CHAPTER 500: CHAPTER 478: I LIKE JOKING

Horn stood silently, gazing at the stone wall and doorway at the end of the corridor.

No one spoke. Everyone was silently digesting the content of the corridor murals.

This corridor seemed to be a square-shaped corridor, with the other half likely buried in the stone wall, or completely lost to time.

"Are you sure this is a palace from a thousand years ago?" Jeanne asked the monk responsible for the survey.

"Absolutely." The surveying monk wiped the sweat from his forehead, "If not a thousand years, then at least eight hundred. Some materials here only existed in the Ancient Aier Empire, and with the desertification caused by vampires and the Western Continent, they are now extinct."

"Could it have been brought from other ancient ruins?" Jeanne persisted in her questioning, unwilling to give up.

"It’s possible, but the problem is, with that narrow path we just walked on, it’s impossible for these huge materials to have passed through." The monk clenched his teeth, "This might be a local palace that sank into the mountain due to an earthquake."

"Who would build a palace in such a remote corner?" Vite roamed around the corridor incredulously, still unable to determine the style it represented.

"Have you all looked at these murals?" Horn turned to the two Demon Hunters behind him and asked.

"We have."

"What do you think?"

"This might not necessarily be true." Aijia Lang said indifferently, "I’ve seen many such ancient ruins, and aren’t there plenty of these deceitful Evil Gods who deliberately forge or distort facts?"

Horn exchanged a glance with Armand; this indeed wasn’t false.

Although there were these murals, a single piece of evidence alone was not enough to confirm its authenticity.

Moreover, when it comes to forging relics and Holy Relics, the early church indeed had a shady past.

For example, the El Scholar Peruzzi had calculated that if all the Miseria scriptures from the churches and castles across the Falan Kingdom were sewn together, they could span the Xilan Sea.

In just the Flower Hill area, the church castles housed over ten thousand, with some noble families possessing nearly a thousand, claiming to redeem fifty thousand years of sins.

Although the church repeatedly declared that Miseria was a pure, sexless virgin without menstruation, they couldn’t stop the enthusiasm of local lords.

Some lords would even re-paint ancient murals or rewrite their family histories into ancient records.

The most classic example is in the Ancient Aiel Records "Dialogues," which mentions only 13 noble families in Li Yang City.

However, based on analyses of contemporary local documents, El Scholars found nearly 500 families.

Yet, the nobles shamelessly labeled themselves as millennium-old families.

As for the fact that only impoverished people followed Miseria across the sea back then, they pretended completely oblivious.

"So, perhaps the original corridor had no murals, and what we see now was drawn by local believers of the Evil God to slander Miseria." Armand coughed, deliberately raising his voice.

"Didn’t Vite say... ah, yes." Mid-sentence, Horn suddenly realized, "We can’t jump to conclusions, everyone."

Standing beside Horn, holding a torch, Jeanne did not speak, seemingly in agreement.

Is that so? So, it was the Evil God causing trouble all along.

As these three key figures of the Salvation Army came to this conclusion, nearly everyone around breathed a sigh of relief, self-hypnotically offering prayers.

Perhaps they knew something was amiss in their hearts, but with the backing of these three high-ranking figures, they accepted the "it’s fake" narrative.

Given the high-pressure situation currently faced by the Salvation Army and a golden development period with an uncertain end, internal stability was paramount.

As for resolving the debates, it would have to be slowly addressed over time.

But what was it all meant to convey?

"Let’s go check out the hall beside us." Horn was silent for a while, then spoke to Raphael beside him.

Aijia Lang and the Demon Hunters turned around, hunched over, and entered the hall through the arched door.

"Hiss—"

Almost everyone who entered the hall inhaled sharply; it was truly as the Demon Hunters described it, eerie.

Underneath a sinister spiral geometric patterned dome, stood an altar with a stone coffin.

In front of the altar was a prayer hall 20 meters in length and width, adhering to early Miseria Church traditions, with no chairs, only the ground to kneel on.

The most peculiar aspect was that the hall was only half, as if something had cut through it cleanly.

On the black and white floral tiles, on each side of the aisle of the hall, stood ten to twenty Angel statues carved from an unknown material.

Horn went to the back of an Angel statue, stretched his head over its shoulder, trying to see its face.

"I’ll test your... cough, cough..." Even Horn, who usually maintained a composed demeanor, was almost startled into cursing.

These statues were different from normal church statues, with expressions and postures terrifyingly twisted.

Some bared fangs from their mouths, others had extra heads, or had deformed, featherless wings on their backs, their faces twisted in pain and anger.

If it weren’t for the halos sculpted behind their heads confirming their Angelic identity, Horn would have mistaken them for demons.

The sculptures of this era were generally spooky, but they were merely ugly, not as overtly hellish as these.

After circling the prayer hall several times, touching here and there, and even peering into the empty stone coffin for some time, Horn found nothing unusual.

"Haven’t you found any trace of Favalari?" Turning around, Horn asked Raphael at the doorway.

"None." Raphael said helplessly, "We indeed found traces of Favalari near the cave entrance, but they disappeared upon reaching this place."

