Shadow of the Evil God

"Okay," Cesar agreed. "But I have one last question... Are you familiar with the name Dongye?"

"Winter Night..." She blinked, "I seem to have some impression of it, but I can't remember the specific details. I think it must have taken it away with it. I'll ask you to find this puzzle on your own."

"And what you encountered when you excavated the tomb of the wise men..."

"Please find it by yourselves." Alanti just smiled at him.

Cesar tutted, "It seems like you, like Milava, have things you don't want to tell others."

"I'm just curious," she leaned closer, "Why do my sister and my descendants love you? Even I vaguely feel that I need to love you. For me, this is also a secret worth pursuing. To satisfy my curiosity, I want to observe what you will do. Is that not okay, dear?"

He raised an eyebrow, "I thought you would oblige me with anything I asked for, just like you did with Milava."

"There's some difference here. Do you know what the difference is?" she smiled.

"The difference," he said, "is that if the curse still existed on you, you would have fallen in love with me simply by looking at me, and you wouldn't have questioned the reason. You would have done anything for me to satisfy your love, fulfilled any request I made, just as you did with Milava. But now it's different. Now, you want to question the curse itself by observing me."

"You're so clever that I like you," said Alanti, nodding. She didn't seem to understand what he was trying to say.

Cesar stood up holding Ferris, and grabbed the hand of Aya, who was stunned by what she heard, to prevent her from disappearing to an unknown place and going crazy when her residual memory changed.

"No, what I mean," Cesar said to her, "is that you are in love with the part of yourself that can always feel that first love. If she were still there, you would turn around and throw yourself into the next perfect love, loving me and pursuing me relentlessly. But now, she's gone, so you will only turn around and look for her, wanting to find traces of her everywhere. Only after that will you continue to love yourself and your love."

She tilted her head. "What's the problem?"

"Let me put it this way. What I love is the memory of my lover and I sitting by the fire, braving the wind and snow. What I want is far away from the day and night of my eighteenth birthday."

"Then let's see who understands themselves and each other better." Alanti said nonchalantly, "What do you think you're looking for? The mystery of the curse? That's not a curse. Sooner or later, you'll apologize for your prejudice." She smiled at him again, "If you call it a curse again, I'll really be angry, Sever—no, Cesar. Finally, I hope you know that I've been talking to you, Cesar, not another part of you, nor your distant past."

Chapter 413: The Deformed Wall of Flesh and Blood

Cesar was stunned for a while after hearing this.

"Oh," Allandi said in surprise, "it seems I guessed your name correctly, Cesar. This is another puzzle. Remember to pay more attention to the past in your residual memories, otherwise you will never know where your name came from."

"Could this be the name you came up with?"

Before he could finish his words, she suddenly reached out and touched his forehead, causing a sharp pain.

......

"stand up!"

Sevra's voice reached him. She grasped Cesar's wrist with one hand, rousing him from the sticky pool of blood. He seemed drenched in blood, half submerged. For a moment, he could see nothing. Only darkness and crimson filled his vision, like a patchwork of bloodstained rags.

Then a blinding flash of fire rose from the darkness, and Cesar saw the shattered corpses of animals and humans around him, like bloated plants rooted in the tomb floor. Many had grown into towering trees. Their flesh intertwined and twisted, forming trunks covered with animal and human hides, packed with bright red viscera. Blood vessels entwined their bones and stretched out like vines intertwined with branches. Boneless arms and legs fluttered like willow branches, and were covered with human and animal faces with wild, rolling eyes.

He saw that as the flames rose, the limbs of each corpse plant began to dance wildly, and its roots broke through the floorboards and struggled towards them. The huddled, broken faces all let out frantic screams, as if calling out to the living creatures beneath the flames.

"I'll carry him first."

It was Ajeh. She took Sevra's hand, grasped him, and lifted him onto her shoulder. Cesar coughed and struggled to move. He felt a strange change in him from Alranti's finger. If the remnant of his memory truly shifted to her, would she transform him into something of hers?

"I will hide you in the memories of my servants, so that everyone will think you are my servants."

Cesar suddenly realized that Alanthi hadn't said who would play the role of Sevra. If it was the taciturn Sevra next to them, he would be thrown into the memory of one of Alanthi's servants...

Thinking of this, Cesar shook his head. The two emperors and queens of the Frankish Empire were too difficult to deal with. One was arrogant, and the other was cryptic. What they had in common was extreme paranoia and narcissism, but they expressed it in different ways.

