Chapter 590: Volcano, Narrow Gap, Death

"Sure enough, it's the lowest-level undead creature. Although its strength and agility are amazing, its intelligence is completely at the level of a beast. Can't it see how dangerous I am?"

Xia De thought in his heart, and his right hand drew a moonlight greatsword from the air. As the corpse ghost approached, he stabbed out a sword toward the front—

"Blade of Twisted Space-Time!"

The corpse ghost twisted its body agilely in the air to dodge Xia De's first sword, and then was directly pierced through the head by the second sword stabbed from the air.

Its "vitality" was extremely tenacious, even so, it still pounced toward Xia De's neck, but was lightly dodged by Xia De.

The moonlight in his hand slashed, and the arc-shaped light blade cut the landing corpse ghost into two halves. Both halves of the corpse squirmed, wanting to escape, and the wounds of the corpse flowed out foul-smelling black-green liquid.

For a long time, it finally stopped moving, and Xia De also confirmed that the other party had finally truly stepped into "death."

He squinted his eyes and looked at the disgusting corpse on the ground:

"Although Priest Ao Gu Si is a Second-Ring, he is not good at fighting himself. Facing this kind of 'elite' corpse ghost, he would indeed be forced into the underground tomb. But he couldn't possibly die because of this. The priest probably still had a backup plan, but the movement was too big, so he had to find a place where no one was around to use it..."

He used the sword in his right hand to poke the terrible corpse on the ground. A considerable amount of alchemical materials and potion materials could actually be separated from this kind of "corpse ghost" that was relatively powerful after mutation. But this required professional techniques and professional equipment to complete the harvest. Although 【Witch Echo · Felliana】 gave Xia De a lot of basic knowledge, including simple material separation techniques, he didn't have professional equipment on him.

This was not just taking a sword and simply cutting a piece of meat.

So, he chose to open the door of an ancient tomb that was closed, pressed his palm on the ground, and used "Felliana's Witch Light" to "melt" a large hole in the ground, and threw the corpse divided into two halves into it.

Dealing with the corpses of undead creatures must be cautious, otherwise it would lead to greater trouble. The best way to deal with it was to burn the corpse into ashes with oil like 【Heart of Fire】 used by Priest Ao Gu Si, but Xia De didn't have this kind of potion on him, so he buried the corpse first and then dealt with it later.

After burying it, he returned to the wall where the priest finally disappeared. He pressed his hand on the wall. The cold soil wall surface was not flat, but it was not strange either:

"Any discoveries?"

【No discoveries.】

"Really..."

His palm emitted golden light, and then the wall was "melted" by this light like butter. Xia De controlled the power of the miracle, only letting his hand penetrate into the interior of the wall.

But until his elbow part was also inserted into the wall, the back was still solid.

"This is troublesome, no traces of elements, and no mechanism."

He pulled his hand out, and then took a deep breath. With the invisible airflow rushing into Xia De's nose from the wall, at the cost of less than two seconds of life, he restored the wall to its original state.

"Could it be that the priest really evaporated into thin air?"

Xia De looked around again. The cold and damp underground cemetery area seemed to have no other clues:

"Do I have to lick the ground and the wall?"

【No need, because you used the miracle "Breath of Time," you contacted the space in front of you more deeply and obtained detailed information.】

"【Breath of Time】 has this benefit?"

Thinking that the effect of the miracle was to inhale the airflow representing "past time" into his nose, this seemed very reasonable:

"I knew that a miracle with life as the spell material couldn't only have the effect of changing time... What did you know?"

【A region similar to a space anomaly zone had appeared here briefly. Your friend probably fell into the space anomaly zone.】

"Priest Ao Gu Si was teleported to another place?"

Xia De thought of the cornfield in the dark domain he and Lu Wei Ya had passed through, passing through the space fracture zone and coming directly to the gate of Miss Miss Jia Lin Na's manor.

