The bishop’s words

The four of them were standing very close together, and both Xing Ye and Lu Mingze heard the conversation between the other two.

Xing Ye’s face was expressionless, making it impossible to tell what he was thinking. Lu Mingze, however, recalled what had happened at the airport—just like Cao Qian and Guan Ling, he too had encountered something slightly strange related to Xing Ye.

“You… do you remember something?” Lu Mingze asked hesitantly.

Xing Ye said, “Time is tight. Let’s enter the church first.”

As he spoke, a pen appeared out of thin air in his hand—this seemed to be his initial skill.

Guan Ling and Cao Qian could only see Xing Ye waving the pen through the air, unsure of what he was drawing. Lu Mingze, however, was bound to Xing Ye and could see countless small squares appearing in the void. What Xing Ye was doing was gently drawing within those squares with the pen.

After more than ten seconds, Lu Mingze realized that Xing Ye was drawing a QR code.

The pen in his hand was very thick; with just a single tap, an entire square would be filled in. His speed was extremely fast—after a little over twenty seconds, a complete QR code appeared before Lu Mingze.

Xing Ye put the pen away and slapped the QR code onto the church door. After a moment, the church doors slowly opened. There was no one inside—the door had opened by itself.

Seeing Lu Mingze’s puzzled expression, Xing Ye explained, “This QR code is called ‘You’re Already a Mature xx Now.’ It’s a QR code that grants autonomous consciousness to non-living objects. I asked the church door to open naturally and safely for us, without damaging its original structure.”

“What a magical QR code,” Lu Mingze said.

“My initial skill allows me to use many more magical QR codes,” Xing Ye said, gazing intently at Lu Mingze. “As long as your affection toward me exceeds 80, every page of that book can manifest a QR code. If it reaches 100, my special ability can also be activated.”

Lu Mingze blinked, said nothing, and walked into the church. He didn’t know how to respond to Xing Ye.

Cao Qian and Guan Ling dared say even less and silently followed Lu Mingze inside.

When they left the city lord’s mansion, they had taken two oil lamps. The church was very dark. As usual, Cao Qian used friction to start a fire and lit the lamps. By the dim yellow light, they saw countless symbols drawn on the inside of the automatically closed door—symbols they could not understand.

Not only the door, but the walls, windows, and floor were all covered in these symbols, forming a seamless whole, like some kind of barrier or magic array.

“If we had damaged the door or the walls, these patterns would’ve become incomplete,” Cao Qian said as she looked around. “No one knows what would happen then.”

“In any case, it wouldn’t be anything good,” Guan Ling echoed. “Even though I don’t really have a faith, I can feel a sense of holiness filling these symbols.”

If even Guan Ling felt that way, there was no need to mention Lu Mingze. Following the patterns forward, he saw a sword embedded in the ground at the very centre of the church. A QR code was drawn on the floor, and the sword stood right in the middle of it.

The sword’s hilt was held by a person—but that person had already become a skeleton. The skeleton wore splendid robes, and a crown rested on its skull.

“Probably a bishop or some kind of priest,” Xing Ye said. “When the disaster came, he took the holy sword, sealed the church, and laid down a barrier to protect the town.”

“This QR code…” Lu Mingze pointed at the QR code on the floor. “Doesn’t it feel a bit out of place?”

“Special abilities in the game world all manifest in the form of QR codes,” Xing Ye said. “This is probably the magic the statue told you about. Scan it with your bracelet and you can collect it.”

Lu Mingze felt an inexplicable trust toward Xing Ye. He obediently scanned the QR code with his bracelet. The QR code appeared inside the bracelet, and once it was absorbed, the pattern on the floor changed, becoming identical to the symbols on the walls.

“Once a QR code is absorbed, it returns to its original form,” Xing Ye explained. “We shouldn’t leave the church immediately. There must be clues here about the Day of Disaster. Try to search carefully.”

“You seem to know a lot,” Cao Qian said, bravely looking at the chairman of her company.

She thought that the company boss wouldn’t remember a probationary employee like her anyway. Even if they returned to the real world, Xing Ye wouldn’t trouble a small employee. Besides, she now had pink hair and looked very different from reality—there was no way he’d recognize her.

Lu Mingze also said, “My reward for this game is memory. We all feel like we’ve lost a segment of our memories, but you don’t seem like that. Do you remember something?”

Xing Ye placed a finger on Lu Mingze’s lips and whispered, “Don’t ask. I can’t say.”

Lu Mingze stared blankly at Xing Ye, feeling the warmth of his finger as their eyes met.

Those eyes seemed filled with stories that could not be told. Under their gaze, Lu Mingze’s heartbeat gradually quickened.

If they really had experienced such a magical world—if everyone had lost their memories except Xing Ye, who remembered everything—and if he watched his former teammates from afar, bearing all those memories alone… wouldn’t that be terribly lonely?

“You…”

Just as Lu Mingze began to speak, Xing Ye suddenly disappeared, and a book fell at Lu Mingze’s feet.

Five minutes were up. Xing Ye had turned back into the book.

Lu Mingze picked up the book, now dusted with dirt from the floor. He gently blew the dust away, hugged it to his chest, and stood there dazed.

Cao Qian patted Lu Mingze on the shoulder and said, “I’m just as curious as you are. If you want to know what happened, then let’s finish the task.”

