Chapter 765: The Fourth Candidate for Death

At the same time the information was received at the summit, the witches on the mountainside also learned the news that the sealing ritual would begin ahead of schedule.

"A powerful Ringed Shushi wielding a sword?"

The witches did not choose to enter the mountain's interior to guard the seal; instead, they waited on the cliff where the entrance to the passage was located. Miss Aurora held the piece of parchment and looked at Old Cassandra beside her with surprise:

"This couldn't be..."

"It should be."

The old witch sat by the campfire, with Sister Delage on the other side. The burning flame was the Primordial Fire; as long as this bonfire existed, the anomalies of the Ringed Sect could not affect them.

The witch's followers and the nuns of the Spiritual Cult were currently scattered around, preparing to welcome the next wave of undead attacks. Sister Delage suddenly looked up at the sky, and the two great witches also frowned as they looked upward.

Faintly, one could see the massive black shadow above the thick fog becoming increasingly clear. Only then did they see that it was a skull, like a Titan giant, composed of densely packed wandering souls, staring down at them.

Those thousands of wailing souls vibrated irregularly. As the skull became clearer bit by bit, their terrifying expressions were reflected ever more clearly in everyone's eyes. Even those with the greatest courage could not bear to look directly at this horrific scene, but the two witches did not care at all.

Faintly visible at the center of the skull's brow was a human with a physical body embedded within. Miss Aurora narrowed her eyes to observe, then snorted through her beautiful nose:

"Joey Barton. How cliché. Does he think he can overcome quality by accumulating quantity?"

She raised her hands and clapped twice:

"Ladies, prepare to move."

She raised her right hand high and snapped her fingers; twelve golden light orbs rotated above her head. Old Cassandra picked up the cane from the ground and stood up; a massive and eerie shadow trembled beneath her feet. Sister Delage reached her hand into the campfire in front of her and drew out the lime sword.

Standing up, as silver, icy fragments drifted in the air, she grasped the small scythe. If one observed closely, the appearance of this scythe was exactly the same as the weapon wielded by the massive shadow behind Joey Barton when he used the "Death Scythe."

The nun flicked her right hand in the air, and the lime shell on the surface of the Angel-level Relic 【Ash】 peeled away. As cracks appeared on her body and clothing, the afterglow of the Primordial Fire flickered on both weapons.

The battle on the mountainside erupted earlier than at the summit or the foot of the mountain. Perhaps in Joey Barton's view, witches were easier to deal with than the Zhengshen Sect. He was only a First-Tier Shushi and not even a core member of the "Truth Society," so naturally, he did not know what the 【Witch Council】 represented, nor did he understand what a Twelfth-Tier witch who was also a Twelfth-Tier Shushi meant when fighting without any reservations.

In the natural church at the foot of the Ringed Mountain, Xia De was still carefully exchanging information with Yin Yi Yi Lu Na; on the cliff on the mountainside of the Ringed Mountain, the witch who inherited the power of the Fifth Era and the nun who guarded the Primordial Fire joined forces to confront the appearing Joey Barton; around the great rift at the summit of the Ringed Mountain, accompanied by rumbling sounds, the ancient souls hidden within the mountain were awakening at the call of the Ringed Sect.

Thick fog filled the air, like a phantom curtain about to be drawn. Xia De, by the campfire, stared at the flames in front of him. In a trance, he somehow thought of the fourth-ranked candidate for death that Luweiya had mentioned.

He had originally thought that the candidate whose identity was still unknown was a vampire, and that Armand Bernhardt had come to Midhillburg to help the other party secure the status of the Chosen One. But thinking about it now, perhaps the vampires' grand plan really had nothing to do with the Chosen One or the Ringed Sect. Even so, the fourth candidate, who had yet to appear, might also show up in this final decisive battle.

"The fourth-ranked candidate is almost unrelated to the description in the Poem, so the inherited ancient god power is also almost impossible to detect. But one thing is certain: he or she must also have some characteristics similar to the first-ranked Joey Barton... Could it be those eyes that see through death?"

