Chapter 67#

His Holiness the Pope Who Spreads Holy Light#

The half of the divine temple left on the Lalan Highlands was not as well preserved as the half on Dragon Island — almost nothing remained but crumbling walls and ruins. However, the long wall bearing the prophetic mural, upheld by divine power, remained perfectly intact, its colors so vivid it looked as if the brush had only been set down a second ago.

Only the Dragon God, himself a god, could have split this mural in two — one half raised into the sky, the other left on the ground. This was also why this temple ruin had remained hidden here for tens of thousands of years without any news of this divine prophecy spreading across the continent.

On the half of the temple that remained on the ground, only the final scene of the prophetic mural was left.

On one side, an endless army of undead surged forth from within. On the other, before a joint army composed of countless living creatures, stood a tiny figure — green skin, long ears, a somewhat ugly face. A goblin.

The one who had lit the fire of a prairie blaze and sounded the horn of the living’s counterattack was, unexpectedly, a goblin. The prophecy ended abruptly here. What mysteries lay within could only be investigated by Lu Heng himself. Only, in the current continent, information about the goblin race was even scarcer than that about dragons. Dragons, at the very least, had always been frequent characters in bards’ tales. But goblins — apart from knowing they had green skin, ugly faces, and had once lived underground beneath the Boulder Mountains — there was no other information.

It seemed a trip to the Boulder Mountains was necessary. The Boulder Mountains were not too far from the Lalan Highlands, and there was a shortcut — through the bottom of the Lalan Depression, crossing the abandoned Lalan mines, one could reach the border of the Boulder Mountains.

Although there were still nearly twenty years until the time of Pope Jose’s death, Lu Heng felt an inexplicable sense of urgency. The main reason was that this dragon behind him was unreliable — who knew when he might sleep for several years, or even a decade. Having learned from the previous lesson, Lu Heng didn’t dare attempt to slip away while the other was sleeping. The previous world’s Qin Yi had been an ordinary person with no destructive power. But this time, Aeones was a demigod, and from the most battle-capable dragon race at that — his destructive power was incalculable. If he went on a rampage, one needn’t wait for the undead invasion; the continent itself would collapse.

Destroying a plane would probably earn a few hundred years in the deep-frying department of the Eighteen Levels of Hell. Lu Heng shuddered at the scene his imagination conjured.

With no interest whatsoever in the mural at all, Aeones strode out eagerly from deep within the ruins: “Come quick and see what I found!”

Lu Heng followed him deeper into the temple and discovered a well-preserved side hall. Judging by the traces before the stone steps, the wyvern had been using this place as a lair. That explained why no news of this ruin had ever spread — anyone who had discovered it had most likely become a delicious meal in the wyvern’s mouth.

The wyvern’s name included the word “dragon,” so naturally it had inherited some dragon habits. For instance, collecting treasure.

The moment Lu Heng stepped into the hall, he beheld a sight perfectly in line with dragon aesthetics. Coins of all kinds, jewels, even weapons and armor lay haphazardly piled on the floor. Judging from their styles, they were all from the Divine Era, and one could discern the craftsmanship of various races. This was not surprising. During the late Divine Era, when the undead army invaded, the Temples of the Light God had always been places of refuge for all living races.

“Look at this.” Aeones lifted a suit of armor from the pile. “This was practically made for the Master of Dragons.”

Lu Heng glanced at it and felt his eyes hurt a little. The suit of armor in Aeones’s hands was a touch too faithful to the dragons’ beyond-description aesthetic. Perhaps because the user was a dragon, the armor gave no consideration whatsoever to weight. It was constructed entirely from thin sheets of hammered gold, encrusted with all manner of gemstones — every gem’s facets polished to absolute perfection. Even though the lighting in the side hall was not particularly good, the golden armor still shimmered radiantly.

On the pauldron, Lu Heng saw the dragon clan’s totem and a dwarven craftsman’s seal. This was indeed armor custom-crafted by a dwarven artisan for a dragon. Had it been the elves, they would never have made such a compromise in aesthetics.

Seeing Aeones eyeing the golden armor eagerly and making ready to put it on, Lu Heng felt compelled to stop him for the sake of his own eyes: “Ao, do you really like this suit of armor?”

Aeones nodded vigorously. From the speed of his nodding, Lu Heng knew that persuasion would require special techniques: “Do you still remember that warrior named Red?”

Aeones thought for a moment. “The one even dragon hawks couldn’t find? He didn’t even have a decent spatial ring — why do you remember his name?”

“…” Not quite understanding dragon logic, Lu Heng decided to stick to his own approach. “The armor Red was wearing looked quite similar to this one. I still remember that mage named Eddie getting a nosebleed when Red hugged him.”

Aeones’s eager expression froze. He thought about it, then tossed the golden armor aside. “This crude armor is completely unworthy of the great Master of Dragons.”