He turned his head and saw Jiralo. The old priest finally regained consciousness, took a breath, and reached out his hand, closing the wide eyes of Allandi and Milava in an instant, then stuffed the sewn heads into the bundle.

"The switching of the remnant's subject came just in time," Jiralo said with a cough. "If it weren't for this gap, I would have been trapped by Milava... She's truly Helgast's chosen one. Let's talk about them somewhere else. There's definitely something wrong with this place; it wasn't this wrong at first. There must be too many beastmen gathered."

"What about the beastmen who disturbed the remaining memories?" Cesar asked him.

"They disappeared as the remnants of the memories were severed," the priest said. "There's no trace left. I guess they're in another timeline, and they won't reunite until Mirava's remnants of memories open again. It seems the remnants of Mirava and Alanti exist in every fork of the time maze."

"This is truly..." Cesar exclaimed, taking a bonfire from Jirallo. He barely managed to get a full view of the tomb, and the Faceless One stalking silently beside him. As usual, the dog appeared not far behind him, like the eerie puppet that invariably appears behind the protagonist in a horror story.

While he was in his lingering memories, he hadn't carefully observed how many newly born bodies the Faceless One had torn apart. Now, he couldn't tell, as each of the remains had sprouted strange plants from the tomb like seeds. As he retreated back to the way they had come, supported by Ajeh, every inch of space along the way was covered with deformed bodies. He couldn't count them, whether they were thousands or tens of thousands.

On the right was an imperial noble whom he had seen in the auditorium. A face as big as a water tank hung from the ceiling, and his skin was covered with granulations, with strings of girlishly slender arms that wrapped around him layer by layer like a coiled centipede.

On the left hand side, there was another pile of cat-man cheeks with lizard skin, some as small as fruit cores, some as big as fists, densely packed together like a honeycomb, with sticky and wet intestines all over the gaps. There were countless hundreds or thousands of heads, many of which looked like identical faces growing from the same corpse.

A famous disabled female official was curled up in a translucent membrane as tall as a person. A large number of blood vessels and roots spread out around her, growing dozens of her own versions, ranging from babies to old people, each of them arguing loudly with garbled words.

The wall ahead was completely covered in vine-like deformed flesh. It was no longer recognizable as a tomb wall, but a wall of flesh slowly closing in on them. Exposed organs as large as houses or as small as fruit cores, faces clinging together and shouting loudly, limbs dancing like willow branches, and so on covered the wall. Everything seemed absurd.

When they were halfway there, the forest of flesh and blood suddenly trembled. Hundreds of slender vines whipped towards them in every direction. Each vine was a slender human body.

They stretched to immense lengths, like flesh-colored earthworms. Boneless arms twisted around their bodies like ropes, weaving into their skin. Their heads were nothing but huge, elongated mouths, toothless lips, eye sockets devoid of eyeballs. They fell toward them, screaming, like a giant spider closing its limbs to grasp them.

Suddenly, the vines that had gathered around them snapped and scattered around them, rolling and tumbling. Sevra, who had been standing in front of him, disappeared, stepped out from behind him, and swung the bloody dagger in her hand. Her free hand clutched her forehead, her vision blurry, and she instinctively reached out and placed a blood-stained hand on his shoulder. She seemed to want to curl up against him to rest, but shook her head.

"What the hell..." Sephora shook her head. "You're almost making me dependent on you."

"I guess that's how you escaped when you were still with Ferriers. You kept escaping until you died, and then you turned the whole thing into a tragedy."

Sephora pressed her index finger against his forehead and flicked it. "Come and carry him away, Aya," she ordered. "The Queen of Farran has planted some magic in him that will likely take effect after the residual memories are transferred. But as it stands now... we'll see what happens later."

Cesar snorted twice, then, seeing Aya approaching in two or three steps, he unexpectedly lifted him up and hoisted him onto his shoulders. The guy barely reached his chest, and he was quite slender, so lifting him was as easy as moving firewood. Ajiehe clapped her hands and whistled like their little mute.

The deformed flesh and blood growing from the corpse's seeds was taking over the tomb's space. It looked like they would soon seal and fill the entire chamber. Jiralo used the few remaining inscriptions on the tomb's floor to clear a path for them, creating a corridor with two dazzling walls of light. Sevra, dagger in hand, surveyed the surroundings, dispatching the fleshy plants that suddenly emerged from the ground or the ceiling, and finally led them all the way to the exit.

