Chapter 1955

"The Heart of the Living Dead!"

A letter was tucked into the ice. With Xia De's permission, Miss Bernice took it out and read it:

"The Church of Peace obtained this item during the Cold Water Haigang incident last summer.

A young man living in the harbor lost his lover. After coming into contact with the curse of the 'Mermaid's Song' and witnessing an indescribable entity in the deep sea in his dreams, he voluntarily sought out the 【Scarlet Cult】. He offered himself as a willing sacrificial victim, suffering torture until death, in exchange for the cult using divine arts to resurrect his dead lover."

She read the contents of the letter. Upon reaching this point, she scanned the rest quickly, then handed the letter to Hillis behind her with a look of regret:

"You tell the rest; I don't like this story."

The young blonde girl continued to read the story in the letter:

"The blasphemous and filthy ritual allowed the dead girl to be resurrected as a 'living dead,' but the price was a fragmented soul and her own transformation into an ugly fish-person. She became a member of the 【Scarlet Cult】 and participated in the Battle of Cold Water Haigang. After that battle, she was wounded and fled into the deep sea. However, she came ashore again in the middle of winter, seeking the broken corpse of the man who had been sacrificed, and was thus discovered and defeated by the Church's patrol on the beach. Her heart is the Heart of the Living Dead."

Hillis also understood why Miss Bernice didn't want to finish the story herself:

"The Church's actions were certainly correct, but this story is just too sad."

"The Heart of the Living Dead does not merely require the heart of a resurrected person; it also requires the most fervent emotion and the most tragic story. Every Heart of the Living Dead represents a tragedy. The Heart of Stone is one, and this is another."

Xia De shook his head, sighing with emotion as he closed the case again. There was a ritual for constant temperature inside the case, so this heart could be preserved for a long time.

"However, such a thing actually happened during the Cold Water Haigang incident?"

Miss Aurora asked from the side. As the second Great Witch to meet Xia De, she had experienced the major event in the coastal port city on the west coast of the Old Continent with Xia De last summer:

"It seems that in corners unknown to us, even in major events we personally experienced, many stories occurred that we knew nothing about."

"That is the wonder of life and adventure."

Xia De said, taking the letter from Hillis. It also contained specific preservation methods and precautions for the heart. However, it wouldn't stay in Xia De's hands for long; it would be used soon.

He opened the second case. Because there were runes inside to reduce weight, all three cases weighed the same, so he couldn't guess what was in the second one.

"Oh, the design is truly exquisite."

A thin silver chain connected the inside of the lid to the inside of the case. The chain worked in tandem with layers of silver metal partitions. When Xia De laid the case flat and opened it in the correct way, it revealed a parallel five-layer structure composed of four metal partitions.

At both ends and in the middle of each layer, brown leather buckles passing through the metal plates or the inner partitions at the bottom of the case secured metal bars of different colors. Three leather buckles held five pieces of metal of varying sizes, thicknesses, and weights, but Xia De recognized them all at a glance:

"The bottom layer is Orichalcum; the volume is the largest, and it's quite heavy. The layer above is Mithril—oh, the Church is truly generous; it's almost comparable to the piece I got in the Randall Valley. The third layer is Adamantite, and the weight is still substantial."

He even took out the piece of Adamantite specifically. During the team mission over a month ago, Xia De had obtained a piece of Adamantite ore from a ring-warlock who used an invisible relic longsword, but the Adamantite extracted from that ore wasn't nearly this much.

"Xia De, if you aren't in a hurry to use it, would you be willing to sell me a third of this Adamantite?"

Miss Aurora asked from the side.

"Of course, no problem. I'll go get the 'Night-Watcher' in a moment and use that sword to split it. Forget about selling it; just take it. Our relationship doesn't require such talk, and I'll be asking for your help in the future too."

The Great Witch of "Light" nodded with a smile. Xia De put the metal back and looked at the fourth layer:

"This is..."

The metal in the fourth layer had a cyan luster, but it wasn't bronze. It had an extremely heavy sheen, and the surface of the metal had obvious scale-like traces.

"Dragon-Scale Metal."

Hillis recognized what it was:

"The cult's inventory has a piece. I saw my father use a small part of it when I was a child, but the metal preserved by the cult wasn't this large. Dragon-Scale Metal, Demon Gold, and Angelic Holy Silver are several famous special alloys related to races. Dragon-Scale Metal is said to come from dragon scales and is considered to possess powerful spell-casting and physical defensive properties. It was usually used to make sturdy armor, but that was in the ancient eras. In the current era, this kind of metal is particularly rare."

