Shepherd Tantra

Chapter 809: Antimony's Triumphal Chariot

"A one and a half year old... probably can't speak yet."

Bayard said in surprise, tapping his fingers lightly on the amber wine glass.

"That's about right. I can say one or two words, but I can't say a complete sentence."

Franz Pomponazzi nodded. “I was killing people before I could talk. That was the first time I sucked blood from a living person instead of drinking from a bottle of blood.

"When I grew up, I found out... it seemed like everyone knew about this. It seemed like everyone knew... that when I just learned to walk, I killed my own sister with my own hands. Hahahaha..."

He laughed, but there was no joy in his laughter.

He put his glass back on the table.

Even if the wine in the glass was the best in the world, he had no interest in drinking it.

"Do you remember what people called me?"

Pomponazzi did not wait for Bayard to reply, because he was asking and answering his own question: "That 'little monster in Pomponazzi's house'."

"So, you became a real monster?"

Bayard said softly, "Killed his entire family?"

"Why not."

Peng Bonazi said frankly: "My brother killed my sister, and my sister killed my brother. My father killed my brother, and I myself killed my sister. Since this is the education I received since childhood and people's expectations of me are also like this, why can't I become such a person when I grow up?

"Besides, I didn't kill them completely..."

As he spoke, Peng Bonazi reached out and touched his chest and abdomen.

Aleister realized something: "You can't be..."

"Oh, it's not as simple as just eating it."

Peng Bonazi smiled and said: "At that time, all the servants in the house were killed by us as 'blood bags'. We fought each other until we were gray... and I was the winner in the end.

"But I was also seriously injured and dying in that 'civil war', and was cursed by my mother. So I prepared a resurrection ceremony - I drained the remaining blood from my body. Mixed it with the remaining blood I collected, and used it to revive myself again... In this way, the curse was removed.

"At that moment, an idea suddenly occurred to me - because I was worried, what if I failed to revive them due to lack of blood, and they were resurrected by others by chance.

"So I smashed all the statues of my family members and gathered some of their ashes around me. I took away a part of them, so that none of them could be resurrected in their entirety.

"After I died and was reborn, I merged with them. I had a sister, two brothers, my father and mother, a total of five, and I was the sixth... It was the 'adaptation number'. The blood at that time was not enough to revive even one person, let alone six ashes. I think... I was able to survive that state, perhaps because of the Lord of Scales and Feathers's blessing."

——That’s why he called himself “Pomponazzi”.

Aleister understood.

It's not because he is estranged from others, nor because he, as a down-and-out noble, still remembers his last name. Because to him, it is not just a last name... it is a "family".

He is not pure "Franz", but the ultimate fusion of all "Pomponazzi".

That is why he likes both men and women, is gentle yet irritable, conservative yet radical... because the consciousness that constitutes "Pomponazzi" is not the same.

"Because I am the only one left in the entire Pomponazzi, the family assets naturally belong to me. Although my family is considered aristocratic family, we no longer have any fiefdoms... We are just impoverished nobles. So I simply sold all the family assets for my own enjoyment.

"People hate me and reject me. Although they respect me on the surface, I know... they just want my money."

Pomponazzi sneered: "If they want it, I'll give it to them. I enjoy watching them fight to the death for that kind of thing, accusing each other and framing each other - who is the monster? Me? Them? Or those golden little round cakes?

"After all, I don't care about that kind of thing. It's better to say that I have already prepared to die. I am not a ritualist, and the resurrection ritual is just a mechanical device. If something goes wrong, I may not be able to be resurrected; even before doing this, I don't know whether it is me or some chimera who is resurrected.

"Until I met Bashir. He was a very interesting human being... I could feel that he was one of the few people who was not afraid of me or laughed at me - he dared to ask me for money directly when we met for the first time."

"……oh?"

Aleister couldn't help laughing.

So it was going to be something like “This man is so special that he caught my attention”?
But Pomponazzi's words denied Aleister's guess:

"In order to use the money to support his research, he was even willing to die. Not as a blood slave, nor was it empty talk like 'I am willing to die for you'... He came to me directly with a contract certified by the Silver Crown Dragon and gave me his life in exchange for a sum of money.

"Even when he became a monarch and established a kingdom... the contract was still with me. He never asked for it back, nor did he ask me to destroy it."

"You must have agreed."

"Of course I gave it to him! It's just a small amount of money, it's not as fun as this!"

Pomponazzi laughed uncontrollably, and it was hard to tell how much of his laughter was genuine and how much was exaggerated.

It's like a child tells a joke and then starts laughing.

In a sense...Pomponacci, who was born as the child of the moon and has permanently bright red eyes, has never experienced a true coming-of-age ceremony.

The transformation of the Moon Children into adults is when they realize that they are no longer the same as they used to be. At that moment, the emotions and desires suppressed by morality burst out instantly... Then [beast] triumphed over [love], and the Moon Children completely turned into bloodthirsty beasts. ——The so-called adulthood is to abandon the naive self of the past.

As for Pomponazzi, he "matured" too early and "adult" too late - as far as he could remember, he had been doing things that only adults would do; when he was a teenager, he gained part of his family's personality and memory out of thin air.

But perhaps until now, he has not really matured.

Because he doesn't have the innocence to give up.

Seeing that "Lady Bayard" did not laugh, Pomponazzi's laughter gradually stopped.

He was silent for a while, calmed down, and then continued, "I was very curious at the time, what exactly he was studying... that made him work so hard. Do you know what he was talking about?

