Chapter 379: The Mountain Storm Approaches

"The blacksmith cast a mold based on the original, but after melting it, we found it wasn't pure silver at all; something else had been cast into it from the very beginning, making up about half."

It had lain dormant within the metal for over twenty years. Perhaps close contact with Dominic triggered something, like an animal awakened from hibernation, realizing another seasonal cycle was approaching, with all around it being defenseless prey.

"You truly never noticed anything wrong with this thing?" Kup asked again, incredulous.

"Perhaps... maybe it is a bit light." The priest pressed tightly against the wooden holy symbol, trying to suppress the suffocating palpitations.

He had worn that silver badge for so long that time had worn away its surface luster and presence, making it a natural part of the church, a part of himself.

A faint, dull cracking sound came, seeming to come from a distance; he instinctively looked left and right but could not find the source.

The crowd, having received no answer, was rummaging everywhere in the blacksmith's shop; various clattering noises never ceased, yet that one sound was particularly clear.

Closer than those beside him, closer than beside his ear, right inside his body, echoing in his memory.

That cracking sound was some kind of trigger; in his memory, he saw two cultivators wrestling before him while he frantically chanted an exorcism spell.

Amidst the chaotic scene, something cracked open—old wooden floorboards, fragile finger bones, aged metal; the sound vanished in an instant, like an ink spot accidentally splashed when writing, unnoticed by anyone.

As he wiped away this memory, the wet ink spot spread and scattered, blurring the image into darkness; the more he recalled, the more indistinct it became.

Everyone had their mouths open, muttering words like underwater bubbles to themselves, yet only one sentence stood out with exceptional clarity.

【Where did they go?】

Indeed, he had never thought deeply about this question. The old priest told him the church's caravan went north, and Benny's family told him the madmen went to a mountain.

But what did that place truly mean?

His fingers instinctively scratched the skin on his chest that had grown accustomed to the holy symbol; itching plagued every pore, as if something fine and dense was about to grow out from beneath the skin, arranged neatly like sentences, interlocking tightly, resembling scales or feathers.

The horseshoe iron under the eaves swayed slightly; the breeze carried a crisp clanging sound and moisture into the shop, a signal that a mountain storm was approaching.

With days of continuous rain, it was time to bring out the stored books to dry them again. Recalling those collections, rarely updated since the church's founding and memorized by heart, he prepared to return alone first.

His waist suddenly bumped against a rigid horizontal bar; looking down, it was a hammer.

The handle was in that girl's hand, dividing a clear boundary between inside and outside the room.

"Where are you going?"

"Back... to organize the books." He felt surprised at the reason he voiced; in his impression, he was never someone so careless about priorities.

Not long ago, he had rushed here in a hurry due to charges involving heresy, yet in the blink of an eye, he intended to abandon the investigation team and return.

"Why?"

"Because I suddenly thought to prevent mold on rainy days?" There were still many days until the next sunny day, yet he felt an inexplicable sense of urgency.

Yvonne shook her head, the hammer handle in her hand remaining motionless.

"For safety's sake, I suggest you temporarily seal the library." Kup emerged from the inner room carrying a small crucible, blocking the priest's thought with a single sentence. "Before suspicion is cleared, all written records could be evidence; you wouldn't want to cause trouble through unnecessary actions, would you?"

"Put the rest aside for now; we must first find the thing cast into the holy symbol."

He held that crucible up to the light; the solidified form of the black-and-silver residue was clearly abnormal.

The silver surface did not cover the inner wall on the spout side; instead, it left an irregular, shallow depression in the middle, surrounded by intermittent condensation patterns that ruined the otherwise smooth cooling surface, like vortex ripples on dirty water layered within one another.

Someone had repeatedly stirred something while it was still un-solidified, removing it once it cooled slightly; the edges still bore traces of being pried open and peeled off.

Judging from the marks the object left on the silver surface, it was a somewhat flat, irregular sheet, about three fingers long and two fingers wide. It was hard to say exactly what it was, but it should be the kind of thing that falls into some random corner and can never be found again.

Kup felt dizzy, unsure whether he should hope the blacksmith had taken the object back.

"Where does he live?"

"Over there, the house on the south side of the church, near the mountain."

The group dragged the priest and knocked straight on the blacksmith's door at dinner time.

A woman wrapped in a headscarf peered through the door for a long while, confirming it was indeed the priest, then cautiously opened a crack, vigilantly observing the unfamiliar outsiders.

When asked if the blacksmith had carried any special items in his last few days, she pondered for a long time before giving an ambiguous answer:

"Before he fell ill, there was indeed a day he returned unusually early. He didn't go drinking, but seemed a bit drowsy, clutching his clothes and refusing help to take them off, then went straight to sleep."

"Can you tell what it was?"

"I didn't see it, but it felt like he was hiding something. Did that thing make him sick? I told him countless times that greed is a sin, that one should not take what the Lord has not given, yet he always treated it as wind in his ears. I never thought this time..."

As she spoke, her eyes reddened, on the verge of tears. Inside the house, two children watched the fire by the stove, looking curiously in this direction, seemingly still not understanding what had happened.

Kup forced himself to continue asking: "Did he go out during those days?"

"Perhaps he went into the mountains. When I saw him return, his soles were stuck with mud clumps and grass leaves."

"Do you know which mountain he went to?"

"There is only one path up the mountain here; the highest one to the north is it."

"Good, I understand. May the Heavenly Father bless you." Kup had roughly grasped the situation: this group, like pilgrims, would go to the "holy land" if they could, or otherwise run to high places; their behavioral patterns were relatively simple.

"If you find anything strange in your home afterward, be sure to hand it over to us immediately; it could be an object inhabited by an evil spirit."

After giving final instructions and adding insurance, Kup took the initiative to take his leave.

Walking out of the yard piled with firewood stacks, the sky had already darkened. The wet, cold, mud-and-stone path beneath his feet led out of the village, toward the dim, silent silhouette of the peaks not far away.

Steep cliffs and rock faces rose abruptly from the ground, piling and crowding together, crushing the boundary between heaven and earth in the night sky. The earth lost its sense of heaviness, like a tattered cloth with one corner lifted, being torn by the gradually strengthening night wind, ready to fall into the bottomless darkness overhead at any moment.

"It seems it's about to rain."

"Which is easier: going up the mountain now, or going up the mountain in the rain?" Kup took a deep breath, trying to suppress his wildly beating heart.

A vague intuition rang an alarm bell, meaning he was approaching something—not in terms of spatial distance, but in a more abstract concept.

"You simply can't go up in the rain," the priest shook his head. "Mountain paths on rainy days are slicker than a spoon handle dropped in soup. Of course, nights are dangerous too; it's best to wait a few days."

"Sorry to trouble everyone to chew on some dry rations one more meal; we will depart immediately."

?? Seriously stuck in writing; no matter how I write, I'm not satisfied (′? `) Urgently need some opinions and suggestions on recent chapters.