Chapter 150 Behind the Curtain
Chapter 150 Behind the Curtain
The interior of the community church, which had been abandoned for ages, was brightly lit and clean, while at the same time, to Duncan’s eyes, the brightly lit church had a distinctly dilapidated “as if it were a different truth” look to it.
This gave Duncan a feeling that this small church was like a “wrong space” superimposed on reality, or a place of oblivion stranded in the cracks of time and space, where two diametrically opposed histories had intersected, but the church had remained at the point of intersection, and the time inside it had not moved forward since then.
It was neither destroyed nor did it survive the fire.
So …… what does the nun lady who remains alone in this church know?
“It has been a long time since anyone has visited this church,” the nun in the black clergyman’s gown and skirt repeated softly again, smiling and looking up, but her gaze seemed to pass over Shirley and Duncan, who stood in front of her, “Where do you come from? Strange faces …… You are not residents here, are you?”
While the scene before her was bright and welcoming, Shirley suddenly shrank under the nun’s smiling gaze; she felt a nasty chill for some reason, and nervously muttered to Duncan in a low voice, “I …… Why do I feel weird about this place… . the outside looks run down like that, but the inside is ……”
Duncan did not answer, just casually patted Shirley’s shoulder, from the girl’s reaction, he already guessed that the other party should only be able to see one of the “side” of the church, and most likely the side that has not been destroyed, but now he did not know how to explain his own guess to Shirley -… -If he released Dog at this time, with the “eyes” of the hound, he should be able to see the real situation here, right?
But before knowing the details of the nun in front of him, it would be better not to let Shirley summon Dog out rashly.
“We were passing through here,” Duncan said calmly to the nun, unchanged, like a normal member of the public visiting a church, “have you been here all along?”
“Me? I have always lived in this church,” the nun nodded gently, “I have always prayed here, to the Great Being.”
“But the people on the block say that the nuns in the church haven’t been back for a long time,” Duncan added, while watching the reaction of the nun in front of him, “They say that this church is neglected, and for a long time it looked as if it was deserted.”
The nun listened to Duncan’s words quietly but without any violent reaction, as if her mind had been eternally calmed.
She just gave a faint smile, “Oh yeah, but I’ve been here …… probably because they forgot the day of prayer and thought the church wasn’t open instead.”
Duncan was noncommittal, but he had already confirmed that there was something wrong not only with this church, but with the entire sixth block outside of it.
The derelict church was deep in the neighborhood, and just from the looks of it, it had been derelict for over a decade! And for the average person in this world, a church is more than just a place to provide spiritual solace – it’s a functional facility used to keep the area safe, to ward off the forces of evil after nightfall, and a place of healing for many civilians after they’ve suffered from mental problems or been plagued by nightmares… …Such an important facility has been abandoned for eleven years for nothing, and the residents of the Sixth Ward don’t see anything wrong with it, but rather just blithely say, “The nuns aren’t here lately”?
Imagine, if a neighborhood has been without water and electricity for eleven years, but the local residents do not feel there is anything wrong, outsiders ask about it, but only lightly said “the water and electricity departments have not been working lately”, this is how bizarre the situation is!
As for this church inside the nun …… now Duncan is not sure that this group of humanoid ash from time to time in his eyes to show the original shape in the end is what kind of road, just through the preliminary conversation, he can feel the other side seems …… not hostile.
Nonetheless, there is no hostility, her thinking seems to be in a very strange state, can not say that there is no reason, but also definitely can not be counted as lucid.
Duncan asked a few questions on the side, and the nun in the church then calmly answered them all, and her calm answers themselves …… were the embodiment of delirium.
Because under normal circumstances, a stranger suddenly ran into the church and grabbed the nun on duty to ask a bunch of unrelated things, the nun should have felt puzzled.
She had sense – but not much more.
“Do you want to say your prayers? Or need help with tranquilizing and exorcism?”
The nun asked with a smile and a soft voice.
“Thank you, but no need,” Duncan shook his head, then looked around the room and asked as if offhandedly, “By the way, where are the guards of this church?”
