
“…In the future, whenever we get sick of looking at each other, we can fight this way,” Myss continued thoughtfully. “Never mind you nearly stabbing me half to death. I bit you until you looked patterned, and the contract didn’t classify any of that as harm.”
Salaar touched an arm covered in bite marks and scratches and sighed. “That’s your takeaway?”
At last, Myss was willing to abandon his bread. He tossed it back into the basket, turned around, and sat on Salaar’s stomach. “What do you want to hear? That you seduced me so thoroughly that I decided to hold my breath until I died?”
Salaar raised an eyebrow. “You know that isn’t what I mean.”
“Fine. It really did feel good. Much better than the previous two times.” Myss pressed down on the Hero Cushion covered in dark-red bite marks and announced cheerfully, “That’s why I said, before the contract ends, if we can’t suppress our killing intent… Ow!”
He looked down in displeasure at the new bite mark on his chest.
“What are you doing?”
“My killing intent suddenly became unbearable.” Salaar grabbed Myss’s arm. “Do you have any idea how infuriating you are?”
Myss grinned. “Thank you for the compliment.”
Looking at the Archdemon’s smug expression, Salaar couldn’t help laughing. His arms tightened slightly.
Myss slipped and fell straight into Salaar’s embrace. He immediately protested loudly. “Wait, let me eat first! I’m still hungry…”
“Shh. Let me hold you for a while.” Salaar tightened his arms and locked Myss firmly against his chest. He held him so tightly that Myss almost suspected his ribs would be crushed.
Apparently, Salaar really did like him. And he really did like this place.
Maybe they should simply stay here for a few years, a few decades, or even a few centuries, Myss thought.
He could use the beautiful eternal daylight, the peace far removed from the human world, perhaps even “a home,” to numb Salaar.
He could make the Hero fall amid pain and attachment. Once Myss had fastened the collar around Salaar’s neck, they could leave this place. It wouldn’t delay their pursuit of V.O.R at all.
Salaar buried his nose in Myss’s wet hair. His breath felt almost hot.
Myss’s eyes shifted. He moved slightly and gently rubbed Salaar’s earlobe.
“Forget it. Two more bites of bread don’t matter. We can…”
“We’ll have a feast later.” Salaar interrupted him. “Whatever you want to eat, I’ll make it for you.”
All this time, Salaar had never deliberately made things Myss disliked, but neither had he ever indulged his every whim. Anything abnormal had to have a reason behind it.
This time, Myss was the one to raise a brow.
“What? Are you planning to do something you’ll feel guilty about?”
“Yes. Something very much against my own wishes.” Salaar still had his face buried against Myss’s shoulder. He had never healed the marks on his body. The scratches across his back were still seeping blood.
“After we eat, we’ll sleep properly. We’ll sleep until we wake naturally. Then I’ll clean the room and lock the doors and windows. After that, we’ll leave here together and continue our journey.”
Tch. Myss’s fingers moved slightly.
Fair enough. The Salaar he knew wasn’t some character from a vulgar romance novel. He wouldn’t waver because of something as trivial as sex, much less allow himself to be trapped by an illusory dream.
Myss’s brilliant scheme vanished in an instant, yet he didn’t feel particularly frustrated by it. But leaving after a single night’s sleep? Wasn’t that a little too soon? He had not rested enough yet!
Myss frowned irritably and tugged hard at the golden hair. “Why are you in such a hurry? If you ask me, we should rest here for at least another week.”
“Because I’m the one being tempted. So I have to be the one who chooses to wake up,” Salaar said softly. “If the best memory between us turns out to be nothing more than a dream… That would be far too tragic.”
<<< || Table of Contents || >>>
