Chapter 922: The Decapitation Surgery

"Oh~"

Seeing the flying heads growing clearer and clearer in the fog, Princess Margaret let out a small moan, raised a hand to cover her own neck, and closed her eyes:

"Under normal conditions, this relic couldn't possibly produce so many duplicates—the relic is going out of control. Mr. Hamilton, step back quickly; the curse is taking effect on us."

"There's no need for that."

Xia De stepped forward and slammed his hands together sharply:

"Ha!"

Arms spread wide, a huge arc-shaped blade of light sliced through the thick fog and hacked toward the dense wall of human heads. The silver-moon blade struck the wall, and amid the increasingly eerie muttering of the heads, moonlight collided with the flying heads. Muffled cursing rose in clusters, and a massive gap was cleaved into the "wall"—but in the blink of an eye it was filled again by new heads:

"Stop attacking—the curse on you..."

Princess Margaret warned at once, then watched in surprise as the black on Xia De's neck suddenly flared bright, as if lit by firelight, and then vanished.

The "Divine Afterglow" state protects the soul from contamination, while the "Embers of the First Fire" grants the body immunity to specific curses. The document-grade relic 【Charles II's Decapitation Curse】 is a flesh-and-blood type curse—precisely the kind suppressed by the First Fire.

"Which one is the main body?"

Xia De stared with bright, intent eyes at the onrushing heads.

【Same as before—all of them are the main body.】

"Sin Chains!"

Black chains poured clattering from his sleeve; once they had extended to sufficient length, Xia De's right hand gripped one end of the chain tight and, like swinging a long whip, lashed it toward the "wall of human heads":

"Red Dragon's Strength!"

Taut muscles drove the chain into its strike; the whoosh~ of splitting air jolted Princess Margaret—who had grown uneasy from glimpsing the runes on the "Sin Chains"—back to her senses. She saw that the light-drinking pitch-black chain, in a single blow, had nearly collapsed more than half of the "wall of heads":

"What a powerful wonder!"

The princess couldn't help exclaiming, but Xia De explained softly:

"It has no attack power!"

As he spoke, 【Living Rope Trick】 made the chain change direction in midair in complete defiance of physics; then Xia De struck out with the chain again, utterly shattering the wall of heads that kept pressing closer.

The dense mass of heads rolled like balls into the filthy alley, and amid a chorus of cursing, they turned into puddles of black mud. The 【Sin Chains】 kept lashing toward the single remaining head in the air—perhaps because it had lost too much power, that head actually didn't try to flee, but instead opened its mouth and bit down on one end of the Sin Chains:

"Good chance!"

Both sides exerted force at once, the head's strength pitting itself against Xia De's physical might, and in the end Xia De had the slight edge. As the head was hauled in, the chain, under Xia De's control, threaded into the head through its mouth, then ran along the esophagus and poked out from the lower end of the skull. It looped around once, then wound itself around the rear portion of the chain—effectively stringing the head onto the chain.

【Gluttony】, 【Greed】, 【Sloth】—the sin runes flickered with ghostly light on the chain, and the still-twitching head, as Xia De's spirit drained rapidly, finally quieted down bit by bit:

"The sins..."

At last its eyes closed, and it went completely still.

"Done."

Only then did Xia De let out a breath of relief; with a clattering sound, the 【Sin Chains】 drew the head toward him. His right hand hauled the chain, lifting the head into his grip. When Xia De looked back at Princess Margaret, the latter took an unobtrusive step backward.

She pressed her lips together. Though she had guessed this knight from Delarion might be quite capable, she hadn't expected him to be quite this capable. A relic on the verge of going out of control—she alone certainly couldn't have contained it—but once Xia De appeared, he had actually broken it head-on through sheer force.

"Mr. Hamilton, may I ask how many rings are you?"

"Miss Mary" asked softly, and Xia De shook his head:

"Miss Mary, since you won't reveal your true identity, I have no reason to tell you my level either. However, you're a ring sorcerer from out of town, so you probably don't know the local situation. Since this summer, all sorts of strange things have been happening here frequently. Our group and Mr. Madison's group are friends, so let me warn you—be very careful in Tobesk."

"Understood."

The princess said carefully, recalling her puppet. Xia De slipped his hand into his pocket, pulled out a paper bag, and put the head inside; then he stepped back a few paces, took a short run-up, and kicked off the wall with his shoe. His empty left hand simply reached up and caught hold of a brass-colored metal pipe running up the wall. With a clean vault upward, in a few bounds he reached the second-floor windowsill, returning himself to the Three Cats Inn.

Looking back down into the alley at Princess Margaret, the latter gazed up at the second-floor window in some difficulty—clearly unable to climb straight up the way Xia De had.

"Please come up."

A chain dangled down from the window, but Princess Margaret shook her head.

When she returned to the inn through the front door and met the group again on the second floor, Xia De and Doctor Shi Nai De were already seated back at the table.

The head had rejoined the woman's body, and then Xia De secured a room from Lady Madame Sangmei. Doctor Shi Nai De saw his patient back to her room; Mr. Madison supported the woman, and together with Princess Margaret, he followed Xia De into the new room on the third floor.

Containing the document-grade relic 【Charles II's Decapitation Curse】 was Princess Margaret's academy assignment. She needed this relic to exchange with Thessice for the special material "Blood Puppet's Silk Thread"—one of the core materials for her advancement from the fourth ring to the fifth ring; even as a princess, she had no way of obtaining it elsewhere.