【The information perceived is not much, but the opposite side is not the material world. I felt distortion, malice, and extremely pure death.】

Xia De thought about it, and then confirmed that he didn't know what this meant with his knowledge:

"Could it be that Priest Ao Gu Si fell into the underworld? But in the mythology system of this world, there is no such thing as the underworld at all..."

In this world, people continue to walk after death, if they are not picked up by gods or dragged to paste walls (referring to the Wall of the Faithless). Here, there is not even the concept of "reincarnation" in the Outsider's hometown.

"Could it be a sub-space sealing an Evil God?"

This was the most likely result.

Since there were no further clues in the underground cemetery, Xia De left the misty cemetery and took a carriage back to the "House of the Blind" in the city. When he knocked on the door of No. 15 Ruff Alley again, it was already close to 5:00 in the afternoon.

At this time, the effect of 【Blood Echo】 had completely disappeared, and the clues Xia De had mastered only pointed to the fact that the priest finally disappeared in front of the wall at the deepest part of the underground cemetery at the foot of Xikaer Mountain.

This time, it was not Miss Michelle who opened the door for Xia De, but probably because she had obtained Miss Michelle's permission, the young nun who also wrapped her eyes with cloth strips directly took Xia De to the third floor.

Miss Michelle's eyes had returned to normal, but she didn't cover her eyes with cloth strips again, but used the eye mask that looked like a silver crown that Xia De had seen once to cover her eyes.

When entertaining Xia De to sit down, Miss Michelle also told Xia De that only formal nuns in the 【Spirit Cultivation Sect】 were qualified to wear such eye masks. In the stronghold of the "House of the Blind," she was the only one qualified.

The two met in the reception room again. Xia De told the other party about his experience just now. Miss Michelle frowned slightly when she heard "corpse ghost," and after Xia De said that he used a method that was not convenient to disclose to find that the priest fell into a strange space, this middle-aged woman in her forties frowned even more tightly:

"Sorry, I don't doubt you, such a powerful Ringed Shushi."

She probably had some misunderstanding about Xia De, but before Xia De explained, the nun continued:

"May I ask, are you sure that is a place of distortion, malice, and full of death?"

"Very sure."

"Then do you understand the local myths and legends?"

"Except for hearing the coachman say that Xikaer Mountain will inexplicably have fog every autumn, I know nothing."

Xia De said very honestly, thinking that he could go to Mr. Edmund, a folklorist and lighthouse keeper in Cold Water Port, to inquire about the rumors of this city.

"Actually, this city has a very ancient rumor that is very difficult to identify as true or false."

Miss Michelle lowered her head and said cautiously:

"First of all, one point that needs to be emphasized is that situations like Priest Rat Ao Gu Si, who suddenly lost his trace at a certain location, appear frequently in this city every year or two. Walking and suddenly losing his trace, or talking to a companion, but it was just a turn of the head, and the companion disappeared."

This sounded like an urban legend of the steam era. Once Tobeisike's lace tabloids couldn't find suitable topics like "the duel between the Duke's lovers," they liked to use this kind of shocking story to occupy the layout, and even good-hearted people compiled these stories and published them, which also belonged to illegal publications.

"Mysterious disappearance?"

Xia De frowned slightly:

"It seems there are similar rumors in many places, but those are just bizarre cases that the City Hall and the police find difficult to solve."

"But in Midehillburg, this is real. I originally thought Priest Ao Gu Si just encountered an accident, didn't expect it to be this situation."

"Did the Church make an explanation for this situation?"

"There are rumors that in Xikaer Mountain..."

Xia De looked toward the window. From the window on the third floor, he could directly see the mountain range that was already shrouded in fog at this time. Xikaer Mountain was part of the Rommel Mountain Range, and the continuous mountains spanned the distance of the city like the giant dragon in the Outsider's hometown.

"Under Xikaer Mountain, there is an ambiguous area connecting the world of the living and the world of the dead, which the Church calls 【Narrow Gap of Life and Death】."