The heavy armor crashed down, sending the small mountain of treasure toppling. A warhammer rolled to a stop at Lu Heng’s feet. One look and his heart jolted. The warhammer’s design, and the faint divine power radiating around it — this was the holy relic lost by the dwarves after that great battle: Thunder’s Wrath. A legendary relic said to have been forged by the finest master smiths of the dwarven race and finally imbued with divine power by the Dwarven God of the Forge himself.

In that battle, the God of the Forge had personally wielded this warhammer, leading the dwarven warriors to send countless undead soldiers back to the realm of the dead. The statue of the God of the Forge holding Thunder’s Wrath still stood at the entrance of the Boulder Mountains to this day.

Lu Heng picked up Thunder’s Wrath and found the dwarven crest at the base of the hammer handle. Though this crest seemed somewhat different from the current dwarven emblem.

To have found the dwarves’ lost holy relic here was truly an unexpected delight. On the continent, there were two races famous for their stubbornness — one was the dragons, the other the dwarves. Lu Heng had been worrying about how to pry information about the goblins, whom the dwarves considered mortal enemies, from their stubborn lips.

Thunder’s Wrath — as long as the holy relic was returned to the dwarven race, the stubborn yet simple-hearted dwarves would surely regard Lu Heng as their most sincere friend. Once that was done, inquiring about the goblins’ whereabouts should pose no difficulty.

“Aeones, I think we need to make a trip to the Boulder Mountains,” Lu Heng said.

He explained everything about the divine prophecy to Aeones, though the latter didn’t seem very interested. Afterward, Aeones said: “All you need to do is tell me where to go.”

When they departed, to prevent any mishaps, Lu Heng stowed the wall with the prophetic mural into his spatial ring, while Aeones contentedly filled his hoard.

The abandoned Lalan mines were home to many powerful magical beasts. Ordinarily, no adventurer would risk their life just to take a shortcut.

For Aeones, these magical beasts were not a problem at all. No matter how powerful, he merely needed to reveal his golden slit-pupiled eyes and glare — and the beast would grovel on the ground, awaiting slaughter. The real problem was that the Lalan mines were simply too labyrinthine. The crisscrossing tunnels were so numerous that even though Lu Heng no longer had the directional problems he’d had in the previous world, he still couldn’t find the correct path through the web-like network.

“Those little runts must have hollowed out the entire Lalan Highlands.” Aeones emerged unhappily from a side tunnel, dragging a massive magical beast behind him. “If not for the tracking spell I wisely placed on you, I almost couldn’t find my way back. We’re eating this today.”

Lu Heng nodded, sitting quietly by the campfire, watching Aeones deftly skin and debone the beast, separating out the most flavorful cuts of meat. This was already their third day in the Lalan mines. The wyvern was too enormous to be released within the tunnels, so the two of them could only rely on their own legs to find an exit.

Lu Heng opened the parchment scroll in his hand. Over the past three days, more than a dozen explored tunnels had been drawn on it. If they still couldn’t find the correct path, they would have to turn back. With a wyvern’s speed, taking the long way around to the Boulder Mountains wouldn’t be too slow.

“Help! Help!”

With a startled cry, a short figure tumbled out of a tunnel, a magical beast in hot pursuit. Lu Heng glanced at Aeones. Aeones took the hint and hurled the boning knife in his hand. The knife, carrying an unstoppable force, pierced straight between the beast’s eyes.

The magical beast crashed to the ground with a thunderous boom — thoroughly, irreversibly dead.

The figure on the ground flipped into a sitting position, pounding their own chest frantically, a look of surviving a disaster: “Dear friends, surely the God of the Forge sent you to my side.”

The stocky yet short stature and the somewhat peculiar accent of the Common Tongue both identified this person’s race. This was a dwarf. But the beard that should have covered his face hadn’t grown in yet, revealing that this dwarf was still a youth — a mere boy.

“Dear friends, I am Sori Steelhammer, of the Bronzebeard Clan.” After steadying his breath, the dwarf youth scrambled to his feet with brisk movements and thumped his left chest with a thick fist. This was the dwarven greeting for friends.

“Hello, friend of the dwarven race, Mr. Sori Steelhammer.” Lu Heng returned a priest’s salute and gestured toward his companion. “I am Jose. That is my friend Aeones, over there.”

On the continent, it was very common to name one’s children after the Pope. Many devout families believed that using the Pope’s name would bring the blessing of holy light upon their children. So saying the name “Jose” would not strike anyone as unusual.

Sure enough, Sori simply laughed heartily: “You saved me! From today onward, you are the most sincere friends of the Bronzebeard Clan! On behalf of the Bronzebeard Clan, I invite you to the Boulder Mountains to taste our finest strong liquor!”