Mystery: The Last Shepherd

Chapter 2 Hanging upside down
"Dengdengdeng!"

Heavy footsteps sounded behind him. Just as Li Ran was about to dodge to the side, a huge force slammed into his back, and his body involuntarily lurched forward, crashing into the wall.

"boom!"

The intense pain made it hard for Li Ran to breathe. He rolled onto the floor and it took him a second or two to catch his breath.

The candlestick was no longer in his hand. Li Ran struggled, enduring the pain, and barely managed to prop himself up. Looking up, he saw Sirius standing where he had just been. Sure enough, it was this old man who had knocked him away.

Li Ran never expected that after knocking so many times, the old man could still stand up again, and that his frail body contained such great strength!

I should have stabbed him a few times!
Li Ran felt remorseful.

"Get up, Luze! He's coming towards you!"

Cecilia called out urgently.

Sirius Aripip walked towards Li Ran. In the dim candlelight, his figure appeared dark and eerie. Blood dripped from his forehead. Without uttering a word, he reached out his hands directly towards Li Ran.

Driven by his survival instinct, Li Ran leaped to his feet. As the hands came hurtling toward his throat, he almost instinctively raised his hand to block.

In an instant, their skin touched.

"Fuck!"

A sharp stinging sensation was generated at the point of contact with the skin, like a surge of electric current piercing Li Ran's brain!

"what!"

Caught off guard, Li Ran screamed in pain and covered her head.

It hurts!

It looked like someone was chopping his head off with an axe!
He was in so much pain that he collapsed to his knees and couldn't straighten up.

Sirius Aripip didn't seize the opportunity to attack; instead, he froze. He shook his head, a strange expression on his face, as if he was about to cry, or as if he was overjoyed beyond measure.

"Lord, is that you? I can feel your presence."

Large tears welled up in his fierce eyes as he mumbled incomprehensible words, staggering and trembling as he walked towards Li Ran.

As for Li Ran, he could no longer hear the sounds of the outside world, because his mind was filled with terrifying mutterings.

This is a language beyond human comprehension, as if millions of voices are speaking simultaneously—shouting, laughing wildly, weeping, and murmuring. Countless voices overlap and blend together into a pure, extreme madness, compelling one to listen intently, as if by listening more closely, one could discern the true meaning of these delirious ramblings.

Intense pain followed him relentlessly. Every whispered murmur felt like a red-hot steel needle piercing the nerves in Li Ran's brain.

It was just an auditory hallucination!
These are the sounds the original owner of the body would hear when they were having an attack!
Past memories collided with the pain of the present moment in Li Ran's mind. He clutched his head, his vision blurring with pain.

Just then, Sirius reached out his hand again.

"boom!"

Li Ran felt a deafening roar in his mind; the real world vanished, and terrifying hallucinations enveloped him.
What did he see?
cross.

A huge cross.

On the inverted cross, so enormous it seemed to support the sky, hung a colossal giant pierced by iron nails, his body stained with blood. His face bore a pained and bewildered expression, as if he were on the verge of death, or perhaps in a deep sleep.

Sacred, strange, eerie, terrifying!
The frantic babbling echoed in Li Ran's mind, growing louder and clearer until it finally exploded like a thunderclap.

Finally, Li Ran understood the meaning of the babbling.

"The will of God will ultimately prevail among mankind."
He will be with us, He will bear our sins.

His great light illuminates the darkness, and thus all beings are saved.

Those were the ancient sacred songs sung by countless ancestors in unfamiliar languages, nameless epics from a primitive age illuminated by torches. The songs were filled with fervor and awe; they trembled, they rejoiced, they went mad!

I don't know how much time passed; it felt like a moment, yet also like eternity.

Just when Li Ran thought he was going to be trapped in this illusion forever, he seemed to hear the sound of the tide.

The sound of the tide was incredibly surreal.

With the sound of the tide, the hallucinations and babbling quickly faded, and his vision gradually cleared.

