Chapitre 32: This Monk Wants To Dig Up A Grave
Éditeur: Atlas Studios
Soon, they reached the first location.
Zhou Zhenguo and Chu Chongtian didn't bother going in to search at all, because there was only an empty shell there. Even the walls of the house didn't exist anymore.
In other words, it was an old and dilapidated house that had been abandoned for years. Just a light push from Zhou Zhenguo was enough to make it crumble.
They didn't suffer any attacks from people who were possessed.
Apart from the crash caused by the collapse of the house, the surroundings were still in total silence.
"Looks like this isn't it," said Zhou Zhenguo.
Bang!
Right at that moment, a sound, not very loud but exceptionally crisp and clear in the silent night, rang out.
Tang Luo jumped onto the roof of the house on the other side.
In the dim light, he saw someone running into the streets some distance away. The person was firing at the shadows in a panic.
A shadow charged out and dived towards him, followed by a second, third, and fourth shadow.
More than ten shadows, as though a pack of wolves out on a hunt, dragged the man from under the light of the streetlamps into darkness.
Right after that, the shadows ran in a certain direction.
Tang Luo surveyed the surroundings. A few leaps later, he jumped onto the tallest building nearest to him.
What entered his sight was a scene where a lot of people were already out in the streets, which were originally as quiet as a mouse.
A small group of them was being pursued. The majority was probably under Jack the Ripper's control and were hunting others.
In addition, after killing their prey, all of them rushed towards the same direction.
"Master, what did you see?" Chu Chongtian shouted from below.
"The Ripper has made his move. A lot of people have been possessed and are under his control. They are running towards the church."
Tang Luo jumped down and landed on the ground, blasting away the snow around him.
A black circle of ground appeared around him.
"The church?"
Zhou Zhenguo didn't understand why the Ripper would possess other people and direct them to the church.
Shouldn't he be coming over here to give them trouble instead?
"I have a theory. I don't know how true it is, but we can go over and see how valid it is. What do you guys think?" asked Tang Luo.
"What theory is it?"
Tears almost streamed down Chu Chongtian's cheeks.
'Master, you've finally started to think.'
Tang Luo asked with a smile, "Is Jack the Ripper really human?"
His smile was very mild and warm, yet it caused shivers to go down Zhou Zhenguo and Chu Chongtian's spines.
This didn't have anything to do with Tang Luo himself. Rather, it was because of what he had said.
'Is Jack the Ripper really human?'
Wasn't that pure nonsense? Was he a ghost then, if not human?
But why couldn't Jack the Ripper be a ghost instead?
Chu Chongtian swallowed hard, looked at Tang Luo, and asked, "Master, what you're saying is?"
Tang Luo didn't answer. Instead, he looked at Zhou Zhenguo.
Zhou Zhenguo nodded with much difficulty. "It's possible. Those two failed missions of mine turned out like that because we had encountered ghosts. Missions that lean towards the supernatural genre are very tough."
"This monk would like to go to the church to take a look. What do the two of you think?" asked Tang Luo.
He was simply so democratic, asking for everyone's opinions in every matter.
While grinding his teeth, Zhou Zhenguo replied, "Let's go."
They had made a mistake.
From the moment they had treated Jack the Ripper as a human and based their deductions on this assumption, they had been wrong.
From that point on, the mission had already been progressing towards the most dangerous deadlock.
"Let's go, then."
Tang Luo started walking in the direction of the church.
That place was where everything had begun when they had first descended into this mission world.
A crypt, a graveyard outside the crypt, a church near the graveyard, as well as Li Liang, who had met with danger right on the first night.
The place was silent. A few kerosene lamps were hung outside the church.
No one knew where the residents of the city, who were running here, had gone.
Similar to the first night, the doors of the church were slightly open, rather than fully closed and locked.
Tang Luo pushed open the doors and walked in.
Zhou Zhenguo brought up the rear. He closed the doors and latched them, blocking out all the wind and snow in the surroundings.
A few candles were still burning in the church, such that the interior wasn't completely shrouded in darkness.
Just like before, there was nobody here. There was only flickering candlelight inside.
Just how similar was this scene to that of the first night?
It seemed like the three of them were going to complete the final mission in the place where everything had begun?
"It's probably this way."
Tang Luo stood in front of a small black door.
Back then, everyone had also discovered this small black door, just that it had been locked tight.
None of them had thought of forcing their way in to take a look either.
But this time, Tang Luo struck it lightly and directly smashed and overturned the seemingly small but in actuality, relatively solid door onto the ground.
A passage with steps leading downwards was revealed.
The passage wasn't particularly long. One could vaguely see the light of flames in there. The blurry shadow of a human was illuminated in the light.
At the same time, they could hear prayers, which sounded like sleep-talking, coming from inside.
After stepping onto the door slab, Tang Luo walked into the unexplored underground chamber.
Before long, the prayers stopped.
Zhou Zhenguo and Chu Chongtian exchanged a look, intending to go in and take a look as well. But before they even went down, Tang Luo returned with someone in his hand.
The person in his grasp was dressed like a priest, but his hair and beard were all messed up. His clothes were filthy and gave off a horrible stench.
If not for his clothes, people would surely take him for a homeless man.
Despite being caught by Tang Luo, the priest didn't struggle, just that his prayers were now a lot softer. It turned from sleep-talking into whispering.
