Crown of Silence

Chapter 491 Afterimages in Purgatory

I took a step forward, but the world seemed completely different.

The rays and shadows of the scorching sun seemed to disappear without a trace.

Everything became dim and ambiguous, like a vague dream.

Under the high tower, in front of the closed black iron door, Charles saw Gaius take out a key from his arms, insert it into the keyhole carefully, and use all his strength to twist it.

Then, amid the tiny sounds of countless gears rubbing and pivots twisting, the door burst open.

Ciel froze on the spot.

Behind the door was supposed to be a huge hall, leading to spiral steps above.

But now the hall is still there, but the spiral steps have disappeared.

The originally solemn hall was completely different now. It was gloomy, as if it had been abandoned for decades.

A huge crack opened in the floor in the center of the hall.

Ciel stood at the edge of the gap, lowered his head, and felt the cold wind blowing from the abyss below. The steel steps extend intermittently, leading to the deeper parts of the ground. There are still dim lights on, but they have long been covered by dust and spider silk, making them dim and indistinct.

"This is where?"

Ciel didn't know where this place was, but he knew that this was definitely not the Tower of Judgment as he knew it.

"Here? It's just a place that has been abandoned for a long time."

Gaius stood at the end of the hall, stretched out his hand, and pushed open the elevator door. Behind the door, amid the harsh sound of steel friction, countless pieces of rust fell into the deep elevator shaft, like dead insects flying.

An old and mottled elevator slowly rose from the deepest part of the darkness.

He turned around and stretched out his hand to signal Ciel to follow him.

In the corner of the elevator, a corpse that had long since rotted into bones was lying diagonally, half of its body hanging outside the elevator, and its legs had disappeared.

There seemed to be a sign with his name hanging on the tattered white uniform, but after a long time, the name had been corroded and could not be seen clearly.

Gaius knelt down and stared at the broken face of the skeleton. After a long time, he sighed softly, "I haven't seen you for such a long time. I thought you had become anonymous. I didn't expect that you died here."

He pulled open the rotten uniform on the skeleton and took out a key from the inner pocket:

"Thanks, old friend. I didn't like you back then, but I didn't expect that you would be able to help me again after so many years."

He stood up, kicked the obstructing skeleton off the lift, walked to the lift's panel, inserted the key, turned it, and pulled it to the bottom.

"What a blessing."

He said to Charles, "With it, we can save a lot of things."

The elevator slowly descended with a harsh sound. Ciel looked around blankly. After a long time, he finally realized: "Isn't this the pure material world anymore?"

"Here are the fragments left over when the sacred city was built in the etheric realm. It can be said that they are scraps... The overlap of the material realm and the etheric realm forms a stable space."

Gaius took a deep breath of the deep wind that carried the rancid smell, and whispered softly: "Forbidden musicians who are good at the realm have built this place from the fragments.

It overlaps with the Tower of Judgment in reality, or... it is the real Tower of Judgment.

Charles, what you see is the secret that the Holy City wants to bury under the Tower of Judgment. If it is known outside, I am afraid you will be sent to the stake, even if you have only heard about it. "

"Holy City?"

Charles was stunned: "What did they do here?"

"Many, human experiments, transformation surgeries, taboo research... For the long-term future, human beings living now must make some unethical sacrifices.

This is what a psalmist said to me at that time. Perhaps madmen and lunatics have something in common, and I thought he was right. Until someone wakes me up from my dream. "

Gaius stared at the changing floors outside the elevator and said calmly: "The most dangerous prisoners in the world, black musicians, and even... natural disasters have been imprisoned here.

It was built by me, and the countries and holy cities gave me orders.

For the future heaven, I built this hell with my own hands.

Later, too many things happened. I defected, Ye Lanzhou went crazy, Bai Heng left, and even this place was abandoned and no one cared about it.

Otherwise, I might have to serve my sentence in the institution I chaired back then..."

Charles was silent, staring blankly at the floor signs flashing outside the elevator, which were mixed with signs he couldn't understand and structures that shouldn't appear here.

Clinical experiment area.

The Sixth Practice Office.

The species of extinction.

The fourth phase of the cultivation room.

dogmatic institutions

Sacrifice

…

Until the end, falling into the deepest darkness.

The elevator finally stopped abruptly at the bottom. Amid countless dust flying, Gaius took off the wind lantern from his cloak and lit it, and the dim light illuminated his face.

"Come with me."

He said to Ciel, "The secrets you want to know are all here."

Six huge steel gates.