They returned from the dry well. Turning back, Cesar asked Gouzi if he had seen any of Ferrieres' plants in the tomb. He breathed a sigh of relief when he received a negative answer. Even if it was a remnant of her memory, he didn't want her to appear among these deformed flesh and blood plants.

"Analik..." Jiralo muttered to himself with a serious expression.

"What?" Cesar looked at him.

"In our language, the True God Analik means infinite and eternal life," the priest explained. "However, if the abundance of life exceeds a critical point, it will exceed the ability of living beings to bear it. In my opinion, this tomb is neither a cursed place nor a dead zone, but a source of life that is abundant and exceeds the critical point. The broken corpse takes root and awakens again, and the shattered flesh and blood grows on its own like the organs and tissues in a living person, gradually losing control..."

"You're saying that people can't die the way they want to," said Sevra.

"I don't think it can stop growing like they hope," Cesar said on Aya's shoulder. "It's always a growing baby... No, it's always a developing embryo."

"Next time I awaken the residual memories of these two to trace the past, I'll need to make more preparations," Jirallo said. "It's a good thing you have a faceless spy with you. This soulless being is not disturbed by residual memories, so I can do a lot less work."

They set off. Jirallo traced two circles along the well wall, sealing the entire tomb shut, trapping the distorted flesh and blood that threatened to flow out along the well wall into darkness. They were covered in blood, but fortunately, the tomb's springs flowed endlessly, and after wading through the water, they felt much cleaner.

Cesar felt weak, but not sick. After walking for a long time, his condition neither improved nor worsened. He didn't know what Allandi's residual memories wanted from him, or what they would do to him after the residual memories were transformed.

He was now certain of only one thing: an unknown ancient entity lurked within the Yesterlen School. It influenced the school's mages through the spells, knowledge, and ideological systems passed down to this day, and through the chosen people from Allanti to Diana as its primary carrier. It could be said that the Yesterlen School, the entire school of magic, was most likely just a puppet circus for some ancient entity.

In certain eras, it would influence the chosen one to approach a specific person and give birth to a more suitable carrier. In Milava's era, this person was Milava, who later became an unknown boy, but died at Milava's hands due to Milava's terrible paranoia. Today, it is him, Cesar.

This was obvious, but judging by Bernadette's condition, the carrier selection process had gone terribly wrong. The later Yesterlen School even resorted to drugs and spells to suppress Bernadette's personality, a stark contrast to Alanti's situation. So, what went wrong? Setting aside Grandmaster Ferriers's forced abandonment of the bloodline curse, was Alanti and Milava's offspring truly born smoothly?

If Milava really discovered the change in Allanti's feelings shortly after she became pregnant, then something like offspring...

"Do you think Milava is someone who cares about children?" Cesar suddenly asked.

"We have observed so little of Milawa," said Sevra.

"It's best to see from Alranti's obscured memories that the observer is not Firiel's servant, Sevra, but a knight or personal servant assigned to Alranti by the Miraval faction."

"Could it be that the spell Alanti cast on me..."

"If the remnant of memory hadn't been interrupted, you might have woken up in the group of knights or servants heading to the Yestren School from Milava," Sevra said. "I mean it."

Chapter 414 I am her sister, mother, grandmother, and grandmother's grandmother

......

After further venturing into the Tomb of the Wise, Cesar discovered that the chamber's structure was beyond his understanding. Exiting a floor-level window, they found themselves on a staircase suspended in the air, built into an incredibly imposing wall. Left or right, there was no end in sight. Below lay an abyss, while above was a veiled fog with no visible dome.

This place seemed to be a woodland, but not the heavily logged woodland of the Farran era. It was more like the giant forest next to Soin's cabin, even older, like the forest in the wasteland where true dragons lived. The giant trees, as old as the world itself, seemed taller than the highest mountains in the real world, reaching down into the bottomless abyss and up into the mists of the dome. The breadth of their branches seemed like ancient avenues, and the dense foliage obscured the view like an opaque canopy.

A staircase ascended from the window behind him to a branch, then vanished. At the end of the branch, a small door opened into the trunk. A wooden coffin could be vaguely seen in the shadows behind it. The coffin was made of logs, seemingly from a large tree. The tomb chamber itself and all its furnishings were also carved and excavated from the trunk. Another wooden coffin, resembling a bird's nest, was set a few dozen meters away on another branch.

Tree grave?

They descended for a long time along the steps strung between the branches. Before a forked, lightless tomb, Aya took a cautious step back, avoiding a shadow whose silhouette was so familiar. Sevra shouted for her to reveal herself. Ajeh pounced and swiftly swung her sword, and the hazy shadow vanished. Only a scar on her face and the other's blood splattered on the tree trunk proved that there had been another Sevra.

