Chapter 128: Apostles of the Crying Moon

Lia lay in bed for an entire day.

Klein fulfilled his promise, perfectly playing the role of a diligent caretaker.

Three meals, afternoon tea, and late-night snacks—not a single one was missed, all delivered punctually to her bedside.

From her initial full-body discomfort, Lia had eventually reached the point where she could command him to go to the kitchen for honey pancakes she suddenly craved without batting an eye.

The recovery of her spiritual power was slower than expected.

It wasn’t until the following morning that she felt her limbs truly belonged to her again, allowing her to barely manage to get out of bed and walk around.

“I’m going out.”

Wearing her dressing gown, Lia stood by the window, watching the grass in the courtyard glistening under the sunlight.

“Denied.”

Klein sat in the room’s single-seater sofa, flipping through a book on magical theory he had taken from Lia’s shelf.

Lia turned around.

“I need to breathe fresh air and get some sun; it’s beneficial for physical recovery.”

“The ventilation in this room is excellent, and the sunlight can reach inside.”

Klein didn’t even look up.

“This is illegal imprisonment.”

“This is part of the contract.”

Lia ground her back teeth, letting out a low, huffing sound.

Just as she was preparing to argue her case based on logic, the bedroom door was knocked upon.

The butler’s aged and anxious voice drifted in from outside.

“Lord! Miss Lia! The butler from the City Lord’s manor is here; he says there is a matter of utmost urgency and requests an audience!”

Lia and Klein exchanged a glance.

Klein stood up and opened the door.

The old butler of the City Lord’s manor stood outside; his usually meticulous formal wear was now covered in wrinkles, his face was drenched in sweat, and his lips were trembling.

“Lord Klein! Miss Lia!”

Seeing the two of them, he nearly collapsed to his knees. “I beg of you, please save the Lord Count!”

“Speak slowly. What happened?”

Lia braced herself against the wall.

“The soul fire in the manor that is linked to the Lord Count’s life has been flickering violently since last night, and now… now it is so weak it could extinguish at any moment!”

“This means the Lord Count is on the brink of life and death!”

Lia’s expression darkened.

“Something has happened to Valerius.”

“Where did he go?” Klein asked.

“I don’t know!”

The old butler was on the verge of tears. “The Lord Count locked himself in his bedroom the day before yesterday. Yesterday afternoon, he suddenly rushed into the study and then rode out alone on a horse, taking no one with him!”

“The study?” Lia caught the word.

Klein’s tone brook no argument.

“Take us there.”

***

The City Lord’s study.

The place was a mess; many books had been pulled haphazardly from the shelves and thrown onto the floor.

This was where the Lord Count had been searching for a while.

A servant pointed tremblingly at a shelf that had a large empty space.

“What did he take?” Lia asked.

“It seemed… it seemed to be a very old book of poetry with a deep blue cover.”

Klein walked to that bookshelf and extended his hand, hovering it over the empty spot.

Blue magic seeped into the wooden grain of the shelf like a living thing, analyzing the residual information.

Ripples of light formed in the air.

A blurred image composed of magical dust unfolded before him.

It was a hand—a hand wearing a family ring—pulling a book from this spot.

The book was flipped open.

The image froze on a yellowed illustration.

The illustration depicted a ruined temple standing in a dense forest, the temple’s spire shaped like a crescent moon.

The image vanished.

“To the west, the Moon Whisper Forest,” Klein withdrew his hand and stated the location immediately.

He walked to the desk, pulled a military map of Leo City’s surroundings from a pile, and ran his fingertip across it, finally landing on an unremarkable mark.

“This is the place. There is an abandoned Ancient Moon Temple here.”

“Let’s go,” Lia said decisively.

***

Horse hooves shattered the silence of the forest.

Klein directly summoned a ghostly blue warhorse composed of pure magic.

The horse galloped through the woods, ignoring any topographical obstacles; its speed was so great that it was nothing more than a blurred streak of light.

Lia sat in front of Klein, completely encircled in his arms. The whistling wind was kept at bay by an invisible barrier.

Soon, the abandoned temple appeared at the end of their vision.

The broken walls stood silent under the setting sun.

In front of the temple, a black steed lay on the ground, having been dead for some time.

It was Valerius’s mount.

The two vaulted off the horse and hurried toward the temple.

The interior of the temple was empty, with traces of battle scattered across the floor; several pools of uncoagulated blood were exceptionally striking against the stone slabs.

“Here.” In an unremarkable corner, Lia discovered a staircase leading underground.

There were signs that the entrance to the stairs had been forcibly breached.

Without hesitation, the two went down.

A cold aura mixed with the scent of blood and decay wafted toward them.

The end of the stairs led to a small catacomb.

Torches burned on the walls, their light and shadows flickering.

Count Valerius lay in a pool of blood in the center of the catacomb, a horrific piercing wound in his chest with blood still pouring out.

His armor was shattered, and he was at his last gasp, his chest barely rising and falling.

And beside him stood three people.

