Chapter 288 – Frost, Death, and Night Flight
Chapter 288 – Frost, Death, and Night Flight
Frost was a very cold place, and for eighty percent of the year, the city-state was bathed in the unrelenting winds of the Cold Sea’s turbulence – the cold air constantly blew in from the frozen sea farther north, whistling and scraping across Frost’s towering walls and steep coastal bluffs, a coldness that deterred many people.
However, Frost is also the largest city-state in the entire Frozen Sea, and despite the cold, the center of this huge island has the richest reserves of Boiling Gold Mines in the northern region, which is the most crucial raw material for the parts in the Steam Cores, and can even be regarded as the industrial foundation of today’s era, the industrial system built around the Boiling Gold Mines supports the operation of this northern city-state, and brings endless wealth and prosperity to it.
And death.
Frost, on the edge of the mining area, at the entrance of the city-state’s cemetery, a black-colored steamer car had not yet been turned off, and under the illumination of the bright gas street lamps, several corpse carriers wearing thick black robes were working together to lift a coffin out of the car, and there was another tall and thin figure wearing black robes standing beside the car, the figure’s entire face was hidden in the shadows of the wide-brimmed bowler hat, and in the places where the shadows were intertwined, a line after a line of bandages.
A few paces away, a slightly stooped, dried-up old man, whose body seemed to be shrouded in low shadows, stood by the entrance to the cemetery and watched indifferently as the corpse-bearers went about their business.
Those corpse carriers from the Church of Death were exceptionally silent, not making a single sound during the process of carrying the coffins, with only the occasional sound of a slight bump, making the already eerie cemetery seem even more treacherous and dead.
After an unknown period of time, the shadowy old man guarding the cemetery finally opened his mouth to break the silence: “Cause of death?”
“Lost his footing and fell into the machine well,” the tall and thin figure wrapped in bandages spoke up, it was actually a slightly husky female voice that sounded young, “Died on the spot and has been baptized. The details are on the handover papers, so you can see for yourself.”
“For how long?” The shady old man’s expression and tone did not change, as if he was discussing a stone that was about to be moved into his room.
The tall, thin figure covered in bandages gave the shady old man a quiet look.
“Three days,” she replied briefly, “three days to purify the spirit, followed by sending it to the melting pot.”
“That’s short.” The caretaker grunted through his nose and glanced up at the cemetery gate next to him, the blackened, carved iron grill gate standing as if it were cold, sharp thorns against the light and the night, while across from the gate, which symbolized the gap between life and death, one could vaguely make out a number of neatly arranged mortuary bays, the narrow paths between them, and the shadowed tombstones and huts deeper down.
This is the cemetery, but for most of the corpses sent to the cemetery, this is not their long-lasting resting place – except for a few long-lasting graves with special significance, the dead are only here for a short while, and no one from the city-state officials down to the peddlers can circumvent the rules here.
They die, are temporarily sent to the cemetery, under the watchful eye of Bartok, the god of death, gradually return to peace, short of a few days, as long as ten days and half a month, will be sent to the cemetery adjacent to the furnace, the sins of life into the sky into the smoke, the good deeds of life into the hissing of the steam pipe, a little bit of the residue into the city’s land, the world no longer residual.
There will be only one small headstone reserved for them in the cemetery – very small, and it will soon be piled deeper into more headstones.
“The dead cannot take the place of the living,” the bandaged woman shook her head, “three days is more than enough time for the souls of the dead whose deaths were ‘clean and innocent’ to regain their peace. ”
“It’s not just for that reason, is it?” The shadowy caretaker raised his eyes, his withered, cloudy orbs gazing silently at the ‘bandaged woman’ in the thick black coat before him, “You are worried about the bodies rising up – as rumors have been circulating lately. ”
“There is no evidence yet that the dead in the city-state are actually ‘rising’, and there are contradictions in the few reports so far, but even if it is only the phenomenon of the briefly revived ‘restless ones’, it is something to be wary of, “The bandaged woman shook her head, “So watch over your graveyard, and as for what happens in the city-state, the church and city hall will take care of it.”
“Would that things were as simple as you make them out to be, Agatha,” the caretaker grunted, “I can assure you that no body will ever make its way out of this garden, but you and your ilk have a lot more ‘graveyards’ to watch over than my little garden It’s a lot bigger.”
The corpse bearers carried the coffin into the cemetery, and the silent, black-clad figures walked through the paths of the cemetery as if they were a corpse, finding the vacant mortuary platform that had been prepared in advance, placing the coffin on the platform, and then standing at the four corners of the coffin in preparation for the execution of Bartok the Reaper’s appeasement rituals.
