Whispering Verse

Looking at the girl in the black skirt in front of him who stretched out his arm to him, Shade sighed. After communicating with the voice in his ear, he stretched out his hand to hold the other person's hand, but the girl in the black skirt held her hand at the last moment. He took his hand back.

"Obviously they just passed us by, but why do you give me such trust?"

She put her hands behind her back and looked at Shade, who shook his head:

"Helen, did I have a reason for helping you at the reception?"

Helen Black looked at Shade, the corners of her mouth slowly raised. The two looked at each other until Helen suddenly laughed:

"Oh, sir, I thought my disguise was successful. It was hard for me to convince Xina to help me."

"The disguise was successful?"

Shade said suspiciously.

"That's not important. I just want to see, sir, what kind of person you were in your own time."

She took a step back with her hands behind her back, getting closer to the hole spewing black mist:

"You are really an interesting person, more interesting than my sister and I thought. But down here, this is not the place you should come. Please wait for me, I am going to get something to welcome my sister back, and I need a sacrifice."

As she spoke, her body fell backwards until she fell into the bottomless abyss.

Two-thirds of the red butterflies fell into the abyss cave with her, and only one-third was still here to protect Shade.

The surroundings were extremely quiet, except for the sounds of resurrected evil spirits wandering in the distance of the mine:

"Helen Grace. I didn't expect Sister Devlin to cooperate with them in lying."

The calm did not last long. As the dust above the head began to fall again, an astonishing roar suddenly exploded in the extremely quiet mine. The sound came from the ground, from the deepest part of the relic. Just by hearing that sound, Shade seemed to be able to see the twisted behemoth entrenched underground, squirming to release its malice.

He was startled and quickly took a few steps back. Then, the entrance of the underground cave lit up with red light again, and soon, red butterflies formed a staircase at the entrance of the cave.

Helen stepped on the steps, holding a thin little girl who looked no more than ten years old in each hand, and walked back.

After the two girls came to the ground, they held hands and ran away along the mine tunnel amid a series of weird laughter. Only a red stone was left in Helen's hand.

"Look, Mr. Hamilton, that's what I'm here for."

She showed Shade the ordinary-looking stone, which didn't even have the element of whispering on it:

"What's this?"

Shade asked curiously, but his eyes were still looking at the backs of the little girls walking away. They are also evil spirits, and judging from the sounds in his ears, all the evil ghosts he saw just now may not necessarily be their opponents.

"The sacrifice, the spell stone, is a specialty of the last era. The two girls just now were the girls that my sister and I passed by this village in the last era. They were the girls who were rescued. Their souls were trapped forever. here, but this is why this stone can be produced.”

"Did they still not leave in the end?"

"But they managed to stay together forever."

The childish laughter still lingered in his ears. Shade turned to look at Helen, who had a smile on her lips:

"If you want to bring back the departed existence, you must offer a sacrifice as the price. It is not easy to find the spell stone every time."

Speaking of this, she looked a little lonely, but she quickly returned to normal.

Throwing the stone aside, the red butterflies automatically wrapped it:

"Okay, sir, now we can leave this terrible place."

She pulled Shade's wrist again:

"But it's not like jumping down."

Winking at Shade playfully:

"Please follow me. Now I will take you to the top of the mountain. There is a shortcut here. Oh, please move that sword farther away. It is really unfriendly to me."

As she spoke, she raised her right arm and drew it sharply in the air. A crimson trace immediately appeared in the sky, and as the butterfly-like light spots spread around, white mist emerged from the crimson crack until it completely engulfed Shade and the black-haired Helen.

[Outlander, you have entered the narrow realm of life and death. The strength of the body and the strength of the soul are reversed. Please do not stay here for too long. 】

Because she had entered it once before, "she" could easily judge the current situation.

The white mist was so thick that Shade could hardly see the situation in front of him, but when the wet and cold white mist dissipated, they were actually standing on a steep stone step in the mountain.

