Chapter 480: Seeing a Dead Body in a Wet Stone Chamber
"Boom!"

Amid the loud noise and rising dust, the steps under the sarcophagus finally appeared before their eyes.

Horn pinched his nose and fanned away the dust with his hand, a smile appearing on his face.

He didn't know what the mechanism of the sarcophagus was like, but he knew there was a passage underneath it, and that was enough.

He ordered someone to use a sledgehammer to smash the altar in the hall, and before them appeared the mysterious tunnel that Aigalang had mentioned.

On the slippery gray brick wall hung an iron-black torch stand, and it was pitch dark so that the scene below could not be seen clearly.

There were vague niches on both sides of the wall, and rotten wooden tools and various debris on both sides of the steps.

It seems that this tunnel is quite old.

However, judging from the shape and the stone carving, it was probably not part of the palace itself, but was built later.

Horn could guess that this was probably the tunnel through which Favaleri escaped.

Although it is a bit too late to catch him now, at least we can collapse this tunnel to prevent more witchers from coming here.

A guardsman took a torch and probed the cave entrance twice. Seeing that the torch was extinguished, he immediately shouted behind him: "Come here, miracle priest, we need wind."

The two miracle priests worked back and forth for half an hour before they finally blew away the suspicious gas in the stone chamber in front of them.

Several Holy Gunners with ropes tied around their waists walked carefully downstairs with torches in hand. Horn waited at the door for nearly half an hour before he could walk around the stairs.

Bored, Horn looked around at the stairs, trying to find a new path.

It's a pity that after searching for a long time, he got nothing but dust.

Looking down in boredom, Horn saw a pile of neatly-formed square stains stuck to the base of the wall beside the steps.

From this appearance alone, Horn could infer that—

It was probably a few scattered pieces of paper that were accidentally stuck to the wall. Over time, they were covered with dust and gradually turned into a square stain.

Hmm... there seems to be a white scratch next to the square stain?

Holding up the glowstone lantern, Horn began to assess the damage to the wall.

There were sharp scratches on the wall extending all the way down from the stairs, probably caused by something.

Crouching on the ground, Horn stretched out his fingers and touched both the steps and the scratches.

There was a gleam of light on the fingertips. It was tiny black powder and debris. An idea suddenly occurred to Horn. Could this be what was left behind by the obsidian obelisk?

If the group of demon hunters did not take the main route, they probably took this route and might have left some traces behind.

Holding the fluorescent lamp, Horn's heartbeat was pounding. He immediately stood up and said, "Go, search around to see if there is anything different."

The gendarmes immediately dispersed and began searching along the shrines on both sides of the steps and in the cracks in the ground.

There were a lot of papers piled up in the niches, but they were either blank or copied drafts of scriptures.

The papers were too damp and stuck together, and the words were blurred and completely unreadable. The gendarmes searched for a long time, but the only thing they found were a few parchment books.

These books are still well preserved, they are parchment after all.

Picking up the first parchment book, Horn couldn't wait to open it by the light of the fire on the stairs without even waiting to go up.

In the flickering firelight and fluorescent lamplight, Horn nodded frequently while reading a book.

There were a few illustrations with strange geometric shapes in the yellowed pages, but he couldn't understand the rest at all.

Horn's cultural level was not low. Although he did not understand the meaning, he could distinguish most of the languages ​​and characters in the empire.

But he didn't recognize the words on the book at all. It was a phonetic text written horizontally from left to right, with the letters all vertical.

These words are winding and twisted like little black snakes crawling on the book, making people feel their scalp tingling at one glance.

This should be some kind of secret language or the writing of the small Norn tribe. However, if it was left by Mother Shilov, then she should be able to translate it or have some clues.

I hope this is really the clue left by Grandma Shilov.

"Check these books. After confirming that there is no danger, send them to Shiloh and let her see if she recognizes them." After giving the order to the military police, the people in the stone chamber below finally climbed up the stairs and reported: "It is confirmed to be safe, Your Majesty."

