My esoteric uncle Jules

Chapter 137 Stealing the Mirror

At the entrance to the chapel of St. Louis Monastery.

The broken bronze mirror hangs high, its fractured surface gleaming with a chilling light.

Ram faithfully played the role of follower and atmosphere-maker, walking behind Jules.

Looking at this familiar place, he couldn't help but feel a little emotional:

"Mirrors... Before entering this place, who would have thought that these mirrors were all magical?"

Jules smiled and said:
"The true face of the world is madness disguised as reason."

Ram nodded in deep agreement:

"So, shall we break this mirror and then go find other mirrors?"

Before the two arrived at the chapel, quite a few mirrors had already been broken.

However, lacking that special intuition, Jules could only rely on his memory of the array's key points to find and break them one by one.

Upon hearing this, Jules shook his head.

“No rush,” he said, raising his head to look at the indistinct statue. “There might be something interesting hidden here.”

He remembered that he had clearly chopped the statue and the wandering spirit residing in it into pieces before, but now it had become intact again.

Moreover, during the recent ceremony, the statue seemed to have been deliberately forgotten, and no one mentioned it.

However, the various scenes he initially saw in the chapel, and the mysterious changes that occurred when he entered the mirror world and saw the idol, all revealed an obvious fact—

This statue is definitely more than it appears.

Jules slowly approached the statue, and the surrounding air seemed to freeze, so quiet that he could hear his own heartbeat.

He reached out and gently brushed away the dust covering the statue.

Marble has a very fine texture and retains some of its original charm even after hundreds of years.

As he cleaned it, the noble and elegant figure of the statue gradually became clear.

Ram watched curiously from the side, then said thoughtfully:
"So, this place is where a female deity is worshipped?"

Jules glanced at Lahm and said with a faint smile:
"The distinction between genders is probably meaningless to these gods; what is meaningful is only one aspect of the power they represent."

Ram nodded in deep agreement.

Just as Jules was about to turn his head and continue pondering the secret hidden within the statue, his eyes widened as if he had witnessed something terrifying:
“Mr. Jules, look!” He quickly pointed to the statue behind Jules.

Jules raised an eyebrow, then immediately turned his head, but saw nothing.

Apart from the indistinct statue and the empty stained glass behind it, nothing else ever appeared.

"What did you just see?"

Ram swallowed hard and said:
"Just now, I saw a terrifying image reflected on this statue... it looked like a corpse like me..."

Jules pondered for a while and said:

"If I'm not mistaken, you're likely affected by that 'ghoul curse'."

Currently, the only way to explain Ram's abnormal behavior is to link it to the "ghoul curse".

Hearing this, Ram looked puzzled:
"Ghoul curse? What is that?"

“This…” Jules then realized that the man in front of him, Ram, was not a native of Blanccourt.

He patiently explained:
"In the land of Blancco, there is a curse that has lasted for thousands of years. This curse will turn people into ghouls after they die, so that they will never have peace."

He expected Ram to show fear, but to his surprise, Ram just pursed his lips and said nonchalantly:

"Tch, so that's how it is."

Jules said with some interest:
"I thought you would show fear of this creature."

Ram chuckled and said:
"Think about it, people only turn into ghouls when they die, so as long as I don't die, everything will be fine, right?"

"Besides, it's me who's transformed, not the people around me, so the ghouls can't eat me!"

“That’s true…” Jules smiled.

It's not surprising that an adventurer like Ram, who makes a living through adventure, has such an open-minded attitude.

After pondering for a while longer, he still couldn't uncover the secret of the statue, so he had no choice but to leave with regret.

Suddenly, a faint buzzing sound arose.

The sound was very soft, but it caught Jules' attention and made him immediately alert.

In this monastery, I've been here for so long and haven't heard any other animal sounds. How could there suddenly be the sound of insects flapping their wings?
Did you hear that?

When Jules suddenly asked a question out of the blue, Ram was a little confused:
"Did you find anything?"

Jules licked his lips and smiled faintly:
"It seems like something is watching us from the shadows."