If Luweiya had appeared in Midhillburg, Xia De would even have thought she might be the fourth-ranked candidate. Those purple eyes definitely had the power to see through death. But from the current situation, Luweiya was clearly not...

"Then who could it be? Has the other party already been dragged into this matter, and do they know the content of the ritual, as well as the fact that someone who has died and returned must be killed before the ritual begins..."

Subconsciously turning his head to look at Yin Yi Yi Lu Na, the seventeen-year-old girl also looked at Xia De, even playfully winking at him.

Under the light of the bonfire, Xia De saw for a split second that her left eye appeared bright gold. This was not Yin Yi Yi Lu Na's original eye; her true left eye had already been sacrificed when performing the ritual to balance the Chosen One. Her current left eye was a gift given by the power of divinity when Xia De first—and currently for the last time—"burned divinity and incarnated as a god."

This eye was very beautiful. Because it was a divine creation, it possessed many complex functions. And because that eye should have been sacrificed to the ancient god, the replacement eye was actually able to exert the power of 【Balance】 better than Yin Yi Yi Lu Na's own true right eye. Sometimes Xia De even felt that perhaps one day, Yin Yi Yi Lu Na wouldn't need spells or sorcery to directly see the traces he could only see using 【Blood Echo】.

Thinking of this, Xia De frowned:

"The result of Luweiya's coin divination at the time was that as of Yin Yi Yi Lu Na's arrival in Midhillburg, there were at least four candidates for the Chosen One in this city... As of... hmm... could such a thing happen..."

He looked at Yin Yi Yi Lu Na. Although the seventeen-year-old girl was not as beautiful as the witches, she was quite pretty among groups other than witches. Moreover, because of her youth, she possessed a special sense of innocence that Miss Miss Jia Lin Na and Miss Aurora did not have.

The Outsider still remembered the morning he first met Yin Yi Yi Lu Na. He had only been in this world for a few days and was on his way to "Good Peter's Pet Shop" on Purple Iris Lane, very close to St. Deran Square, to pick up Little Mia, when he bumped into Yin Yi Yi Lu Na at the shop's entrance.

At that moment, he felt as if all the light around him had dimmed, and only a single beam of light shone on Yin Yi Yi Lu Na. And the Chosen One candidates he met after that, whether it was Dac Nisi or Joey Barton, did not give him this strange feeling.

"Is there something strange on my face?"

Seeing Xia De staring at her, Yin Yi Yi Lu Na asked somewhat embarrassedly. Xia De shook his head and continued to stare at the flames in front of him:

"Thought of some strange things, just a guess... Regardless, solving Joey Barton's problem is the priority."

The twenty-minute rest period was enough for Xia De to recover his physical strength and Qi by the campfire. When he stood up again, he felt as if he had inexhaustible strength throughout his body.

He had wanted to take advantage of the remaining time to walk around the church. Just as he was thinking about how to persuade the high-level Shushi in the church to allow him to take a look at the basement, he heard a dull but clear bell tolling from deep within the thick fog outside the church.

Everyone put down what they were doing to listen carefully; it was nine consecutive tolls. And after the bell rang, all the ritual supplies and ritual traces prepared for the sealing ritual inside the church began to flicker with golden radiance. The holy emblem of the God of Nature hanging on the wall at the end of the main chapel—two overlapping leaves—scattered miracle elements into the church, while outside the church, the thick fog became restless.

"It has begun..."

Yin Yi Yi Lu Na said softly.

Xia De frowned and looked at the church entrance. His keen senses allowed him to perceive the further changes in the Ringed Sect. The whisper elements were almost on the verge of overwhelming the miracle elements even inside the church. And further away, he heard a sound like the roar of an ancient beast; the rumbling vibration of the ground indicated that something was coming.

In the real Midhillburg area, the major earthquake that had been notified in advance in the newspapers arrived as scheduled. With a rumbling sound as if the Ringed Mountain were about to crack, Midhillburg, shrouded in thick fog, endured the ravages of nature's great power. Boulders collapsed from the summit of the real Ringed Mountain, rolling black smoke emerged from the crater lake, the lake water was boiling, and the dormant volcano was being reactivated.