Everything around him was in black, white and gray, and unlike the last time Shade came, black was obviously more prominent this time. After the two earthquakes, Hazama itself also changed a lot. Obviously the last time Shade walked around in it, he only felt a little cold, but now he felt a bone-chilling chill that almost immediately invaded his bone marrow.

[That's because you didn't hold the "Eternal Youth Leaf" in your mouth. 】

"She" reminded him gently. Shade immediately found his pocket watch and took the leaf into his mouth. But the chill still didn't dissipate, and the whole world's malice toward the living almost became tangible, making him think that some giant creature was watching him.

"Please come with me."

The girl in the black skirt took Shade's hand, and the two walked up the stone steps together. Swarms of red butterflies flew up and down along the stone steps in the mountain until they dyed the steps red.

The sky full of red butterflies and crimson light spots add a bit of warmth to the world with only monotonous colors, just like the vivid lines painted with red oil in a sketch book.

The red butterfly was protecting them, and the evil spirits patrolling in the narrow space were driven deeper into the forest. Looking at those red butterflies, Xia De felt a little sad for some reason.

The stone steps lead directly to the top of the narrow world. There are several small peaks on the top of Mount Sikal in the real world, but it is generally flat. The trees on the top of the mountain are very sparse. After walking a few dozen steps on the stone path connected to the stone steps, you can see the waves ahead. Sparkling mountain top lake.

But in the narrow space between life and death, when you step over the last step and officially climb to the big platform at the top of the mountain. Surrounded by those weird black dead trees is the big crack on the top of the mountain that Iluna mentioned.

The violent black wind surged out from it, spraying ashes wantonly into the terrifying black-gray sky.

This black mist is very familiar to Shade. The black wind blowing from the Door of Death at the foot of the mountain has the same composition. Therefore, the big crack on the top of the mountain in front of you is the passage to the real death on the top of Hazama Mountain.

The red butterflies in the sky shrank along the stone steps behind them and hovered around the two of them again:

"Mr. Hamilton, please follow me."

Helen let go of Shade's hand and moved forward with Shade to the edge of the crack.

At this moment, not even the red butterfly group could protect the two people in the black wind intact. The strong wind representing the power of death blew by, and the light of the red butterflies gradually dimmed. Helen's face turned pale, and cracks appeared on Shade's body.

The cracks appeared not only on the exposed skin, but also on the clothes. As the wind blew across his cheeks, the golden traces of light dragged back a flame-like afterglow, as if a golden flame ignited on Sha De's body.

He stretched out his hand to support Helen:

"If you can't hold on, then I'll do it."

"No."

She shook her head slightly, and at some point she began to cry in the wind, her blue eyes staring ahead:

"It's been done countless times, yes, countless times. It's been so long that we've lost track of time."

The red butterflies came to her with the red sacrifice-spell stone. Helen cut her wrist with a knife and let the blood soak the stone. Her blood was not the normal red, but as bright red as a red butterfly.

Then she picked up the stone and threw it into the abyss. The next moment, red light spurted out from the bottom of the large crack on the top of the mountain, and in that light, dense red butterflies flew out of the abyss.

A swarm of butterflies enveloped a figure, a figure exactly like Helen.

"Sister Grace."

Helen looked at her with tears:

"meet again."

The girl who emerged from the crack was wearing a white dress. When she opened her eyes and looked at Helen at the edge of the crack, the red butterflies in the sky overwhelmed the black wind of death for the first time:

"Helen."

They opened their arms and hugged each other. The flashing light of the red butterfly pendants around their waists almost turned the entire mountain top red. Shade immediately took a few steps back. He didn't want to disturb the reunion at this moment, and the whispering elements in Grace and Helen were already so strong that he couldn't get close at all.

"This is the ritual."

The old witch's voice came from behind, and Shade turned to look. Granny Cassandra, Sister Devlin, and the witch's apprentice Miss Rita Swift were all behind him. Being so close to the passage of death, the three of them had green runestones hung around their waists to protect them from temporary safety.