Sephora shook her head. "You're too excited," she said to Ajeh. "It's rare for you to disappear without meeting me. I want to ask myself what happened back there."

"That's a Sevra I can kill openly," Ajeh shrugged. "What a rare opportunity! I can even cut off your head right in front of you for my collection."

"It seems the accident is most likely related to residual memories," Cesar said, stopping the two men. "The confusion between different times is getting worse. No matter what happens in other times, I hope we can always hold each other's hands..." He looked at Ajeh and Sefera, "Yes, I'm talking to you two. Can you not fight so quickly? Just think of it as a matter of each side taking a step back in the cemetery. When we return to reality, you can do whatever you want."

Aya covered her mouth with her hands, coughed seriously, and nodded in agreement.

They walked down for a long time, still unable to find the base of the giant tree. However, they reached another staircase leading to a window in the wall, intending to rest there and escape through the window if any trouble arose. The branches had formed a vast canopy, resembling a civic square. More than a dozen wooden burial chambers had been carved out of the trunk, scattered across the grounds. While Ajeh was quite interested in making love in the chambers, Cesar wasn't so keen. Ultimately, they pitched their tent under the canopy, intending to spend the night there.

After the tent was folded, the eternally burning bonfire shone outside, while inside, it was pitch black. Cesar lay in the tent, his arms to one side and the other, his left arm cradle beneath Ajeh's neck, his right arm resting against the dog's chest. Despite their different positions, the two inhuman creatures bit into him, licking their mouths of blood with their own eagerness.

If he was still the original human being on the altar, he would have died from excessive blood loss by now.

Ultimately, these two creatures were bloodthirsty monsters, and it was only because he'd been feeding them with his own flesh and blood that they'd been kept from harming others. Cesar always held himself to an unnecessary moral compulsion, so every time he watched this scene, he felt like he was raising demons to wreak havoc on the world. Even now, he hadn't done much to change their habits, only to keep a constant watch on them and demand things of them.

Ajeh leaned over and licked the wound on his shoulder, moving up along his shoulder until she reached his lips. Then she licked the corner of her mouth, opened her arms and wrapped them around his neck, laying her snow-white body on top of him, pressing against his chest. Cesar lifted his knees and felt the soft lips between her legs slide against his thigh.

He kneaded Ajiehe's white round buttocks, stroked the wolf tail that was slightly twitching behind her buttocks, and felt the lips between her thighs bulging outwards like blooming petals, squirming slightly against his thighs, and turning to the sides with the friction, constantly dripping with wet liquid.

Cesar bit Ajeh's lip and kissed her gently. He felt Gouzi hug his arms, burying his cheek in his hair, biting his earlobe with warm breath. Gouzi took his ear in his mouth and licked it, making a wet sound of saliva stirring and hot breathing.

Gouzi's right breast and Ajiehe's left breast pressed against his chest, squeezing them together. The two beads pressed tightly against his skin, like two tiny tongues entwining and teasing each other. His snake slid between their white bellies, pressed tightly together and rubbing against each other. Sometimes it pressed against the texture of Ajiehe's lower abdomen and pressed against her belly button, and sometimes it pressed against the texture of Gouzi's lower abdomen and slid into her lips below, feeling a chaotic sense of pleasure.

He grabbed the buttocks of the two and kneaded them, slapping them from time to time. The burning sensation in the dog's mouth became more intense. His left ear almost melted in her saliva, and the sucking of her sunken lips and the sweet tongue

The long tongue, parted from the middle, wrapped around it again and again, like a hunting snake. Ajeh's cheeks gradually turned a light red with intoxication. She raised her head, clamped her legs around his hand, gasped, then lowered her head and bit his neck.

Cesar felt Gouzi's hand on the snake's head, while Ajiehe's hand grasped the body, one circling the head and teasing it, the other caressing the body. He held Ajiehe's slender waist and slipped his fingers between Gouzi's lips, letting her suck and lick them, then he took out her soft tongue and kneaded them. He felt his body languid, his soul weary, and even mentally he had the illusion of being lost here.

Somehow, he saw his own childhood: flocks of migrating birds flying across the sky, hand-sized fey slithering through the woodlands, his master showing off a venomous snake to her sister, declaring its pattern more beautiful than the castle's carvings. His childhood had been spent following his master everywhere, watching her follow her sister everywhere, so in the end, he had been following his master's sister everywhere.

