Chapter 2 Chapter 1 No time for guilt

A ghost heard a call from afar and drifted across this smoky and desolate void of gray.The mournful voice spoke words that were unintelligible, but to the ghost they seemed a lot like his name. ghost.It called to him clearly, summoned him from the rotten swamp of his eternal purgatory.Ghost, the tone called again.The villain looked around at the howling, huddled shadows, evil spirits left behind by evil men.He was a Howling Shadow himself, a tormented wraith punished for a life of wickedness. But now he was called, and was carried away from his pain by a string of familiar tones. familiar?

What remains of the ghost's conscious faculties struggled to recall, to recall even more of life before this filthy, empty existence.Ghosts think of sunshine, shadows, and killing... Arms down!The evil ghost got it.It's Qi Lufu, this magic tool that he has lived for decades, calling him to lead him away from the fire of hell! ※※※ "Cadderly! Cadderly!" when Visello Bellague, the resident alchemist at the Moezhi Library, saw young Cadderly and Danica appear in his vast library At the door of the room on the third floor, I couldn't help screaming. "Son, it's so good to have you back with us!" The lean man literally hopped past his shop, weaving his way through a pile of beakers, bottles, wet coils, and piles of thick books. table.No sooner had Cadderly stepped into the room than he rushed forward, wrapping his arms around the sturdy young man and patting him hard on the back.

Cadderly looked over Belag's shoulder at Danica, shrugging resignedly at her, and she winked at him with one exotic brown eye and a wide smile that shone with a warm radiance. "We hear there are assassins after you, boy," Bellag explained, pushing Cadderly about an arm's length away, carrying a pair of assassin's daggers that seemed to protrude from Cadderly's chest. Look at him. "I'm afraid you'll never come back." The alchemist also squeezed Cadderly's upper arm, clearly amazed at how strong and strong the young priest had become in such a short time away from the library.Like a concerned old lady, Bellag ran a hand through Cadderly's loose brown hair, brushing the unruly strands away from his face.

"I'm fine." Cadderly replied calmly, "This is the house of God Denir, and I'm Denir's disciple. Why don't I come back?" His evasive remarks, together with the calm expression in those gray eyes, had a calming effect on the excitable alchemist.Belag seemed about to blurt out an answer, but closed his mouth halfway and nodded instead. "Ah, and Miss Danica," the alchemist continued.He reached out and stroked Danica's luxuriant golden raspberry hair gently, the smile on his face was genuine. However, Belag's smile faded almost immediately, his arms dropped to his side, his eyes on the ground. "We heard about Dean Avery." He said softly, shaking his head, his face covered with sad resignation.

The mention of fat Avery Shere, whom Cadderly had regarded as his father, had stung the young priest deeply.He wanted to explain to poor Belag, that Avery's spirit lived with their god.But how should he speak?Belag would not understand; no one who has not stepped into the spiritual world and seen the divine and the glorious feels will never understand.And without this understanding, anything Cadderly said would sound like ridiculous platitudes, typical comforting words that neither the speaker nor the listener believed. "Someone sent me a message that you want to talk to me?" Cadderly said instead, raising his voice so that it sounded like a question, thereby changing the subject.

"Yes." Bellague replied softly.His head stopped shaking at last, and his eyes widened as he looked into the young priest's calm gray eyes. "Oh, yes!" he exclaimed, as if he had just remembered the incident. "I think—of course I want to!" The slender man, clearly embarrassed, hopped back into the store and came to a small cabinet.He fumbled awkwardly among a pile of keys on an oversized keyring, muttering to himself. "You're a hero now," Danica commented, noticing the man's movements. Cadderly could not disagree with Danica's observations.Visello Bellague had never been so happy to see the young priest before.Cadderly was always a difficult customer, demanding more than he could afford from Bellague.Because Cadderly had asked Belag to make a dangerous thing, and the alchemist's shop was bombed to pieces.

That was long ago, though, long before the war at Simista, and before Cadderly's performance at Calaton, the city on the eastern shore of Lake Impesque. Before Cadderly was a hero. hero. What an absurd title, the young priest thought.He hadn't done much more than Danica or the dwarf brothers Ivan and Pikel at all in Caladon.And, unlike his strong friends, he also fled from the war in the Simista Forest, fleeing because he couldn't bear the terrible reality. He looked down at Danica again, and the gaze of her brown eyes reassured him in its own way.She was beautiful, Cadderly noticed, with a figure as delicate as a newborn fawn, her hair bouncing freely on her shoulders.She was beautiful and irreverent, he concluded, with an inner strength that shone clearly through her exotic, almond-shaped eyes.

