In the end, the monk was forced to give Yin Chen fifty gold coins.
Three gold coins as compensation for the pork chop, and the fee for treating His Excellency the Bishop… came to forty-seven in total.
Yin Chen openly engaged in a forced transaction, yet not a single person present dared say a word against it.
The most outrageous part was that after emptying their pockets, the two monks really could produce fifty gold coins in compensation on the spot.
Rich indeed. As expected of the lackeys serving a local emperor. No wonder they behaved so arrogantly.
It filled an entire large cloth pouch, heavy in the hand. Merely touching it was enough to lift one’s mood.
Yin Chen casually tossed the money away. It traced a beautiful arc through the air before landing directly in Song Zang’s arms with a smack.
He leisurely put on his silk top hat, rested a hand on an ebony cane even more luxurious than His Excellency the Bishop’s, and let his gaze fall carelessly on Sister Pudu. “Let’s go. I’ll let you see the truth with your own eyes.”
The two battered monks dared to be angry but not speak. Having lost so much face in front of a crowd of lunatics, resentment burned inside them, and their vicious gazes swept over everyone in the dining hall as if in warning.
Awooo!
The very next second, a madwoman standing on a table lifted the hem of her clothes.
She was extremely fat, exposing the savage, mottled scars across her enormous belly. Twisting her waist in a bizarre posture, she abruptly jumped off the table and charged toward the monk while cackling and shrieking.
An orderly stepped forward to stop her, but she slipped from his grasp.
“Ah! Stay away from me, lunatic!!” the monk who had lost one eye screamed. His voice cracked in terror, and he collapsed onto the floor.
Pfft.
The woman suddenly laughed and stopped in her tracks. The madness on her face vanished in an instant.
She stared at the monk with open mockery. “That’s enough to scare you? Sir, are you afraid of the scars on a woman’s stomach? Feeling guilty?”
“…L-Lydia?” The monk’s face twitched as uncontrollable, distorted terror surfaced in his eyes. “You’re Lydia? You’re not dead?!”
“How could I die so easily before coming to claim your life?”
The woman’s laughter turned sinister. She threw herself down on top of the monk without restraint, using her overwhelming weight to pin his terrified, thrashing limbs beneath her. Screams and sounds of struggling rose one after another.
The orderlies anxiously tried to drag her away, even resorting to yanking hard on her hair from behind, but it was still useless.
She felt no pain at all. Copying what Yin Chen had done earlier, she pulled a fork hidden inside her clothing, raised it high, then stabbed downward viciously!
The sharpened point of the dining fork plunged straight into the monk’s remaining healthy eye.
The thick scent of blood burst outward and clung heavily to the air. Now the others became genuinely excited. One after another, they waved their plates and eagerly copied her, attacking one another’s eyes.
The other monk burst into tears in terror. Trembling, he turned and fled the dining hall without caring about his companion’s miserable state, shouting as he ran, “Baron Capet, save me! Please save me! I still have two whole bags of gold coins! I’ll give them all to you!!”
The woman’s laughter grew shrill. Ignoring the whips the orderlies were frantically lashing across her back, she raised both hands again without hesitation and stabbed the fork into the face of the man beneath her. Once. Twice. Again.
Flesh tore apart and bloody foam scattered everywhere. The woman carved his face until it became completely unrecognizable, then finished with one final, clean killing blow. The dining fork plunged precisely into his carotid artery.
The scene had become so chaotic that Lin Xing was still clapping and egging everyone on like an idiot.
Xu Wei Ran neither stopped the woman nor helped the orderlies. Helplessly, he pulled Lin Xing down from the table, dragged him beside Song Zang’s wheelchair, confirmed that no one nearby was paying attention to them, then mercilessly punched Lin Xing straight in the face.
“Lin, what the hell are you doing today?” His brows knitted tightly as he scolded him under his breath.
Lin Xing toppled backward from the punch, his face covered in blood from his nose. He finally seemed to recover from his excited state.
He stared blankly for a moment before saying hoarsely, “I’ve gotten kind of stupid… Oh, right. Where’s my leech juice?”
“What leech juice? Oh, you mean the medicine Yin Chen gave you.” Xu Wei Ran scratched his head, thought for a moment, bent down to search Lin Xing’s pockets, and pulled out a tiny bottle of brownish-green liquid.