Every church should have guardsmen sitting in it, even the smallest community church in the slums kept a force of guardsmen large enough to deal with the usual threats, and this church should be no exception.
“The guardsmen …… guardsmen are resting in the church, they won’t show themselves until after nightfall,” the nun’s smiling expression remained unchanged, “What do you want with the guardsmen?”
Duncan did not answer, only slowly swept his gaze over those pews beside the nun. In his field of vision, visions of fires destroying everything and collapsing piles of ash and debris overlapped the lighted church as if on overlapping film, and in the other dimension of that iteration, there was no shortage of …… charred bodies.
“Is that where the Guardians rest?” Duncan raised his hand and pointed a short distance away, whereas to Sherry’s eyes there were only two rows of empty pews.
The nun froze for a moment and looked in the direction of Duncan’s finger for a moment before speaking softly, “Shhh …… they’re sleeping.”
Duncan hmmmed and asked again casually, “Can we look around?”
“Of course, the church is open for tours,” the nun nodded gently, “Then make yourselves at home, I’m going to continue praying – feel free to call on me if you need help.”
With that said, the strange nun literally turned and walked towards the Goddess’ icon not far away, completely leaving Duncan and Shirley to dry.
And until the nun left, the nervous Shirley who had been tense for half a day only snapped out a sigh of relief, she couldn’t care about being afraid of Duncan at this time, because the omnipresent weird atmosphere in the church had already made the Dog who was in a state of concealment restless, and the strange feeling of nervousness was being transmitted through the spiritual connection directly into her mind, which made her subconsciously lean towards Duncan: “This …… what the hell is going on in this place …… how does this nun give people a creepy feeling, obviously looks normal, but as if nowhere is normal …… “
“There seem to be two churches here,” Duncan spoke softly, explaining simply and bluntly, “one has burned down and one still remains intact, they are iterated in this time and space at the same time and the nun in the church …… is not dead not alive.”
Shirley froze, and it was a full half-minute before she whispered in confusion and shock, “What does that mean?”
Duncan gave her a look, “Go back and read some books – I can teach you if you can’t.”
He then walked off into the depths of the church without waiting for Shirley’s reply.
The nuns had said that the church was open for tours, so of course he was going to “tour” it as much as he wanted.
Shirley was stunned for a moment, but hurriedly followed in Duncan’s footsteps, and they passed through the neatly arranged pews, and then passed by the icon and the prayer desk at the end of the pews.
The serene nun was already kneeling in front of the icon of the Storm Goddess, her hands lightly pressed to her chest, devoutly praying to God, as if she had completely forgotten about the visitor, as if she had been kneeling here for the past eleven years, maintaining an uninterrupted prayer.
Duncan blinked, and the nun dissolved back into a writhing mass of humanoid ash, piling up beside the charred and ruined prayer platform, starbursts of firelight spilling out of the dome as if falling leaves had drifted away.
He suddenly felt something in his heart and looked up at the icon of the Storm Goddess above him.
Dressed in a long gown, the icon stood silently on the raised platform, a crack jutting across the head of the icon!
In this brief moment, Duncan saw the truth iterated in the core of the double church, he clearly saw that the head of the icon of the goddess bloomed into a dark fissure, in the fissure there was a faint chaotic light and shadow, as if a horrible pupil placed horizontally, and the depths of the pupil mapped out the light that should not be part of the real world, and the aura of “holiness” that should be lingering in the icon of the goddess had long disappeared. Holy” breath that should have lingered on the goddess’s icon has long since disappeared without a trace, this bizarre and horrifying stone statue, coiled only cold and nothingness!
In the next instant, that horrific scene disappeared without a trace, and Gemona’s icon still stood quietly on the high platform, looking down majestically on the surrounding area, emanating a reassuring and awe-inspiring majesty.
The nun who was kneeling and praying in front of the goddess statue suddenly opened her eyes, she slightly tilted her head sideways and calmly looked at Duncan.
“Would you like to pray to the goddess?”
(End of chapter)