867

……

"It's finally time to reach the top of the mountain......"

It took a full five hours, from the white sky to the middle of the sky, and a person's mountaineering action could finally be temporarily stopped. Leonard gasped for breath on the straight branch he had picked up on the road, ready to rest for a while and move on.

There was no sound in his head, and Pales was probably resting, or maybe he was thinking about something, but he didn't speak to himself, and he didn't answer his rambling on the road. So he slowed down and walked among the gentler mountains, passing the time by admiring the scenery along the way. After a while, it was suddenly noticed that traces of a human appeared in front of me.

Suspecting that he was dazzled, Leonard stopped, craned his neck and looked ahead, literally seeing a path through the mountains with nothing but dirt, gravel, weeds, and trees.

The road is very plain, one might even say rudimentary, with only stone slabs paved on the dirt. The shape of the slabs was not uniform, but the cutting was fairly smooth, and in this way, four or five meters in front of Leonard, a stone road appeared that seemed to have been cut off, about a meter wide.

Is it a ruin? Leonard didn't find it strange that there were ruins on the deserted mountains, after all, this was the Hornachis Mountains, where Pales told him that the "Land of the Night" of the Duke of Antigonus, who had been the main believers in the Quaternary period. And if people live here, it is impossible to show traces of human activity until near the top of the mountain.

After making sure there was no danger around, Leonard's back molars collided up and down, summoning a spirit that had contracted with him to lurk nearby, and then cautiously approached the path with a cane.

Stepping on it, it's pretty steady.

Unexpectedly, thousands of years have passed, and this stone slab has not decayed into mud, but has only shaken.

Leonard stepped on it a few times, and after carefully checking the path with Spirit for any remaining Extraordinary Ability and Traps, he spoke to himself into the air:

"The ruins of the Night Nation are on the top of the Honachis Mountains, how can they be so well preserved? There must be an extraordinary force intervening, right? Could it be something left of the Duke of Antigonus that protects this place? ”

He openly sought the help of a living history book, anyway, the old man was an angel even if he fell off, and no one would find him unless the Duke of Antigonus was here. If anyone in the ruins was paying attention to this, Leonard was talking to himself.

However, Pales remained silent, as if in a deep sleep as before.

That is, there is no danger ahead, or the danger is controllable, or the danger is so dangerous that the old man directly gives up resistance?

It can't be that the Duke of Antigonus is really here......

After all, they didn't know who the final winner of the "divine war" that took place in the spirit world was, and whether the loser had already lost his life.

Leonard suddenly retreated in his heart, anyway, there is more than one route over the mountain, and if it really doesn't work, he will turn back and change places, and it is not necessary to accidentally enter someone else's domain and cause his life to be in danger. But just as he was about to retreat and turn around, a will suddenly appeared in his mind again, and Paris did not speak, but hinted that he should not retreat and continue to walk.

The old man said so, so let's move on.

Leonard tightened his grip on the branch crutches and continued along the relatively smooth path.

The stone road is indeed much easier to walk on than the dirt on the mountain, and it is a walk, but it is much faster than before.

Soon, an empty, flat land appeared in front of Leonard's eyes. After turning a corner, the view suddenly widens.

Leonard's eyes lit up, and he saw that directly in front of him was the side of a church.

The gray-white stone path beneath his feet extends from the side door of the church. The church is quaint and simple, with no sculptures or stained windows, and it is a bit rough and not tall enough to make people feel the essence of the church and the majesty of God from the outside. However, as a church built on the top of a mountain thousands of meters above sea level, it is very exquisite, and may even be indispensable to the participation of extraordinary powers, which shows that the people of the "Night Country" respected and loved "the Lord of the Night, the Mother of Heaven".

However, the church also took Leonard's vision seriously.

"Would you like to go in and have a look?" Leonard was talking to himself again.

He didn't feel anything alive from this ruin, or even from the entire area, not even a trace of a spirit's presence. If it's so clean, it's probably a long, long time since anyone has been here.

As soon as he finished speaking, Leonard suddenly felt a tingling pain in his eyes, as if something had come out of his eyeballs, and as if something sharp had pierced his eyes. Leonard subconsciously bent over in pain and reached out to cover his eyes, but then, to his horror, he realized that he could still see!

- At the same time, he saw things that he couldn't have seen before.

He saw that around his body, or in the open space where this church was located, there was an extremely thin gray mist floating at his feet, flowing slowly.