Lufu Lane, Home for the Blind.

Sister Michelle stood in front of the second-floor window, holding the window frame and feeling the vibration of the building itself. Many people were still standing behind her; after Xia De left, quite a few Shushi came seeking help. Sister Michelle knew everyone's worries, and she was equally anxious. Sister Delage had once prophesied what would happen, and she knew better than anyone how terrifying the coming night would be:

"This dormant volcano is finally going to erupt."

St. Kara Avenue, Cassandra Auction House.

The old witch's young apprentice, Miss Rita Swift, was comforting the staff who had not left the auction house in the lobby on the first floor, and organizing the Shushi left behind by the witches, preparing to face the undead that might appear next. The violent earthquake made everyone's complexion look poor, and at this moment, three strange figures actually appeared outside the auction house. They were three middle-aged men with pale complexions; one held a thorn scepter embedded with rubies, one wore six gemstone rings of different colors on his hand, and one held a black-and-white pair of pistols. They all looked like nobles:

"Excuse me, are Miss Grace White and Miss Helen Black here... We have their invitations."

Southern City Slums, Spider Tail Alley.

The flower-selling girl who had once had all her flowers bought out by Xia De at once was huddled in a dilapidated, drafty house with her parents and siblings, eyes closed, shivering in the earthquake. Outside the door was the howling wind, and deep in the thick fog, something massive was moving slowly, leaving a huge black shadow on the window.

This was the Midhillburg slums, the habitat of the proletarian poor living in this city. Tonight, no one could help them except themselves. Suddenly, a knocking sound rang out outside the drafty door. The middle-aged man with a scruffy beard and not-so-tall stature picked up the only kitchen knife in the house and blocked the front of his family:

"Don't be afraid, I will protect you, Mary, Jenny, Dennis, and little Harry."

Ringed Mountain, dense forest at the foot of the mountain.

The Delarion Royal Army stationed in the Ringed Mountain area had each found the position their team needed to guard in the mountain forest. The fifty-man squad led by Captain Lades was constructing defensive fortifications, responsible for protecting a silver stake erected in the forest. That silver stake was inserted into the soil like a nail, and its complex and dense patterns made those young corporals constantly guess its value.

Captain Lades, wearing a cold-proof cloak and stepping in his leather boots, looked at the foggy night mountain forest, then looked down at the headless corpse on the ground.

He clutched the amulet Xia De had sent him in his hand. Even the sudden earthquake could not disturb this middle-aged man's thoughts:

"I just have a feeling that something incredible will happen tonight... The dead returning to life? So the stories weren't lying; there really is legendary magic."

Five Gods Church.

The earthquake did not interfere with the ritual that had been planned for a year. The Shushi squad remaining in the real world was fully mobilized, entering the city to clear out the undead that had become powerful once again. And inside the church, following the old priests summoned from all over the Old Continent, as well as the local Shushi, participating in prayers in the magnificent main hall of the church while wearing uniform white robes, five golden pillars of light broke through the thick fog from the church and extended toward the high sky. The holy emblems representing the five Zhengshen appeared under the starry sky in the thick fog of the night.

Golden radiance shrouded the entire city, further making the real-world Ringed Mountain look as if it were illuminated by the city below. The sealing ritual "Trace of the Holy Tree" had officially begun.

And in the natural church in the Ringed Sect, the ordinary clergy who had been protected and brought into the Ringed Sect were currently praying in low voices around the bonfire in the center of the main chapel. The Shushi, walking with hurried steps and holding spell materials and their respective relics, watched the thick fog that was constantly being stirred in front of the doors and windows.

Hundreds of brass life rings appeared together, but the steam fog did not overly affect their vision. No one spoke; everyone was waiting quietly.

The main part of the sealing ritual was in reality; the church in the Ringed Sect did not need to perform too many additional ritual steps. What they had to do was to withstand the undead's assault on the Gate of Death before the ritual was officially completed.

The final battle was about to begin. *** **CHAPTER 766: Great Melee**