Falling into the Abyss

Due to the shortage of dormitories, Ethan and Samuel were placed in a room in the Puji district used to help the poor or the homeless. The furnishings in the room large enough for six people are simple but complete. The refrigerator and other furniture are almost embedded in the wall, and there is even an automatic beverage synthesizer. Tanithel has not been able to see them, but only sent another apprentice to bring them over.

In the room, four seemingly desolate Eve wanderers gathered together to talk about the huge requiem ceremony that will be held in the temple on the Holy Spirit Festival in two days. Ethan heard them saying that this time the Requiem Festival was not open to the public, and only invited priests, royal nobles or officials could participate, which was very mysterious. Ethan seemed to have heard them talking about Tanisel, saying that it was a pity that he couldn't see the Tianyinqin playing by the priest in white, and also said how wonderful the performance last year was even a fairyland. It's just that these conversations stopped abruptly when they saw them coming in, and the wanderers dispersed separately, seeming to be very jealous of them as apprentices.

Ethan greeted them friendly, and others greeted him with a nearly humble attitude.

It seems that priests in this country are indeed a very high status occupation. Even the apprentice can follow along.

Ethan became more and more curious. He imagined what it would be like to play Tianyinqin by Tanisel, and he was a little expectant.

Tanithel only showed up at dinner and took them to an octagonal building. Obviously this is the place where all the priests and apprentices dine. The long tables are laid out in rows, and the more advanced blue priests, white priests, and the only purple priest in the temple-the chief priest Theo Neil sits at the front of the hall. Several long rows of tables. As soon as he entered the door behind Tanisel, curious eyes were cast over. Tanithel is notorious for not accepting apprentices, but now he has accepted two apprentices for the first time. I have to wonder how sacred the two apprentices are.

Ethan suddenly felt that it was a foolish idea to come in with Tanithel. At the same time, a feeling of eating makes him feel a little uncomfortable...

Tanithel was still there to smile at all the priests or apprentices who passed by him. He even smiled so charmingly. Does this person always discharge like this casually?

The urge to hide him from others hovered in his mind for the third time.

Dinner is a buffet. Tanisel took his two "apprentices" very intimately to familiarize themselves with the place where the meal was served, pointed out where the bathroom was, and thoughtfully added a few more pieces to Ethan's plate. Eve’s specialty meat that looks like a deer and a horse, said “you are too skinny” as if half complaining, causing the priests in front and behind them to throw strange waves. look……

Then Tanithel actually planned to sit with them on a long ordinary table for dinner, instead of joining the three priests of the same rank as him at the front long table. Now they are not just the little ones around. The priests, even the high-ranking priests began to look at them. Ethan hurriedly said in a low voice, "Hey! Sit down where you should be!"

"I'm eating here today." Tanisir Shiran replied.

Samus still pretended to be deaf and dumb and didn't speak, just an expression of watching the show.

"Ethan, I'll take you to a place for evening prayers for a while. As for Samuel, you can stroll around at will. By the way, this one is for you." Tanithel handed Samuel a one that seemed to be ten thousand breaths. The ball thing, "If you want to leave the temple and go outside, take this. You can get in touch with me anytime."

Samuel put the small ball away and nodded at him.

During the evening prayer, almost all the priests and apprentices gathered in the prayer hall. Tanisel led Ethan through the empty and magnificent corridor, followed the revolving staircase all the way into the ground, and then turned along the winding corridor. A few turns. A tall stone door is criss-crossed with many tortuous straight lines. It seems that the pattern is somewhat similar to the line on the egg of the preface. Tanithel drew a few patterns on it, and a beam of light came out and scanned his pupils, the door Then slowly opened.

The pure and pure blue suddenly overflowed, and the originally gloomy underground corridor suddenly shone brightly. At the same time, a clean and clear breath turned into a breeze, making people unable to open their eyes for a while.

It’s just that I don’t know why, it’s obviously a light breath, but Ethan feels very uncomfortable, like the nausea he will have after eating something disgusting.

Ethan squinted his eyes and gradually adjusted to the sudden light, and then he could see the hall in front of him.

There is a tall statue of Eve woman in the empty hall. She has a dignified appearance and a holy look. She is graceful and moving, holding a plate in her hand.

On that plate, there are three eggs of Preface God.

