Chapter 241: The Shift of Divine Power

Chapter 241: The Transition of Divine Power

Armor and bones were scattered on the ground, and soon a scorching wind blew, raising yellow sand that covered the remains of the knight and the marks left behind, creating an unusually desolate scene.

Yi Fengchu lowered his eyes, staring at the bones for a moment, his expression gradually turning peculiar.

After a while, he spoke softly, "Actually, your consciousness never really dissipated, did it?"

"..."

The deliberately crafted tragic atmosphere was shattered as the charred bones of the knight wriggled beneath the sand, seemingly feeling embarrassed and uneasy.

A finger bone suddenly thrust out, shaking off the remaining grains of sand from its tip, and drew six dots on the surface of the yellow sand, then wrote:

"...You are the first passerby to figure it out."

"In fact, I did hesitate about whether to play along with you," Yi Fengchu said with a smile, sitting down casually on the ground. The swirling sand seemed to avoid him consciously, leaving his white robe spotless despite the dusty surroundings. "But I don't much like people who leave their sentences unfinished."

Thanks to characters like this knight—enigmatic, vague, and always holding back—the protagonists in many horror games have to circle around to uncover the truth, extending the gameplay by several hours.

Yi Fengchu shook his head with a smile, "In such matters, I've never been very patient—I prefer to see or hear things directly."

The knight's finger bone bent, starting to write "Who are you?" but paused, then erased what he had written.

From the young man before him, the knight sensed a distant yet familiar mysterious aura, one he had also felt from the archbishops of various divine churches and long-standing high-ranking nobles.

Knighthood is a profession that values loyalty and obedience—instinctively, he now obeyed Yi Fengchu.

"Alright, alright."

The knight's bones gathered and reassembled into a half-ruined form. He shook off the sand from his body, donned his armor, and knelt on one knee before the young man seated on the ground, solemnly writing: "What do you wish to know from me?"

"The first question," Yi Fengchu asked with a hint of curiosity, "if someone passing by is successfully deceived and kindly buries your bones for you, what would you do?"

"..."

The knight clearly hadn't expected this question.

After a moment of silence, he struggled to provide an answer: "Indeed, something similar has happened before... However, the sand around here isn't very hard, so I would wait until they leave and then dig myself out."

This one was quite the seasoned actor.

But considering how much time had passed, with the once-prosperous town now reduced to ruins in the scorching heat, it wasn't hard to understand why the knight, whose remains inexplicably retained consciousness, had developed a small hobby of putting on a show of 'making his final wishes' for passersby.

Satisfied with his curiosity, Yi Fengchu nodded happily, glanced at the city gate, and estimated that it would be some time before the capital opened. He then said to the knight, "Tell me about the past."

"For example, what this town used to look like; or... what kind of disaster turned it into ruins."

Of course, Yi Fengchu could directly perceive the fate of the past, but he believed that stories told by those who lived through them carried a different weight.

The knight, looking at the young man's amiable appearance, felt a long-dormant curiosity stir within him. He couldn't help but ask, "Pardon my impertinence, but are you a bard?"

In his memory, only those wandering bards who played their lutes and roamed far and wide would be as enthusiastic about collecting the forgotten past as if searching for lost treasures.

"..." Yi Fengchu fell silent for a few seconds, seemingly thinking of something, and did not deny it. "You can think of me that way."

The knight nodded and began to write and draw on the ground with focus.

He hesitated, wondering where to begin in describing this town, this great 'mother' that had nurtured generations of his family.

He had so much he wanted to convey—the once flourishing scenes, the vibrant culture, should not be left known only to him.

The knight had a vague premonition that the young man before him might be an existence even more eternal than his own bones.

If he could do everything in his power to make the young man remember this city, it would be as if the homeland were preserved forever—forever existing in the young man’s long memory, stripped of the scorching sand and hot winds, restored to a land of lush greenery and purity, accompanying him in eternal immortality.

At this moment, the knight deeply regretted that his throat and vocal cords had long since rotted away; otherwise, with abundant emotion and moving speeches, he might have been able to touch the young man even more.

The knight racked his brains, carefully weighing his words, but when he finally mustered the courage and resolved to write, the simplest and purest words flowed out naturally:

"Our city was once very beautiful, very beautiful."

"Before the abnormally hot winds came, it was a place where spring lasted all year round..."

In the knight’s description, Yi Fengchu saw a charming town.

Due to its proximity to the capital, the First City was wealthy and open, with merchants dressed in various attire visible everywhere on the streets. Lovers strolled under the shade of trees, and the dancers’ earrings were adorned with clear yellow gold. The air was filled with the aroma of baked bread, and the river flowing from distant mountain peaks was sweeter than honey...

Here, songs, flames, and laughter never ceased day or night, and many wandering poets came from foreign lands, writing countless poems.

"Until one night, a meteor streaked across the sky, and one of the meteors fell straight toward Sombara, eventually landing at the kingdom's border."

"I was very young then, but I heard people on the street say that the scouting party sent by His Majesty to investigate the meteor found a strange book there—it could converse with people and claimed it could fulfill any wish."

"The book was transported back to the capital, starting from the farthest Twelfth City."

"At first, people were still skeptical about the book, but after a dying patient tried wishing for recovery and truly received it, regaining health overnight at the cost of merely listening to a story from another world... everyone went mad, falling into a frenzy over the book."

