Chapter 38: Chapter 38: Offline
Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
The body was breathing, as if it had wandered on the edge of death’s domain before circling back to the living world.
The black-robed cultists in the room stared blankly at this scene, some of them not even realizing that the man before them had actually “died” once, because the moment of life and death was so fleeting that without close attention, it was almost imperceptible. They only felt that the breath of the dying “comrade” somehow became suddenly steady and strong, which was quite astonishing.
The next second, the man lying on the ground opened his eyes.
It seemed he had been in the dark for too long, so much that even the not-so-bright oil lamp in the room felt blinding. He blinked, adjusting to the light, then his eyes slowly moved, as if only just now noticing the three black-robed figures gathered around him.
“Praise the Lord for His protection!” a relatively young cultist finally realised what had happened and could not help but exclaim excitedly, “You’ve pulled through! I thought you were going to…”
“Wait! Something’s wrong! Back off!” the cultist with the deep voice suddenly came to a realization. He stopped the others’ movements and stared intently at the man who had just awakened, retreating while saying in a threatening tone, “His breathing had completely stopped, I’m absolutely sure of it… something’s not right!”
Duncan finally got used to his surroundings, and the ringing noise in his head also faded away. He saw clearly the figures surrounding him, and his first instinct was—how come it’s still these people when I open my eyes? Why am I still in the sewer?
Traveling through the Spirit Realm was supposed to be random, and when he had chosen his destination, he had done so following his Intuition, clicking randomly. Yet he couldn’t believe that both times he opened his eyes, he ended up among these heretics. What kind of cursed fate was this?
But immediately afterward, he sensed something was off from the reaction of those around him, and the next second, he noticed the black robe on his body.
Duncan fell silent for two seconds, his mind suddenly clear.
In the last round, he had been a sacrificial offering to the heretics, then closed and opened his eyes, and now he was a “heretic.”
He really was fated with these people.
“…Something’s not right!”
Just then, a hostile, low voice suddenly interrupted Duncan’s post-“awakening” mental disarray. He looked towards the voice and immediately met a wary and cold gaze.
The owner of that gaze was coldly watching him, and beside him, the other two black-robed cultists also belatedly realized something was amiss and began to retreat, taking defensive postures.
Duncan was taken aback for a moment, then suddenly realized—he might have, just like the last time, possessed a corpse.
He had played dead right in front of these heretics!
After figuring out the situation, the nervous reactions of these cultists also seemed logical. Duncan’s mind raced, feeling the lingering numbness within the body that hadn’t entirely dissipated, making action difficult. To make a move under the watchful eyes of several cultists didn’t seem easy. He had to find a way to calm these people down—just as he was quickly searching for a way out, bits and pieces of fragmented, vague memories suddenly began to surface in his mind!
Among those fragmented memories, he “recalled” many experiences that weren’t his own—he remembered “himself” hiding in the sewers, “himself” offering his wealth to the envoy of the sun, “himself” participating in those dark, mad, bloody, and sinful ceremonies to heal diseases, drinking the blood of the innocent to obtain the “Sun Amulet’s blessing”…
At the end of that series of muddled memories, he “saw” the scene of a sacrificial ritual, saw many people dressed in black robes like himself standing beside the high platform, and a young sacrificial offering being brought up to the platform, with a stiff and eerie expression, plunging the whole ritual into chaos…
He saw the “envoy of the sun” sacrificed by the heart, all the people around the altar fell into madness, cultists killing each other, surging flames spilling over from the sun’s totem, angry roars and empty murmurs filled the gathering place, and the original owner of this body, along with the last few cultists, fled in disarray…
Duncan didn’t know how long he was dazed, perhaps it was just a moment, but the surging foreign memories in his mind calmed down again. A pathetic and despicable life was turned into a series of pale fragments lying at the bottom of his heart—as if a sort of “nourishment.”
This was the memory of the original owner of this body—although not much remained, its source was without question.
Duncan blinked, an alteration that had not occurred during the last “Spirit Realm walk.”
