Embers of Embers

Chapter 308 Well of Sublimation
The Temple of Stasis.
There is still silence and emptiness here, old dust falls from the darkness above, and they are spread evenly in every corner, like a dead world.
Except for the new pope, no one else can be seen at all, but you can hear those subtle breathing and heartbeats in the silence, as if there are unknown lives in invisible places.
Under the steel mask, his eyes were coldly staring at the writing on the paper.
After so many days of sorting out information, re-examining past records, and interrogating those who had been involved... After countless violent methods, the new pope finally got this. Although it was not the whole story, it was It was also a highly credible guess, and now he needed someone to confirm these guesses.
Thinking like this, blazing fireworks rose from his hands, burning the paper, and the gray-black residue fell randomly, but suddenly there was an inexplicable suction pulling it, and it was involved in the invisible vortex, and fell into the giant in front of him. in the void.
Seni Lothair stared coldly at the thing in front of him. It was a pitch-black well, pure darkness, and there seemed to be an endless abyss below. Even the light that entered it would be completely swallowed up.
Well of sublimation.
When the alchemists were still there, this place was similar to an altar for rituals. Through a method unknown to the new pope, they extracted the mysterious secret blood from this well.
If the Temple of Stasis is the source of demon hunters, then this place is the source of the secret blood. Even though it has been abandoned for many years, standing at the edge of the Well of Ascension, the new pope can still smell the strong stench in the darkness, as if There were countless corpses stacked in the dark depths.
"Remove impurities to make the material more pure, the beautiful things rise upwards, and the dirty things fall downwards..."
The new pope said softly, this is the explanation of "sublimation" which is the core of alchemy.
That is the miracle that all alchemists are pursuing. They believe that by continuously sublimating a substance, they can obtain the "soul" of that substance, and when a large number of "souls" come together, they can crystallize into a "miracle". thing.
"The Philosopher's Stone, the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of Life..."
The new Pope recalled the names of those "miracles". These are the products of alchemy sublimation, but in fact, different substances are sublimated, and the things obtained are also different. For example, the miracles obtained from the sublimation of demons , a miracle called Secret Blood.
The Well of Sublimation is a place where large-scale alchemical sublimation is carried out. Beautiful things gush out from it, and dirty things fall into the dark well. The Evangelical Church has been refining secret blood for thousands of years. There are countless filthy things that have been removed from the well of sublimation, but after so many years, they still can't fill the deep well.
It seems like this is a bottomless pit. If you lose your footing and fall, you will just starve to death in the process of falling and never reach the bottom.
But this is just a legend. The new pope knew exactly what it looked like. So while he was waiting, the sound of mechanical rotation sounded, and the old structure once again triggered dust to fly. Amidst the harsh friction sound, along the well wall, Many step-like protrusions extend from the top, and they spiral downward until they fall into the dark end, which is bottomless.
He didn't stop for much, picked up the bright lantern, stepped directly onto the ancient stairs, and walked towards the darkness below.
The new Pope didn't know how long he had been walking. After being completely submerged in the darkness, it seemed that all senses had been stripped away. He was also not sure how long he had been walking. Maybe it was only a few minutes, or maybe ten minutes, or a few hours.
He stopped and raised his head. The new pope had gone too deep. When he stepped into the deep well, the light spots above his head were blurred and almost invisible. Except for the lantern in his hand, he was surrounded by absolute darkness, and this darkness seemed to be It's alive and crawling slowly. No matter how the candle in the lantern burns, it can only illuminate the distance of three steps.
The new pope moved cautiously. There were no guardrails here, and it had not been maintained since it was established. In other words, the original builders did not expect anyone to try to reach here.
The road under our feet was also built in later times. Every stepped step has a history of nearly a thousand years, and why people at that time built this road to reach the deep well, its purpose has long since disappeared. In the years.
The new pope stopped and walked, stretching out his hand to wipe the walls of the well. After wiping away the solid dust, under the illumination of the lantern, he found that the well of sublimation was made of a strange metal, silvery white and glowing.
Ordinary people may not recognize this substance, but the new pope knows very well that it is holy silver.