Belag returned to him at this time, seemed a little nervous, and hid his hands behind his back. "You forgot this thing here when you came back from the Elven Forest," he explained, holding out his left hand.He carried a leather belt with a wide, shallow sheath on one side, revealing a palm-sized crossbow. "Because it never occurred to me to use it in peaceful Kaladon," Cadderly replied easily, taking the belt and tying it around his hips. Danica eyed the young priest strangely.The crossbow had become a symbol of violence in Cadderly's eyes, and, for those who knew him best, Cadderly's aversion to violence.Seeing him put it on so easily, almost nonchalantly, made Danica's heart twitch.

Cadderly felt the woman's gaze and her confusion.He forced himself to accept it, thinking that in the days to come, he might do more things that would break his glasses.Because Cadderly had seen, in a way no one else could, the danger to the Moezhi Library. "I see that you've used up almost all of your arrow points," Belag stammered. "I mean...there's no charge for this batch." He held out his other hand, showing a cartridge belt filled with arrow points specially made for the small crossbow. "I think I owe you—we all owe you, Cadderly." Cadderly almost laughed out loud at these clumsy and cute declarations, but he restrained himself with self-respect, and took the very expensive gift from the alchemist, nodding earnestly and affirmatively.These arrow points are indeed very special, the center is empty, filled with a small bottle, which Berag has filled with a very explosive shock oil.

"I thank you for your gift," said the young priest. "Please rest assured that you have done your part in the library's long-term resistance against the evil Trinity Walled City." Bellague was quite happy to hear these words.He shook his head up and down again, and shook Cadderly's hand eagerly.When Cadderly and Danica walked out into the hall, he was still standing where he was, the grin on his face stretching from ear to ear. Cadderly could still sense Danica's constant restlessness, the disappointment etched into her features.The young priest narrowed his eyes and responded to the disappointment with his eyes. "I've dropped guilt because I've run out of room for it." That's all he offers. "Not at this moment, when there's so much to do. But I haven't forgotten Barjin, and that fateful day in the Catacombs."