He yanked out the wooden stopper and poured the entire thing over Lin Xing’s face. He did not waste the last few drops either, forcibly tipping them straight into Lin Xing’s mouth.
“Hurry up and wake your brain up. If you keep acting this stupid, you’ll freeze to death in the snow one day without even realizing it.”
“Mm. I understand. Thanks, bro.”
Lin Xing sat limply on the floor, one slightly trembling hand gripping the edge of Song Zang’s wheelchair.
“You okay? Wipe your nose first.” Song Zang picked up a handkerchief from the table and passed it over.
Meeting Song Zang’s somewhat worried gaze, Lin Xing looked exhausted. “I suspect part of my frontal lobe got damaged. I’ll find time to ask Yin Chen later… maybe there’s still something he can do. If you guys notice me acting wrong, stay far away from me.”
“No. I’m partly responsible for you becoming like this. I’ll find a way to help cure you too,” Song Zang said seriously.
Lin Xing knew exactly what Song Zang meant. The horrifying nightmare from last night had already been branded deep into his soul, leaving behind a layer of fear he did not even dare recall.
“No. I was just forced to become unlucky. Extremely unlucky… I really did want to kill Sister Pudu, and I actually tried several times without succeeding. That old bastard God deliberately made me suffer like crazy because of it.” Lin Xing shook his head as he spoke, struggling upright and wiping the filth from his face.
He tucked away the handkerchief and continued, “But I have a feeling that after escaping from that dream alive, I probably won’t keep suffering for no reason anymore. As long as my brain can be fixed, there’s still hope.”
“Wait, what dream?” Xu Wei Ran looked completely lost.
“Last night, Lin Xing accidentally ended up inside my nightmare.” Song Zang swept his gaze across the agitated crowd around them. “This isn’t a good place to talk about it. I’ll explain everything properly when we have time.”
Xu Wei Ran nodded. “Okay. I’ll deal with something first.”
With that, he pulled the whip from behind his waist, cracked it beautifully through the air, then efficiently lashed two patients who were attacking each other.
The loud crack of the whip brought many people back to their senses. Xu Wei Ran moved quickly, joining the other orderlies in pulling apart the entangled patients. Before long, the chaotic situation was brought under control.
As for the woman who had brutally murdered the monk…
Her name was Lydia. She was the monk’s younger sister. At sixteen, she had been sold to a wealthy merchant for money. In exchange, that merchant bought her brother a position as a monk.
He did not need to personally endure rigorous study or pass the numerous examinations. He directly replaced someone else’s identity and smoothly entered the bishop’s inner circle.
That was right. The Diocese of Carlisle truly was this corrupt. Power, official positions, even sacred clerical appointments supposedly beyond violation could all be bought with enough money.
Even the wealthy merchant himself held the title of deacon within the Church and enjoyed the monthly benefits distributed by the diocese.
Lydia became pregnant. The merchant was delighted and gave her brother even more help, eventually earning him Bishop Levis’s favor.
Meanwhile, Lydia, imprisoned inside a lavish cage, tried everything she could to escape the merchant’s clutches. Even as she approached childbirth, she continued looking for a way out… But someone as insignificant as her could accomplish nothing struggling like a trapped animal before overwhelming power.
To prevent Lydia from deliberately aborting the child and angering the merchant, the brother who had once depended on her for survival became completely different. His face twisted savagely as though possessed by a demon, and he personally cut the baby out of her belly and presented it to the wealthy merchant.
And Lydia, whose abdomen had been brutally cut open?
That very night, she was casually thrown into a narrow, gloomy cattle shed somewhere in Nar Town, half her body carelessly covered with hay to conceal any traces.
Her brother never looked back. Beneath the massive hooves of a black ox, she struggled weakly and nearly bled to death there in despair.
Until a witch found her, rescued her, and brought her back to a small red-brick house.
The witch crushed strange herbs, mixed them with an eerie black-red medicinal liquid, and applied it inside Lydia’s ruptured womb.
Then the witch found a fine needle and thread and stitched Lydia’s split flesh back together one stitch at a time before forcing her to drink a bowl of foul-smelling, thick green frog soup.
When the weather grew warm, the witch drove her out of the house and berated her as a weak, useless coward who was far too softhearted.
And so Lydia, after enduring endless torment, was lucky enough to survive.
But she really was close to going insane.
