Chapter 961: Chapter 154: His Name Is Lu Li, and He Is an Exorcist
Katerina and the others burst into the shack due to the anguished cries.
They saw Lu Li with a cold expression, the headless corpse at his feet, and the corroded sleeve and arm.
Katerina rushed to Lu Li’s side, took a water pouch, and poured clean water to wash his hand.
It didn’t help; the mucus stubbornly adhered to Lu Li’s palm, corroding the skin and devouring the deeper flesh.
“Give Mr. Luli the artifact!”
At that moment, Puxiu shouted, and Katerina realized and stuffed the artifact shard into Lu Li’s palm.
The stubborn mucus dissipated instantly with the contamination, but suddenly Ophelia emitted a scorching temperature.
“What’s happening?” Katerina pulled out a dagger to solidify the corpse.
“Someone is… casting… a gaze!”
Ophelia was looking at another place.
The obscure aura emerging from the void intensified as the heretics completely dissipated, converging into a substantial malice that suddenly overflowed.
Except for the merchant and Lu Li, everyone else clutched their heads and screamed in agony as fragments of delirium squeezed into the depths of their trembling minds.
Deep sea, waves, mud, relics.
They formed a tableau, revealing the true fear beneath the deep sea before everything abruptly ceased in shattered fragments.
Katerina gasped intensely, opening her bloodshot eyes.
Lu Li seemed to awaken from slumber, lowering his dark eyes.
The artifact shard in his palm was completely reduced to powder, melding into his flesh.
It shielded them from most of the contamination.
“What was… that…!”
Katerina squeezed out a low growl; she couldn’t focus her attention, with countless remnants of delirium floating before her eyes.
“It’s… the existence… it believes in… detected… us.”
Her bloodshot eyes turned to Puxiu’s large patches of falling hair.
“Are we cursed?”
“No.”
Ophelia’s aura gradually stabilized.
“The artifact… blocked… most of the… curse.”
A small amount of contamination still affected their minds; now they needed rest to escape the dreadful influence brought on by the detection.
“You guys go back first.”
Lu Li unscrewed a water bottle, washing away the remaining blood and lime from his palm and wrapping a bandage around it.
“I have more to do.”
“The artifact shard is destroyed now; we can’t remove the curse here anymore,” Katerina said with a frown, clutching her forehead.
“I won’t leave the cemetery.”
Yet the purification site still existed.
“Then we’ll wait for you in the house outside, hurry. He noticed us and might come at any time.”
Katerina spoke hoarsely; she was barely holding on.
They left the shack, and Ophelia and the merchant were also driven away.
Lu Li was left alone in the cemetery.
Once they left, Lu Li stepped over the heretic’s corpse and picked up the pale skull from the wooden rack.
The empty eye sockets of the skull were indistinguishable from other skulls.
Lu Li carried it out of the shack, walked through the path back to Anna’s tombstone, and entered the grave.
Gently placing the skull down, he collected the scattered bones around, placing them one by one into the grave.
After placing the last segment of the leg bone, the silent Lu Li climbed out of the grave, finding a broken shovel at a not far away incomplete tombstone, shoveling dirt mixed with snow to bury the bones.
Clang—
The shovel was tossed aside, the grave fully covered.
Lu Li stood quietly at the tombstone, before leaving, he took out a book from the inside pocket he’s always kept, placing it on the coarse soil.
“Belfast’s Love”
This was Anna’s favorite book.
…
Boom boom boom.
Ophelia turned towards the knocking on the door.
Opening the door, Lu Li stood outside with black hair dusted with snowflakes.
“It’s over…?”
“Yes.”
Lu Li picked up the water bottle they left outside the door and walked into the room.
Ophelia then closed the door.
They moved the bedroom bed into the living room, where Katerina lay.
“Miss Katerina’s condition isn’t good.”
Puxiu said.
He and Ophelia were anomalies; the contamination itself wouldn’t harm them, but the contained consciousness would. As a human, Katerina was influenced by both the contamination and the consciousness.
As a hunter surviving in the wilderness all along, Katerina’s Sanity Value was already near the breaking point.
“Don’t listen to his nonsense, I’m fine.”
Katerina weakly refuted: “The stone shard blocked the contamination; the remaining trouble isn’t difficult for me, Bee Sting…”
She was putting on a brave front, but it indicated it wasn’t the worst moment yet.
“Tell us about it, what happened that made you… angry?”
Ophelia and Puxiu looked at Lu Li.
After a brief silence, Lu Li said: “On the way.”
They returned the way they came, arriving at the wooden wall.
Ophelia supported Katerina out of the wooden wall.
Lu Li turned back to gaze, the church spire in the west of the city faintly visible through the flurry of snowflakes.
Silently gazing for a moment, he lowered his head and stepped out of the wooden wall at his companions’ call.
…
On the way back, they quietly listened to Lu Li’s indifferent recounting of everything that happened in the shack.
“So, what’s the deal, those bones… were Anna’s true form?”
Katerina found it hard to comprehend: “But why did she become human and then killed by the heretic?”
“Anna was looking for a way to resurrect the dead,” Lu Li said.
“Resurrect the dead… you mean she revived herself…”
Though struggling to think, Katerina understood Anna’s actions all along.
Anna believed Lu Li was dead, so she sought ways to resurrect the dead to bring back Lu Li. She nearly succeeded, resurrecting herself in her true form, but was attacked by the heretic… and died.
“We haven’t encountered trees and the brown car yet!” shouted Puxiu, following the group’s footprints.
Katerina lifted her drowsy head: “Puxiu is right, and regardless of what Anna meant to you, she was an evil spirit… couldn’t be killed by a mere weak heretic.”
“She’s still alive…”
Lu Li murmured quietly.
“Yes! The Prophet must know something, let’s ask him again,” Puxiu said.
Katerina looked over: “Has the voice bewitched you again?”
“What?” Puxiu froze, looking up to ask: “Did I just say something about going back to Belfast?”
“The Prophet is in Belfast.”
“I… I don’t know…”
Maybe it was a coincidence, maybe Puxiu’s consciousness was subtly influenced.
No matter what, they had to make another trip to Belfast.
Finding Anna yielded not so good results, the group returned along the coast, boarded Andrea, and headed for Belfast.
Meanwhile, news came from Vena Ice-Free Port.
“I heard you went to Himfast?” Mayor Matteus inquired.
There were merchants in Vena Ice-Free Port, so it wasn’t difficult for Mayor Matteus to know about Lu Li’s whereabouts.
“Ask him what he wants.”
Lu Li became more silent than before, leaving Katerina to support inquiries.
After a moment, the merchant brought news that the museum director wanted a batch of treasured artwork from Himfast Montaldi Art Gallery.
“Tell them it’s no longer possible to enter Himfast.”
Not long after, Mayor Matteus replied with regret, saying he would convey the message to the museum.