But as soon as he regained consciousness, he felt the pain of suffocation.

"Cough cough." The pressure on his neck made it hard to breathe. Looking down, he saw Sirius's hands tightly gripping his throat. Blood was still dripping from the wound on his forehead, but the blood had turned from bright red to dark black.

But the color of the blood was no longer the worst of it! Even more horrifying was that Sirius's entire face was twisted and deformed, turning him into a monster. Protruding tumors covered his face and hands, and his mouth was split open to his ears, revealing sharp, white teeth!

"Lord, indeed, you are here."

He mumbled through his split mouth, his grey-blue eyes filled with fervent joy!

"Let go, let go!"

A girl's anxious shouts came from one side; it was Cecilia, who was futilely pounding on Sirius's arm, trying to save him.

"Using a knife"

Li Ran felt his vision go black, and his lungs felt burning and dry. He tried his best to squeeze out two words.

Reminded by him, Cecilia immediately reacted. She turned around, picked up the dagger from the ground, gritted her teeth, and without hesitation plunged the dagger into Sirius's waist!

"Ooh!"

Sirius let out a painful scream, swung his arm, and threw Li Ran away!
"boom!"

Li Ran flew up again. This time, he crashed into the desk on the other side. He lay on the ground, grimacing, feeling a sharp pain in his back.

"ah--"

Just as she was in excruciating pain, Cecilia screamed from the other side; it turned out that Sirius had pounced on her.

Hearing the scream, Li Ran instinctively became anxious. The memories from Lu Ze urged him to save his sister. He reached for the desk, trying to get up quickly, but in his haste, he accidentally pulled open a drawer, and the contents clattered to the floor.

With a "thud," something heavy hit the back of his hand.

Li Ran looked down and saw a revolver lying on the floor, its metal reflecting the candlelight. He picked it up, and its heavy weight and intricate mechanical structure caught his eye.

Is it the real thing?
Cecilia screamed again; she had been cornered by Sirius and had nowhere to hide!

do not care!
Li Ran gritted his teeth, half-knelt up, and checked the magazine by imitating the steps in the video he had watched. It was full of six bullets.

"Hey! You idiot!"

He got into a shooting position, pointed the gun at Sirius, and then raised his voice and shouted, "Your lord is here, come quickly!"

Sirius paused, then, as if instinctively drawn by Luze's words, turned and pounced on him.

"Hehe!"

He became increasingly unlike a human, his mouth agape, saliva stringing and sticking between his sharp teeth.

Go to hell!
Li Ran gritted his teeth and pulled the trigger with all his might.

"boom!"

The loud gunshot echoed in the room, and the powerful recoil slammed into his hand, traveling through his arm to his shoulder as if struck by a hammer.

Sirius's body stiffened for a moment, as if he had been hit, but he quickly charged towards Li Ran again.

Without hesitation, Li Ran fired the remaining five bullets at Sirius.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

He had never practiced shooting and was just firing randomly by luck. Fortunately, the target was close enough, and he was lucky enough that one of his shots hit Sirius in the head. Sirius's brains splattered everywhere with a crack, and he fell forward to the ground as if out of control. After convulsing a few times, he stopped moving.

"Huff, huff"

Li Ran gasped for breath in the gunpowder-smelling air, his gaze passing over the corpses to Cecilia across from him.

The girl was unharmed, but still shaken.

Li Ran's mind went blank, and her stiff face managed a forced, bitter smile to comfort her.

On my very first day in this world, I killed someone with my own hands. What a terrible start!

　At the time this book was published, the author, Cuttlefish, had not yet released the potions and abilities of the Secret Prayer Path, so the relevant recipes and rituals in the early stages were created by the author himself. Please forgive any conflicts with the official version.

　　When this book reached Sequence Five, the author, Squid, revealed the relevant settings. Therefore, this book will begin from Sequence Four and be written according to the settings already revealed by Squid.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)