Gray fog?

"Fools"?

Could it be that Mr. "Fool" is here? Is He looking here? These gray mist are clearly His symbols!

Parles did not speak, nor did he answer, after all, it is not wrong to say that this is related to the "fool", how is the "half fool" not a kind of fool? And Leonard has only seen the "gray fog", not the fog of history, and at the moment confuses the two, and Parles is not in a hurry to explain.

Leonard was startled, and then his spiritual intuition naturally took on his current form, his eyeballs did not break, but suddenly appeared around the center of his pupil in a circle with twelve translucent worms. Seeing the familiar "Worm of Time", Leonard immediately understood that this was a hint from Pales that he was looking at it in his person and identity...... But what to look at?

Getting such power for the first time, Leonard blinked with some curiosity.

His left and right eyes saw two worlds at the same time.

The anomaly is seen in the left eye, while the right eye is still a calm remnant of the city. It seems that the old man is more than capable of completely transforming his vision, but in order to show contrast and avoid Amon's features, he chooses to move in the eyeball.

Leonard quickly adapted to the slight stinging of the sudden strengthening of his left eye, which was spiritually strengthened, when he saw something extraordinary, he re-examined his surroundings, his eyes widened suddenly, and finally slowly raised his head, looked at the sky high above the church, and used the "spiritual vision" of the angelic level to see the huge palace hidden in the sky except for white clouds and blue sky.

"Temple......" he whispered in disbelief.

Whose temple is it? It is the god of the "Night Country", the temple of the Duke of Antigonus!

Not only him, but also Pales had seen the ancient palace with its crumbling walls, crumbling, and shrouded in mist.

It seems that there was a fight. Leonard observed the ruins and had basically guessed the end of the Night Nation.

"Old man, how do you go up?"

Since Parles had lent him his power and person, but had not shown it himself, there must have been something Leonard needed to do. Pales's thoughts were already very familiar to him, so he spoke directly.

That palace obviously does not exist in reality, and the angels can only see it, and they must not be able to enter as a mortal.

"Stealing." Parles said.

Leonard didn't hesitate, although he didn't know what to do, he immediately raised his arm, aimed at the castle in the air, and made a hard grip and pulled back in his direction, as if grasping something on the opposite side firmly.

The next moment, Leonard really felt that something had been "stolen".

A similar mist appeared on his body, and Leonard was startled by the change, feeling as if he had been separated from the world around him by a membrane, and the fog had blocked out some of the light. In the different fields of vision of the two eyes, the left eye sees things more clearly and more realistically, but the things in the right eye are covered with a veil.

Leonard immediately understood, and without delay, he ran straight over, grabbed the raised stone bricks and the edge of the window on the church and climbed up.

With the excellent physical strength of the "Dark Night" route, Leonard climbed to the top of the church, which was about four or five stories high. When I looked up, I saw that the old and dilapidated palace was overhead. He took a few steps backwards, then jumped up with all his strength, and finally, with the help of a "stealing distance" from Pales, smoothly moved from mid-air to the main entrance of the palace, and then reached out to push it away.

Leonard suddenly felt something in his heart and looked up.

He saw corpses, countless corpses hanging from the roof like bacon—and what appeared before his eyes was a hall of many corpses, each different, male and female, dressed in rich, austere, delicate, or casual.

Behind these hangers, there is a transparent and slippery, intricately patterned tentacle, all of which come from the dark mist deep down the hall, where there seems to be a somewhat familiar high-backed chair...... Leonard stared intently, and then his left eye was forced to close in severe pain,

He didn't see anything, but Parles saw that in the deepest part of the fog of history, an illusory figure sat on an ancient high-backed chair, transparent and twisted worms hugging together and growing wantonly, extending one strange tentacle after another towards the surroundings.

Who's that?

Is it Antigonus, Klein, or the hidden "secret attendant"?

Pales still doesn't know the answer to this question, but he knows it must be a "fool"!

A real "fool"!

As if sensing the opening of the door, as if sensing someone approaching from the outside, Leonard saw that the slippery tentacles seemed to tremble at the same moment, and then, the scene that Leonard Mitchell, who only had Sequence 5 at this time, was unforgettable, and who avoided the "soothsayer" high sequence for decades to come.