The leader was a woman wearing a gray robe.

Beside her were two men dressed in the same fashion.

Upon the chests of all three hung an emblem of a crying moon.

Hearing the footsteps, Ella slowly turned around.

She saw Klein, and then Lia beside him; there was no surprise on her face, as if she had long expected this.

“Two more lost souls have arrived.”

Ella’s voice echoed in the catacomb, ethereal and eerie.

“One appears to be an Eighth-Circle mage from the capital, and the other is… hm? A rather interesting little girl.”

Her gaze lingered on Lia for a brief moment before shifting away, appearing to disregard her completely.

“Are you here to save him?”

Ella pointed to the nearly dead Valerius at her feet. “What a ridiculous and pathetic gesture. You wish to salvage a piece of dross destined to be discarded by the era.”

Klein did not speak; he merely took a step forward, shielding Lia behind him.

The temperature in the catacomb plummeted.

Ella felt the oppressive pressure, but the smile on her face did not change.

“The thing you rely on is nothing more than this.”

She opened her arms as if embracing the entire world.

“Do you think you possess the truth? You use formulas to frame the world and magic to twist reality; you build tall towers, categorize ranks, and complacently believe yourselves to be the masters of the world.”

“How foolish.”

“You are like maggots crawling upon the rotting corpse of a giant, fighting over flesh that has already turned, yet never wondering why this corpse rots or where it will ultimately go.”

The two men beside her stepped forward expressionlessly, standing between her and Klein.

“This world is sick. From the moment of its birth, it has been sick.”

Ella’s voice began to grow high-pitched, tinged with fanaticism.

“Life itself is an error. Emotions, desires, thoughts… these are all breeding bacteria. They make the world noisy and chaotic, filled with meaningless suffering.”

“Everything you do—studying, researching, fighting, protecting—is merely applying powder and rouge to this rotting corpse, delaying its inevitable collapse. Your struggles are meaningless.”

Lia furrowed her brows.

“So, your so-called ‘purification’ is to kill everyone?” Lia spoke coldly.

Ella’s gaze finally fell back onto Lia, carrying a hint of condescending scrutiny.

“Kill? No, we do not call it killing.”

“We call it ‘The Return’.”

“Returning everything to its original form—absolute, eternal silence.”

“In silence, there is no pain, no conflict, no right or wrong, and no distinction between existence and nothingness. That is the ultimate harmony, the perfect form.”

“We are the Apostles of the Crying Moon. We come at our Lord’s command to lead this world toward ultimate harmony.”

“To guide this lost world back to the silence it deserves.”

“What exactly is this ‘Lord’ you worship?” Klein asked, his voice icy.

“The Lord?”

Ella began to laugh, her laughter filled with pity and fanaticism. “The Lord is not a ‘thing’. The Lord is the end, and also the beginning. The final destination of all things, and the only truth.”

She stroked the emblem on her chest, her eyes growing glazed.

“The ‘Lord’ once walked upon the earth. He saw through the vanity of life and chose self-destruction. But His sorrow did not vanish; He left behind the Holy Emblem as guidance.”

“He is waiting. Waiting for this world to rot to the extreme, waiting for the final bell to toll.”

Ella’s voice suddenly became low and mysterious, like some ancient incantation.

“In the future-past of the past, and the past-future of the future, the Lord shall reappear.”

“When the river of time no longer flows forward, when the chains of causality completely shatter, when existence itself loses meaning, the Lord shall return from eternal silence to personally erase this final, discordant noise.”

“You mortals cannot understand the Lord’s greatness.” Ella’s tone regained its arrogance.

“You are still immersed in the clumsy drama of salvation and destruction. Like him.”

She kicked Valerius’s body with the tip of her toe.

“To protect a city that should have disappeared, for his ridiculous sense of responsibility, for his hypocritical love for me… he chose to become an enemy of the truth.”

“Therefore, he must be Returned. His death shall be the overture to this city’s purification ritual.”

“As for you,” Ella looked at Klein, “a powerful Eighth-Circle mage. Your soul will be an excellent sacrifice offered to the Lord. Your descent into silence will accelerate the Lord’s advent.”

“Now, you have two choices.”

“Kneel, kiss the Holy Emblem, and become one of us—become an apostle guiding the world back.”

“Or, like him, become a part of the ritual and use your deaths to adorn this final feast.”

After Ella finished speaking, the entire catacomb fell into a deathly silence.

Only the crackling of the torches and Valerius’s faint breathing could be heard.

A long time passed.

Klein finally spoke.

“Are you finished?” he asked.

The smile on Ella’s face stiffened.

“You talk even more nonsense than that Eighth-Circle old man from before.”

Klein took a step forward.

BOOM!

An unrivaled and terrifying pressure instantly filled the entire catacomb.

The two Apostles of the Crying Moon standing before Ella didn’t even have time to react before being crushed directly to their knees by the pressure, their bones emitting overstrained cracking sounds.

Web-like cracks instantly spread across the stone walls.