Danica turned her head to look down the hall, but put her arm around Cadderly's, showing her trust in him. As the young couple made their way to Danica's room at the southern end, another figure—a plump, shapely, obviously female—entered the corridor.Danica clamped Cadderly's arms tighter as she caught a whiff of exotic, heavy perfume. "Hello, handsome Cadderly," said the hot priestess in a crimson robe provocatively. "I'm so glad you're back." Danica's grip on Cadderly nearly cut off his blood circulation, and he felt his fingers start to tingle.He knew his face had swollen crimson, as red as Priestess Histra's curvaceous robes.Intellectually, he knew, the dress was perhaps the most conservative he had ever seen worn by the Suni—aka Eros—priestess, but that didn't make it stand out from the others. His eyes became conservative.The front of the suit was cut in a deep V, so deep that Cadderly thought that if he stood on his toes, he might be able to catch a glimpse of Histra's navel.Furthermore, even though it was a robe, the slit in the front was impossibly high, allowing Histra's entire legs to be unobstructed whenever she took a step in her typically seductive stance. Histra didn't seem offended by Cadderly's apparent discomfort, or by Danica's snarling scowl.She bent one leg, and the entire thigh was completely exposed from the negligible cover of the robe. Cadderly heard himself gulp, and didn't realize he was staring dumbfounded at the explicit performance until Danica's tiny fingernails were scraping deep into his upper arm. "Come and see me, dear little Cadderly," said Histra provocatively.She looked haughtily at the woman in Cadderly's arms. "Of course, when you weren't held so tightly." Histra walked into her room slowly, twisting her hips.The soft click of the door as she closed it was drowned out by Cadderly's incessant swallowing. "I—" he stammered, finally looking Danica in the eye. Danica smiled and dragged him down the hall. "Don't be afraid," she said, her voice too calm. "I know about your relationship with that Suni priestess. In fact, she is quite pathetic." Cadderly looked down at Danica, bewildered.If Danica was telling the truth, why was there a thin streak of blood running down his muscular arm? "Of course I'm not jealous of Histra," Danica continued. "I trust you with all my heart." Just outside her room, she stopped and turned to look Cadderly squarely, one hand brushing the side of his face and the other wrapping around his waist. "I trust you," Danica said again. "Besides," the fiery young monk added, turning into the room, in a very different and forceful tone, "in case you're with that simple-minded, over-made-up bunch—a bunch shaking If there is anything wrong with the too strong meat, I will put her nose behind one of her ears." Danica disappeared abruptly into her room to get the notes she and Cadderly had prepared for their meeting with Thobex.The young priest stayed in the hall outside, thinking about the threat she had just made, and laughing at how likely it was to come true.Danica was a full foot shorter and about a hundred pounds lighter.She walks gracefully like a dancer—and fights like a bear stung by a bee. However, the young priest was not too worried.Histra had practiced seduction all her life, and she made no secret of her intentions for Cadderly.But she had no chance; no woman in this world could break the bond between Cadderly and Danica. ※※※ A blackened and scorched hand emerged from the freshly turned soil, desperately searching for the open space above.A second hand—also charred and snapped at a horrible angle between the wrist and elbow—appeared next, scratching at the mud and clawing at the natural prison that surrounded the filthy body.At last, the monster found enough support to free its hairless head from the shallow grave, and once again looked at the world of the living. The blackened head turned on a neck where the skin was so dry that it stuck to the bone, checking the surroundings.For a moment, the monster didn't understand what was going on.How did it get buried? A short distance away, down a hillock, the monster saw the glow of a night-lamp in a small farmhouse.Next to it is another building, a barn. barn! Fragments of consciousness that once belonged to a man named Ghost remember the barn.The ghost had looked at this body, its body, scorched by the loathsome Cadderly, right there in that barn, the vile wreck sucking some air—an action that, as far as the undead were concerned, could not It's called breathing -- and it drags the rest of its charred and shriveled body out of the hole as well.A distant but eerily familiar note continued to beat in its feeble consciousness. Unsteadily, the ghost approached the building, dragging rather than walking, the memory of that horrific, fatal day being recalled more fully with each step. The ghost steals the body of the Fubo giant, Vander, using the Luv, a powerful device with magical powers over the world in which the spirit resides, and forces the reluctant Vander to become his collaborator.Pretending to be Vander, the ghost crushed his own body with the strength of a giant and threw it to the side of the barn. Then Cadderly burned it. The vile monster looked down at its bony arms and protruding ribs, the hollow, half-dead body. Cadderly burned its body, the body! A single-minded hatred filled the mind of the evil thing.The ghost wanted to kill Cadderly, everyone around the young priest, everyone. The ghost is now in the barn.Thoughts about Cadderly flitted and vanished, replaced by an inexplicable anger.The door was on the side, but the monster knew it didn't need the door, it had become something more than a simple plank blocking the way.The shriveled monster flickered, disembodied, and the ghost passed through the wall. Before it had fully returned to its physical state, he heard the neighing of the horse and saw the poor beast standing there with eyes wide open and sweat all over his body.The sight delighted the undead creature; waves of new pleasure washed over the ghost as it smelled the beast's terror.The undead monster slowly walked up to the horse and stood with its tongue hanging hungrily from its mouth.The skin on either side of the tongue had been burned away, and the pointy tip hung far under the ghost's blackened chin.The horse didn't make any sound, it was too scared to move, it couldn't even breathe. The ghost gave a gasp of evil anticipation, and laid deadly cold hands on either side of the horse's face. The horse fell down dead. The undead hissed with pleasure, but the ghost, though thrilled by the kill, was not satisfied.Its