No wind blew, and the countless corpses hanging from the ceiling slowly moved and turned, gathering around Leonard. Leonard's scalp was already tingling when he heard the rustle of clothes rubbing against him, and his Adam's apple rolled a little, but he still mustered up the courage to look up in order not to be attacked from above by an unfamiliar enemy.

A pair of pupils had dilated, and various colored eyes stared at him blankly;

The pale and stiff faces of the dead were facing him, and directly above him, the head and neck of a corpse were already perpendicular to his shoulders, and his eyes were now wide, looking at Leonard from between his feet, swaying leisurely in mid-air.

This scene is deeply engraved in Leonard's mind.

In the next second, Leonard in Sequence 5 rolled his eyes and fainted directly under the instinctive intimidation of his former colleague, who was already an angel.

Klein, of course, didn't know how much psychological damage Leonard's instinctive reaction to "want to see who's coming" caused Leonard, and Pales stole his vertigo, and Leonard opened his eyes the next moment after passing out, but then continued to look at the corpses hanging from staring at him—after repeating the process of being repeatedly stunned by the Sequence One Sorcerer five times, he finally chose not to open his eyes again.

"Old man." Leonard closed his eyes and said weakly, "I shouldn't have messed with you lately, right?" ”

Pales almost didn't laugh out loud, if he hadn't been afraid of scaring Leonard silly, he would have missed this unpretentious method of scare—after all, there was no child of the Extraordinary Family in the Quaternary who had not been frightened by Antigonus, Amun, and Zarathu.

Now, the pranks that scared me so badly turned pale at the time are a thing of the past.

"Don't look up, just look at the ground." "And go ahead." ”

"That's the seat in front."

Leonard lowered his head and looked at his toes, glad that the floor of this palace was not a shiny black marble that could illuminate human figures: "It's dangerous to go forward, I almost went blind when I looked at him just now." ”

"You don't have to walk there." "You'll know where to stop. ”

Leonard only felt that countless eyes were staring at his back, as if if he did something wrong, the countless corpses on the ceiling would fall directly, and one person could tear him apart. Leonard had to try to ignore the ubiquitous sight and the faint sound of footsteps behind him, and boldly walked forward.

He took a step.

There was also one more footsteps in the back.

…… Leonard stopped, and Parles thought for a moment and comforted him:

"Do you think they won't come near if you don't go?"

Leonard was comforted, this old man really had a point, maybe there was more than one corpse behind him, maybe all the corpses were behind him, maybe these corpses were stuck to his back! Under the huge psychological pressure, Leonard simply gave up thinking and ran forward in stride.

The footsteps behind him also ran after him, hidden in his steps, looming.

After a few steps, Leonard felt the fog around him deepen, and then he suddenly saw the bottom of the stone seat in front of him, and the tarot card with the image of Russell the Fool and the words written in starlight lying quietly on the ground.

Just seeing this scene, Leonard's spirit suddenly suffered a heavy blow, and he had a tendency to collapse and disintegrate, but fortunately, Pales intervened in time, and did not have the negative situation of confusion and mental abnormality, nor did he freeze in place and could not make any movements.

Leonard realized, he directly swooped down, grabbing the mysterious card that had fallen to the ground in his hand.

In the next moment, Leonard's body dissipated, and the "fog of history" he stole was about to disappear, and Pales directly distorted the distance and space, leaving Leonard in the "hidden town". The slippery tentacles seemed to be only now reacting, waving twice with Leonard's vanishing traces, and finally slowly retracting, allowing the "stars" to pick up the cards on the ground.

The open door then closed little by little, hiding the scene.

Touch!

Leonard was thrown to the ground defenseless, and after rolling around twice, he patted the dust off his body and stood up, before finding himself intact and seemingly in an empty town.

"What was that? Are tentacles mythical creatures? ”

"If it was a mythical creature, then I didn't go crazy now, it must be because of the old man's help, he let me enter that place, what did he get?"

"Is it Antigonus or Mr. 'Fool'? Are those corpses the 'Master of Secret Puppets'? It's horrible......"

Unable to contain his fear, with joy and intense doubt in his heart, he opened his palms and looked at the object he had obtained from that horrible temple that he did not want to recall at all.

It's a tarot card, and the surface of this card is Roselle Gustav wearing an ornate headdress, colorful clothes, carrying a cane and luggage, his eyes are full of hope for the future, and he is followed by a puppy.

In the upper left corner of the board, Bright Starlight outlines a few words:

"Sequence 0: The Fool!"

TBC

——————

Good night! (End of chapter)