"A story?" Yi Fengchu repeated thoughtfully.

"Yes," the knight wrote carefully, "the book tells a different story to each wisher, fantastical and varied, some like fairy tales, others like fables or myths... This is where our suffering began."

[It is said that the Twelve Cities wished upon the book for the dead to return and live forever, becoming an eternal city. The price was to listen to a myth about a man named 'Orpheus' who ventured into the underworld to bring back his deceased wife, only to lose her again when he looked back before reaching the human world.]

"The man wiped away his tears as he walked back to the human world, but his once beautiful wife could only remain where she stood, with worms crawling from her eyes, maggots gnawing at her rosy lips, her golden hair damp and sparse, clinging to her decaying scalp, eventually turning into a grotesque skeleton."

Yi Fengchu sighed, "The metaphors in the story later played out in the Twelve Cities."

"Besides this, what other stories did the book tell?"

"There was 'The Pied Piper,' who lured away all the children with his flute, 'The Black Death,' where the plague spread rampantly across the land, 'Hansel and Gretel,' where a witch lured children with candy and ate them, and 'Bloody Mary,' where a beautiful countess bathed in the blood of young girls to retain her youth..."

"You remember very clearly," Yi Fengchu commented.

After a moment of silence, the knight responded slowly, "Because I can never forget those terrible disasters."

Even if he wanted to forget, fear would always return, echoing within his now hollow, skeletal body.

"What happened to your city?"

"One wish after another was made, and the book finally reached our town."

"When the lord made a wish on behalf of the town, many people gathered to watch, including my mother, who held me in the crowd. That's when we saw that it was a book made of human skin. When someone turned its pages, they could feel its thin, cold, and delicate texture, and the neatly cut edges of the human skin would gently stick to their fingers, as if it were caressing the reader’s fingertips."

[The children were all afraid of this strange book and huddled closer to their mothers, but the adults’ eyes sparkled with a peculiar fire. Looking back now, I know that fire was called 'desire'.]

"After consulting with his subjects, the lord told the book that we already had comfortable surroundings and a prosperous life, so we didn’t need more gold or treasure. Instead, we wished for eternal daylight, to become a city that shone like the sun."

"The book granted our wish, making the sun in our town never set, even at midnight, the streets were always filled with all-night celebrations and parties."

And the story it tells introduces us to a race known as the 'Flame Winds,' which occasionally lose their way in the cosmos and descend upon the ground like scorching celestial fires...

Yi Fengchu’s eyes softened slightly as the light from the newborn furnace fell on his usually cold face, giving him an unexpectedly gentle and compassionate look.

His voice was low and slow: "...This is what you truly experienced decades later."

The knight paused, setting down his pen and cradling his dented helmet, but being a skeleton, he could not cry. He quickly regained his composure and continued describing the disaster:

"Perhaps because the first city made its wish the latest, the calamity also arrived here last."

"At that time, the city walls were crowded with refugees and beggars who had fled from other towns, creating an atmosphere as tense as a fully drawn bow, with arrows of despair ready to pierce hearts at any moment."

"When the Flame Winds came, I was serving in the knights, responsible for evacuating the crowd gathered at the city gates."

"I watched helplessly as many mothers, holding their children, had traveled great distances to seek refuge, but the moment they set foot on the land, their faces still wearing hopeful smiles, they were consumed by a wind... an incredibly scorching wind, leaving no trace of ash behind."

"Everyone was disintegrating, not melting into liquid, but turning into gas, merging with the searing wind, indistinguishable from one another."

"Steamy white smoke rose everywhere, shimmering with specks of white ash, which might have been parts of human bones that were hard to burn completely, or perhaps diamond dust formed from melted bones..."

The knight was so agitated that he completely forgot about Yi Fengchu’s presence, as if reliving the moment when the disaster struck.

Yi Fengchu remained silent, watching him quietly.

It wasn’t until a dull sound, like a door lock falling, echoed through the air that the knight snapped out of his trance, looking up in shock at the city gate.

The First City bordered the capital, and in the past, one only needed to pass through the nearby city gate to step onto the broad, smooth streets of the capital.

But since the disaster, the capital seemed to have vanished.

The knight had attempted to pass through this door countless times, but without exception, nothing but endless darkness lay beyond, forcing him to turn back and return to the First City.

At this moment, accompanied by a sound like a lock being opened, the scene outside the city gate began to distort, as if a curtain of shadow had been lifted—

Familiar streets of the Imperial Capital came into view before the knight’s eyes.

“I should be going,” Yi Fengchu said softly as he rose with his lantern in hand.

The knight was unable to speak, nor did he know what to say; countless questions filled his mind, yet they remained unanswered.

He wondered if the Imperial Capital had been reopened for the unfamiliar young man?

What had concealed the Imperial Capital before, and what now welcomed the youth?

And…

Had the young man remembered the story he told—the story of Sombera?

“I will always remember it.”

Yi Fengchu took a few steps and suddenly spoke, seemingly out of nowhere.

The knight’s hollow eye sockets stared straight at him, his loose jawbone moved, producing a faint clattering sound of bone against bone.

‘Thank you.’ He bid farewell silently.

In the next instant, the knight’s bones and armor clattered to the ground.

This time, he truly found release, embraced by the silence of death.

For the story he had guarded was finally told, and from now on, someone would remember it for him.