Cesar and Ferriers huddled beside her bed, reading aloud the spell theory she'd requested, pausing every now and then to listen to her corrections. She'd said something was wrong, but Ferriers couldn't pinpoint the specific error. After she'd fallen asleep, mumbling, Cesar tucked her in, only to see Alante drift in like a ghost, her hair white and her skin the color of ice.

"The world is approaching its end like a mechanical clock with no one to wind it anymore," she said meaningfully. "The God of No Creation has lost everything, leaving only an empty shell. Who will restore it to its former self? Who will grant it wisdom once again?"

"No one winds it up, so of course a mechanical clock will..."

"It wasn't the age of mechanical clocks yet." Alanti said as she came over to him and placed her hand on his forehead. Her fingers were long and slender, cold as ice. "Where are you from?"

"I don't know." Cesar shook his head, feeling a little afraid. "I just answered subconsciously. Like a prophet's prediction, sometimes fragmented words and impressions appear in my memory. Aren't you also talking about things that didn't appear in this era? We are obviously both in our teens..."

"I am indeed a teenage girl, but I am not completely one, just like you are not completely one either." She came to Ferriers and said, "You know what? I am her sister, her mother, and even her grandmother, her grandmother's grandmother, and..."

"Your mother is still alive," said Cesar.

"No," Arlandi said, smiling as she came to his side. "The one still alive is just an old woman who has forgotten how to love. It wasn't she who gave birth to us sisters."

"You give me some consternation, sir."

"Why are you so nervous?"

"Hearing the master's secrets in the school is a way to death for people like us," said Cesar.

She floated up behind him, bent down, and took his shoulders. "Are you afraid I'll tell anyone about this, dear?"

"You can make me do anything without threatening me like this..." Cesar shook his head, and then he found that she took his hand and placed it on her chest, which was already quite large at that time, and his face suddenly turned red.

She smiled. "I haven't seen you blush since the day we cut you out of the hydra. People are not wary of a taciturn little maid, but I noticed something different about you. Now your face is as red as a cherry. Does that mean my guess is right? Do you think you are a man or a woman? Also, if you stay with my sister for a few more years, will Ferris fall in love with you, or will you fall in love with Ferris? Can you tell me?"

"I'm just worried," Cesar said. "You have an early class tomorrow, and if your instructor notices you're tired, he might bring it up with me."

"Even if I spent the entire afternoon with someone and talked about academics with a flushed face, my professor wouldn't ask me anything."

"That's because when Milava comes to pick you up, all your lovers will be executed, and their heads will be presented to the emperor. This is the custom of you, the nobles of France..."

"So, you think I came to you because I wanted to relieve my longing for a dying person?"

"Your advisor will say he's going to have a discussion about academics with a young man who had an hour-long sex act at noon, and he's going to write about it in—"

"Write it into a cipher manuscript," Alanti floated to his side, her face close, her eyes filled with ancient terror. "You appear silent, but in fact you know everything. You've taken root like a strange plant, recording and exploring everything you see. Am I right?"

"At least I know nothing about you." He lowered his head.

Chapter 415: Spider Cocoon and Boy and Girl

Alanti stared into his eyes and shook his head after a long while.

"When discussing matters of love, a servant need not know everything their master knows or thinks," she said. "However, I can make an exception. Although my love in this era is Milava, the Chosen One is shrouded in a dangerous fog. Fate is unpredictable, and many years from now, you may be a way out."

"I am only a servant, sir. If you regard me as a backup..."

"You'll know later," Alanti said nonchalantly. "Night has fallen. Hold my hand, Sevra. During these afternoons and nights, you will melt into joy with me."

Cesar felt himself drifting off. This conversation seemed too fantastical to be real. He tried to argue, "I am Lady Ferrieres's maid, and I don't want my head chopped off and sent to Milava."

"Flesh and blood are but the shadow of the soul. Since you desire me, it will be easy for me to draw out different sexual characteristics from you. As for death, rest assured. Sevra will definitely stay with Firiels. Come quickly. Since beautiful dreams can bring greater joy, why resist?"

Who will die then?

Before he could ask, Arlandi had already reached out and touched his forehead. In an instant, he felt his soul and flesh yearn for her love. This feeling contained terror, strange and inexplicable, like death.

Her long, snow-white hair drifted like the snow outside the window, swirling around him, gradually obscuring his vision and enveloping his body. Her cheeks looked even more childish in the falling snow, while her deep blue eyes, imbued with antiquity, seemed even more eerie.