"——He said, I'm researching the Moon Child. But I can't find a Moon Child that I can use for research, so I can only find someone to buy the Moon Child's ashes at a high price."

This time even Aleister couldn't hold it anymore.

...Is Bashir so awesome? The person in front of you is the Son of the Moon!
At this point, Peng Bonazi laughed again: "Because at that time, the Son of the Moon had not yet completely occupied the top positions in the empire.

"At that time, there were some 'vampire hunters' who hated us. In order to deceive other nobles to target us, they joined forces with the Medical Association to spread a rumor - claiming that the ashes of the Moon Child could enhance male sexual performance.

"...It must be said that this widely spread rumor has created a great obstacle to our infiltration. Many nobles have hired 'vampire hunters' at high prices to hunt down the Son of the Moon. Although there are many fakes on the black market, there are occasionally real ones. At the same time, some nobles will try to raise the Son of the Moon.

"In most cases, the Moon Child is young, beautiful, immortal, and extremely lustful. Because the Moon Child cannot cross flowing water, when the Moon Child is imprisoned underground and surrounded by an underground river, it forms a one-way cage that cannot be escaped.

“So some nobles will pay a high price to buy the ‘complete ashes of the Moon Child girl’, and then revive by shedding blood; some people desire immortality… Although some people have warned that the resurrection of the Moon Child is not what they want, it does not prevent some people from wanting to imprison the Moon Child to force them to tell them the method of transformation, or to use a contract to constrain the other party to become their thugs - this is also the reason why I specifically wanted to smash the ashes of my family members.

"It is for this reason that those Moon Children with higher 'origins' are fine, but those with lower 'origins' are often ruthlessly hunted down by hunters. Even so, the price of Moon Children's ashes on the black market is very high... So high that Bashir can never afford it in his lifetime with just his income."

"So you gave him the money?"

Aleister asked.

"No," Pomponazzi shrugged. "Although I don't care about money, this level of waste is unnecessary."

"……waste?"

"Well, I gave him all my family's ashes."

Pomponazzi laughed happily: "His 'disenchantment' will completely destroy the possibility of their resurrection - if I had known this, I would not have used that method to merge them.

"Perhaps it is because I often sigh and say 'Why didn't I meet you earlier', so the child probably regards me as a confidant or a close friend."

But it was obvious that until then... Pomponazzi had not regarded Bashir as a person who could communicate with him on an equal footing. It was just that Bashir, who had low emotional intelligence, thought that "they were already friends".

"—until he gave me his research."

Peng Bonazi said softly: "I admire his talent - he demystified the ashes of the Moon Child and actually analyzed the method of becoming a perfect person."

"...'The Triumph of Antimony'?"

Aleister knew what he meant by "research".

The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony, written by Valentine I, tells the story of the alchemy of sublimating animal nature into divine transcendence.

If this alchemy can be completed completely... it will mean that he has created an ability that can "stabilize the Heavenly Master". In the fairy tales, it is a skill that can be used from Qi training to ascension.

But obviously... perhaps because the material Bashir consumed in his research was the Son of the Moon, Pomponazzi believed that this book was about how to reach the "perfect man".

"Let a fierce gray wolf devour the king's body, and then burn it in a great fire until it is burnt to ashes. Repeat this three times, and the lion will have the upper hand over the wolf, and there will be nothing left in him to devour.

"Then the Lion purified himself with the wolf's blood, and the color of his blood matched that of the Lion most beautifully; and when the Lion's hunger was appeased, his spirit became more powerful than before, and his eyes shone like the sun..."

Pomponazzi recited the words from "The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony" without hesitation: "The lion is the 'soul of gold', and the color of the moon is gold." This sentence is apparently about a way to purify gold, but in fact it is about the predation and sublimation of the child of the moon.

"As both beasts of transcendence, the more powerful lion is the Son of the Moon. The gray wolf is a mortal and also symbolizes the alchemist - the mortal draws divine power from the dream world and burns himself to ashes in the ascension ceremony. After three repetitions, he is promoted to the fourth energy level... and the human body is purified.

"Taste the golden blood, and the lion's hunger will be quenched. The blood of the Moon Child can only quench its thirst. Only blood above the fourth energy level has the sacred power to completely calm the Moon Child..."

...So that's it.

Aleister finally understood why the blood of Isabel and Aiwass could calm him down, but the blood of Selene only made him more excited and restless...

For a moment, even Aleister himself had some doubts - could it be that he had misunderstood?
Does "Antimony's Triumphal Chariot" really implicitly tell the story of how to become a perfect person?

"And at the same time... he also prepared his own path to advancement. 'The king traveled through the six regions of the sky and settled in the seventh region. There, golden tapestries decorated the royal palace. If you know what I mean, this key will open the first lock and push the first bolt'... This is the first of the twelve keys proposed by Bashir in the book. When you become an alchemist after reading this, you will become a stellar alchemist.

"The 'Golden Stone Knight' will transform his soul seven times. The first six energy levels have already reached the limit of the world, and the seventh energy level has undoubtedly reached the realm of God.

"This book records both his and my methods of advancement. In the mortal world, he is the king and I am the wise minister... and when we ascend to the dream world, I will be the Immortal King and he will be my Stone Knight."

Pomponazzi said softly: “From then on, I regarded him as my true friend.

"Closer than my family... my only friend, my fellow traveler."

(End of this chapter)