Although this world does not have an "underworld," because the dead will continue to walk, there is a clear boundary between the living and the dead. This kind of "boundary" is just a conceptual thing. Xia De had never heard that such a place really existed:

"This is not normal, this kind of place should not exist."

Xia De pointed out, and the nun nodded:

"This is indeed not normal, death and the material world should not have any connection, nor should there be a channel connecting the two, but the material world does indeed have similar narrow gaps. Most of them are small in scale, and Midehillburg is built above the largest known life and death boundary. Including the white mist that must appear in Xikaer Mountain every autumn, and the inexplicably disappeared people, these are all caused by the blurring of the boundary, leading to the direct overlap of the world of the living and the world of the dead."

Miss Michelle sighed softly:

"And once falling into that boundary, it is almost equivalent to death; once entering a special door in the 【Narrow Gap of Life and Death】, one truly steps into irreversible death. That place really connects to the concept of death itself."

"Are these rumors you mentioned local legends?"

These things were not mentioned at all in the folklore-related courses for Second-Ring Shushi.

"No, many evidences prove that this is a real situation. Mr. Watson, the sect determined a long time ago that there is indeed something under Xikaer Mountain, this volcano..."

Xia De was stunned:

"Volcano? Sorry, please forgive my impoliteness, Xikaer Mountain is a volcano? Although my geology and geography are not good, this doesn't look like volcanic terrain at all."

"This is indeed a dead volcano."

Miss Michelle said. Although she wore an eye mask like a crown, Xia De couldn't see her eyes, but this lady was obviously not joking:

"The Orthodox Church knows about the 【Narrow Gap of Life and Death】 under Xikaer Mountain, but they don't reveal any information to the outside world. The sect believes that this is actually a relic of extremely high danger level."

"Angel level?"

Xia De asked tentatively, but Miss Michelle shook her head slightly.

"Unknowable level?"

He widened his eyes.

"The sect believes so. Some things are not convenient to tell you, but in fact, the sect has been exploring the secrets here. We revere death, we perceive spirituality. You can peek at its appearance, even peek at that twisted and terrible death power, and it looks like nothing happened at all. In my opinion, it is really incredible."

Miss Michelle summarized:

"From the current information, Priest Rat Ao Gu Si should not have entered the door in the 【Narrow Gap of Life and Death】, just fell into the 【Narrow Gap of Life and Death】. And the corpse ghost you encountered appeared because the boundary was blurred."

"It turned out to be like this... Then you help deal with the corpse of the corpse ghost, and the valuable things on it will be the reward."

Xia De said with his hand on his head. This kind of situation was really an unimaginable big trouble. Just a day ago, he was still preparing for the final of the Great City Player under Difa's help, but 24 hours later, he heard another terrible rumor here.

Today is Thursday, the

The nun said softly:

"Thank you for your generosity."

Digging up the buried corpse was not difficult, and the materials that could be separated from a powerful, mutated ghoul were indeed valuable. The most valuable parts were the ghoul's brain and its lungs, which could sell for at least 20 pounds to Mr. Corps in Tobesk.

Xia De was willing to let the other party have them, not only to express his gratitude but also because he might still need more help from the 【Spirit Cult】 in this city.

"Then, assuming the priest really fell into that kind of place, is there any way to get him out?"

Xia De asked again.

"He can only come out himself. That kind of area where life and death are ambiguous is not something we living people can interfere with. And once one fails to leave for a long time, or truly crosses the boundary—the door that crosses the boundary between life and death—and enters the world of the dead, one can truly never walk out again."

Xia De nodded; he more or less understood the meaning of the priest's "dead but not dead" state. The priest must have believed he could not get out, which was why he used his final strength to enter Xia De's dream to say goodbye.

"Then for the next period of time, I will stay in Midhill until I rescue the priest."

Xia De stood up and walked to the window, looking at the mountain ranges in the sunset:

"I definitely will."

"I wish you luck."

Ms. Michelle said in a low voice.

It was not that she was unwilling to provide direct help, but that she was truly powerless.