Chapter 100: Chapter 104: The Note
Looking at the feather pen and parchment handed to her by the Tomb Guardian, Fenna took a deep breath to quickly steady her emotions.
“How long may I stay inside?” she looked up and stared at the nameless Tomb Guardian.
The Tomb Guardian slightly bowed his head, this being that simultaneously embodied life and death seemed to seriously judge the strength of the soul before him and gave a chilling response, “A moment, or eternity.”
This answer implied that the message soon to be conveyed from the tomb would be brief and singular, yet it might point towards a very dangerous “origin”, where the Listener risked death.
Fenna nodded slightly and withdrew her gaze from the Tomb Guardian.
She stepped towards the massive tomb not far away, with the Tomb Guardian following close behind. Rusted chains dragged on the ground, screeching sharply, while the gathered shadows in the plaza merely watched silently as a chosen saint approached the sepulcher.
Before the tomb’s grand entrance, Fenna stopped. She looked up at the towering pale stone doors, whose ancient, desolate aura subtly moved her.
She had not seen the tomb for the first time in a Spiritual Energy congregation, but it was her first time being chosen to enter the tomb as “the Listener.”
Anomaly 004, “Tomb of the Nameless King” — this ancient sepulcher, situated in some bizarre temporal rift, wasn’t under the control of the Deep Sea Church. Instead, it was guarded and shared in turn by various orthodoxies. From the outside, it had the distinct architecture of the Ancient Crete Kingdom, and current evidence suggested that the tomb indeed was a legacy left by that ancient kingdom — yet no one knew who built it; nor did anyone understand why this ancient tomb had turned into an “anomaly.”
People only knew that the master of the tomb would intermittently convey some messages to the outside world. The contamination carried by these messages, in most cases, was lethal to mortals. And yet, these messages were reliable, precise, even able to directly reveal the “true information” of certain powerful anomalies and phenomena.
Whenever the master of the tomb conveyed a message, a Tomb Guardian would emerge from the sepulcher and select a Listener to enter the tomb — the Tomb Guardian himself was part of Anomaly 004, nameless, dutifully committed, and keeper of secrets. He would prioritize souls close to the congregation plaza, but if none were there, he would take willing candidates from all over the world.
In the days before the patterns of Anomaly 004 were summarized, such “random selections” had claimed hundreds of lives — until thousands of years ago, the emergence of a natural-born saint broke this terrible cycle for the first time.
That saint returned alive from the Tomb of the Nameless King to the world of the living and disclosed the first sacred gift from the “Nameless King”: the original list of anomalies and phenomena.
While it was common knowledge that the classification and list of anomalies and phenomena were gifts from the Ancient Crete Kingdom left for posterity, few knew that this gift actually entered the world through such means — the ancient kingdom left behind Anomaly 004, which, after hundreds and thousands of failed summons, succeeded in publishing the initial catalog.
And since then, the churches gradually grasped the method of approaching the tomb via Spiritual Energy congregations and actively sending saints to become “Listeners,” thus rendering this ancient anomaly relatively safe for human use.
“Enter the tomb, prepare to listen,” came the Tomb Guardian’s deep and hoarse voice from behind. Fenna then stepped forward.
The sound of the stone doors slowly closing came from behind, and the breath of the Tomb Guardian also dissipated into the air at the same time — the ancient custodian merged back into the tomb, now monitoring through invisible senses every move of the soul that had entered the grave.
Pale flames ignited on either side of the corridor leading to the burial chamber, and Fenna walked along the path lit by the flames towards the heart of the tomb, her eyes scanning the walls on either side where one could faintly see… “carvings” as if etched out forcibly with fingernails.
“Move straight ahead, do not look back.”
“Do not ask the Tomb Guardian about the identity or name of the master of the tomb.”
“Do not run, do not shout, do not pray to any deities.”
“Maintain humility and reverence, but do not kneel.”
“Once in the burial chamber, do not speak.”
These were warnings left over innumerable ages by countless “Listeners” — in ancient times, the vast majority of Listeners died on this very path, and only one in a hundred or even one in a thousand might be strong enough to leave these “instructions” as a warning for posterity before their own death.