Scorching rage, distorted violence, fear and terror rooted deep in her bones, and the image of that beautiful witch standing with her hands on her hips and chewing her out mercilessly… all tore madly through her mind.
Before completely losing her sanity, Lydia sold the rings and jewelry the wealthy merchant had casually tossed her way, accumulated a large sum of money, and paid her own way into Lipton Asylum.
Her horrifying experiences had left her deeply traumatized by beautiful faces and frail, slender bodies.
So Lydia began eating frantically, bribing the orderlies to buy meat for her until she finally raised herself into someone broad, sturdy, and enormously fat. Those relentless efforts, day after day and night after night, finally allowed her to obtain what she wanted.
She personally inflicted the same savage, brutal revenge upon her brother. No one could pull away her mountain-like body.
“I no longer have any obsession left, sir. I made a mistake. Punish me however you wish.”
As she finished speaking, Lydia touched her scar-covered stomach and revealed a relieved smile.
Dried blood clung to her fleshy, smiling face, making her look somewhat gruesome and frightening.
Yet Xu Wei Ran smiled too. “Why would I punish you? You did very well! The Five Books of Moses say life for life, eye for eye. You personally killed your enemy without harming any innocent person. Naturally, the Lord won’t blame you, and neither will I.”
Ahem.
The nun who had been ignored coughed twice, her gaze dissatisfied.
“Oh, right. But you violated the rule against making loud noise during meals. So how about three days in confinement?”
Lydia froze briefly, then lowered her head as tears entered her eyes. “Sir, thank you for understanding.”
She had assumed they would suspect her of demonic possession, denounce her as some terrifying, venom-hearted madwoman, then lash her to death with holy-water whips.
She had never expected Xu Wei Ran to let her off so lightly.
Xu Wei Ran sighed. “Then I’ll be going. Rest properly. And even if you love eating meat, watch your health.”
He left the rest alone. After bidding the nun farewell, he resumed his job of pushing Song Zang’s wheelchair. Lin Xing followed them out as well.
After all, they still needed to hurry over to the chapel and enjoy the spectacle of Bishop Levis being “scared into pissing himself” by a corpse.
“The Church in this world is disgusting. It’s exactly like those corrupt ancient governments where official positions were openly bought and sold. Same rotten breed wherever you go.”
Xu Wei Ran complained as he walked, recounting Lydia’s story.
Song Zang looked thoughtful. “The witch she mentioned should be your contact in the Cross Society, the tavern proprietress… Gina, right?”
“That’s her. Looks like Gina is a good person! I thought the Cross Society was some evil cult organization.”
“Not necessarily evil, but it’s definitely a mixed bag with every kind of person inside. Father Riley, for example. Sister Pudu just said he was a Satanist.”
Lin Xing chimed in, “Exactly. I suspect the biggest thing this organization’s core members have in common is that they all possess a certain amount of 【spirituality】 and special abilities, and they all firmly oppose Catholicism… But when it comes to the other details, that’s harder to say.”
Xu Wei Ran turned his head. “You seem pretty normal right now. Is your brain fixed or not?”
“My attention still isn’t great. I’ve actually been controlling myself this whole time.” Lin Xing paused, then answered with complete honesty, “I have an incredibly strong urge to sprint outside and buy pork chops. Extremely strong. Yin Chen’s food is way too good. I’m starving.”
“…I really can’t with you.”
Fortunately, the scene the three encountered next completely extinguished Lin Xing’s violently surging appetite.
Bishop Levis lay unconscious on a pew inside the chapel, his face deathly pale.
One of his attendants had covered his lower body with a cloak, but it could not hide the faint gamey stink and foul odor.
He had been frightened into losing control of both his bladder and bowels, and the room was far too warm. The longer the waste sat there, the stronger its stench became.
Everyone stared straight ahead and pretended not to notice. No one dared personally pull down His Excellency the Bishop’s trousers, afraid he would hold a grudge afterward. Besides, this was a chapel. Publicly taking off one’s trousers would be an affront to God and utterly improper.
Worst of all, the priest’s corpse, which had been rotting for who knew how long, had finally been exposed before everyone’s eyes.
Two completely different stenches layered over one another and mingled with the fragrance of the scented candles. Somehow, the resulting smell became even more horrifying, as though the air itself were filled with countless tiny carrion maggots.
Lin Xing turned and fled. Unable to suppress his nausea any longer, he clung to the trunk of a dead tree and vomited violently.