He looked around for a while but still couldn't find where the unsettling buzzing sound was coming from.

If that's the case, then it's quite intriguing.

……

hum-

The moth gently landed on Uriel's fingertip, and the trembling of its wings gradually stopped.

A few specks of scale fell from its transparent wings and landed in his palm.

With his other hand, Uriel picked up some scale powder, tossed it into his mouth, and savored it.

A distorted image appeared before his eyes—

Various abstract concepts twisted and recombine in ways he cannot comprehend, reconstructing the world he knows into a chaotic mess of colors in the eyes of a moth.

“These moth lunatics…” Uriel had a toothache, but he still tried to make out the picture composed of these abstract concepts.

The scales he just swallowed contained the images that this moth had taken from another moth, images that the other moth had "seen."

He suspected that the person in the shadows might possess some skill in concealing their presence, which was why they had specifically searched for this item.

It sees things without relying on any of the organs that living beings are accustomed to using; sight, smell, touch, etc., none of these exist in it.

It relies on only one thing—intuition.

As an apostle of the Blade Code, Uriel's thinking was straightforward, and he couldn't understand at all what kind of mentality these Moth Code madmen had in order to research these things.

However, now that it has been developed, even if it's disgusting and uncomfortable to use, we still have to use it.

At this moment, he seemed to have entered the first-person perspective of the moth, reviewing that moment with his "compound eyes" that had no sense of light.

Soon, he saw it—

Two regular, abstract concepts are intertwined, seemingly radiating a sense of vigilance towards their surroundings.

Uriel stared intently at the two abstract concepts, trying to deduce more useful information from them.

The world as seen through the moth's eyes is distorted and absurd. He disregards his aversion to the chaotic power of the moth's rules and devotes himself entirely to interpreting it.

In the image, the two conceptual "beams" flicker incessantly, as if communicating or guarding against their surroundings.

As he watched, fine beads of sweat appeared on Uriel's forehead.

Interpreting images from this intuitive perspective is a huge challenge for him.

Meanwhile, Jules and Ram moved carefully through the chapel.

The annoying buzzing sound still echoed faintly, but Jules' vigilance did not diminish in the slightest. His eyes kept scanning the surroundings, not missing any corner that might be hiding danger.

"You mentioned a constant buzzing sound... Could something be following us?"

Ram lowered his voice and asked nervously. Now he understood that those legendary "magic" and "supernatural powers" were real.

As a result, he was extremely anxious and suspicious of any unusual occurrences.

Jules did not answer immediately; he had a premonition that this hidden spy was probably more troublesome than he had imagined.

"Could it be Uriel?" he couldn't help but wonder.

Currently, Uriel is perhaps the only one with both the motivation and the ability to search for him.

As he thought about it, he casually replied to Ram:

"Don't worry, we'll just do our job."

Ram clenched his fists. Although he was afraid, his adventurer's instincts prevented him from backing down.
"Then, Mr. Jules, what do we do now? Go and keep looking for mirrors?"

Yule narrowed his eyes and said:

"Soon, I'll take care of the tail."

His steps suddenly stopped, and then, blood flew from his hand, scattering into a net of blood spots that rushed towards an inconspicuous corner!
Under the influence of those sharp words, the web formed from blood gleamed with a cold light, directly covering the darkness in that corner.

Just as Ram was wondering what was going on, the buzzing suddenly grew louder until he could hear it too.

And its source is that darkness!
"I knew it would be here..."

Jules remained expressionless as the blood-red web contracted, instantly shredding the moth to pieces.

"Alright, the tail's been taken care of. Let's hurry up and go. There are still plenty of mirrors waiting for us to break."

……

On the other side, Uriel, standing at the entrance of the monastery, suddenly opened his eyes, his face grim.

"The moth was discovered so quickly?"

Although he didn't think this thing could really conceal its presence and continuously track and spy on its opponent in the dark, he still couldn't imagine that it would be dealt with so quickly.

He thought for a moment and then released the moth from his hand.

