Looking at the girl in the black skirt in front of him who stretched out his arm to him, Shade sighed. After communicating with the voice in his ear, he stretched out his hand to hold the other person's hand, but the girl in the black skirt stopped at the last moment.
He took his hand back.
"Obviously you just passed us by, but why do you give me such trust?"
She put her hands behind her back and looked at Shade, who shook his head:
"Helen, was there a reason why I helped you at the reception?"
Helen Black looked at Shade, the corners of her mouth slowly raised. The two looked at each other until Helen suddenly laughed:
"Oh, sir, I thought my disguise was very successful. It was hard for me to get Xiao Zina to help me."
"The disguise was successful?"
Shade said suspiciously.
"That's not important. I just want to see, sir, what kind of person you were in your own time."
She took a step back with her hands behind her back, getting closer to the hole spewing black mist:
"You are really an interesting person, more interesting than my sister and I thought. But down here, this is not the place you should come. Please wait for me, I am going to get something to welcome my sister back, and I need a sacrifice."
As she spoke, her body fell backwards until she fell into the bottomless abyss.
Two-thirds of the red butterflies fell into the abyss cave with her, and only one-third was still here to protect Shade.
The surroundings were extremely quiet, except for the sounds of resurrected evil spirits wandering in the distance of the mine:
"Helen Grace. I didn't expect Sister Devlin to cooperate with them in lying."
The calm did not last long. As the dust above his head fell again, an astonishing roar suddenly exploded in the extremely quiet mine. The sound came from the underground, from the deepest part of the relic. Just hearing that sound, Shade
It's as if you can see the twisted behemoth entrenched underground, squirming and releasing its malice.
He was startled and quickly took a few steps back. Then, the entrance to the underground cave lit up with a red light. After a while, red butterflies formed a staircase at the entrance of the cave.
Helen stepped on the stairs, holding a thin little girl who looked no more than ten years old with her left and right hands, and walked back.
After the two girls came to the ground, they held hands and ran away along the mine tunnel amid a series of weird laughter. Only a red stone was left in Helen's hand.
"Look, Mr. Hamilton, that's what I'm here for."
She showed Shade the ordinary-looking stone, which didn't even have the element of whispering on it:
"What's this?"
Shade asked curiously, but his eyes were still looking at the backs of the little girls going away. They were also evil spirits, and judging from the sounds in his ears, all the evil ghosts he saw just now were not necessarily them.
opponent.
"The sacrifice, the spell stone, is a specialty of the last era. The two girls just now were the girls that my sister and I passed by this village in the last era. They were the girls who were rescued. Their souls were trapped forever.
Here, it is possible to produce this kind of stone.”
"Did they still not leave in the end?"
"But they managed to stay together forever."
The childish laughter still lingered in his ears. Shade turned to look at Helen, who had a smile on her lips:
"If you want to bring back the departed existence, you must offer a sacrifice as the price. It is not easy to find the spell stone every time."
Speaking of this, she looked a little lonely, but she quickly returned to normal.
Throwing the stone aside, the red butterflies automatically wrapped it:
"Okay, sir, now we can leave this terrible place."
She grabbed Shade's wrist again:
"But it's not like jumping down."
Winking at Shade playfully:
"Please follow me. Now I will take you to the top of the mountain. There is a shortcut here. Oh, please move that sword farther away. It is really unfriendly to me."
As she spoke, she raised her right arm and slashed in the air. A red trace immediately appeared in the air. As the butterfly-like light spots spread around, white mist emerged from the red crack until it was completely
Swallowed Shade and black-haired Helen.
[Outlander, you have entered the narrow space between life and death. The power of the body and the power of the soul are reversed. Please do not stay here for too long. 】
Because she had entered it once before, "she" could easily judge the current situation.
The white mist was so thick that Shade could hardly see the situation in front of him, but when the cold and wet white mist dissipated, they were actually standing on a steep stone step in the mountain.
