An Ascension Demon? The Nun's Sacred Edict

The heavy sense of being watched by some formless, majestic presence clung to Bai Zhou for only an instant, and then it drew away. Bai Zhou came back to himself. A weight lifted. His back was already soaked through, yet his spirits had never been better. "Scarlet Curse · Imitation?" "Scarlet Senses?" Bai Zhou's eyes burned. "Because the curse I offered up was the so-called Scarlet Curse, what I received is Scarlet Senses?" "The two seem linked, as if the Root of Troy drew the essence straight out of the curse and then bestowed it on me." Bai Zhou thought it through. "What principle is this, exactly? And later, what could I do by that principle..." He had thought Troy would give him some piece of knowledge stored within the civilization. He had not expected a surprise of this kind. An Instinct! The fourth Instinct, after Life-and-Death Intuition, Mind's Eye, and Companion Lightning. The first three needed no saying. They were not so vast in spectacle, nor so peerless in slaughter, as Moon Cinder Holy Oath Slash and the Nine Basic Slashes, yet each had uses those slashes could not match, and more than once they had pulled Bai Zhou out of mortal danger. In the mystical world, the means of the Extraordinary were endlessly strange. Set beside other pathways, the Adventurer pathway, whose secret techniques were mostly arts of killing, was in fact at a disadvantage. But extra Instincts, rare to awaken even among the Destined, had made up that lack in Bai Zhou completely. As for those characters branded on the surface of the Sea of Ignorance, companion gifts that seemed born with him? To other Extraordinary they were a blow from a higher dimension, a distinction that belonged to Bai Zhou alone. There was no need to set them beside anyone else. Soothe, Light, and Moon that came after—each had carried the word inconceivable as far as it could go. "This fourth Instinct..." Bai Zhou could not wait to feel it through. Yielding to some primal impulse in himself, he put the ability to use. "Hah..." The world, clear a moment ago, faded before his eyes and even grew unreal, as if it had become a blurred cloth backdrop. Everywhere the view was gray-white. His five senses seemed to have arrived all at once in another, silent world. Fine murmurs seemed to whisper at his ear, and upon the gray-white backdrop scarlet lines slowly showed themselves, fierce and hideous. Like bloodstains. The scarlet lines surfaced on the floor and the walls. Some were broad pools, some tiny spots; some were thick, some pale. They spread from the ground up the walls and even onto the bars of the Black Prison, filling Bai Zhou's sight in a disordered sprawl. "These are..." Bai Zhou froze. Blood left by people who had once died here? Time seemed to lose its meaning in his senses. The scarlet stains laid the past of this place before him. And it was not only blood. He saw disordered footprints and all manner of traces. Those traces carried scarlet of differing depths, and they belonged to different predecessors of this Black Prison, from different stretches of time. "A fine ability!" His spirits rose. The instant he shut the ability off, the gray-white world contracted before his eyes and vanished. Color came back, sharp and clear, and the disordered scarlet traces were gone. "It can track an enemy's trail, and it can show whether anyone has died in a place, or whether an anomaly has occurred... Quite a good ability. It suits an Adventurer very well." With this, if life in Tinghai ever grew hard, he could become a private detective and open an office, and he would surely be able to get by. More than that, Bai Zhou had a vague feeling— Just as his other Instincts could gradually grow. The use he was making of the ability now was perhaps far from the limit of Scarlet Senses! He turned back and, through Scarlet Senses, looked again at the place where Lucus's corpse had vanished, making certain nothing anomalous remained. Perhaps because Bai Zhou had, in every sense, taken Lucus's place—and in a certain sense Lucus was still alive—no last words had been left behind. But Bai Zhou knew what Lucus's last words were. He remembered. "O gods, if you truly exist..." "I am willing to offer up all my life—please avenge me!" Fulfilling last words of this kind would bring no corresponding gift, but Bai Zhou would still remember them. After all, many times when he helped someone fulfill their last words, it was not always for the gift. If he