Ethan was astonished, "This is... where you specialize in collecting the eggs of the Prologue?"

"Not bad." Tanithel took a step forward, and the door behind him closed suddenly. He came to the statue of the goddess, "If you can stay here for an hour every day, you may be able to suppress the development of mutations in your body. It's just that this method treats the symptoms rather than the root cause, and even the entropy in your body is too high to a certain extent. It may hurt you later, so be careful."

Ethan nodded gratefully, and walked closer to look at the blue things. For some reason, he didn't feel very excited, and even felt a little disgusted with that blue.

Tanithel suddenly asked, "Ethan, do you really want to be cured?"

Ethan glanced at him, and many memories flashed through his mind.

He remembered Roland’s cold eyes, the condemning eyes of the moral court, the verbal abuse of him, the alienated look of his father, the ignorance and betrayal he saw in the forbidden city, and the people’s attitude in the face of death. cruel. He also remembered the almost blissful sensation of killing and devouring, the feeling of being liberated from body to heart, and what the black man said to him.

As long as you accept, you can have everything and Tanithel.

Ethan hesitated, he whispered, "I don't know... I just... want to live..."

"But the so-called'alive' is just an illusion. A group of DNA temporarily combined to form embryos and cells, temporarily forming a fragile organism, the purpose is to continue to multiply and copy its own DNA. All this is short-lived, Only death is eternal.” Tanithel stretched out his hand and took out the flawed Order of God’s egg from the tray. “You know, I became a priest for this. I thought I just had to get it. Can save my father, because I believed in the power of Prologue so much at that time. I thought they were as kind as written in the scriptures. But in the end, it could not change anything, no matter how much Prologue energy was absorbed, the father’s body was still Withering day by day, I can almost see how entropy swallows his body little by little. At that time, I knew that life and order were just an illusion."

Tanithel's voice was very calm, but Ethan could see a continuous trace of sorrow in his drooping eyes. His heart ached, and he thought of his mother's haggard face.

His mother's once beautiful face became his deepest nightmare.

"But, don't you have nothing if you die?" Ethan said sadly, "No matter how much you worship Entropy God, they still won't have any kindness to you? Wouldn't they lead to death faster instead?"

"Entropy God and Preface God are two sides of the same body, and there is no way to separate them. Entropy God cannot exist without order force, and if there is no entropy force in Preface God, they would be polarized long ago. They are just higher than us Living bodies are creatures that understand the rules of the universe better than we do. As long as they have a purpose, as long as I can use them for them, there is a chance to profit from their confrontation and even achieve their own goals. This is actually what we believe in. Nature."

"Then..." Ethan looked at the priest seriously, "What is your ultimate goal?"

Tanithel was silent for a moment, and said in a soulless tone, "I hope that all orders and rules will be broken, I hope to blur the boundaries of life and death, and I hope everyone, whether alive or dead, can do it. Merging into one body, we don’t divide each other, there is no hatred or estrangement, there is no past or future, and we are together forever. That is true eternal life."

Ethan looked at the priest dumbfounded, as if he was shocked by his words and didn't know what to say.

The priest suddenly laughed, "I was kidding, did you scare you?"

Ethan breathed a sigh of relief and slapped his arm, "...Don't make such a joke!"

**********

On the day of the Holy Spirit Festival, the gate of the Temple of Red Moon was closed, and even the royal guards surrounded the temple layer by layer, and martial law was enforced in all blocks within a mile.

The soul sacrifice ceremony starts at twenty-five o'clock in the night (Eve Star has twenty-eight hours a day). Ethan and Samuel were lucky enough to be selected to wait in the prayer hall with a dozen other apprentices. There are about a hundred priests invited to participate today. Except for the chief priest who has not yet appeared, all the priests in white and blue are there. Tanisel is wearing the same formal sacrificial robes as the other priests in white, but still It is the most dazzling one among the crowd. In addition to high priests, there are about fifty Tsing Yi priests. Hadir, whom he had seen before, was among them. Ethan greeted him, but the other party seemed to pretend not to see him and did not respond.

Samuel smiled and said that he had been secretly in love with Tanithel for many years, and regarded Ethan's sudden appearance of the "disciple of the room" as a thorn in his eyes.