Everything around is black, white and gray, and unlike the last time Shade came here, the black is obviously more prominent this time. After the two earthquakes, Hazama itself has also changed a lot. It was obvious that Shade was walking around in it last time
At first I just felt a little cold, but now I feel a bone-chilling chill that almost immediately invaded my bone marrow.
【That's because you didn't hold the "Eternal Youth Leaf" in your mouth.】
"She" reminded him gently. Shade immediately found his pocket watch and held the leaf in his mouth. But the chill still did not dissipate, and the whole world's malice towards the living was almost substantive, making him think that there was some giant creature watching.
he.
"Please come with me."
The girl in the black skirt took Shade's hand, and the two walked up the stone steps together. Swarms of red butterflies flew up and down along the stone steps in the mountain, until they dyed the steps red.
The sky full of red butterflies and crimson light spots add a bit of warmth to the world with only monotonous colors, just like the vivid lines painted with red oil in a sketch book.
The red butterflies were protecting them, and the evil spirits patrolling in the narrow space were driven deeper into the forest. And looking at those red butterflies, Shade felt a little sad for some reason.
The stone steps lead directly to the top of the narrow world. There are several small peaks on the top of Mount Sikar in the real world, but it is generally flat. The trees on the top of the mountain are very sparse. After walking a few dozen steps on the stone path connected to the stone steps, you can see the waves ahead.
Sparkling mountain top lake.
But in the narrow space between life and death, when you step over the last step and officially climb to the big platform on the top of the mountain. Surrounded by those weird black dead trees, is the big crack on the top of the mountain that Iluna mentioned.
The violent black wind surged out from it, spraying ashes wantonly into the terrifying black-gray sky.
This black mist is very familiar to Shade. The black wind blowing from the Gate of Death at the foot of the mountain has the same composition. Therefore, the large crack on the top of the mountain in front of him is the passage to the real death on the top of the mountain.
The red butterflies in the sky shrunk along the stone steps behind them and hovered around the two of them again:
"Mr. Hamilton, please follow me."
Helen let go of Shade's hand and moved forward with Shade to the edge of the crack.
At this moment, not even the red butterflies could protect the two people in the black wind intact. The strong wind representing the power of death blew by, and the light of the red butterflies gradually dimmed. Helen's face turned pale, and a series of signs appeared on Shade's body.
Cracked.
The cracks not only appeared on the exposed skin, but also appeared on the clothes. As the wind blew across his cheeks, the golden light traces dragged back the afterglow like a flame tail, as if a golden light was ignited on Sha De's body.
flame.
He stretched out his hand to support Helen:
"If you can't hold on, then I'll do it."
"No."
She shook her head gently, and at some point she began to cry in the wind, her blue eyes staring ahead:
"I've done it countless times, yes, countless times. It's been so long that we've lost track of time."
The red butterflies came to her with the red sacrifice - the spell stone. Helen cut her wrist with a knife and let the blood soak into the stone. Her blood was not the normal red, but as bright red as the red butterflies.
.
Then, she picked up the stone and threw it into the abyss. The next moment, red light spurted out from the bottom of the large crack on the top of the mountain, and in the light, dense red butterflies flew out of the abyss.
A group of butterflies enveloped a figure, a figure exactly like Helen.
"Sister Grace."
Helen looked at her with tears:
"meet again."
The girl who emerged from the crack was wearing a white dress. When she opened her eyes and looked at Helen at the edge of the crack, the red butterflies in the sky overwhelmed the black wind of death for the first time:
"Helen."
They opened their arms and hugged each other. The flashing light of the red butterfly pendants around their waists almost turned the entire mountain top red. Shade immediately took a few steps back. He did not want to disturb the reunion at this moment, and
The whispering elements in Grace and Helen were so powerful that he couldn't get close to them at all.
"This is the ritual."
The voice of the old witch came from behind. Shade turned to look. Granny Cassandra, Sister Devlin and the witch's apprentice Miss Rita Swift were all behind him. So close to the passage of death.