"Is this what you said you would catch up with?"

Shade asked with a sigh.

His body still looked like the afterglow of divinity at this moment, but the old witch seemed to have known that this situation would happen and was not surprised at all. Sister Devlin, who "saw" everything, did not ask anything, only the young witch apprentice He looked like he wanted to ask but didn't dare.

She was curious about the current situation, the marks on Shade's body, and what the humanoid object Shade was carrying was.

"Look, didn't we catch up in the end?"

The old witch said with a smile, then looked up at the two people embracing in front of the big crack on the top of the mountain among the red butterflies in the sky:

"Ritual, a ceremony that takes place every 22 years. Teachers can only get together once every 22 years, and the time to get together is one year. After that, those who have lived alone for 21 years return to death, and those who have been awakened from death walk alone. In the world. She will live alone for another 21 years, until she comes back here to meet her sisters again. After spending a year together, she will enter the 22-year cycle again. "

She sighed. As the person who had witnessed the most rituals in the past hundred years, Xena Cassandra was the one who felt the most empathy:

"This is the blessing of the great ones of the past [Twin Gods]. They will be together forever. As long as they follow the cycle of rituals, they will always be together. Hamilton, do you know what the meaning of the red butterfly is?"

Xia De looked at the two people in Hongdie blankly:

"The red butterfly is the holy symbol of the old gods [Twin Gods]."

"The twin gods are two persons in one body, one body and one heart."

Sister Devlin gave Shade the correct answer.

The old witch nodded and explained softly:

"In this ceremony, the red butterfly symbolizes separation. When the reunion every 22 years is over, the teachers will come back here again, and then the party who needs to wait for another 21 years will strangle his sister to death with his own hands and take her The body was thrown into the crack on the top of the mountain. This was not only for the cycle to start again, but also for the good god who once came to the Sikal Mountain area to assist in suppressing Hazama."

The witch apprentice gasped.

Shade bit his lip:

"I once saw the Phoenix under this crack in a dream, and saw that it was surrounded by densely packed corpses (Chapter 708). Those are"

Shade didn't say anything further, but he already understood.

"Red butterfly."

Sister Devlin asked softly:

"These flying red butterflies must be related to rituals, right?"

"Yes, tell me, what does the red butterfly look like?"

Shade had already guessed it.

"The corpse fell into a large crack, and the red pinch marks on the neck would fly out again and turn into red butterflies."

The four people on the edge of the cliff looked at the red butterflies flying in the sky together. The old witch's voice was very soft:

"Each of the red butterflies here symbolizes a long separation, the sadness of killing a sister, a twisted ritual of love, and the next reunion. Mr. Hamilton, do you know how many red butterflies there are here?"

Shade could no longer describe his feelings at this moment. He thought it wouldn't be a heartwarming story, but he didn't expect it to be like this:

"I don't know, but it must have been a long time, right?"

They originally attended the God's Drinking Party in order to escape the separation between life and death, and to save future generations of the family from this fate. They got the answers they wanted and even gained immortality, but in the end they still could not escape the fate of separation.

However, the permanent separation turned into a cycle of pain and waiting for 22 years. This will be eternal pain, everything is for the encounter and reunion once every 22 years.

Someone seemed to be singing in the wind, and "she" in my ears was also catering to the faint voice. The ancient language that traveled through the curtain of time tells stories of encounter, waiting, blood and love:

[The red butterfly spreads its wings and flies,]

【Flying over the towering mountains,】

[Crossing the black river. 】

[May the wind take away eternal thoughts,]

【Until the end of life and death. 】

This was a nursery rhyme that Professor Manning had mentioned, and it was also the method used by Old John to make the pendant. But it was not until this moment that Shade understood the meaning of this nursery rhyme.

Not ritual steps, not alchemy recipes, it's really just stories.

The true story, their story, spans two eras, and represents the story of longing and bondage, the story of the red butterflies.