"Do you know where he went?" Jeanne turned to ask the two Demon Hunters, especially Aijia Lang, "I remember you were particularly surprised when you heard it was a dead end at the cave entrance."

The old demon hunter was the first to shake his head: "When we came over, we were blindfolded, led by Favalari, with Aval at the end.

Each of us held onto the cloak of the person in front, and when we pulled off the blindfold, we were already outside the palace."

"It was the same for me," Aijia Lang shook his head. "I was curious as to why this was a dead end, but I am from the Wolf School, my nose is particularly sharp, maybe I can find some clues."

"Oh?" Jeanne walked up to Aijia Lang and looked down at him as he knelt on the ground, "Are you willing to work for us?"

"I have one condition," Aijia Lang struggled to raise his head, "If I find that path, you let me go."

"Wishful thinking, the Saintess asked for your help, that’s a sign of respect for you, you..."

"Wait, are you called Aijia Lang?" Jeanne sized up this demon hunter, "Aren’t you afraid I’ll expose your betrayal?"

"Simple, I’ll just flee to Norn," Aijia Lang said indifferently, "I don’t want to stay in heretical lands and work for heresy."

Jeanne glanced at Horn, who was already paying attention and smiled, "Let him wander around the hall, if there are clues, what harm in letting him go once?"

With two Holy Gunmen following, Aijia Lang crawled on the ground, his nose moving nimbly, beginning to crawl around the hall.

Horn was pondering the origins of this palace again, for some reason, he always felt that the explanation of a seismic collapse was unreliable.

Because from the stone walls of the hall, it seemed to be the mountain’s natural stone walls, yet they appeared cut by human hands.

This level of precision, although one cannot rule out the marvels of nature, was too much of a coincidence.

Moreover, a thousand years ago during the dark age of warlords, Thousand River Valley was the domain of beastmen and heretics.

Where was the need to build such a beautifully luxurious palace here in the mountains?

Just as Horn was thinking about how to cover up the existence of this palace, a scream suddenly erupted in the hall.

"Wait, demon hunter! You! Uh—"

Horn turned his head, only to see the demon hunter named Aijia Lang hastily scramble up, while two Guard Holy Gunmen collapsed limply beside him.

While removing the handcuffs with keys, he dashed towards the altar at the hall.

Despite having shackles on his feet, Aijia Lang’s speed was barely slower than a normal person.

Amidst the alternating light and dark, he dashed on the black and white checkered tiles, sprinting between the fierce and terrifying angel statues.

"Catch him," Raphael, infuriated, drew out a T-shaped iron rod and personally charged forward.

At this moment, Aijia Lang had already reached the altar, leaping up and smoothly diving into the altar’s stone sarcophagus under everyone’s watchful eyes.

"Mechanism, activate!"

Recalling Aval’s instructions, Aijia Lang lay within the sarcophagus, brushing his fingers over specific glazed fragments inside, and struck down hard with his elbow.

"Boom—"

The next second, the previously heavy lid of the sarcophagus suddenly slammed shut.

Curled up with excitement, Aijia Lang trembled with thrill and joy.

He led Horn and the others for this very moment, unlike those old demon hunters, he did not succumb to betrayal.

When he learned they hadn’t found the passageway, he realized this was a perfect chance to escape.

He initially didn’t understand why Aval told him the secret of the tunnel, even swore an oath not to disclose it.

But now he understood Aval’s good intentions, foreseeing that Favalari might abandon them and flee.

These short-sighted demon hunters, they have something coming, especially that Favalari.

The old demon hunters always complained about how miserable things were; he didn’t feel that way. If you can’t endure a bit of hardship, you couldn’t manage anything else.

A bit of suffering and exhaustion now is irrelevant, in a few years he could become a master demon hunter!

Captured, yet still able to escape from the dreadful heretics, this would make the "Aijia Lang Master Demon Hunter Story Collection" dramatic.

Comfortably leaning against the bottom of the sarcophagus, Aijia Lang exhaled a turbid breath, smiling as he waited... and waited...

After waiting for two seconds, the smile on his face gradually faded into confusion.

The anticipated sensation of weightlessness never arrived; what came instead was the rapidly advancing sound of footsteps.

Could it be that he pressed the wrong button? Impossible, he remembered it clearly.

Unwilling to yield, Aijia Lang pressed the glazed fragments again, but the bottom of the sarcophagus still did not open.

Is it this slow? Or did he press it wrong?

When firelight shot in through the crack in the sarcophagus lid, Aijia Lang panicked completely, frantically pressing the glazed fragments in desperation.

"Mechanism, activate, activate... you must activate."

Amidst Aijia Lang’s shouting and the sound of stone scraping, the sarcophagus lid was slowly pried open with an iron rod.

Originally frantically pressing the glazed fragments, Aijia Lang’s actions gradually ceased as he stiffly turned his head.

In the square view framed by the edges of the sarcophagus, Horn, Armand, Raphael, and Jeanne stood expressionlessly to the left and right.

The firelight illuminated Aijia Lang’s face, making the sweat on his forehead glitter.

"Ah, I was just joking, I just love to joke around... Ah—"