Extracting the relic from the woman's body required a fairly elaborate procedure. By the time Doctor Shi Nai De knocked and slipped inside, the ritual was only half prepared. Xia De and the doctor had, after all, taken the other's money, so they helped set up the ritual as well.

By four in the afternoon, they had placed the unconscious woman in a chair and moved the chair into the ritual base array chalked on the floor.

Xia De drew the curtains shut, and the doctor stuffed newspaper into the gap under the door to block the light. Once everything was ready, as Mr. Madison by the wall turned off the gas lamp, in the darkness every chalk mark on the floor lit up.

Princess Margaret held a specially treated silver dinner knife, wore a brown leather apron, and donned a crow mask that served as a ritual symbol. Under the gaze of the three men, she stood beside the chair and personally cut off the woman's head.

The cut surface did not bleed; instead, writhing black mud seeped from it. Princess Margaret held the head in her left hand, while with her right she drew from the large front pocket of her apron a wide-mouthed glass Erlenmeyer flask containing fresh blood and flesh, and set the glass vessel beneath the head.

The blood and flesh in the flask was bait; the writhing black mud gradually detached from the cut on the head, then burrowed into the flask and within moments rotted that mass of flesh. The writhing black mud, only at this stage, finally truly became a disgusting black parasite—but after leaving a living person, its whispering element had grown quite faint.

"Miss Mary looks quite adept at this sort of surgery."

Xia De remarked quietly from the side, and the doctor explained:

"Thessice Higher Medical Academy and Saint Byron's differ in their training focus. Apart from excelling in magical pharmacy and alchemy, they're also very skilled in necromancy and body modification."

Seeing the relic perfectly detached, Princess Margaret also let out a breath of relief. She handed the flask to Mr. Madison beside her, while she herself re-sewed the woman's head back on. This unfortunate woman was not a Tobesk local; she had come all the way here from a city farther south, where Thessice had then discovered her identity.

After the relic's departure, if the head could be sewn back on quickly enough, she could still survive. But because the relic had clung to her too long, her mind had already suffered irreparable damage. Afterward, Thessice Higher Medical Academy would send people to take her away, and once they confirmed she could return to a normal life, they would send her back to where she lived.

"Good, good—the containment process went fairly smoothly. If it had really gone out of control, this time would have been a real mess."

Mr. Madison, gloved, said as he shook the flask violently. After confirming that the pitch-black worm inside the flask had stopped moving, he carefully placed it into the metal case opened on the table. That box was the true containment vessel; its surface bore the Thessice Higher Medical Academy crest—a book pierced by a scalpel.

"What would happen if it went out of control?"

Xia De asked curiously.

"Within three hundred meters around the flying head, the heads of every humanoid creature automatically separate from their necks."

Mr. Madison touched his own neck, and Doctor Shi Nai De at the door clicked his tongue:

"These past six months, strange relics like this have been getting more and more common. Before, even though there were uncontained dangerous relics in the big cities, they didn't show up this often."

"Is Tobesk very dangerous?"

Princess Margaret, who was still performing the "suturing surgery," asked.

Doctor Shi Nai De looked at Mr. Madison, Mr. Madison looked at Xia De, Xia De looked at Doctor Shi Nai De, and for a moment none of them gave an answer.

After sewing up the woman's head, Mr. Madison hired a horse-drawn carriage and sent the woman away. Princess Margaret, holding the box containing the relic, paid Xia De and the doctor their fees. She clearly still had things she wanted to say to Xia De, but in the end she left with the words on the tip of her tongue.

This made Xia De look forward even more to the next time he would see Princess Margaret in public.

He and Doctor Shi Nai De stood at the window of the third-floor room, watching "Miss Mary" disappear into the crowd of Hymn Square, and only then did the doctor ask: Bi Qu Ge

"Xia De, now the princess knows you are a Ring Ringed Ringed Shushi, but the princess doesn't know that you already know she knows you are a Ring Ringed Ringed Shushi. And you know she is also a Ring Ringed Ringed Shushi, but you know even better that she doesn't know you know she knows you are a Ring Ringed Ringed Shushi. What will you do next?"

The doctor's words were easy to understand, and Xia De answered:

"So what if Princess Margaret knows I am a Ring Ringed Ringed Shushi? Compared to her, I'm more interested in another correspondence student from Senrick."

"Sir Puli Xia?"

the doctor asked.

Xia De nodded:

"Doctor, if you know that Sir Puli Xia plans to take part in relic containment locally or other activities related to Ring Warlocks, please let me know. I have some matters I need to find him about."

The doctor didn't ask what Xia De wanted to do either:

"No problem, I'll go ask Ah Lan and I'll know. Actually, I wanted to say last time — since there are Ring Warlocks in the Anjou royal family, there should be some among our kingdom's royal family members as well."

As he spoke, he also glanced at Xia De, clearly wanting to get confirmation from him.

Xia De hesitated for a moment, then nodded:

"The royal families of both countries and the Academy of the Arcane Arts all have private relationships. Although the Wushen Sect Church has pledged not to interfere with secular royal authority, the royal families can't not make their own arrangements."

"Understood."

The doctor sighed and looked at the bustling crowd in Hymn Square:

"We are living in the best of times — theocracy and monarchy support each other, social change is on the whole peaceful, and the two great human kingdoms have basically maintained peace because of the arrival of the Steam Age. I really hope this kind of era can continue forever... but anyone with sense knows that's impossible."

The doctor tapped the wooden windowsill with his finger, then gestured for Xia De to go with him to check on Mr. Jims. That gentleman had slept all afternoon and should probably be awake by now.