Silent Crown

Chapter 476 Afterimage in Purgatory

They had only taken a step forward, yet the world was completely different. The blazing light and shadows seemed to have all disappeared. Everything became dark and ambiguous like a blurry dream.

Under the high tower, before the sealed black metal gate, Charles watched Gaius take out a key. The man placed it into the lock carefully and used all his might to turn it. Gears began creaking and grating and the door opened.

Charles froze.

There should have been a spiral staircase in the large room behind the door. Now, the room was still there but the staircase was not. The originally solemn room was eerie as if it had been abandoned for decades. There was a giant crater in the ground.

Charles stood at the edge and looked down, feeling the eerie breeze from the abyss. The steel staircase extended brokenly to somewhere deeper underground. There were faint lights but had all been covered by dust and cobwebs, making everything dark and subtle.

"Where…is this?" Charles did not know where they were but he knew this definitely was not the Judgement Tower.

"Here? Just somewhere abandoned for a long time." Gaius walked to the end of the room and pushed open the door to the lift. Behind it, metal grated and countless scraps of rust fell down the deep well like dead bugs that were still dancing in the air.

An ancient lift slowly rose up from the darkness.

Gaius turned and motioned for Charles to come over.

There was a corpse-turned-skeleton leaning in the corner of the lift. Half of its body hung outside and its legs were gone. His nametag seemed to still hang from his ragged white uniform. However, the name had faded through time.

Gaius squatted down. Studying the skeleton's broken face, he sighed. "Long time no see. I thought you were living under a different name. I didn't expect that you'd died here."

He pulled open the skeleton's old clothes and pulled a key out.

"Thanks, old friend. I used to not like you but I didn't think that you could help me again after so many years."

He rose and kicked the annoying skeleton off the lift. He walked onto the panel and inserted the key. He twisted it to the bottom.

"Such good luck," he said to Charles. "With this, we can save a lot of effort."

Under the grating sounds of the lift descending, Charles looked around in confusion. After a while, it finally dawned on him. "This isn't a pure material world anymore?"

"This is a piece left behind when establishing the holy city in the aether world back then. It's scrap waste…the material and aether world overlapped, creating a stable area."

Gaius inhaled the cold and rotten wind. He murmured, "Abstinence musicians of the territory way turned the scrap into this. It overlaps with the Judgement Tower. Or rather…this is the true Judgement Tower.

"Charles, what you see is the secret that the Sacred City wants to hide under the Judgement Tower. If people find out, they'll probably send you to the stake to be burned even if you've only heard about it."

"The Sacred City?" Charles was confused. "What did they do here?"

"Many things. Human experimentation, mutation surgery, forbidden research… Humans must make immoral sacrifices for the future. This is something a Choir musician told me. Perhaps madmen have more common topics. I always thought he was right until someone woke me from my beautiful dream."

Gaius stared at the changing levels outside the lift and said lightly, "Here, they imprisoned the most dangerous criminals, dark musicians, and…natural catastrophes. I had once created this with my own hands. The nations and Sacred City ordered it.

"I created this hell for the future heaven. Later, too many things happened. I betrayed, Ye Lanzhou went crazy, Bai Heng left, and even this place was abandoned. Otherwise, I would probably have to serve a sentence in the institution I once commanded…"

Charles was silent. He gaped at the levels flashing past. There were signs he could not read and should not appear here.

Clinical Experiment Zone.

The Sixth Practice Office.

Extinction.

The Fourth Incubation Room.

Dogma Institution.

Sacrifice Office.

Finally, they descended into the deepest darkness. The lift stopped at the lowest level. Dust danced and Gaius took the lantern under his cloak. He lit it and dim light illuminated his face.

"Come with me," he said to Charles. "All the secrets you want to know are here."

There were six steel gates. Standing before them, Charles looked up blankly. The gates reached into the darkness. Compared to them, humanity was as insignificant as dust. This was like the home of deities that had been abandoned. It had once been as glorious as heaven but now, it was so dilapidated.

These gates had been created with the Church's alloy technology. They could withstand sieges without any damage. However, when Charles walked past them, he saw that there was a gaping crack on all of them. Some places had melted and solidified but riddled with holes. Some places had been torn with giant fingerprints still visible. Other places had been crashed through with a crude hole.

The last door had been yanked out of the wall and crumpled into a ball. It was tossed to the side like a rusty hill.

"Where exactly is this?"

As he advanced, he witnessed unbelievable scenes. There was even the skeleton of a demonic whale in the ruined square. But he didn't understand what this all was.

"This was the first generation 'purgatory.' It's a prison the Church created to realize God's punishment in the human world," Gaius explained. "Even though they made a better one to replace it, its significance is irreplaceable."

"The Sacred City created a purgatory themselves?"

"Why not?" Gaius asked in return. "Didn't they create heaven themselves? Charles, this isn't anything shocking. Compared to their biggest mistake, this place isn't even worthy to be brought up.

"Here, the world's best musicians and scholars once grouped. There were prophets from the Rock Institute, cursers from the Mirage Islands, alchemists from the School of Destruction…even Indian monks and Eastern Devas…

"This was once the highest point of the human world. The Trinity College's research room can't even be compared to it." Gaius halted in the center of the dark empty room. "We're here."

He suddenly stopped, causing Charles to trip and fall backward. Gaius caught his collar and pulled him over. Meeting Charles's confused eyes, he lowered the lantern and illuminated the mottled yellow lines on the ground.

"Remember to step outside the yellow lines. Inside it…is a world humans cannot understand."

In silence, Charles seemed to understand something. He looked into the darkness before him. His vision seemed to pierce through the solid darkness and see the true appearance of the shadows.

His face paled.

Sweat dripped.

Gaius bent down. He placed the lantern by his feet and reached out. Pulling out a burner, he broke it and tossed it into the darkness. Blazing light burst forth, illuminating everything. Beyond the yellow line was the deep abyss! Light bloomed from the burner. It spiraled and fell deep into the darkness, illuminating the terrifying cage before them. It looked like shackles made for a giant. Dozens of thick chains dropped from hundreds of meters above but they were now broken and scattered on the ground.

The burner fell from the podium Charles was at to the ground. It dropped into the dirty water and dimmed. But the dim light still illuminated the terrifying shadows everywhere.

The cage was obviously empty but the light still cast a menacing shadow that filled the entire cage. It was just a shadow but it was horrifying. It was impossible to describe the thing. It seemed to be curled up asleep in the cage but its mere existence was an interrogation on a human's sanity. All beliefs were shattered.

Three unclear and abnormally shaped heads looked in all directions. Thousands of limbs cast odd shadows, slithering on the metal walls like snakes. As they moved, the metal would sizzle. The shadow was like a beast that radiated with a corrosive aura.

It was just an afterimage. This was a shadow left behind through the ages. It caused this place to lose control completely, turning into an inhumane territory.

"Scared, Charles?" Gaius studied the blurry afterimage with nostalgia. He reached out as if wanting to embrace it. "Here, we achieved something that could never be bested. We defeated, captured, imprisoned…and even dissected a natural catastrophe!"

Charles gaped at the black shadow. It felt like his head would split apart. He stumbled back. After a long while, he murmured, "Hecatoncheir?"

"Charles, this was the cage for Hecatoncheir before it fell." Gaius looked up at the large shadow as if meeting the eyes of the natural catastrophe that had long gone.

"Humanity captured it while it was in its century-long slumber and placed it here. We racked our minds and put in our blood, sweat, and tears…Finally, we put in all the effort we had, paid every cost we could, to understand something of a natural catastrophe's nature."

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