Standing in front of the door, Charles looked up blankly. The iron door extended into the deepest part of the darkness. Compared with it, human beings are as small as dust.

It was like an abandoned abode of the gods, once glorious as heaven, but now in dilapidated condition.

They are made of the Order's alloy technology and are strong enough to withstand the bombardment of battering rams head-on without any damage.

But when Ciel passed through them, huge cracks had already been torn open on each one. Some places were burned, and the ground was covered with cool flowing copper. Some places looked like they had been torn apart, leaving huge fingerprints on them. In other places, it was knocked straight away, leaving a crack violently and brutally.

Until the last one, it was completely pulled out from the wall, crumpled into a ball, and piled in the corner, like a hill covered with rust.

"Where exactly is this place?"

As he advanced in the depths, he witnessed various incredible scenes, and even the skeleton of a demonized whale was displayed in the ruins hall.

But he didn't understand what exactly this place was.

"This is the first generation of 'Purgatory', a prison built by the cult, a manifestation of God's punishment in the human world." Gaius said lightly: "Although they later built a better one to replace it, its own Meaning is irreplaceable for humans.”

"The Holy City created purgatory by itself?"

"Why not?"

Gaius asked, "Didn't they even create heaven?

There's nothing surprising about this, Ciel, especially when compared to the biggest mistake they've ever made, the original significance of this place is nothing to mention.

Here, the world's top musicians and scholars once gathered, the prophets from Yantie Academy, the cursers from the Illusion Islands, the alchemists who studied under the Gate of Annihilation... and even the monks from Tianzhu, the Heaven of the East. people……

This was once the forefront of the entire human world. The laboratory of Holy Trinity College is not even worthy of carrying shoes. "

His footsteps stopped in the middle of the empty, dark hall.

"Here we are."

He stopped suddenly, causing Ciel behind him to stumble and fall forward, but he grabbed him by the collar and pulled him behind him. Facing Ciel's confused eyes, he lowered the lantern and illuminated the mottled yellow lines under his feet:

"Remember to step outside the yellow line. Within the yellow line... it is no longer a world that humans can understand."

In his silence, Charles seemed to understand something. He raised his head and stared at the darkness in front of him. His sight seemed to penetrate this substantial darkness and glimpse the true face of the shadow.

That's why he looks pale.

Drenched in sweat.

Gaius bent down, placed the wind lantern at his feet, reached out, took out a burning rod from his arms, broke it and threw it into the darkness. Then, a blazing light suddenly burst out in the darkness, illuminating everything.

Beyond the yellow line is the abyss!

The burning rod burst out with blazing light, spiraling into the deepest part of the darkness, illuminating the horrifyingly huge cage in front of it.

Like shackles made for giants, dozens of shackles several meters thick hung down from the underground space more than a hundred meters high. The shackles had already broken and were scattered on the ground in a mess.

The burning rod fell to the ground from the stand where Ciel was sitting, and fell into the remaining sewage, and the light was dim.

But in the dim light, a terrifying figure that didn't exist here was illuminated.

There was obviously nothing in the cage, but when the light fell on the wall, it left a ferocious and huge shadow, filling the entire cage.

Just a shadow is thrilling.

There is no way to describe what kind of creature it is. It seems to be curled up in this cage, sleeping, but its mere existence makes people feel that their reason has been cruelly tortured, and their worldview has been shocked and collapsed.

Three vague and strange deformed heads seemed to be staring in all directions all the time. Thousands of arms cast strange shadows, like snakes snaking on the steel wall.

Wherever it passes, the steel makes a hissing sound, as if this pure shadow has turned into a beast, bringing the smell of corrosion pervasively.

This is just an afterimage.

But the shadows left over by the years have caused this space to completely lose control and become an inhuman realm.

"Are you scared, Ciel?"

Gaius stared at the vague shadow remaining on the wall with nostalgia, and stretched out his hands as if to embrace it: "Here, we have achieved unprecedented feats. We have defeated, captured, and imprisoned... …even dissected natural disasters!”

Charles stared blankly at the black shadow on the wall, feeling a splitting headache and staggering back.

After a long time, he whispered softly:

"——Hundred-Armed Giant?"

"Char, this is the former natural disaster, the prison where the hundred-armed giant was before its fall."

Gaius raised his head and stared at the huge shadow, as if facing the natural disaster that had already left:

“Humans captured it in its centuries-long sleep and placed it here.

We have racked our brains, worked hard, worked hard, and worked hard... We have made every effort and price we can in order to understand the nature of natural disasters. "