“Oh, Priest!”
Xia De rushed forward, wanting to help Priest Augustus with healing, but the old man frowned and shook his head:
“It’s fine.”
He snorted, and a pure white light slowly emerged from his palm. That holy white light, simply shining on Xia De’s side, made him feel as if his soul had been baptized. The light deeply attracted Xia De; he widened his eyes, and the inspiration accumulated from reading 'crazy light chaser' was slowly enriching, but this time it was not enough to form a new Ling Rune.
In the light, Augustus’s arm gradually recovered, and the dagger also trembled because of the white light, finally being completely suppressed by it.
“It seems I’m not old yet.”
Priest Augustus murmured, took off the holy emblem from his chest, placed it on the dagger, and prayed softly for a long while before stopping:
“Is there any container? Something that can hold this?”
He asked Xia De.
“Yes.”
Xia De recovered from the disappearing light, reached into his pocket for a pile of small toys, restored the wooden box among them, and handed it to the Priest.
The Priest pressed the holy emblem onto the dagger, bound it with red thread, and carefully placed it in the box. Then, he pulled out a blue chalk stick and drew intersecting continuous diagonal lines on all six sides of the box, and in the blank areas between the lines, he wrote the exorcism symbols commonly used by the Dawn Church.
Letting Xia De hold the box, the Priest placed one hand on the box, closed his eyes again, and whispered a prayer in the night wind of the cemetery, before finally completing the entire process.
Xia De felt his horizons broadening; professionals indeed had their ways.
“Priest, since this isn’t a relic, what kind of thing is it? An alchemy item?”
Xia De asked curiously. The Priest handed the box to Xia De for safekeeping, then watched the corpse on the ground burn fiercely with Xia De. The flames from the burning lamp oil should have been orange-red, but at this moment, they appeared an eerie green.
Thick black smoke billowed from the corpse. Xia De was very glad they were in an open outdoor area and that both he and the Priest were upwind, otherwise the smell would truly be fatal.
“I’m not sure what it is, but concealing a weapon by blasphemy a corpse must be extremely evil.”
The two stood there, watching the corpse burn. Xia De also looked up at the cat in the tree; the cat was sprawled on the trunk, looking quite leisurely. When it noticed Xia De looking up at it, it meowed softly in response.
Xia De realized this was the first time he had seen Mia climb a tree; the cat was more agile than he imagined.
“Later, when the flames die down, we’ll move the corpse back into the coffin. I need to perform an additional exorcism ritual to prevent anything else from happening.”
The Priest instructed.
“The corpse is like this, can anything else happen?”
Xia De asked in surprise, and the Priest enlightened him with basic Knowledge:
“To prevent this charred corpse from contaminating other corpses in the cemetery. We don’t want to hear news of a corpse riot in the nameless cemetery outside the city in a few weeks.”
As he spoke, the Priest couldn't help but sigh:
“One must always be cautious; young people often don't understand this principle.”
The abnormal green flames burned for a full twenty minutes before extinguishing. However, the flames did not burn the corpse to char; instead, they made the rotting corpse appear fresh again, and even the wounds kicked by Priest Augustus and the gashes cut by Xia De had healed.
The woman's voice whispered in his ear, prompting Xia De about the appearance of the 'whisper' element. However, the Priest's “other self” did not seem to prompt the 'whisper' element; the old man suddenly frowned:
“Detective, look quickly!”
When Xia De looked at the corpse's hands, he was immediately stunned, because both hands were placed on its chest, tightly clutching a black metal dagger. And the source of the 'whisper' element was not the newly reappeared dagger, but the lying corpse itself.
The element's trace was very faint, not like a relic, but more like a residual trace of a relic.
Xia De immediately looked at the box he was holding.
“Open it.”
The Priest said.
When the box was opened, it was indeed empty. But this box had not left Xia De’s hand for a moment, and the woman’s voice in Xia De’s ear had not warned him of any abnormality.
“This is very interesting.”
The Priest nodded to Xia De. Xia De dropped the box and threw out a playing card again. Then, as expected, the relatively fresh corpse, again holding the dagger, pierced through the playing card.
It slowly rose from the ground. Although it was relatively close to Xia De, it still turned and lunged at Priest Augustus.
Having learned his lesson from last time, the Priest dodged and did not raise his leg to kick. His right index finger drew an arc in the air, then pointed at the corpse's head:
“Thunder!”
After an astonishing bang, a bolt of lightning pierced the air and shot towards the corpse. But the corpse surprisingly raised its hand and blocked the lightning with the dagger.
In the dark night, it raised its hand again to stab Priest Augustus. The Priest agilely dodged sideways, then stomped his right foot, causing the corpse to lean backward:
“Detective!”
“Coming!”
Xia De again held the sword with both hands and slashed down behind the corpse, but the corpse surprisingly turned and raised its hand, blocking Xia De’s two-handed sword with a short dagger that showed no elemental traces. The corpse’s physical strength was extremely strong.
The corpse’s right hand shook, and a peculiar burst of strength made Xia De stumble backward, his wrists tingling, but he quickly recovered due to his strong physical fitness.
However, the corpse still did not actively attack the exposed Xia De, but instead turned back to deal with Priest Augustus.
“Priest, do you really have no grudge with it?”
“Is this the time for jokes?”
The old man asked discontentedly, his Destiny Ring appearing behind him. He said loudly to Xia De:
“I can still handle this small trouble. Retreat quickly, and take your cat as far away as possible.”
“No problem!”
Priest Augustus was probably preparing a very powerful move, so Xia De took a step and moved ten meters out of thin air, beckoned to the cat jumping down from the tree, and then continued to run forward.
From behind, Priest Augustus's clear voice came:
“Corpse Explosion Miracle!”
Boom~
A dull sound, almost making the ground tremble. Xia De, who had fallen to the ground and rolled into a ball with the cat, looked worriedly at the gravedigger's hut, and then turned to look back.
When he returned to the old man in the clerical robe, there was a deep pit still emitting black smoke in front of him. Xia De, holding the cat startled by the explosion, was somewhat incredulous that the old man in front of him had blown a corpse to pieces:
“Do all followers of the God of Light and Shadow learn 'Corpse Explosion Miracle'?”
This sounded nothing like a Miracle a righteous character should learn.
“I am not a Ring術士 of the Church, and besides, power does not distinguish between justice and evil.”
Priest Augustus said softly. Xia De noticed that the Ling Rune that had just lit up on his Destiny Ring was 'Corpse'. This kind of Ling Rune also didn't seem like something a devout orthodox believer like Priest Augustus should possess.
The smoke and dust from the explosion gradually settled, and in the deep pit created by the explosion, a scalp-tingling rustling sound gradually began to emerge. In the smoky dust with a burnt smell, Xia De, holding the cat, and the Priest saw that the fresh corpse, which looked as if it had just been buried, once again crawled out from the bottom of the deep pit.
It now not only looked more like a human, but its movements were also increasingly agile, and it still charged directly at Priest Augustus instead of Xia De.