Rafael, who was following the Holy Gunner, said excitedly, "We found the bodies of Favaleri and the Beast Queen, right down there."

Horn hurriedly dragged Jeanna down the stone steps and came to the stone chamber at the bottom.

This stone chamber is not big, only about 20 to 30 square meters in size. It is more like an aisle corridor than a stone chamber.

Jeanne sniffed and found that the air indeed smelled of a rotten corpse.

Stepping onto the floor tiles of the stone chamber, Horn lowered his head and saw the dead body of a beastman lying on the ground near the stairs.

And further away, across the steps, was another human corpse.

The middle-aged demon hunter with graying temples fell on the damp and cold stone bricks. He leaned against the wall, his body twisted in an unnatural posture, his fingernails full of stone chips and dirt.

His eyes were wide open, his eye sockets were sunken, his mouth was open like an O, and his wrinkled face was full of disbelief and despair.

Not far in front of him was a stone door covered with scratches, with a hole in the middle that had been smashed and dug out.

The loose dirt in the hole poured out and covered his legs, making his previously clean and tidy trousers all muddy.

Is this the Favaleri?

"How did he die?"

"Your Majesty, he died of suffocation." After whispering to the investigating gendarmes, Rafell walked over to Horn and reported.

Did he die of suffocation? It's only been two days, could the oxygen run out so quickly? Why didn't he open the sarcophagus above?

"Call the two witchers and see if it's him." Horn snapped his fingers behind him, and two witchers appeared at the stairs.

The old witcher walked in front with a gloating look on his face, and behind him was Agalan, whose eyes were so swollen that he couldn't open them, and whose cuffs, collar and lips were all covered with blood spots.

He had three shackles on his feet, two handcuffs on his hands, and an iron collar around his neck, so he could only move half a step at a time.

Rafael stepped aside, pointed at the body of the middle-aged man by the wall and asked, "Do you know him?"

Seeing Favaleri's body, the old demon hunter was stunned at first, then shook his head in self-mockery: "I know him, he is Favaleri, ha, I knew it..."

At this time, Aigalan walked over from behind with difficulty, but compared with the calmness of the old demon hunter, he was much more excited.

"Impossible, this, Favaleri, there used to be a road here, and there was a tunnel." Aigalan took half a step forward, but was stopped by two gendarmes.

He looked at the corpse on the ground, his eyes full of disbelief. Favaleri, just died like that?

"There is a way here, there is a way here." Staring at the back of the stone gate, Aigalang shouted incoherently, while shouting, he continued to walk towards there.

"What's wrong with you?" The Holy Gunner next to him hit him on the stomach with a stick, causing him to fall down.

But he was still mumbling to himself, still not daring to believe the reality: "Why is there no road? There was a road when we came here before, right?"

The old demon hunter who was being watched by Aigalan sneered: "I guess the mechanism of the sarcophagus was tampered with, and then the church outside dismantled the support of the tunnel, so the people inside can't get out."

"why?"

The old demon hunter wanted to taunt him, but he seemed to see his past self in those tearful and swollen eyes. He sighed and said, "The church doesn't want us to come back. We are lucky. If we had followed Favaleri, we would all have died here."

"Master Pierre is here too. How could he allow the church to do this? He's the guarantor." Aigalan still couldn't believe it. "Just because of the balance of several dozen pounds?"

As the master witcher of Wolf Fort in Stonebreakers, Pierre is almost a father figure and idol to the younger generation of witchers. He even has his own collection of "Witcher Stories".

Even Aigalan joined Favaleri's professional team through Pierre's introduction.

"Who knows how many gold pounds there are, dozens, hundreds, or thousands?" The old demon hunter looked at the tunnel blocked by mud and Favaleri who died of despair, and smiled bitterly, "If Master Pierre really had good intentions, why would he introduce you to assassination missions instead of hunting monsters?

To be honest, I am not surprised at all that this kind of thing happened in our industry. On the contrary, you, Aigalan, is this your first day in the Empire?"

Sitting on the ground, looking at the hideous corpse, Aigalang said nothing.

(End of this chapter)