There is no illuminating lamp in the lobby, all the light comes from thousands of candles on the wall, reflecting the entire magnificent hall. Beginning at 24 o'clock, some noble and gorgeous Eves entered the hall one after another, and Hadir humbly led them to the rows of seats behind the priests. Ethan noticed that all of them, male and female ABOs, were covered with black gauze, and they rarely talked, and the whole hall was filled with a strange silence.

About half an hour to twenty-five o'clock, someone suddenly shouted, "Eve United and the King of the Star Kingdom——Your Majesty Krones is here——"

Everyone stood up to greet him, and Ethan quietly raised his head curiously. First, a few guard soldiers entered, and then the tall man who entered looked not much older than him. He was wearing a long black coat that was dragged to the ground. The blond and silver eyes that were the same as Tanithel were about family characteristics. Even the eyebrows and eyes seem to be somewhat similar, except that Tanithel is more refined, while King Eve is more masculine and handsome.

As the crowd bowed and saluted, the king went straight to the front without squinting his eyes. At this time, the chief priest had already appeared in person to greet him. King Eve exchanged a few words with him, then turned to Tanithel behind him, even hugged him, and talked with him intimately like an elder.

Ethan heard the whispers of several apprentices near him.

"The king really cares about Tanithel's sacrifice!"

"Of course, the king has no heirs until now, and the outside world has been rumored that he may not be able to bear children. If this continues, Tanithel is his heir."

"But he is already a white priest, how could he be his heir?"

"It's not easy. At that time, just find an excuse to let him leave the temple."

Ethan was shocked, it turns out there is such a reason...

No wonder Tanithel was so lawless before, and even dared to steal the Egg of the God of Order without authorization.

Now he was even more suspicious. With such a noble status, why did Tanisir risk going to earth? Why did you take risks for him again and again? Is his ultimate goal really the same as what he said?

When the time is up, the festival begins on time. The gate also closed with a bang.

At that moment Ethan suddenly felt a little uneasy.

It's too quiet, the air is like stagnant. There was no one to speak in the huge hall. All the priests and visitors were silent, and they couldn't see their faces under the layers of black veil. They didn't know who those people were and what they were thinking about. And the sky outside the window that should have been dark was glowing with a strange crimson. I don't know if it was an illusion. A faint rancid smell permeated the scent of sandalwood burning candles.

Ethan suddenly began to wonder, is this really a routine ceremony to commemorate the dead?

Silently, Sionier stood on the preaching platform, placed an old and heavy book of unknown age on the platform, and opened it gently.

He said in Eve language, "Eternity is about to end, and the sleeping king is about to wake up."

Ethan's body shuddered suddenly, and his breath seemed to be suddenly strangled by an invisible hand.

Did he hear it wrong?

Are the people on the stage really reading this sentence?

He turned his head and looked around, but the people around him just looked forward with a pair of focused and somewhat enthusiastic eyes, and didn't seem to feel anything wrong.

Sionier continued, "When the order collapses, the worms mourn in the empty earth, the shadows swallow the entire galaxy, and the god's extradition will open the door of chaos. That is the end of the old world and the beginning of the new world, the sea sleeping The island will be awakened with the sleeping prisoners, the forgotten gods will swallow all the illusions of reason, the source of foolishness and chaos will nourish the entire universe, and we will witness heaven!"

His mellow voice was filled with a certain longing passion, which caused the crowd to suddenly shout joyously.

How is this going? Ethan suddenly stood up from his seat and wanted to leave, but at this time he saw Tanisel slowly walking towards the "stage" in front of Tianyinqin.

Almost at the same time, a soldier stood in front of their row, staring at him with indifference, "Please sit down."

The deterrence in that voice made Ethan know that if he did not obey at this moment, he might be forced to sit down even more. He suddenly felt that his reaction was too big, but he heard what the black man in the dream told him in reality. Maybe he just saw the words accidentally somewhere, and then stored them in the subconscious. That kind of dream...

Thinking that Tanithel was still there, he hesitated to sit back.

The handsome priest in white stepped on a disc in the center of the stage full of pedals. It seemed to be a table used to balance the weight of the body, and it would not make Tianyinqin sound. He paused there for a moment, then turned to look at The O'Neill.

His instructor exclaimed, "The Great Ambush Chaos has already planted the seeds of chaos in the world. This kind of seed will begin to take root today, and eventually he will throw more seeds around the universe. He accepts the core of the universe. The gift of God, becoming its incarnation in the Preface God universe, will lead us to eternity!"

