Chapter 479 I Like to Joke
Looking at the stone wall and doorway at the end of the corridor, Horn did not speak.

No one spoke, silently digesting the contents of the murals in the corridor.

This corridor should be a U-shaped corridor, and half of it should be buried in the stone wall, or completely disappeared in time.

"Are you sure this is a palace from a thousand years ago?" Jeanne asked the monk in charge of the survey.

"Absolutely true." The monk in charge of the survey wiped the sweat from his forehead. "It's been eight hundred years, if not a thousand years. Some of the materials here are only available in the Ancient Aiel Empire, and they have disappeared with the vampires and the desertification of the Western Continent."

"Could it have been taken down from some other historic site?" Jeanne pressed on.

"It is possible, but the problem is that the road just now is so narrow that only one person can walk through it, and there is no way these huge materials can pass through." The monk gritted his teeth and said, "This may be the local palace, and it fell into the mountain because of the earthquake."

"Who would build a palace in this corner?" Witt walked around the corridor in disbelief, but he still couldn't figure out what style it was.

"Have you seen these murals?" Turning around, Horn asked the two demon hunters behind him.

“I’ve seen it.”

"What do you think?"

"This is not necessarily true." Aigalan said nonchalantly, "I have seen many ancient ruins like this. Are there not many evil gods who deliberately fabricate or distort the facts?"

Horn and Armand looked at each other, which was true.

Although this mural exists now, it is not enough evidence to prove it, so they cannot be sure that it is authentic.

And when it comes to the counterfeiting of ancient monuments and relics, the early church does have a dark history.

For example, the Aiel scholar Peruzioni once calculated that if the Myrcella cloths collected in churches and castles throughout the Kingdom of France were sewn together, they could span the Sea of ​​Greece.

There were tens of thousands of them hidden in the churches and castles in the Flower Hill alone, and some nobles had nearly a thousand in their homes, claiming that they could atone for sins spanning five hundred thousand years.

Although the church repeatedly stated that Myrcella was a pure, asexual virgin with no menstrual period, it could not stop the enthusiasm of lords from all over the place.

Some lords would even repaint murals of ancient monuments or even rewrite their own families into ancient books.

The most classic one is the ancient Aiel book "Dialogues", which says there are 13 powerful families in Lieyang City.

However, according to the analysis of documents from various places by scholars from Al, there are nearly 500 such companies.

Of course, nobles from all over the country still shamelessly label themselves as a thousand-year-old clan.

As for the fact that only poor people followed Mircella across the sea, they pretended to be completely unaware of it.

"So, there might not have been any murals on the original corridor. The mural in front of us was painted by local evil god believers to slander Michela." Armand coughed and spoke in a deliberately louder voice.

"Didn't Witt say... ah, yes." Halfway through his sentence, Horn suddenly realized, "We can't jump to conclusions, everyone."

Standing beside Horn holding a torch, Jeanne said nothing, as if to assent.

Really? So it was the evil god who was drawing.

After these three Salvation Army heavyweights made their judgment, the people around them almost breathed a sigh of relief and prayed in a self-hypnotic manner.

Perhaps they knew in their hearts that something was wrong, but with the endorsement of three senior executives, they still accepted the fact that "this is fake."

Given the current high-pressure situation faced by the Salvation Army and an unknown period of golden development that may end, the most important thing for the Salvation Army is stability.

As for the content of the debate, we can only trace it back to its source later.

But what exactly does this mean?

"Let's go to the hall next door and take a look." Horn was silent for a while and said to Rafael beside him.

Aigalan and the other demon hunters turned around, hunched over, and walked into the hall through the arc-shaped door.

"hiss--"

Almost everyone who entered the hall gasped at the first moment. What the demon hunters said about this place being weird was true.

Under the eerie dome with spiral geometric patterns is an altar with a sarcophagus on it.

In front of the altar is a 20-meter-long and wide prayer hall, which maintains the tradition of early Messianic religion, with no chairs and people kneeling on the ground.

The most peculiar thing is that the entire hall is only half, as if it was neatly cut in half by something.

On the black and white tiles, there are more than a dozen stone statues of angels carved from unknown stones on each side of the hall corridor.

Horn walked behind an angel statue and put his head over its shoulders, trying to see its face.

"Let me test your... ahem..." Even Horn, who was always knowledgeable and cheerful, was frightened and almost lost his quality.

These stone statues are different from those in normal churches. Their expressions and movements are abnormally terrifying and hideous.

Some of them have fangs sticking out of their mouths, some have an extra head, some have deformed hairless wings on their backs, and their facial muscles are knotted with pain and anger.

If it weren't for the halos carved behind their heads to prove their angelic identity, Horn would have thought these guys were devils.

Most of the statues from this era were quite horrible, but they were merely ugly, not as ugly as the pure hellfire style that was before him.

After walking around the prayer hall several times, Horn touched here and there, and even looked into the empty sarcophagus for a long time, he did not find anything unusual.

"Didn't you find any trace of Favaleri?" Horn turned around and returned to the door and asked Rafael.

"No." Rafael said helplessly, "We did find traces of Favaleri near the cave entrance, but he disappeared when we chased him here."