These precious pieces of “advice” had already been written in the books used by various churches to train saints, and Fenna knew them by heart, daring not to forget a single word or phrase.
However, at this moment, Fenna suddenly became curious again—she had heard of the advice left by her ancestors in this crypt, yet she hadn’t expected to find only these pieces of advice. What about those who had become hysterical, those who had fallen into insanity, those who had lost hope in despair and had desperately pleaded or even rabidly destroyed? Had they not left any traces in this crypt?
Human nature is complex. Before the churches successfully controlled vision 004, Tomb Guardians had brought hundreds, perhaps thousands of people here. Among those people, there surely must have been some who experienced mental breakdowns, some who cursed their fates, and it would have been unavoidable for some to leave behind mad ravings or even curses on the walls of the crypt… but along the way, all Fenna had seen were the encouragements and reminders left by her forebears, as though…
Only those steadfast and noble souls were allowed to leave their mark here.
Fenna was somewhat puzzled in her heart, but in the end, did not call out to the Tomb Guardian to ask about her doubts.
In theory, she could have spoken to the Tomb Guardian during the crypt phase; this would not have violated the “rules” of the tomb. The Tomb Guardians themselves indeed had records of responding to visitors and proactively answering questions, but this was the first time Fenna had entered here as a listener. She was very cautious and did not dare to do anything unnecessary.
So, under this nerve-wracking condition, the young Judge finally arrived at the end of the crypt—through the flickering light ahead, she could already see the “Tomb of the Nameless King” in its deepest part.
She stepped across the stone doorway at the end of the hallway.
A broad and primitive tomb chamber appeared before her eyes.
Within the vast pyramid-shaped room, the sloping pale stone walls were covered with unclear patterns. Two rows of dark brown metal braziers were distributed on both sides of the entrance, burning with pale flames and emitting a hazy smoke, yet in the center of the tomb chamber, there was no sign of a coffin or anything of the sort—there was only a stone chair, and upon that chair sat the tomb’s master.
It was a headless body, seemingly that of a large man—his limbs were firmly bound by chains, his arms and chest covered with thick black fur, like that of an animal. His feet were deformed and twisted, resembling the misshapen limbs of an animal, or as if they had been scorched by flames, presenting a charred and rotting appearance.
The body sat quietly on the throne, seemingly unresponsive to Fenna’s visit.
But Fenna remembered what she had been taught. The moment she saw that “Nameless King,” she took out the parchment and the quill pen, concentrating her mind to prepare for the imminent spiritual contamination, while getting ready to record what she would hear…
Fenna opened her eyes.
She saw herself lying on the ground of the gathering square, where distant and towering broken pillars connected the chaotic sky with the fractured earth, and further away, groups of dark figures were gathering.
A few shadows were moving toward her, one of which appeared to be Bishop Valentin.
“You’re awake. Leave,” said the hoarse and low voice of the Tomb Guardian, suddenly coming from beside her. Fenna, startled and struggling, lifted her head and to her shock, realized she was lying at the entrance of vision 004. In the corner of her eye, she saw the tall Tomb Guardian turning to enter the stone door of the tomb, followed by a thunderous rumble—the massive tomb structure rapidly sinking beside her and disappearing into the ground of the square.
Fenna had yet to comprehend what had happened when a few shadows had already reached her side, one of which spoke with Bishop Valentin’s voice: “Fenna, are you all right? I saw you walking out of the tomb and then you just fainted at the door…”
“I…” Fenna slowly propped up her body, feeling as if all her strength had been drained out, but now it was gradually returning, which helped her mind to slowly clear up, “How long was I inside?”
“A moment,” said another saintly figure solemnly beside her. “You entered the door, then the door closed for a moment, and next you walked back out from inside.”
Fenna stared for a moment, then she heard Bishop Valentin speak again: “What about the parchment? What did you write down?”
“Oh, right, the parchment!” Fenna finally became fully alert and immediately felt something indeed in her hand. She quickly raised her hand, and in the next second, her gaze froze.
The initially whole piece of parchment in her hand had, for some reason, been torn to just a few centimeters long scraps, and on the tiny scrap of paper, there were only a few hasty numbers and letters:
“Anomaly 099 – Puppet.”