The caretaker and the black-robed goddess known as Agatha followed them into the cemetery to the mortuary.
The four bearers took out Bartok’s talisman – a triangular metal emblem with a door in relief in the center, symbolizing the gates of life and death – and placed it on the four corners of the coffin, recited a short prayer in unison, and then took a half-step backward.
Agatha then stepped forward, removing her wide-brimmed bowler hat and gazing at the coffin on the mortuary table in the cold wind.
The glow of the Vas street lamp illuminated her form.
Layers and layers of bandages were wrapped all over her body, covering even a small portion of her face, only where the bandages did not cover her could she still see a slight hint of beauty and soft lines unique to women, her long, dark brown, slightly curly hair fell behind her head, and there was nothing but calmness and compassion in her eyes, which were also dark brown in color.
“May the favor of Bartok, the god of death, shine upon your soul and restore peace to your last three days on earth …… All your karmic debts with the earthly world are wiped away today, and those who have lost their way, you may travel with a lighter load …… “
Agatha’s low, hoarse prayers echoed in the silent cemetery, gradually blending into the deep colors of the night.
Temperament of the shadowy watchman is standing on the sidelines indifferently watching this ceremony, his hands do not know when more a heavy-looking double-barrelled shotgun, the shotgun’s wood can be vaguely seen on the symbol of the god of death Bartok’s triangular emblem. After a few moments, the ceremony ended, and Agatha turned her head to the cemetery caretaker, “It’s done.”
“I hope your prayers were effective,” the caretaker lifted the double-barreled shotgun in his hands, “although I trust myself more as an ‘old partner’.”
“There should always be some utility in a ritual of appeasement performed by me, the ‘keeper’ himself,” Agatha said lightly, before resuming the dark, wide-brimmed bowler hat, and with a nod to the cemetery caretaker, she led the body-senders towards the exit of the cemetery, the “It’s time for us to leave.”
Bartok’s followers departed, and the dark steamroller drifted away into the night, until the taillights faded into the night of the city.
The cold night wind blew through the cemetery, over the rows of mortuaries and the carved iron fence at the edge of the cemetery, and the somber old caretaker stood at the gate, looking in the direction of the departing hearse for a long time before retracting his eyes and tightening his clothes in the chilly wind.
“The living are finally gone, I’m not used to the cemetery being so busy.”
He muttered, grasping his reliably powerful double-barreled shotgun as he slowly made his way to his caretaker’s hut on the edge of the mortuary.
A few moments later, the old man stepped out of the hut again, this time with one more thing in his hand.
A small, pinkish-white flower, plucked from nowhere.
He went to the newest coffin, picked up a rock from the side, and pressed the small flower into a corner of the mortuary table.
The night wind blew across the path, blowing the soft petals shivering in the wind, and an identical small flower could be seen pressed in an inconspicuous corner on the rows of nearby mortuaries.
Most of the flowers had already withered in the wind.
“Go to sleep, have a good night’s sleep, it’s hard to sleep so soundly when you’re alive,” the old caretaker muttered, “Your family will come to say hello to you in the morning, as a rule, say goodbye to them and then leave in peace, the world of the living isn’t really that good ……”
The old man shook his head, bent down and grabbed his double-barreled shotgun, turned and slowly left.
……
“We are sailing north, our destination is Frost,” on the deck of the Lost Country, Duncan found Vanna who was looking at the sea in the distance in a daze, so he went up to greet her, “I see that you have been looking at the distance in a daze, so I guess that you should be curious about the ship’s course. ”
“Frost?” Vanna was a bit surprised, she was indeed speculating about the Lost Country’s next journey, but she didn’t expect Captain Duncan to take the initiative to mention it to her, “Why Frost? Did something happen over there?”
“It started when Maurice received a letter, a letter from a late friend,” Duncan came to the edge of the deck and braced his hands on the railing on the side of the ship, looking out at the sprawling sea in the night in the distance, “but more than that it’s because I’ve developed an interest in it.”
“You took an interest?”
“In a sense, Frost is sort of Alice’s ‘hometown’,” Duncan said with a smile, “though she has no concept of it herself at all.”
“…… I don’t know much about Frost, except that the main faith there is Bartok, the god of death, but there are some believers in the Storm Goddess, and that Frost’s local industry seems to be well developed, while the biggest economic pillar of the entire city-state is the boiling gold mines… …”
Vanna paused here, then her gaze subconsciously glanced in the direction of the cabin.
“Of course, Frost is best known for that rebellion half a century ago – Alice doesn’t mind if someone discusses that, does she?”
“She doesn’t mind – because she can’t understand it at all.”
“…… Okay.”
(End of chapter)