"Do you know where he went?" Jeanna turned to ask the two demon hunters, especially Aigalan, "I remember you. You were very surprised when you heard that it was a dead end at the entrance of the cave." The old demon hunter shook his head first: "We were blindfolded when we came here, Favaleri led the team, and Avar was at the end.

Each of us held onto the clothes of the person in front of us, and by the time we had removed the blindfolds, we were outside the palace."

"Me too." Aigalan shook his head. "I'm still curious why this is a dead end. But I'm from the Wolf School and have a very keen nose. Maybe I can find some clues."

"Oh?" Jeanne walked up to Aigalan and looked down at him who was kneeling on the ground. "Are you willing to work for us?"

"I have one condition." Aigalan raised his head with a struggle, "If I find that way, you let me go."

"What a wild idea! The Saint asked you for help because she thinks highly of you. You..."

"Wait, your name is Aigalan, right?" Jeanne looked at the demon hunter, "Aren't you afraid that I will tell others about your rebellion?"

"It's simple. I'll just flee to Norn." Aigalan said indifferently, "I don't want to stay in the land of heretics and work for them."

Jeanna glanced at Horn, who had been paying attention to this place for a long time, and said with a smile: "Let him walk around the hall. If there is really a clue, why not let him go once?"

Following the two Holy Gunners, Aigalan crawled on the ground, his nose twitching flexibly, and began to crawl around in the hall.

Horn began to think about the origin of the palace. For some reason, he always felt that the so-called earthquake collapse was not very reliable.

Because judging from the stone walls in this hall, they are clearly the stone walls of a mountain, but they seem to have been cut by humans.

Although this kind of neatness does not rule out the possibility that it is the work of nature, it is too coincidental.

Moreover, a thousand years ago it was still a dark age of warlords, and the Thousand River Valley was still the territory of beastmen and pagans.

Where did the need come from to build such an exquisite and luxurious palace in the mountains?
Just as Horn was thinking about how to conceal the existence of this palace, screams suddenly came from the hall.

"Wait, Demon Hunter! You! Uh—"

Horn turned his head and saw the demon hunter named Aigalan hurriedly getting up, with two fallen holy musketeers beside him.

He used the key to unlock the handcuffs and ran towards the altar in the hall.

Although he had shackles on his feet, Aigalan's speed was not much slower than that of an ordinary person.

In the interweaving of light and darkness, stepping on the black and white tiles, he ran between the stone angels with hideous expressions.

"Catch him." Rafael, furious, pulled out a T-shaped iron rod and rushed forward himself.

At this moment, Aigalang had already run to the altar. He jumped up, and in full view of everyone, he slid smoothly into the sarcophagus on the altar.

"Mechanism, start!"

Recalling Avar's description, Aigalan lay in the sarcophagus, brushed his fingers over the specific glass fragments inside the sarcophagus one by one, and pressed down hard with his elbow.

"Boom——"

The next second, the heavy lid of the sarcophagus slammed shut.

Curling up his body in excitement, Aigalan was still trembling with excitement and joy.

He helped Horn and the others lead the way just for this moment. Unlike those old witchers, he did not rebel or surrender.

When he learned from these people that they had not found the tunnel, he realized this was a great opportunity to escape.

At first he didn't understand why Avar told him the secret, and even swore an oath not to tell it to anyone.

But only at this moment did he understand Avar's good intentions, which was to anticipate that Favaleri might abandon them and escape.

You guys, these short-sighted demon hunters, will be in trouble, especially that Favaleri.

Those old demon hunters complain every day about how hard their lives are, but he doesn't think that if they can't even bear this little bit of hardship, they will definitely not be able to do anything else.

Don’t be afraid of the hard work now, you can become a master demon hunter in a few years!

After being captured, one can still escape from the terrible heretics. This is how the "Master Aigalan's Witcher Stories" would be more dramatic.

Leaning against the bottom of the sarcophagus, Aigalan exhaled a breath of foul air, smiled and waited...waited...

After waiting for two seconds, the smile on his face gradually disappeared and turned into confusion.

The expected feeling of weightlessness never came, and instead there was the sound of sudden footsteps.

Could it be that he pressed the wrong button? That's impossible, he remembered it clearly.

Unconvinced, Aigalang pressed the button again, but the bottom of the sarcophagus behind him still did not open.

Is it so slow? Or did I press the wrong button?
When the firelight shot in from the gap in the sarcophagus lid, Aigalan was completely panicked. He frantically pressed the broken pieces of glass in a panic.

"Mechanism, start, start...you start it."

Amid Aigalang's roar and the sound of stone rubbing against each other, the lid of the sarcophagus was slowly pried open by an iron rod.

Aigalang, who was still pressing the broken pieces of glass frantically, gradually stopped. He stiffened his body and turned his head to the side.

In the square field of view formed by the coffin, on the left and right sides are the expressionless faces of Horn, Armand, Rafell and Jeanne.

The firelight shone on Aigalang's face, making the beads of sweat on his forehead glisten.

"Oh, I was just kidding. I like to joke around...ah——"

(End of this chapter)