wanted to do it, he did it, because he felt like it, and he asked only that his heart feel at ease. "It seems Lucus—or rather, 'I'—still carries secrets." Bai Zhou narrowed his eyes. "Someone had planted a curse like this on him, and the hand behind it can hardly have wanted nothing." Whether that hand had acted out of fear of a mere ritualist apprentice like Lucus, or for some benefit—Bai Zhou had no small interest in either. "No, don't lock me up!" Outside, an old man suddenly howled at the top of his voice. "I'll talk, I'll confess it all! I can cooperate! I can love the Empire too!" Bai Zhou's heart stirred. Carefully he drew close to the filthy, icy metal bars and craned his head to look out. In the narrow, deep passage, a gray-robed old man, snot frightened loose and hanging on his pale beard, was being dragged by two jailers like a dead dog. "Noisy!" One jailer raised the short club in his hand high. Just then— "Stay your club!" Hurried running echoed down the passage. Two more jailers came up, panting. "A mistake, a mistake!" The newcomers pointed at the gray-robed old man and shouted, "The Tribunal has ruled again. They hold that this prisoner need not be specially brought to the Black Prison." "Yes, yes!" The gray-robed elder nodded over and over, life returning to his eyes. "I don't want to be shut in the Black Prison and forgotten. I'm actually quite valuable... For instance, your humble servant is very good at working a treadle loom!" The jailer shook his head. "Not for that. We're taking you straight to the execution ground. The lords of the Tribunal hold your crimes too great. There is no need to lock you in the Black Prison. You can be beheaded directly." "Of course, you may also choose another way to die. Warming yourself on a pile of firewood, for instance." "Starting now, you may consider what you want for your last meal in a little while." "Ah?" Wailing rose again in the passage, and the gray-robed old man was dragged away. No one knew what he had actually done. His wails alone struck silent with fear every prisoner pressed to the rim of a cage to watch. The dim, damp passage fell quiet once more. Bai Zhou lay against the edge of his cage, thoughtful. Beheading. A fire to warm by. The Tribunal? Familiar indeed. This feeling was even more familiar to Bai Zhou than Tinghai, with its neon lights everywhere. It was almost a little dear. All at once a voice came from the cell diagonally across, seeming to speak toward him. "Good noon, cellmate. Why haven't you sung today?" "Sung?" Bai Zhou looked toward the voice. "Those strange, peculiar tunes... ee-ee ya-ya, woo-woo loo-loo. Noisy, but surprisingly good for sleep," the man said. By the deep-blue flame of the brazier in the passage, a slovenly, unbridled face entered Bai Zhou's sight only as a blur in the dim light. Behind the full beard, a youth's face could faintly be made out. Eyes like candle flames were the most striking thing on that face, bright, and filled with a hunger to know. "Come to think of it, this is the first time we've talked, isn't it? Every time I speak to you, you never answer." The bearded youth was easy as an old friend from the first word. "What did they put you in for?" he asked. "I offended someone and got dragged in with it... And you? What were you put in for?" Bai Zhou said no more. He watched the man with care. "So you were wronged too? My own kin!" Sprawled against the iron window, the bearded youth looked a little worked up, his head bobbing like a woodpecker's. "They insist I'm a member of some evil society. Heavens, I've never even heard of that society!" He clutched his chest, deeply pained. "The way I see it, this Empire is truly finished." "Did you not try to prove you were clean?" Bai Zhou frowned and asked back. "How could I not? But there was no way. There were more of them." The youth spread his hands. "So long as they all say I am, then even if I'm not, I ought to be." "That is pitiful." Bai Zhou offered deep sympathy, though his eyes still measured the youth with caution, and the tail of his gaze took in the passage while he thought over a way out. "Yes, pitiful, that's what it is!" As if he had found someone who understood, the youth all but shoved his face out through the iron window and talked without end. "People have shut me out since I was small, so after I left the academy I couldn't find work at all. So I thought I'd go home and farm. I bought a farming and cultivation manual from a wandering merchant and studied