Meanwhile, Sister Pudu sat collapsed beside the confessional door, clutching the cross pendant on her chest so tightly that her knuckles turned white. Her hollow gaze lifted toward the other cross hanging high overhead.
“Lord, was I wrong? Was it my stupidity, my obsession, and my madness that completely blinded me?
“How could he be dead? How dare he die? If he was going to die, fine, but why did he deceive me into committing so many unspeakable crimes…”
“Little lamb, I am not dead.”
A withered, ancient voice drifted eerily outward.
At the sound, Sister Pudu’s face twisted violently. She whipped around and glared viciously at the rotting corpse in the darkness, roaring gloomily, “Stop spewing bullshit, you shit-maggot born from a brothel madam’s □□! I curse you to have a black goat’s horn rammed straight through your □□, be cast into Hell’s crucible and burned alive ten million times, never to reincarnate for all eternity!”
Elio’s Note: The □□ blocks in this chapter are already present in the Chinese source. I’m leaving them exactly as they are rather than guessing what was censored or lost.
“Oh, irritable child. Your spirit has been damaged.
“You need the calming guidance of the Bible.”
“Calm my ass! You child-molesting, perverted old bastard! You deserve to have been dead for eight hundred years with nobody bothering to collect your corpse! Fuck off!”
Everyone in the chapel, who could hear every word clearly: …
No one had ever witnessed this ferocious side of her temper before. For a moment, nobody dared make a sound. Even the other nuns exchanged stunned looks.
Xu Wei Ran and Li Ming looked at each other and silently discovered that both had widened their eyes in perfect unison.
Yin Chen merely curved his lips without the slightest surprise and ignored it.
After this, Sister Pudu would probably be completely willing to cooperate with them.
As for right now, he still had a patient to attend to.
Yin Chen stood beside Levis and put on white gloves, then lightly patted the side of his face.
No reaction. Time for something stronger. Expressionless, Yin Chen slapped him viciously. Levis was knocked straight off the pew and rolled several times before stopping.
The crisp, resounding slap tore through the air. The already quiet chapel instantly became deathly silent.
One of the accompanying clerics gathered his courage. “Lord Capet, you… isn’t that a little too…”
Before he could finish condemning him, however, Levis slowly regained consciousness.
A vivid red handprint stamped across his face, he looked around blankly and struggled upright. “What happened? My head hurts terribly. I feel as though I had an extraordinarily frightening nightmare…”
“You weren’t dreaming. Father Riley’s corpse is in the confessional. Would you like to see it again?” Yin Chen curved his lips slightly.
“Ah, n-no need.” Levis’s face went several shades whiter, and his gaze shifted evasively.
He pretended to regain his composure, as though he were still the dignified bishop from before, and looked toward one of his attendants. “John, take me somewhere to change. Companions, and Baron Capet, please forgive my temporary discourtesy and offense. I will return as soon as possible to handle matters.”
“Who said you could leave?”
Just then, Yin Chen raised his cane and lightly pressed its tip against Levis’s chest from above.
“…Lord Capet?”
“What are you afraid of?” Yin Chen asked with a half-smile. “Father Riley has been your old friend and spiritual confidant for many years. Yet your behavior tells me you feel not the slightest grief over his death. Instead, you’re desperate to escape this place, frightened enough to lose control of your bladder and bowels. Look at the undignified state you’re in, Your Excellency.”
One of the clerics accompanying him flushed crimson with rage. “Lord Capet, even if you possess a noble title, the Church is not something you can bully! How can you humiliate…”
Yin Chen could not be bothered listening. He knocked the man unconscious with a swing of his cane, turned back, and continued interrogating Levis. “Tell me. What exactly are you afraid of?
“There is some secret between you and Father Riley, something utterly shameful, isn’t there? Otherwise, as bishop, why would you leave your close friend stationed at an asylum as though he had been exiled, with no hope of advancement for the rest of his life?”
The refined, handsome skin of Levis’s face twitched. Gritting his teeth, he stubbornly held out. “I… I… It isn’t like that. You’re slandering me out of thin air beneath the Lord’s own gaze. Aren’t you afraid of divine punishment?”
Yin Chen was not at all surprised by the bishop’s stubborn resistance. Nor was he in any hurry. He lifted his eyes toward the confessional with an amused smile and said mockingly, “Sister Pudu, you should have plenty of methods for torturing people. Why don’t you take responsibility for interrogating him and show me your sincerity in cooperating with us?”
