The kerosene lamp flickered to life, casting a dim, wavering yellow glow that provided poor illumination but was better than complete darkness.
Norton had just settled onto his bed when a knock sounded at his door.
"Knock knock knock!"
"Acolyte Norton, Father Mia sent me to deliver something for you." A deep male voice echoed from outside the door.
Norton opened the door to find a missionary in white robes standing outside, holding a stack of worn books in his arms.
Seeing Norton open the door, the missionary expressionlessly shoved five books into Norton's arms and left without even a word of greeting.
This was perfectly normal here. The missionaries in this place all had some peculiarities, having been raised in confinement since childhood - it would be strange if they didn't have some mental issues.
Moreover, The Church strictly forbade excessive contact between acolytes and missionaries, even conducting bed checks at night. Over these twenty years, he could count on one hand the number of words exchanged with the acolytes he'd grown up with. This isolated lifestyle was driving him insane.
Norton carefully carried the books back into his room and placed them on the wooden table.
As he looked at the books arranged on the table, two lines of tears slowly traced down from the corners of his eyes, yet his face remained completely expressionless.The degree of confinement here reached utterly insane levels. For these twenty years, they had only been permitted access to three religious texts.
"The Bible," "Baptism," and "Eden."
These five books on the table represented the only new information he'd been able to access in two decades.
The emotion of curiosity slowly stirred from its deathlike slumber. Though dormant for so long, it still made his heart tremble, creating subtle yet overwhelmingly intense ripples in emotions that had long been barren.
Tears continued to flow uncontrollably from Norton's eyes, yet his face maintained its blank expression.
Norton sat on his bed, feeling his heart pound wildly, unable to suppress his inner yearning any longer. He picked up the books from the table and began examining them with meticulous care.
The books here weren't made of paper, cloth, or bamboo slips. They used some unknown material that was soft and thin as cicada wings.
Holding them for too long would produce a slight oily residue from friction, and placing them over a kerosene flame would release a charred aroma resembling cooked meat.
Though reluctant to admit it, given the absurdity and darkness of the so-called Papal States era, Norton suspected these might very well be made of human skin.
Norton picked up the first book.
"Mass"
This explained the procedures and precautions for conducting Mass.
According to the book's description, Mass involved Norton taking some bread to the believers' gathering place - essentially the slums - to distribute it as charity work. After distribution, he would follow the main group to a place called 'The Sanctuary' to receive Father Mia's blessings, offer devout faith to God 'Caesar,' undergo purification with sanctuary holy water, and finally don missionary robes to become a proper missionary.
The process wasn't complicated, but the most important thing was finally being able to go outside. Just reading the words on the page made Norton feel tremendously excited.
The second book was titled "The Holy Covenant."
This one, however, was quite different.
Norton frowned deeply, growing more doubtful of himself the more he read.
"The Holy Covenant" was a typical Bible-like book depicting certain events of God 'Caesar.'
However, unlike "The Bible" which exclusively portrayed God's greatness and contributions...
For example: Caesar opened his eyes, and chaos became order. God said: Let there be cosmos, and the universe appeared. God said: Let there be life, and all things were born. All living things existed without reproduction, without life and death, without natural order (the laws of natural operation), so God created Eden......
This "Holy Covenant" instead contained entirely negative content about God.
The book was thin with sparse content, but everything in it presented negative portrayals, especially incorporating various monster legends.
For example: God created Eden, initially with disordered natural laws. Snakes mated with elephants, producing 'Indan' (a type of monster). Horses mated with chickens, producing 'Jiyuan' (a type of monster). The mating influenced God's heart, so humanity was born. God mated with women, producing 'Divine Cause' (the first supreme deity in "The Bible"). God mated with men, producing 'Jonah' (the primordial god of death who oversees hell in "The Bible"). God mated with corpses, producing 'Kuba' (the vampire progenitor in "Eden")......
Just look at this content! This Caesar character actually developed mortal desires and produced a bunch of little monsters.
Norton originally thought the relationship between priests and young boys was quite strange, but now it seemed Father Mia truly lived up to being a priest, having clearly received God's teachings.
Indeed, there's always some reasoning behind these things - when the upper beam is crooked, the lower ones will be too.
Norton turned the page, and the next section became rather mystical.
[All things could reproduce but not die, and Eden expanded increasingly. So God created death, suspending it high in the sky. Appointing Divine Cause as Lord of Gods to govern the origins of life, appointing Jonah as Final Dusk to manage the decay of living beings. Only Kuba was displeased and was exiled by God.
To escape decay, Kuba eternally avoids sunlight.]
Thus concluded "The Holy Covenant" chapter, which was actually somewhat interesting.
Most importantly, it highlighted two key points: 'vampire' and death = sunlight.
Norton placed the book back on the table. Though twenty years had passed, he could still recall much of his previous life's memories, especially terms like vampire which immediately brought to mind previous life legends about vampires.
He had been quite fond of such dark themes in his previous life, so he had researched extensively about vampires and read numerous materials.
First, it needed to be clear that vampires didn't actually appear in the Bible of his previous life. The so-called vampire progenitor Cain was actually a creative interpretation by a company based on Cain's biblical ending, which then became widely circulated.
So ultimately, vampires from his previous life were fictional creations.
But this place was completely different. Both the Church's official text "Eden" and now this "Holy Covenant" contained actual descriptions of vampires.
"The Holy Covenant" documented the origin of vampires arising from God mating with corpses. Meanwhile, the main text of "Eden" included descriptions of vampire habits and terminology explanations.
According to "Eden": To escape death, Kuba perpetually avoided sunlight, hence being active at night. But without sunlight, he couldn't farm (another Bible version stated: he didn't eat sunlight-absorbing creatures (plants), fearing death), forcing him to adopt a different lifestyle based on hunting.
However, Divine Cause governed living creatures and forbade him from killing other beings for food. Jonah governed dead matter and forbade him from consuming corpses. Thus he could only sneakily drink the blood of living creatures at night while they slept, without killing them, to ensure his survival. Hence he became known as the Blood Ancestor, or vampire.
"Eden" clearly described the term vampire, though whether this was for The Church's convenience or because such creatures actually existed remained unclear.
Norton knew nothing about the outside world, so he couldn't even deny the possible existence of vampires in this world.
He could only temporarily believe and remain cautious about this, lest he venture outside only to discover that gods, vampires, or monsters truly existed here, and actually get captured by some vampire-like creature.