from it." Bai Zhou's brows lifted slightly. The youth's words hooked his doubt. "Going back to an empty countryside to farm your own land—whom does that offend?" "I thought the same, until I grew a mushroom on the village head's head." The youth scratched his head. "Then they sent me here." "...?" Bai Zhou began to feel the man really ought to be locked up here. No wonder people had shut him out since he was small. Being dragged in was not the least bit unjust. He kept up a fitful chat, hoping to draw some information out of the man, but the other cared only for cursing the Empire and telling of his own grievance—or else for how mushroom soup and black bread ought to be paired to taste better. At least Bai Zhou learned that everyone held in this Black Prison was an Extraordinary, and the farther underground, the more dangerous the prisoners. As a ritualist apprentice, he and the Mushroom Youth belonged to the uppermost level. Those sent here almost never got out in a lifetime. The Black Prison made men blanch at the rumor of its name, which was why that gray-robed old man had been so unwilling to be shut inside. "I can see it. Everyone locked in here has some rare skill." With a wary glance at the Mushroom Youth, still chattering with heat, Bai Zhou turned thoughtful. In a prison like this, breaking out would be a hard problem... Even if he truly got out, his place in the Xiluo Empire afterward would still be a problem. Bai Zhou had already had his fill of being hunted in Tinghai. He did not want to taste it once more in Xiluo. Push people too far in Tinghai, and at most they would send a crowd of Painters paddling surfboards, a few Deformed Children with big mouths and thick necks, and at most one armed helicopter flying in the sky. But in Xiluo? Against fugitives, these people had strength and means to spare! Bai Zhou thought it over, then sat back on the straw and brooded. After a while he felt time was precious. Should he use this chance to get familiar with those two first-rank rituals? If he could master them before he went back, he could use them directly against the Major... "Woof! Woof! Woof, woof, woof!" Barking echoed down the dark stone passage. Heavy footsteps, with the harsh clash of iron keys, drew nearer. A rough voice exploded through the dim corridor. "Stop sleeping! Get up, you damned lazy dogs!" "A stretch of the city wall was dug up by damned wild dogs. Hands are needed to repair it at once. Anyone who can move, anyone who can breathe—roll out here!" "Do the work well, and there will be benefits for you!" At these words the Black Prison went dead silent. "Hm?" Bai Zhou drew on Lucus's memories and soon understood why. The walls of Heishi City were ancient, with terrible rituals laid upon them. Damage to a wall was by no means as simple as wild dogs digging, and repairing one was harder still. Prisoners of the Black Prison's upper level often had labor, and could trade that labor for meager benefits. But repairing the city wall... Such labor was rare, and once it appeared, almost no one was willing. Repairing the rituals on the wall meant letting the ritual draw out one's own essence blood and spirituality... When the wall was whole again, the laborer would be more than half drained. In the sunless, cold, damp Black Prison, an Extraordinary was no different from an ordinary person. A drained state like that could well be fatal. One careless moment, and weakness might kill. But... Rituals? Bai Zhou's gaze flickered. In the Fate Principle space, Celestial Pivot pulsed twice. Repairing a ritual, for an ordinary Extraordinary, might require essence blood and spirituality to be drawn away. But for a ritualist like him? Bai Zhou keenly realized that, for him, this might be a chance. "No one?" The jailer swept the place with his eyes, a vicious light on his face. "It seems the lessons in loving the Empire have not been enough. I'll make them up for you!" "Even if none of you volunteer, I'll start calling names this instant..." Just then a weak voice came from a cage not far off and echoed through the deathly silent prison. "I'll go." Bai Zhou's face showed from behind the bars. He wore a look of feeble breath, his voice low and hoarse. "Let me try." "Good!" The jailer was delighted and looked toward him from afar. "Well done! Afterward your benefits won't be lacking. A great person pressed this matter himself. Win his favor, and you might even have good fortune to come!" Bai Zhou paid it no mind. He only nodded