“Okay,” Lu Mingze said, snapping back to himself. “Just like Xing Ye said, let’s search the church.”

The three of them set aside their doubts and carefully searched the church, doing their best not to touch the patterns so as not to damage the barrier.

After searching for a long time, they found nothing. In a corner lay another skeleton, holding a parchment scroll in its arms and a quill pen in its hand. But there wasn’t a single word on the parchment—it looked as if the person had died before they could write anything.

“Nothing,” Guan Ling sighed, sitting down on the ground.

Lu Mingze, however, stood before the holy sword, gazing at the skeleton that had died standing.

Both of the skeleton’s hands gripped the sword hilt tightly. Even reduced to bones, its grip was unwavering. If they wanted to take the holy sword from it, they would probably have to dismantle its finger bones.

“We can’t be sure that taking the holy sword directly won’t damage the barrier here,” Cao Qian said, frowning.

Lu Mingze kept staring at the skeleton. Suddenly, he performed a type of salute none of them had seen before—one he had noticed earlier on the parchment. In meaning, it was equivalent to three bows and nine prostrations (NT: a ritual representing the highest level of reverence and respect, for example when paying homage to an emperor).

On the Day of Disaster, this skeleton had taken the holy sword, carved the barrier inside the church, and used its own life to protect the town’s residents and main structures. It truly deserved respect.

Just as Lu Mingze finished the salute, the robe on the skeleton suddenly moved.

There was no wind in the church. The robe moved on its own.

Lu Mingze crouched down and lifted a corner of the robe, discovering that the inside of the white robe was soaked with bloodstains.

Thinking there might be writing beneath it, Guan Ling crouched down to help hold the lamp. As he brought the oil lamp closer to Lu Mingze, Lu Mingze suddenly noticed a point of light opposite him. Turning his head, he saw that directly across from the skeleton and the holy sword was a full-length mirror embedded in the wall. The point of light he had sensed was the lamp’s reflection in the mirror.

Lu Mingze walked over to the mirror, frowned, and said, “Strange. When I investigated the mirrors inside the church before, I didn’t find this one.”

“We didn’t see this mirror either when we were searching the church just now,” Cao Qian noted. “I’m sure I carefully examined this wall earlier. At that time, it was just a layer of plain wall surface with no patterns—there was no mirror.”

“It was only after I saluted the skeleton and lifted the robe that this mirror appeared,” Lu Mingze said. “It seems the salute was the key.”

He placed his hand against the mirror’s surface and activated the initial skill “Eye of Truth.”

This time, the skill took effect, and the mirror lit up.

The “Eye of Truth” normally could not transmit sound, but strangely, when the mirror lit up, sound echoed through the church, as if someone were playing back a recording.

“Bishop!” a panicked voice cried out. “Divine punishment—it’s divine punishment! Greed and sin have finally drawn down divine punishment! This town is finished!”

“Don’t panic,” a steady voice replied. “Deacon, please help me close the doors.”

“Close the doors? Divine punishment has descended upon the world—this entire town will become a city of death. All life will perish, and the town will turn into a hell where monsters breed. Please, you should leave with me as soon as possible!” the deacon said.

“There is still hope, Deacon,” the bishop said. “Please help me close the doors and leave.”

“You… you’re holding the holy sword? The missing holy sword is with you?” the deacon exclaimed. “Bishop, what are you planning to do?”

“All I can do is wait,” the bishop said. “Buy time for this city. Wait for someone who can once again offer a Diamond Heart to the Child of God. Deacon, I no longer have any strength left. Please help me.”

“Bishop, your body… these patterns on the ground—were they drawn with your blood?” the deacon asked in shock.

“I have no strength left. I need someone to help me lock the doors and use my remaining blood to complete the final stroke of the sigil on the door. But if you do this, you will also remain inside the church and never be able to leave. Are you willing to help me?” The bishop’s voice grew weaker and weaker.

The mirror faithfully reflected the scene. The deacon in the mirror said nothing. He took the bowl of blood and the pen from the bishop’s hands and rushed toward the main doors.

The bishop smiled faintly. Facing the mirror directly—whether speaking to the mirror itself or, across twenty years of time, to Lu Mingze—he said: “If one day, someone with a firm and kind heart is able to enter the church, you may take the holy sword. But please leave my remains at the centre of the formation. In that way, the barrier can be maintained for three more days—only three days. During those three days, if you need it, my remains can be used to activate the formation, but the remaining energy can only be used once.”

The scene ended there.

Lu Mingze and the others walked back to the skeleton, looking at the bishop who still clutched the holy sword and the deacon’s corpse lying dead in the corner.

Lu Mingze placed his hand on the bishop’s hand bones and solemnly promised, “I will rebuild this city—not only for you, but also for our memories. Please believe me.”

As soon as his words fell, the skeleton that had maintained a human posture collapsed apart. Lu Mingze pulled out the holy sword, wrapped the bishop’s remains in the white robe, and placed them at the centre of the formation.

The white robe released a faint glow, as if it were the bishop’s final afterglow.

At that very moment, Lu Mingze heard the notification that the task of finding the holy sword had been completed. The task progress changed to 1.56.

The three of them left the church and closed the doors once more.

Lu Mingze remained silent for a moment, then gripped the sword hilt and said, “Let’s go suppress the bandits.”

“Alright.” Cao Qian clenched her fingers.

 

Translator : DarNan