The lantern continued to shine, and strange symbols and patterns were carved on the surface of the holy silver. These were regarded as symbols of alchemy. There were also such things in the observable well mouth. They were built together as if they were a picture. Huge picture.
But what was even more frightening was what was to come. The new pope descended at least several hundred meters deep, stopping regularly to observe the walls of the well along the way.
The walls of the well are solid and made of pure holy silver. This is an unimaginably huge quantity. Compared with the holy silver currently stored in the church and the holy silver in the entire Well of Ascension, the quantity is simply the difference between a lake and an ocean, and According to the new pope's observation, there are no traces of splicing on the entire well wall along the way. It seems that except for these extended steps, the rest of the structure is combined together.
This is a building beyond what humans can do with current technology. The new pope can hardly imagine who built it, and even said that it is likely to be something that exists naturally, and humans are just making changes on its basis.
He continued downward, and then a feeling of discomfort arose in his heart. The long-term darkness tested his mind, and countless negative emotions grew in the shadows, disturbing the new pope bit by bit, until a strange whimpering sound came from the darkness.
Just below him, in the deep darkness, a certain creature made a low sound, and the sound became more and more loud. They smelled the breath of a living person, so they woke up from their long sleep, pleading for blood. .
The new pope could hear it, like a sinister symphony, with broken organs and maggots singing, and scavenging creatures sucking blood.
At the end, the stairs came to an end, and there were no further steps to go down. On the last step, there was a mottled blood-stained chain. The new pope held the chain with one hand, and then looked down.
There is only a darkness that cannot be illuminated by a lantern, an unknown that no one knows.
"Every time I come here it's a test..."
The new pope couldn't help but whisper, even he became hesitant at this moment, until he mustered up the courage to leap towards the darkness.
The falling process was not long, only a short moment, and the drop was only about three or four meters, but this distance made the new pope fearful.
There is an overlapping gray line between the worlds of life and death, which is the edge of life and death. This long march is on the edge of hell, and with the new pope's leap, he crossed this short distance. Came to "Hell".
There was still the invisible darkness all around, the air was filled with a strong fishy smell, and the temperature was cold and gloomy. It was like the polar regions of the north, and there was a crystal mist on every breath.
The ground under his feet was soft and sticky, and then he seemed to have stepped on a pool of water. Even though the temperature was so low, the liquid failed to freeze. Under the light of the lantern, he realized that it was scarlet blood. He looked towards the end of the darkness The blood spread all over the field of vision, as if thousands of people had died here, and their blood has not dried up yet.
The new pope didn't seem surprised by all this, he had been here before, and then he shouted loudly.
"I am coming!"
No one responded to him, but the trivial evil sounds in the darkness became more dense.
The new pope understood that he had just slept too deeply, and it was difficult to wake up. A dazzling white light appeared under the steel mask. Then he pulled out the nail sword he carried at his waist and gently cut his wrist open. Let the blood pour into the pool of blood at his feet, and the pure flames burned around the new pope as the blood poured into it.
The pale light illuminated this filthy world, and the scarlet blood was soaked with disgusting flesh and blood organs. Some of them were still emitting a slight heat and twitching slowly, as if they were still alive, and there were many such things. , a weird and deformed body, severed limbs and head, from the blurry darkness, you can barely distinguish something larger, but it is too big, even the firelight cannot fully illuminate it.
This is the bottom of the Well of Sublimation. There is no specific name for the Evangelical Church here. Perhaps it once had a name, but it was deliberately forgotten.
The beautiful things rise upwards, and the dirty things fall downwards. The filth of the evangelical church has gathered here for nearly a thousand years. They have been forgotten here, but after so long, they have not completely died.
With the arrival of living people, more and more strange things woke up. There were things moving under the blood. They slowly got up. They could barely distinguish human shapes one after another. They seemed to be human beings. , they tried to stand up, but the flesh and blood of their bodies had already adhered to the ground... No, that was not the ground, that was also flesh and blood. The entire bottom of the well seemed to be filled with some kind of giant flesh and blood creature. The position of the new pope was Instead, it's like the intestines it digests.
They struggled, obviously dead long ago, but their flesh and blood were still full of vitality, and their countless hands were waving, like some abominable horror ritual, but the new pope didn't care about this at all and continued to move forward.