weakly. Other faces showed behind the bars, carefully sizing him up. Some were puzzled, some awed, and some looked at him as if he were a fool or a madman. "Me, me, me—then I'll sign up too!" The Mushroom Youth diagonally across stuck his head out as well, and from afar winked and pulled a face at Bai Zhou. The jailer only glanced at him, expressionless. "No. You won't do." "If you grow mushrooms on the city wall, the garrison will certainly cut off my head and hang it on the wall for a streetlamp!" Bai Zhou, standing to one side, was struck dumb. "..." Suppression existed inside the Black Prison. In there, the liveliness of spirituality was pressed to its lowest. Aside from things like Instincts, which hardly needed spirituality, the Extraordinary there were almost no different from ordinary people. They had to eat, drink, and relieve themselves. They could fall ill, suffer the cold, and die. Under the jailers' shouts and shoves, the labor gang followed a winding, steep stair, skirting walls that constantly seeped some unknown slime, and left the gloomy Black Prison. The moment he was out, Bai Zhou felt a weight lift. But special shackles had been put on his hands, and several escorting jailers eyed him fiercely from the side. Besides Bai Zhou, a dozen-odd unlucky souls the jailers had picked at random all turned somber eyes on him. The glare of the sun made Bai Zhou narrow his eyes. Then the city's own complicated smells rushed at him. Smoke from cooking fires drifting toward the sky, a faint odor of dung, the scent of spices from the distant market, and the smell of stone and dust hanging everywhere—all of it sharpened him as he looked about. The air twisted faintly in the heat, as if the whole city were breathing steadily. People and beasts beyond counting came and went. Streets paved in black stone had been worn smooth by carriage wheels and the hooves of livestock, and they threw back light under the sun. Markets and shops lined both sides of the broad streets. The talk of trade rose and fell at his ear. From a smithy came clanging and waves of scorching air. A bakery burning charcoal gave off the fragrance of wheat. At a fishmonger's stall, knives rasped as they were sharpened, and a dead fish on the board stared blankly up at the sun. True Rome—or rather, the Xiluo Empire. Utterly unlike the dark, damp Black Prison, the noisy city was woven through with people and beasts. Life here flourished and rose, all a scene of peace. Only, when they saw Bai Zhou's party, they often showed curiosity and loathing, looking from afar while keeping their distance. Far off, toward the city's center, the outlines of taller buildings could faintly be seen—perhaps the dome of a temple or of the public baths—a solemn, silent silhouette against the deep-blue sky. The buildings of the whole city took black stone as their base tone, and yet scarlet could often be seen as well. Beneath the sun, a clock tower pointed, stark, at a certain time. 34:23. In the Xiluo Empire, this usually meant afternoon. In Lucus's memory, 36-point time in the Xiluo Empire usually corresponded to six in the evening in Tinghai. This, too, was something that left Bai Zhou puzzled. Streets paved in black stone were not always straight. Often one had to turn into narrower lanes. Twisting and turning all the way along cramped alleys strewn with rubbish and filth, the labor gang at last reached the city's edge, the place where the wall stood. The jailers went forward to speak. The city gate boomed open, and the gang went on. As they left the city, Bai Zhou keenly noticed a robust man in gleaming red-and-gold armor standing atop the wall, a greatsword in his hand. The golden sun shone on him. He looked down on the labor gang with disdain, and his face seemed to carry a certain agitation and impatience. With a rumbling boom, the gate behind them shut. "That is...?" Bai Zhou was still thinking when a cry of alarm sounded at his ear. He looked up toward the cry, and an inexplicable chill swept over him. Only after one had passed through the gate could it be seen. High on the rampart, beneath a fluttering scarlet eagle banner— There was a corpse. A corpse that seemed alive had been driven through by a long spear and fixed fast to the wall. It stood nearly three meters tall. Even pierced and fixed to the rampart, it still held a kind of struggle and writhing, as if even now it were alive. Its skin was covered in cracked lines, like stone scorched by fierce flame. Deep in the