As soon as the voice fell, Tanithel suddenly took the first step.

An ethereal and distant sound of music gurgled out along with his moving clouds and flowing water, and the huge glazed disc intertwined in the air into a dazzling round dance. Tanisel's white robe blossomed into a beautiful lotus in the air. His footsteps were smart and relaxed, and his posture stretched and elegant, just like a white swan dancing on an ice lake. With his dance steps, the moving music trembled in the solidified air. Ethan had never heard such music, as if it did not belong to the world, but fell from the eternal sky.

The music is undoubtedly beautiful, but there is something wrong in this beauty. After listening for a long time, I felt that the whole person was being sucked in by something, and there was no way to concentrate, and my thoughts seemed to be captured by the melody.

The dance steps of the priest in white became denser, with a pious smile on his beautiful face, and the rhythm was woven like a fine spider silk, driving everything in the hall to tremble with its frequency. Ethan noticed that the people around him, including Samuel, seemed to have a hypnotized expression on their faces, their eyes were staring forward, and they didn’t know what they were looking at. focal length.

Those empty expressions that seemed to have no soul made him a little scared, and at the same time his neck suddenly began to itch and sore.

Oops……

How could this be? Ethan didn't understand, he wanted to escape, but found his body unable to move. It turned out that at some point, the rhythm had entered his brain, and he couldn't control himself not to listen to the fatal temptation music like a mandala.

Buzzing in his head, it seems to be responding to the endless Tianyin Qin music. The more I listened, the more I felt that everything in the surroundings became unreal, and there was a kind of panic like in a dream.

"Ethan."

The gentle voice suddenly heard shocked Ethan's body.

He slowly turned his head stiffly and saw the beautiful woman sitting beside him.

She is about thirty years old. She has long dark brown curly hair that seems to be chocolate-colored silk satin, and her beautiful emerald green eyes are like emerald lake water. There is a breathtaking beauty, staring for a long time as if even the soul can Lost in there. Her skin is so white, so white that we can almost see the blue blood vessels, so white that it seems to reflect a faint candlelight. His lips were so blushing, as if they were bitten and exuded. Her hands are so white and slender, so suitable for pressing the strings of a cello. Her ankles are so slender, so light that they seem to be able to fly.

"Mom... Mom..." Ethan choked.

The mother in front of me was exactly what she looked like in the three most beautiful days after she passed her adulthood.

"Ethan, my baby." She stretched out her hand to stroke the corner of his eyes that was tearing uncontrollably, her fingers shuddering so coldly. There was a rotten smell coming from her body, but Ethan didn't feel the smell anymore.

On the day he entered the forbidden city, he knew that he might never see his mother again in this life. Later in the dream, the man said that his mother was dead, and he was also very numb, as if he thought that would happen sooner or later.

But until now, he didn't know how much he missed his mother. Missing the feeling of being touched by those gentle hands on her cheeks and the top of her head, the blueberry pie she baked for him, and the melodious piano sound coming from her house.

"Mom, I miss you so much..." At the moment she reached out and hugged him, he murmured this sentence on her shoulder. The mother can no longer smell the old eau de toilette, but the familiar touch still tells him that this is the mother, the beautiful woman who gave birth to him.

"Ethan, your father has been waiting for you." The mother gently stroked the back of his head.

"Wait for me...?" Ethan shook his head with a sorrowful smile, "No, he has severed relations with me..."

She chuckled and said softly in his ear, "Silly boy, I'm not talking about my husband, but your real father."

Ethan's body stiffened.

However, her whispering continued, and the fluffy voice made Ethan fall into an ice cave, "I was just engaged to my husband at that time, and then he came to my dream. He is so beautiful and gentle, begging me Give birth to him. I can’t refuse him.”

Ethan broke free from his mother's arms, ignoring the tears on his face, "Mom, what are you talking about!"

"At the moment when the gods died, he had walked alone on the earth for thousands of years, deceiving and tempting stupid lambs." She chanted, but her fair and young skin was rapidly aging and her lips were ruddy. It quickly became shriveled, showing yellow teeth, and those bright green eyes also rotted in an instant, leaving only two cavities, "You are his pride, my baby!"