Metals like Mithril and Adamantite were never abundant, while "Dragon-Scale Metal" became rare as dragons became scarce.

"The Church is truly generous. Just the value of these four metals alone must far exceed five figures in gold pounds, right?"

"And this is something you can't buy even with money."

Miss Bernice evaluated.

As for the top layer of metal, it was a silver block carved with leaf, vine, and root patterns. Although the silver block itself had faint traces of miraculous elements, it was just ordinary blessed silver. The key was the small piece of "red stone" inlaid in the center of the metal bar.

The stone was only half the size of a fingernail and had a bright red color. Xia De only took one look, and his breathing became heavy. He carefully took the "small stone" and placed it in his palm to observe it against the sunlight outside the window:

"Philosopher's Stone!"

Philosopher's Stones don't have purity levels; they either are or aren't, so one could only estimate the amount by volume.

"But how is it not as big as the one I had originally? It's probably only two-thirds the size of the original."

"Xia De, do you think Philosopher's Stones are easy to come by?"

Miss Aurora reminded him with a smile:

"Based on my experience, the piece in your hand is already considered quite large."

"There is also a letter here. Oh, this is handwritten."

Miss Bernice said. As for the letter here, it was handwritten by the 13th-ring warlock of the Church of Nature, the friend of Sister Dervin, the "Nightmare Witch" Maria. In the letter, she stated that the metals in this case, except for the Philosopher's Stone, were gifts from the Five Gods Church. But that Philosopher's Stone was a gift from the Church of Nature alone to the "God-Caller."

This was the Church of Nature expressing goodwill to the "God-Caller" through this gesture. As for why the Church of Nature was allowed to prepare a separate gift among the gifts sent by the Five Gods Church, that was a matter for the Five Gods Church itself. The five orthodox churches stood in the same camp, but it didn't mean there were no contradictions or conflicts of interest between the heretics and other heretics.

Since the first two cases contained the items Xia De had requested, the last case should be the gift the Church had originally intended for Xia De, besides those metals.

He opened it with full curiosity, finding it filled with straw, and inside the straw lay an item wrapped in soft red silk. After Xia De took it out, he found the silk contained a rather heavy, silver crescent-shaped...

"Jade? Or metal?"

Only after touching it did he know the crescent was metal, larger than a palm, and felt quite cold. It was originally lusterless, but after Xia De touched it, the crescent began to emit a faint silver light. This was a relic with a very thick whisper element. Regardless of its function, its appearance was the top-tier among all the relics Xia De had ever seen.

There was also a letter in the case. This time, Hillis opened it:

"Xia De, try to guide your spirit into it; be slow, try a few times. Oh, don't forget to hold it and hold it level in front of you. Let's all move aside."

Xia De tried it. Because his own perception was very strong, he was quite adept at controlling his spirit. He succeeded in guiding his spirit into the "crescent" in his hand on the first try.

The relic absorbed a small portion of Xia De's spirit, and then the luster on the crescent became clearer, though not blinding. The two ends of the crescent extended and stretched outward in the light, and after the stretching ended, a silver thread appeared connecting the two curved ends. Finally, what appeared in Xia De's hand was a magnificent silver longbow.

This longbow was exceptionally ornate, entirely silver-white, with fine star map patterns carved into the bow body, and decorated with things like crystal clusters. The grip section featured ancient runes symbolizing "Starry Sky" and "Moonlight," and the identifiable sentence was—

【Trace of Stars, Trace of the Void.】

The bowstring looked like a phantom, emitting a faint silver radiance just like the bow body. Even in the dark, the light on this longbow was enough to illuminate the surroundings. In Xia De's view, this was a weapon that should only exist in fairy tales.

"Is this the Sage-level relic 【Trace of Stars】?"

Miss Bernice recognized what it was. Seeing Hillis, who held the letter, nod, she took the initiative to introduce it to Xia De:

"This is a very famous relic, quite famous. This bow originates from the Second Era, or even the First Era. Legend has it that it was a weapon personally used by the ancient god 【Silver Moon Sage】 in his Saint form."

It should be from the Second Era, because Xia De's wonder 【Sound of the Ancients】 was not triggered by his touch. As for whether it had been used by that ancient god, that was not something Xia De could know.

"This bow can be used without arrows; pulling it draws spirit from one's own body to form arrows, possessing extremely powerful exorcism, anti-magic, and piercing capabilities, and can even easily penetrate armor forged from Mithril or Dragon-Scale Metal with high spell resistance. Used under moonlight, the effect of the arrows is even more outstanding."