“…No problem.”
Sister Pudu strode over, took a deep breath, picked up a cowhide whip soaked in holy water, and suddenly swung it before anyone could react!
Bishop Levis, already bearing a handprint on his face, rolled his eyes and passed out once again.
A chunk of flesh had been torn from his face, exposing bone underneath. Everywhere the holy water touched produced eerie, piercing sizzles, followed by the spreading smell of scorched meat.
The dense crowd of clerics accompanying him finally could no longer sit still. Their expressions were half terrified, half furious. They did not dare provoke Yin Chen, who was both a noble and a doctor, but why should the mere head nun of an asylum dare raise a whip against a bishop?
Relying on their numbers, they began loudly condemning her one after another.
“Cooperation? What cooperation?!”
“What are you planning to do to His Excellency the Bishop?”
“This is outrageous! Have you been plotting to rebel against the authority of the Church all along?”
Sister Pudu turned a deaf ear to the noise. Looking at the burned wound on Levis’s face, she subtly licked her lips, a strange light flowing through her dark eyes.
She felt for the warm cross pendant against her chest, her tone soft and devout. “Lord, if You permit me to continue harvesting the □□ of sinful men and depriving them of the right to produce descendants for You… then grant me one tiny sign.
“Your believer, who has found her way back from error, is willing to handle all the dirty work on Your behalf.”
The instant she finished speaking, the loud cry of an infant split the sky.
Bright daylight flared. The heavy snow piled over the rooftop slid down in sheets, rapidly melting as though spring had arrived.
“That’s the Holy Son! The Holy Son is awake! Sister Pudu, what are you waiting for? Hurry and hand the Holy Son back to the Church!”
“The Holy Son should never be left in your care! Don’t think you can throw your weight around just because you have Him!”
Amid the overlapping shouts, only the monk who had originally barged into the dining hall remained silent. Pale-faced, he retreated step by step, trying to distance himself from this group of fools seeking their own deaths.
Sure enough, the icy smile curling Yin Chen’s lips was filled with absolute mockery. With one hand, he lifted a heavy wooden pew and hurled it directly toward the loudest cluster.
Bang!
Immediately afterward, Lin Xing and Xu Wei Ran moved in tacit agreement. Each picked up a pew and smashed it viciously over the clerics’ heads without holding back in the slightest.
Their overbearing attitudes, foolishly arrogant rebukes, combined with the horrifying events Lydia had experienced… were more than enough to demonstrate the corruption of the Diocese of Carlisle.
Spending too long in excessively revered positions, enjoying the pleasure of issuing orders, drenched in vast quantities of gold and silver and showered with privileges and preferential treatment, had gradually pampered them into useless pigs convinced of their own superiority.
No wonder the Church’s authority was steadily weakening beneath the pressure of the Empire.
The closer one came to the center of power, the less likely one was to encounter anyone truly holy and innocent.
In reality, almost every one of them deserved to die.
Li Ming’s methods of killing were gentler. She preferred slow and silent suffocation, such as holding someone beneath the holy-water basin while listening to the delightful sounds of thrashing and sizzling burns.
Or… gathering up the large amounts of hair that kept falling from her head and knotting it into a thin, strong, portable rope, then catching someone off guard and simply strangling them to death.
In the blink of an eye, within only a few short seconds, the people from the Church were completely annihilated beneath the players’ coordinated violence, without the slightest ability to resist.
“That weak? I haven’t even had my fill.” Xu Wei Ran loosened his knuckles. “Old Lin, help me move them. We’ll throw them into the basement and lock them up first.”
“Sure.”
Meanwhile, Song Zang, who had been silently designated as unnecessary for combat, was lowering his head and staring at his trouser leg.
Ever since first entering the chapel, an unusual suffocating sensation had begun rising inside him, as though some malicious existence were watching him from far away.
It seemed to peer silently at his every movement through the empty eyes of the rotting corpse inside the confessional.
On the ankle that the crazy old man had grabbed that morning, a greasy black handprint gradually surfaced as time passed.
The cotton-linen fabric slowly became muddy and damp, sticking tightly to his thin, fragile ankle and clinging to his skin.
A faint sound of water came from beneath his feet. Within the foul, filthy air, it seemed as though some living thing was being born in a frenzy, about to break through the soil from inside his trouser leg…