Chapter 151: Inside the Secret Chamber

Lin Qi stared blankly at the Holy Cross emblem above the gate. The cross itself was not particularly strange; what truly troubled him was that he could not read the metallic letters. They were twisted and winding, solemn yet touched with exquisite grandeur. How had he never encountered such writing before?

Longcheng walked forward in silence and placed his hand upon one of the twisted characters beneath the emblem. He glanced back at Lin Qi with a faintly mocking smile.

“This is the difference between civilization and barbarism. These are the ancient divine characters, the script once used by the gods of the legendary Age of Destruction.”

He raised his brows proudly and continued with a smile, “I began studying ancient divine script and various archaic languages at the age of three. I am fluent in divine script, goblin script, fairy script, undead script, Black Spirit sorcery script, orc blood script, giant runes, demonic incantations, devilish heresies, and several even older languages preserved only in legend.”

Lin Qi was dumbfounded. So were the assassins around him. They stared at the twisted metal letters on the gate, then lowered their heads in shame.

The gate was right before them, yet they could not read the writing. They had no hope of deciphering the mechanism. But Longcheng—that freak, that utter aberration—actually understood so many nonhuman languages. Did that mean he was proficient in the scripts of every race whose civilization rivaled humanity’s?

Was this the foundation of the great aristocratic houses of the East?

Lin Qi did not know whether every great noble family in the East possessed such depth. But from Youlian, he had learned that among the great houses of the imperial capital, if a nobleman mastered the language of a foreign race and composed a sonnet in it for some exalted personage, it would generally lead to a passionate and scandalous romance.

Yet those supposedly learned and accomplished noble lords seemed no different from illiterate peasants beside this freak named Longcheng. Mastering even one foreign language was enough to boast about in the Empire’s aristocratic circles, earning its possessor a reputation as some sort of linguist. But Longcheng?

Lin Qi had heard of goblin and fairy script, but he had never known that the undead possessed a written language. He had known even less about the enormous, dark-skinned brutes of the Black Spirit Continent having a script of their own. As for demonic incantations and devilish heresies, anyone on the Western Continent who dared study such writing would be sent to the stake by the Church without the slightest hesitation.

Spreading his hands helplessly, Lin Qi said dejectedly, “All right. I admit that in certain areas… you possess an overwhelming advantage.”

Longcheng hurriedly pointed at his own nose and laughed. “A civilized man!”

Then he pointed with malicious delight at the men beside Lin Qi. “Savages!”

Lin Qi was so furious he nearly spat blood. One day, sooner or later, Longcheng would be shot to death by a storm of arrows from behind. Of that, Lin Qi was utterly certain.

The men around him were equally enraged, their faces turning livid. They had seen plenty of street thugs and scoundrels, but this was the first time they had encountered such a spectacular bastard—someone who called himself a nobleman while being a hundred times more vile than any common thug.

“Watch carefully. This character means space.”

Longcheng shifted the character beneath his hand into the circle to the left of the Holy Cross emblem.

“Infinite space. Everything exists upon its foundation.”

He pressed another divine character. Amid the clicking of hidden mechanisms, he moved it into the circle to the right of the cross.

“This character means time. Infinite time is the axis of space. It governs everything within space—the birth, development, and decline of all things.”

“From left to right, this stroke of the Holy Cross represents the evolution of space and time. It represents the eternal principle that never changes within the laws of existence.”

He moved another divine character into the circle below the cross and sighed softly.

“Law. This character represents every force of law within endless space and infinite time. Fire is hot. Ice is cold. Water extinguishes fire. All things grow; winter passes and spring arrives; life ends in death and silence. Every law lies beneath this Holy Cross. Law is the foundation of all existence. Only by being founded upon law can space and time possess eternity.”

Lin Qi gazed thoughtfully at the Holy Cross. For the first time in his life, he learned that the Church’s seemingly simple emblem contained such complex meaning. And from Longcheng’s explanation, it seemed to make perfect sense—far too much sense.

But what kind of truth was it?

Lin Qi felt as though a dense fog lay before his eyes, hiding the reality concealed behind it.

Longcheng shook his head and moved another divine character into the circle above the cross.

“Soul. The soul can transcend time and space, surpassing all laws in order to exist. All things possess spirit, but only the soul can escape these natural restraints. Everything else is unreliable. Only the soul that commands space, controls time, and transcends law is the ultimate existence in the universe. All things lie beneath the soul—including space, time, and law. They are all subordinate to the soul!”

With a sharp click, the character representing the soul slid into its corresponding circle. The entire bronze gate suddenly blazed with light.

The gate’s original dull, heavy bronze became lively and radiant, as smooth and lustrous as pale green crystal.

Longcheng placed both hands upon the final divine character and moved it into the circle at the very center of the Holy Cross.

“This character has an exceedingly complex meaning. It may be understood as self-restraint, self-purification, self-redemption, and things of that nature. It also represents absolute goodness, absolute purity, and absolute prohibitions and commandments. The soul stands above all things, but it can rise above everything only through self-restraint, self-purification, self-redemption, absolute goodness, absolute purity, and absolute law.”

“Purification and purity are the foundation that allows the soul to transcend all things. If the soul loses absolute purification and purity, it will inevitably fall.”

Longcheng lightly tapped the divine character in the lowest circle of the cross and said calmly, “The strange thing is that in ancient divine script, the word for law also carries another meaning: sin. Two meanings that have nothing whatsoever to do with each other—and yet they were fused into a single word. I truly cannot understand why. Could that old teacher, whom I paid thirty thousand ounces of silver every year, have deceived me? Surely not.”

A beam of violet light shot from between his brows and entered the enormous Holy Cross emblem in an instant.

A dull succession of clicks echoed through the chamber. The bronze gate slowly opened, sinking gradually into the ground.

Only when the gate descended did Lin Qi realize that it was ten meters thick. It was not something human strength could ever hope to breach.

A soft radiance spilled from behind the gate—a warm, lustrous golden light.

Lin Qi stepped inside cautiously.

Then he stood there, utterly stunned.

To be continued.