Last time, he had not gained any memories from the possessed corpse, the brain of that “sacrifice” was nothing but a blank slate… Why had there been such change this time?
Was it because the shell he now occupied was still “fresh”? Or was it because the pigeon “Ai Yi” had strengthened the power of the Brass Compass?
Duncan slowly rose from the ground, knowing that no matter the reason behind this change, now was not the time to be dazed. Those tense heretics had clearly realized that his “resurrection” process was abnormal.
And as Duncan stood up, the three heretics also immediately took a half step back, followed by the deep-voiced man in a black robe breaking the silence with one hand on his waist, “Don’t move just yet—tell me, what is your name?”
“…Ron,” after a brief recollection, Duncan quite naturally said the name he’d just extracted from his memories, “Ron Strine.”
“His name is Ron.” A younger heretic in the opposite group immediately lowered his voice to say to the man who had become their apparent leader with the deep voice.
However, the man in the black robe did not let down his guard, merely continuing to glare at Duncan, before suddenly chanting in a strange and arcane tone, “In the name of the Sun, may the Lord’s light shine upon all, in the name of the Sun, may the Lord’s blessings descend!”
As Duncan listened to the heretic across from him suddenly spout madness, he was momentarily stunned, before feeling a burning sensation in his chest. He instinctively reached into his clothes to pull out the object heating up beneath them, only to see it was a golden Sun Amulet—strange waves of heat were emanating from the surface of the amulet!
The next second, the amulet suddenly burst into fierce flames, flames that seemed filled with malice, lunging straight for Duncan’s heart!
“The glory of the Lord is backfiring on him!” Upon witnessing this, the heretic who had been chanting prayers reacted instantly, drawing a short sword from his waist and shouting loudly, “His soul has been replaced! Kill this heretical abomination!”
The other two heretics were clearly a bit slower to act, but soon caught on as well; those who had thought Duncan was a “brethren” moments before unhesitatingly drew their short swords and daggers, charging at him full of murderous intent while loudly calling out, “Kill him!!”
Grasping the now fiercely burning Sun Amulet, Duncan watched as three figures rushed towards him. In the next instant, another shadow suddenly appeared at the edge of his vision.
A necromantic bird enveloped in eerie green flames, like a ghostly spirit, tore through the air, carrying a cold flame stream as it swooped over the roof. It emitted a strange and piercing screech, scattering invisible ashes and feather fragments with each flap of its wings.
The three heretics naturally had their attention drawn to this “necromantic bird”; they instinctively looked up at “Ai Yi” who had taken on the Spectral Form.
The next moment, their movements all slowed down as if the connection between them and the real world suddenly became distant and sluggish. The figures of the three robe-clad men, as if in a jerky stop-motion animation, left overlapping afterimages in mid-air; they slowly descended in motions so slow they seemed absurdly comical and finally came to a complete halt in front of Duncan, less than two meters away.
Their eyes were filled with immense terror as they watched the necromantic bird circle the ceiling before landing on the body of their fellow black-robbed “brethren” opposite them. They saw the man’s Sun Amulet still burning fiercely, but the next second, the flames became an eerie green, adopting the same form as the flames on the “necromantic bird.”
Duncan pinched the Sun Amulet in his hand; the green flames of the Spiritual Body twisted and wrapped around the amulet’s surface; the flames that burst forth from the amulet circled halfway in front of him before settling down obediently, as if pleasingly coiling around his arm.
Holding the Sun Amulet that had been completely overtaken and altered, he approached the three heretics at a leisurely pace, looking into their horrified eyes with an involuntary sense of regret in his tone, “It would have been much better if you had pretended to know nothing.”
The next second, the figures of the three heretics flickered violently in midair and then vanished without a trace.
The “necromantic bird,” wrapped in green fire and resembling a skeletal creature, hopped twice on Duncan’s shoulder, and amidst the crackling of the flaming fire, it let out a sharp and hoarse cry, “Ah, the page is missing, try refreshing?”