Chapter 128 — The Heretic

All the noise and illusions vanished in an instant. Before Gao Yang could even work out what was happening, his sight had already returned to normal.

The corridor of the Leslie family castle stretched out before him, its floor covered with a dark red carpet. Portraits of Viscount Andrew's ancestors, generation after generation, hung along both walls, and between the portraits were inset charged magic crystals. These crystals emitted a steady glow, yet something seemed to be interfering with the propagation of the light—bright as the crystals looked, the places a little further off were strangely dim.

Gao Yang instinctively glanced back, only to see Sir Philip and the others stepping through the gate right behind him. There was nothing unnatural about their movements; it seemed he alone had been affected, and those illusions had lasted but a single instant—no one had noticed a thing.

"What's wrong?" Amber asked in a low voice, catching the change in Gao Yang's expression.

Gao Cen kept his guard up as he answered, "I think I just hit an illusion, but it only lasted a moment."

"There was indeed magical power dissipating—most likely a trace left by the cultists. Upon contact with an over-tier expert like you, it collapsed on its own," Pi Yun analyzed in a whisper. "We need to be careful. There could be magical traps here."

Gao Yang frowned. "Can you sense roughly where the cultists are?"

"He's cautious—or else his power is simply bizarre," Pi Yun said, shaking his head. "I can feel twisted druidic magic residue everywhere in here, but not a single trace is 'active'..."

Sir Philip gripped his longsword tightly, pressing the hilt to his chest as he briefly invoked the name of Kael, god of knights and warriors. In this way he channeled a power akin to divine magic, then looked toward the end of the corridor. "The traces converge over there."

That was the direction of the lord's council hall.

Gao Yang and Amber exchanged a glance. Then Gao Cen took the lead, the druid Pi Yun followed behind, and Philip and Amber guarded the flanks as the four of them advanced cautiously down the corridor.

Under the light of the mutated magic crystal lamps, the portraits hanging on both walls gleamed a ghastly white. The Leslies' ancestors, generation upon generation, hung there, staring coldly at the intruders' visit, their whitened eyeballs like those of dead fish, making Amber shiver despite herself.

Gao Yang merely gave the portraits a cursory glance. They were nothing but slight mutations caused by the magical environment—hardly worth worrying about. Besides, who hadn't hung a few things on their walls?

The doors of the lord's council hall were likewise ajar, faint, shifting light spilling out from within. Yet as they drew near, neither Pi Yun nor Philip could sense any definite trace of the cultists. Gao Yang probed the doors, confirming that neither the doors themselves nor the space behind them held any latent danger such as traps, and then carefully pushed open the wooden door, ornate with fine metal filigree and carved with the Leslie family crest.

The lord's council hall was utterly empty. Magic crystals set in the surrounding pillars and vaulted ceiling cast a murky, confused light. The tables and chairs that had stood at the hall's center had all been moved elsewhere, leaving only the velvet high-backed chair upon the raised platform at the head of the hall—the lord's seat.

The lord of Tansang Town, Viscount Andrew, sat in that high-backed chair. Behind him hung the portrait of the first ancestor of the Leslie family to be granted a title, and beneath his ancestor's gaze the man himself breathed with difficulty. Gaunt and tall by nature, he had now grown so emaciated as to be nearly shriveled; his flesh seemed to have wasted away, his skin clinging tightly to his bones like a pale, withered living corpse. Propped against the chair's back, his head lolled against his shoulder, his eyes staring unfocused at the ceiling as he fought for breath and murmured something under it.

The magic crystals flanking the seat cast white radiance that stretched Andrew's shadow long and cast it vaguely upon the floor.

The viscount seemed to have completely lost the ability to move of his own will.

Gao Yang tightened his grip on the Pioneer's Sword and led Philip and Pi Yun into the hall. The three of them kept watch on their surroundings as they came to Viscount Andrew's side, yet the viscount seemed entirely unaware of their approach; he merely stared blankly at the vaulted ceiling, incoherent sounds spilling from his mouth.

"His mind is trapped," Pi Yun judged at once. "But not severely. I'll lift his curse—though the cultists will likely be alerted. Be ready."

Gao Yang gave a slight nod. "Do it."

Pi Yun placed his hand on Viscount Andrew's forehead and drew a small vial from his breast with the other. He bit out the wooden stopper and let a few drops of the liquid fall onto the viscount's crown.

A strange, potent floral fragrance rose from those drops and, together with the druidic spell's activation, produced a powerful exorcising and soul-calming effect. The dark magic binding Viscount Andrew's mind was affected in turn and began to loosen, bit by bit.

Suddenly, Viscount Andrew's eyelids fluttered. He emerged from the murk into clarity and looked up at Gao Yang standing before him; his eyes went wide in an instant, and a hoarse, horrifying sound rasped from his throat: "He's in my shadow!"

Almost the instant the viscount's words fell, the shadow he cast upon the floor began to twist. The magic crystals behind the chair shattered with a bang, and the shadow on the ground abruptly swelled as a pitch-black figure lunged out of it, straight for Gao Yang's face.

But Gao Yang, as though he had expected it all along, had already been poised to spring back before Viscount Andrew even cried the warning. Before the shadow could charge out, he had dragged Pi Yun off the platform, and Sir Philip followed close behind.

The shadow's lunge met only empty air, and before it could recover its stance, the shadow on the floor twisted once more. A foot clad in a short leather boot flew out of it and kicked the figure squarely in the back: "I'm in your shadow!"

The figure was kicked violently out of its shadow form and tumbled wretchedly off the platform, but midway through the air it burst apart with a bang into drifting smoke and dust, which a gust of wind swept to the far end of the hall and there re-coalesced into a solid shape—a figure cloaked in black robes, features unknown.

Amber, meanwhile, had leapt fully out of the shadows and darted swiftly behind Gao Yang.

Gao Yang regarded the black-robed figure with a half-smile. "A spellcaster who won't stay quietly in the dark throwing ball lightning, but insists on coming out to assassinate a knight in full plate—is everyone in the Order of All Things' End this refreshingly unconventional?"

The black-robed man, his ambush foiled, could not master his astonishment: "You weren't affected by the Voice of Truth?!"

"The Voice of Truth? You mean that spell you left on the door? The one that fills your head with noise the moment you push the door open?" Gao Yang asked curiously. "Ah, I did hear it—shame I'd only just wanted to chat with it a bit when the sound was gone. Surely I didn't talk it insane with a single sentence?"

At Gao Yang's words the black-robed figure seemed to fall into a vast rage. His hood shook, and from the shadow beneath came a venomous curse: "A heretic who violates the iron law of All Things' End and returns to the world of the living from the realm of the dead—you truly should not be allowed to remain in this world!"

And as his words fell, everyone present suddenly heard a dense chorus of cracking and shattering sounds from outside the hall!