In this place, the three of them all hung green rune stones on their waists to protect them from temporary safety.
"Is this what you said you would catch up with?"
Shade asked with a sigh.
His body still showed the afterglow of divinity at this moment, but the old witch seemed to have known that this situation would happen and was not surprised at all. Sister Devlin, who "saw" everything, did not ask anything, only the young witch apprentice
He looked like he wanted to ask but didn't dare.
She was very curious about the current situation, the marks on Shade's body, and what the humanoid object Shade was carrying was.
"Look, didn't we catch up in the end?"
The old witch said with a smile, then looked up at the two people hugging each other among the red butterflies in the sky in front of the big crack on the top of the mountain:
"Ritual, a ceremony that takes place every 22 years. Teachers can only get together once every 22 years, and the time to get together is one year. After that, those who have lived alone for 21 years return to death, and those who have been awakened from death walk alone.
In this world, she will live alone for another 21 years until she returns here to meet her sisters again. After spending a year together, she will enter the 22-year cycle again."
She sighed. As the person who has witnessed the most rituals in the past hundred years, Xina Cassandra is the one who feels the most empathy:
"This is the blessing of the great ones of the past [Twin Gods]. They will be together forever. As long as they follow the ritual cycle, they will always be together. Hamilton, do you know what the meaning of the red butterfly is?"
Xia De stared blankly at the two people among the red butterflies:
"The red butterfly is the holy symbol of the old gods [Twin Gods]."
"The twin gods are two persons in one body, one body and one heart."
Sister Devlin gave Shade the correct answer.
The old witch nodded and explained softly:
"In this ceremony, the red butterfly symbolizes separation. When the reunion every 22 years is over, the teachers will return here again, and then the party who needs to wait for another 21 years will strangle his sister to death with his own hands and kill her
The corpse was thrown into the crack on the top of the mountain. This was not only for the cycle to start again, but also for the good god who once came to the Sikal Mountain area to assist in suppressing Hazama."
The witch apprentice took a deep breath.
Shade bit his lip:
"I once saw the phoenix under this crack in a dream, and saw that it was surrounded by densely packed corpses (Chapter 708). Those are"
Shade didn't say any more, but he already understood.
"Red butterfly."
Sister Devlin asked softly:
"These flying red butterflies must be related to rituals, right?"
"Yes, tell me, what does the red butterfly look like?"
Shade had already guessed it.
"The corpse fell into the big crack, and the red pinch mark on the neck will fly out again and turn into a red butterfly."
The four people on the edge of the cliff looked at the red butterflies flying in the sky together. The old witch's voice was very soft:
"Each of the red butterflies here symbolizes a long separation, the sadness of killing a sister, a twisted ritual of love, and the next reunion. Mr. Hamilton, do you know how many red butterflies there are here?"
Shade could no longer describe his feelings at this moment. He thought it wouldn't be a heartwarming story, but he didn't expect it to be like this:
"I don't know, but it must have been a long time, right?"
They originally participated in the God's Wine Party in order to escape the separation between life and death, and to save future generations of their family from this fate. They got the answers they wanted, and even gained immortality, but in the end they still couldn't.
Escape the fate of separation.
However, the permanent separation has turned into a cycle of pain and waiting for 22 years. This will be eternal pain, everything is for the encounter and reunion once every 22 years.
Someone seemed to be singing in the wind, and "she" in my ears was also catering to that faint voice. The ancient language that traveled through the curtain of time told stories of encounter, waiting, blood and love:
[Red butterfly spreads its wings and flies,]
【Flying over towering mountains,】
【Crossing the black river.】
[May the wind take away eternal thoughts,]
【Until the end of life and death.】
This was a nursery rhyme that Professor Manning had mentioned, and it was also Old John's method of making pendants. But it was not until this moment that Shade understood the meaning of this nursery rhyme.
It's not a ritual, it's not a recipe for alchemy, it's really just a story.
The true story, their story, spans two eras, and represents the story of longing and bondage, the story of the red butterflies.