Tang Luo threw the priest onto the ground and asked, "Tell me, where's Jack the Ripper?"
The instant he uttered the words Jack the Ripper, the priest's prayers came to an abrupt stop.
He started to tremble. Then, he righted his position and knelt on the ground, all curled up. "My omnipotent master, your lowly servant is here, and I offer up everything to you."
Chu Chongtian had only just opened his mouth when Zhou Zhenguo lifted his arm and stopped him from speaking.
"Is that so?"
Looking at the priest at his feet, Tang Luo said, "Then bring me to the holy land."
"Yes, my master." The priest got to his feet and slowly walked out of the church.
He looked just like a damaged doll or puppet.
Zhou Zhenguo hurried forward and opened the doors of the church again.
The snowstorm outside flurried in at once. The priest swayed in the wind and almost fell onto the ground. It made one extremely worried over whether he would suddenly just keel over and die.
Fortunately, the priest only swayed a couple of times but didn't fall. He continued walking forward.
After walking out of the main doors of the church, he turned and walked towards the left.
"Seems like it's a graveyard over there too," whispered Zhou Zhenguo.
The church was in a relatively remote area. There was a lot of empty land in the vicinity, and on both sides of the church were graveyards.
Tang Luo and the others had emerged from one of the sides.
However, it was exactly the opposite of the direction in which the priest was leading them right now. The graveyard that Tang Luo and the others had seen previously was of a relatively higher grade.
For example, many had been buried there after the tragic case at the manor.
The other side was the commoners' graveyard.
To put it bluntly, it was actually no different from a mass grave.
Amidst the snowstorm, the priest walked on with much difficulty.
After almost an hour, they finally reached an extremely remote spot. The area nearby was the messy forests.
The priest stopped in his tracks. Disregarding the snow on the ground completely, he fell onto his knees and prostrated.
When Tang Luo had first seen him, he had also been praying in this position.
"There isn't anything here," said Chu Chongtian.
The holy land?
That was probably where Jack the Ripper was buried, right?
Master Xuanzang had deceived this abnormal priest into bringing them here. But there wasn't even a single tombstone, the only thing there was a bald tree branch.
"This is exactly it."
Tang Luo went past the priest and walked towards the tree branch about five meters in front of him.
Zhou Zhenguo and Chu Chongtian hurried after him. It was only when they got nearer that they realized that this wasn't a tree branch at all. It was a couple of wood slabs tied together to resemble a cross.
Sticking it into the ground, it could, by a stretch, count as a tombstone, right?
Or rather, a marker.
The most important thing was that there was a dagger stuck into the top of the wood—a rusty and bloodstained dagger.
The light from the lamp in Zhou Zhenguo's hand shone onto the dagger. The design of the dagger gradually overlapped with the one he had seen the other night.
"So our efforts all this time were all for naught?!" Chu Chongtian couldn't help but exclaim, his voice somewhat sharp.
After so much hard work, to think the answer, in the end, was actually something like this.
Jack the Ripper was a ghost and vengeful spirit who didn't even have a tombstone?
Hmm, to put it in a more oriental way, a malicious ghost back to exact revenge?
"No, the mission isn't complete yet," replied Tang Luo. "This shows that there's something more important that we have overlooked. It's only when we find it that we'll be truly considered as having found Jack the Ripper."
As he spoke, he lifted his arm to grab the simple cross erected on the ground.
When Tang Luo took hold of the cross, the heavy snowstorm instantly turned into a true blizzard.
The biting wind blew against their cheeks, as painful as knives slicing through their flesh.
The lamp in Zhou Zhenguo's hand swayed a couple of times in the wind and broke, falling onto the ground in pieces.
The light disappeared.
Darkness enveloped them at once.
"Master!" Chu Chongtian shouted and crouched down instinctively.
He felt a piercing chill, just like that night. But this was unlike the suddenness of the previous time.
The other time, they had been like insects sealed directly within amber, whereas this time, it felt more like frigid waters were constantly rising from beneath their feet.
The numbness came gradually. There was still some room for struggle.
"Buy me two minutes of time."
Tang Luo's voice pierced through the howling wind into their ears.
Golden light glowed around them at the same time and chased away the cold numbness.
This time, the light didn't dissipate immediately. Instead, it was sustained. A warm current flowed through their limbs, allowing Zhou Zhenguo and Chu Chongtian to disregard the snowstorm and darkness around them.
But the instant they got a clear view of their surroundings, they froze up nonetheless.
At some point, a huge crowd had gathered around them. Under the snowstorm cover, the ones nearest to them were already no more than 20 meters away.
All of them were residents of the city. There were even Cotland Yard detectives whom they had met before among them.
But now, they were no longer residents of the city anymore.
Everyone's faces were shrouded in dark shadows. Their facial features weren't visible. One could only see three spots where their eyes and mouths were that were visibly darker than the shadows covering their faces.
Two minutes?
If this massive crowd of people that had been 'possessed by evil spirits' was to come at them all at once, it wouldn't even take half a minute for them to rip Zhou Zhenguo and Chu Chongtian into pieces.
"Master, what do you intend to do!"
Chu Chongtian's voice was trembling.
"I have sinned. This monk wants to dig up a grave."
-- Cadeau
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