As if summoned by some force, the moths swayed and flew off in a strange direction.

"Since the mysterious person who broke the mirror could spot the moth, there's no need to hide it anymore..."

Uriel's eyes flickered as he stepped back into the monastery.

Meanwhile, many beggars, clutching the broken mirrors they had just found, walked happily toward the door.

"How many did you find? I found two! Lord Uriel said he'd give ten pounds for each mirror, this is going to be a fortune!"

"What's that? I was lucky enough to stumble upon a room full of mirrors that no one had ever been to before, and I found four or five mirrors inside!"

Everyone wore an excited expression, except for Uriel, who had gone into the distance.

A sinister smile hung on his face:
"You like breaking mirrors? Well, I'll make sure you don't get your way..."

Although he didn't know if this was related to the bronze mirror he was after, he wouldn't gamble on that possibility.

Everything must be under his own control!
……

After a while...

“Mr. Jules, we haven’t seen a mirror in several places… Have we been here before?”

Ram scratched his head, looking somewhat puzzled.

He remembered that they had never been here before, and no one had ever paid attention to these mirrors. How could the mirrors be gone?
Jules gazed at the almost imperceptible footprints on the ground and said calmly:
"Do you remember those beggars we saw before?"

Ram paused for a moment, then said:
"Remember, what happened?"

"Do you remember when I said that he seemed to be holding something in his arms?"

"I also remember... wait!"

Ram gasped and said:
"You mean, is Uriel hiring those beggars to steal the mirror from us?"

Jules's mouth corners slightly raised:

"It's obvious that we will inevitably have to deal with Uriel in the end."

Hearing this, Ram hesitated, somewhat worried:

"But, if we go against him, what should we do..."

Jules noticed Lam's worry and smiled faintly:

"Don't worry, I don't mean you have to actually go against him—think about it, since we're in a strange form that exists between existence and non-existence, how can we not make use of it?"

"what do you mean?"

"steal."

Jules spoke in a relaxed tone:

“I’ll distract Uriel, and you steal back the mirrors those beggars took and break them—if I’m not mistaken, those mirrors can’t leave this monastery anyway.”

"Can I help Mr. Jules?"

Upon hearing this, Ram seemed somewhat excited, but then said:

“But Uriel clearly doesn’t want to enter this monastery, we…”

“That’s in the past,” Jules said with a smile. “Didn’t you feel footsteps approaching?”

His figure vanished instantly, leaving only one sentence:
“I’ll go and meet him, you go and steal the mirror at the door, and we’ll meet at the chapel.”

……

“It’s just ahead…” Uriel put away the moth in his hand and stared intently ahead.

Just now, his unique senses, which belonged only to his blade, alerted him to a danger ahead that posed a threat to his life.

He gripped the lantern tightly in his hand, fearing that the wandering souls residing in the monastery might suddenly jump out and strike him unexpectedly.

"Hey you over there, get out here right now!" he growled.

Based on the previous observations of the moth, he was now 100% certain that a living person was hiding here!

Jules' voice drifted out, echoing in the empty corridor, but he was nowhere to be seen.

“Mr. Uriel, why are you so nervous? I am right in front of you, you just can’t see me.”

Uriel whirled around, the lantern's light flickering wildly, illuminating only the empty surroundings, with his own panicked shadow cast on the walls.

"Stop playing tricks!" Uriel shouted angrily, his hand gripping the lantern trembling slightly.

He scanned every corner warily, not missing a single shadow, but apart from his own heavy breathing, there was no other sound.

Uriel licked his lips, a hint of doubt in his eyes:
"That voice... it sounds familiar."

He wasn't familiar with Jules' voice; he just felt it sounded somewhat familiar.

Even so, it was enough to make him wary!
"Heh, Mr. Uriel, are you looking behind you?"

Uriel turned around abruptly.

A mocking sound rang out, but no one was seen.

However, a familiar feeling rose in my heart.

The answer is ready to come out.

"One of the two distorted concepts that the moth saw..."

(End of this chapter)