cracks, dark-red glimmers flickered in and out, like embers not yet dead. The head hung low, the face hidden in shadow. On the skull was a pair of broken horns, crowded with blasphemous, mad inscriptions, long weathered and yet still faintly legible. Bai Zhou had only to look once from afar, and a feeling of utmost evil, blasphemy, and madness assailed his whole body. But that chill flashed and was gone. Looking again, he hazily sensed upon this struggling, writhing living corpse something close to sacred—an urge to believe with devotion and to offer worship. Amid the sacred, he also smelled sulfur. Yet none of the strangeness could touch the people coming and going, because that scarlet spear bound and suppressed it all. Its keen brilliance could not be looked at directly. By the sense of Bai Zhou's Mind's Eye, that spear was clearly more sacred, more exalted, more magnificent and upright than the sun in the sky! And yet this living corpse, nailed to the rampart for who knew how many years, weathered long ago, gave him a strange familiarity. He felt as if he had met an existence like this before. That School Demon in Tinghai! Bai Zhou drew a deep breath. His heart lurched. On the rampart outside Heishi City, a demon was simply nailed up like this! "A demon." Another cellmate said, "Have you hardly ever been out of the city? Is that why you never noticed this?" "The Empire's enemies have always been evil gods, demons, and the rebel remnants of the previous civilization. But the Empire also has the most experience in dealing with these demons." "This is one of them." "That's right." A jailer beside them spoke with a solemn face. "Through the glory of the Golden Age, through the expansion of the Silver Age, enduring the winter of the Bronze Age, the Empire has already crossed its sixteenth millennium." "Gods in the dark, demons of the Abyss, and those ancient ghosts that will not rest... they have been eating at the Empire's foundation all along." "Now the dark is at hand. We seem to live in peace, and we have always kept up that illusion... but in truth, the war has never ceased." "It breaks out in unseen corners all around us, without shadow or form, and yet in full blaze." "At every moment epics are entered into the Empire's Hall of Honor. Before a momentum like this, even a remote little city like Heishi City cannot be spared—just as today the lords are in haste to repair the wall, because they must guard against the tide of abominations after nightfall." "As for this demon—" The jailer raised his head and looked from afar at that terrifying living corpse, savagely nailed dead to the rampart by a spear. "Its remains are a mark of victory, a showing of order, and a warning to those who come after—this is the end of making an enemy of the Empire and of the gods!" "Whoosh..." Just then a hot wind, carrying the dust of the stony desert and a strange raw reek, blew from the depths of the wilderness outside the city. It howled across the rampart, rolled dust into the sky, and set the black aura steaming around the living corpse into a moment of disorder and twist. The jailer said, "This mongrel from the Abyss, two millennia ago, just after the Bronze Winter had passed, actually had the mad presumption to seek Ascension to Sainthood at Heishi City. It drew in the Living Saint then patrolling the North, Nun Amala." "The nun nailed it, still living, fast to the rampart, left the Holy Spear to seal it for all time, and left a Sacred Edict: 'Let this blasphemer who failed at Ascension to Sainthood watch with its own eyes how the city it meant to defile goes on standing beneath the Empire's glory!'" In the turn of an eye two millennia had passed. The Empire still stood unfallen, and this past had been written into the most important history of Heishi City, handed down generation after generation to the present day. Hearing it, the laborers all grew solemn. The Empire's might was shown here to the fullest. Small people like them could only drift with the current. How could they resist? And yet. "...Tap." Bai Zhou stopped short. His body staggered, and his heart lost half a beat. What had this jailer just said? He had said— A demon, Ascension to Sainthood? Bai Zhou blanked. His gaze fell at once on the living corpse atop the wall. This was a demon that had once undergone Ascension to Sainthood? The same Ascension to Sainthood as the Major's? Bai Zhou's burning gaze soon turned toward... The spear that had nailed the Ascension Demon dead.