He is the only light in the darkness, countless eyes are staring at him, maybe when the flame goes out, those monsters will rush up.
Countless voices were ringing, and the new pope clearly couldn't understand those whimpering voices, but he could understand their meaning.
[It’s a living person... a living person...]
[Fresh blood, bloody flesh...]
[How long, how long have you not eaten...]
【It’s light!Light! 】
[It’s so dazzling, so charming...]
The new pope took a deep breath. At this moment, the erosion intensity at the bottom of the well had reached an unbearable level. He might lose his mind in the next second, but he was still gritting his teeth and persisting.
He grabbed the chain with all his strength. In the darkness, which was unable to illuminate, this was his certificate of returning to the ground.
"You're here..."
Suddenly there was a voice from the darkness ahead, it was a real human voice.
The new pope knew who the other party was and strode directly towards him. The wound on his wrist continued to bleed. The secret blood ignited a pure flame, burning the darkness bit by bit.
The darkness was expelled, and the man's appearance was revealed... He was barely a person. His upper body's flesh and blood were extremely dry, his skin was as cracked as bark, clinging to the bones, and his hands were as slender as branches, because The death of flesh and blood, the bones that have become petrified and joined together over the years.
The new pope was not surprised that he became like this. Looking at the frightening head, it looked like a rugged skull covered with a layer of human skin. The eye sockets were deeply sunken, and there was a piece of dark.
"How have you been after all these years?"
The new pope asked him like an old friend, and the man answered calmly.
"What else can I do? I can't die, and I can't really live..."
He seemed to be laughing, his laughter was hoarse and fitful.
"That would make me so happy."
Hearing these new popes seemed extremely happy. He raised his hands and let his blood fall to the ground. This was fresh blood, powerful blood.
The calm was broken in an instant, and the man immediately knelt down and greedily sucked the blood of the new pope, as if it was a delicacy from the gods.
Seeing his ridiculous look, the new pope shook his head, stopped the bleeding, and took off his mask.
"To be honest, I can only take off this mask without any worries when I face you."
He lit a cigarette, illuminating the face that had been hidden behind the scenes.
It was a face that only a devil would have in a nightmare. The flesh and blood of the nose and lips were completely withered and shrunken, but underneath the dryness, the hideous scarlet flesh slowly squirmed. The gums and teeth were completely exposed, and went down along the neck. This weird life and death spread all the way to his chest, and his heart like a war drum beat in the rotten wood.
But amidst such hatred, a pair of clear eyes were embedded in the twisted flesh, with a faint white light glowing inside, and no emotion could be seen.
A cigarette was quickly finished, and the blood on the ground had already been licked clean. The two of them remained in an eerie silence until the man raised his head and looked at the hateful face and asked softly.
"What are you going to do?"
"Information, information about Lorenzo Medici."
The new pope dropped his cigarette butt and looked down at the man.
"He's dead, isn't he? What information does a dead man have?" he said.
"But what if he is not dead? Your Majesty," the new pope said.
When he heard the word "Your Majesty," the man's body suddenly froze, and then he began to tremble violently. He seemed to become crazy. The humble and submissive look just now disappeared. He was crying and laughing, withered. Roared under the body.
"how dare you!"
But what greeted him was the falling nail sword. The new pope stabbed the sword blade along his withered chest and nailed the sword blade to the ground, forcing him to bow his head to the new pope.
"How sad..."
The new pope laughed as he spoke. He enjoyed this kind of torture. After living at the bottom of the well for so long, the pain could no longer disturb this person, but the mental humiliation could make him angry, which was good.
"I'm in a hurry, so what on earth is Lorenzo Medici going to do?"
The new pope looked at the former pope, the old pope who had done nothing on the night of Advent, facing Seine Lothair's questioning. At this moment, he was crying and laughing, like a madman.
"I have no idea……"
The old pope murmured to himself, no matter how much the new Seni Lothair turned the blade and how much pain it caused, he just repeated these words.
"I do not know."
He kept repeating it, just as Seine Lothair had questioned him many years ago.
"I do not know."
(End of this chapter)