Chapter 359: The Lost Clan

“How do you know?”

Benny turned his head in surprise, but before he could get an answer, he murmured to himself thoughtfully, “Then again, the Church must have known—but why did it take so long? So long for anyone to come?”

Field had no reply. He couldn’t say the Church had spent twenty years pretending not to hear, and that these two unlucky fools had stumbled here purely by chance and their own stupidity.

Had he had any choice, he should’ve broken both their legs while driving, left them to rest quietly in the manor and write reports with fresh variations every day.

Not like this—forced to risk entering a fog beyond comprehension.

What troubled him wasn’t just the fog in his mind; the mist before his eyes had grown denser too, not dissipating as his intuition had predicted with sunrise.

The mountain’s moisture differed from riverbank mist—it carried an impure, gray-green backdrop stained by shadows and trees, descending from unseen heights and surging through the valley’s natural confines, tossed by chaotic winds.

Especially when looking upward, one could plainly see the gray veils rolling—not slowly, but deceptively swift—like ancient, stubborn bruises, or murky saliva dripping from the clouds, streaming in thick strands across some blurred barrier separating them from the sky.

“How long have we been walking?”

The all-night journey had distorted his sense of time, but after laboriously detouring around the ruined village, hunger made him aware of time’s passage.

“Close to noon, a bit slower than usual,” Lu Xiusi, closer by, removed one glove and felt the icy droplets landing in his palm. “We can’t stop yet—it might rain heavily soon, and then it’ll be even harder to walk.”

“Is it far?”

“If everything goes well, you’ll see your destination before nightfall. They’ll all be there—just as mountain streams inevitably flow into rivers, without exception.”

…

…

Pain and cold—physical stimuli awakened his consciousness. Compared to that, the itching and roughness on his skin hardly mattered.

His eyelids struggled open; the gray background, divided by withered grasses, felt vaguely familiar, yet the memories tied to it were as disconnected as his numb fingers—attached to his body, yet utterly alien.

He shouldn’t be here—but where else should he be?

【Dominic…】

A voice—a voice without tone or characteristic—slammed directly into him, like a character in a play who arrives without setup yet triggers a pivotal turn, wearing a mask that marks him as nonhuman to deliver a divine decree.

He was merely an actor manipulated by the plot, fumbling along the ground to move. The moment he exerted force, sharp, bone-deep pain shot through his fingers, so he shifted to propping himself up with his elbows and finally saw his surroundings.

The set was clearly carelessly constructed—the surroundings were desolate beyond comprehension. A thin, damp layer of soil covered the rocks, as if the mountain’s skin of vegetation had been slowly and cruelly peeled away, replaced by soil filling its bulk, until only the jagged skeleton remained, stripped of every last trace of nourishment, leaving only drooping shrubs and weeds.

Mosses and fungi crawled from every crevice, growing everywhere, carpeting every surface. Some, along with other plants, had been ripped away in patches—the missing parts vanished without a trace.

He stood up and noticed scattered horse hoofprints circling nearby, but saw no sign of Ma Pi—perhaps frightened off by something.

It didn’t matter. The voice had conveyed all the plot without reservation; the roles were in place, ready to perform the final act.

The terrain was rugged and treacherous, his still-healing leg wound dragging his steps—but his feet always found the most suitable footholds, as if he’d rehearsed this path countless times, stepping upon it under different identities.

This reminded him of stories about saints—they weren’t all scholars steeped in scripture; some came from military backgrounds, others from noble houses, and some had spent most of their lives tilling soil, only awakening to the ultimate meaning of their lives in old age.

Then they abandoned everything, following the guidance of that most true, most knowing, most exalted, most sacred will, embarking on a journey to fulfill a divine mission.

The journey’s process and purpose often revealed transcendent wisdom and power, incomprehensible to mortal minds—only fragments could be glimpsed, just as the Father’s true face could never be seen by human eyes.

What he was doing now was exactly this.

A vast, seemingly unrelated mass of information had snapped together in his mind through one key thread, forming a whole beyond the limits of thought.

With his intellect, he could perceive only a small fragment—unable to contain its full scope.

Yet even that fragment allowed him to imagine the grandeur of the whole—pointing toward something unbound by time or place, present in the past and future, distant across a thousand miles or within arm’s reach.

It possessed autonomous will—he could clearly sense this.

It appeared within consciousnesses capable of perceiving it, carried by them toward their destined destination.

No explanation other than divine oracle existed.

Bearing this sacred burden made his steps unnaturally light, as if part of his weight had vanished—he felt so buoyant that even a slightly stronger wind might lift him and carry him into boundless heights.

As he climbed higher, objects incompatible with the environment began to appear.

They were remnants of older architecture, built with cut and carved rectangular stones, the mortar between them long since powdered and eroded, utterly lost its binding function.

Soil erosion had loosened the foundations; serpentine and lightning-shaped cracks split the walls, causing them to bulge, collapse, and crumble into brittle, crumb-like piles of ruin.

From the remaining foundations and fragments of spiral staircases, one could faintly discern an aura rivaling that of the Westmin Protectors.

The increasing number of column bases and arched stone portals revealed that the builders had pursued aesthetics alongside function—and possessed immense wealth.

Even though the fate that led him here was strange enough, these grand ruins still astonished him.

Standing at the edge of the watchtower, its battlements reduced to half a circle, he looked down upon a ridge that had torn open the sky’s veil, cleaving through inverted clouds and thick mist, where layered peaks floated above the fog sea, their black silhouettes stripped of weight, resembling the clawed membranes of some vast, spread wings.

This was no accidental wonder—it was a perspective deliberately chosen by a once-prosperous family.

Strangely, he had no memory of such a family. This mountain region had always seemed fragmented, backward, and impoverished, lacking even a proper name, despite its proximity to the kingdom’s heart.

Curiosity drew his attention to the ruins, searching for any valuable clues—he vaguely remembered this had some use, perhaps something to write into a report, though the exact reason and goal remained unclear.

Even if a once-mighty family left no name in history, it should have left at least a symbol.

On a particularly stubborn fragment of wall, he found what he sought: a relief emblem, one person tall, depicting a rare creature in mid-flight, scaled and winged.

These features pointed to the dragons of legend, often cast as villains—but this one differed: its body was slender, lacking claws, appearing strangely alien.

A vertical sword, pointing downward, split the emblem in two, severing the dragon’s body, its tip buried in the earth. The hilt was gripped by armored hands—on first glance, it seemed a standard motif of slaying a beast, symbolizing the family’s martial valor.

The overall aura was striking, yet the direction of the hands’ force felt opposite to the downward thrust. An accidental error was impossible—no family would permit such a grave flaw in their emblem.

The only explanation was that it was designed this way—the hands were not pushing down, but…

【Straining to pull the sword free?】

“No…” Too familiar an element pierced the chaos like a blade—no Dunling would fail to recognize this iconic motif. It shouldn’t be here.

(End of Chapter)