hunger demands more than it can be filled by the simple death of an animal.The ghost walked past the barn and out again through the wall until it could see the lights of the farmhouse.A human shadow moves in one of the rooms. The ghost comes to the front door; can't decide whether to walk through the log and tear the door open, or just knock on the door and let the sheep go to the tiger's mouth.However, this decision was not something the monster could make, because it happened to see a small piece of glass next to the door, and for the first time after it was unearthed, it witnessed its own reflection. Red light scatters from the empty eye sockets.The ghost's nose was gone entirely, and what was there now was a black hole with shards of charred skin hanging around it. The little part of the ghost's consciousness that still remembered the vitality of life completely lost control at the sight of this horrific reflection.The ghostly wail of the monster, which terrified the animals of the barn, was more violent than any storm, and shattered the stillness of the autumn night.There was a rustling from inside the house, just behind the door, but the raging monster couldn't hear it at all.With a force unmatched by any human being, his bony hands pierced through the center of the door and yanked to either side, tearing the wood apart as if it were nothing more than a thin sheet of parchment. A man stood there, wearing the uniform of a Carraton City Guardsman, with a terrified expression on his face; his mouth was gaping, frozen in a silent scream, and his eyes bulged out, almost Fall off his face fast. The ghost rushed at him through the shattered door.Under the ghostly touch of the monster, the man's skin began to change and age; his hair changed from black to gray and fell out in clumps.Finally, the guard finally made a sound, screaming, wailing, and flapping his hands helplessly.The ghost tore at him, clawing at his throat until the visceral scream was nothing but the cluck of blood-soaked lungs. Hearing footsteps, the monster looked up from the killing to see a second man standing behind the hall, by the door of the kitchenette on the other side of the house. "My God!" the man whispered, before he retreated into the room there and slammed the door shut. The ghost picked up the dead man with just one hand and flung him off the crumbling front porch and into the middle of the open space next to the barn.The undead floated across the ground, savoring the kill just now, but hungry for more.Its figure flickered again, then across the room, through another closed door. A second man, also a member of the city guard, stood in front of the vile monster and frantically swung his sword at the terrifying monster.But the weapon didn't touch the ghost at all, and slid directly past the monster's transformation into a disembodied mist of smoke.The man tried to run away, but the ghost pursued him, past the furniture the man was stumbling past, and through the wall to the other side of the door, where he appeared in front of the terrified man. The game of torture was long and agonizing, until the helpless man finally stumbled out into the night, dropping his sword as he stumbled on the front porch steps.He struggled to his feet and ran into the dark night at full speed toward Carradun, howling all the way. The ghost could turn back into reality at any moment and tear the man apart, but somehow the monster felt that he enjoyed the feeling, the taste of fear, more than the actual killing.The ghost felt it more intensely, as if it had been fed by the emotion and screams of the terrified man. But now it's over, and the man is gone, and the other man is too dead to provide any more entertainment. The ghost wailed again as the remaining fragments of consciousness thought of what it had become, of what that damned Cadderly had created.The ghost doesn't remember much about its past life, except that it was one of the most expensive killers in the kingdom of the living, a professional assassin, and a murder artist. Now the monster is undead, a wraith, a hollow, quasi-living shell of sinful energy. In possessing the body for more than a century, ghosts have come to see the physical body in a very different way than other people.Twice the evil man used the power of this magical device to change bodies, killing the previous one and taking the new one for himself.And now, inexplicably, the ghost's soul - at least a small part - has returned to this world.Because of a trick of fate, the ghost came back from the dead. But how?The ghost can't quite remember where it was in the afterlife, but it can sense that it's not a pleasant place, not at all. Images of Howling Shadow surrounded it, dark claws slicing the air ahead of its mind.What brought it back from the grave?What makes its soul return to the world again?The monster scans its fingers and toes for the ring of regeneration that the ghost once wore.But it vaguely remembered that the ring had been stolen by Cadderly. The ghost felt a call in the wind, silent but commanding.And familiar.It turned its radiant eyes to the distant mountain, and heard the call again. It's a weapon. The evil spirit understood, remembering hearing the tune in the land of eternal punishment.Qilu crouched down to call it back.With the power of Qi Lufu, the ghost returned to the world again.For a moment of bewilderment and shock, the monster wasn't sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing.It looked at its shriveled, bleak arms and torso again, wondering if it could hold up to the sunlight of the day.In this state, what kind of future will ghosts face?What hope could this undead creature have? The silent call came again. It's a weapon! It wants the ghost back—and by its power, the monster's soul must be able to steal a new body, a living body. In Carraton, not far from the farm, the terrified guard staggered close to the closed gate, screaming about ghosts, and howling for his slaughtered companions.If the soldiers guarding the gate had any doubts about the man's honesty, just look at his face, which was much older than his actual age of thirty years. Less than an hour later, a large group of people, including a priest of the Ilmat Temple, set off from the gate of Caladon on horseback, and rushed to the farm desperately, preparing to fight the evil ghost.By this time the ghost was gone, sometimes on foot, sometimes drifting across the fields, following the call of Qilufu, its only chance of being set free. Only the howls of nocturnal animals—the frightened bleat of a sheep, the startled screech of a nocturnal owl—mark the ghost's way.