IWOL Chapter 315: Deadly Blood Pestilence

After exploring, Dong Zheng had already figured out the layout of the church and so he was easily able to find a secret room nearby and told Dong Linhai to hide in it.

The secret room was about 10 square meters long, and it lay along the edge of the church. If Dong Zheng hadn’t surveyed and mapped the internal and external structure of the church with his kernel, this secret room would be quite difficult to find.

Dong Linhai sat down against the wall. Above him on the wall was an inverted metal cross with Jesus Christ nailed to it. This was similar to what Dong Zheng had seen in the secret room the woman was in.

After seeing Linhai’s condition deteriorated to such a degree after just half an hour, Dong Zheng felt as if a stone was lodged in his throat and he couldn’t breathe. It had only been a little over an hour since they entered the box. Even if Cui Zuojing had killed the heretic in the kitchen the moment they entered the box, the corpse could not have decayed to such an extent. This “pestilence” that was spreading through the church was deadlier than they thought possible.

Was this the “Heretic’s Curse” that was written in blood on the inside of the coffin?

The situation wasn’t very optimistic, but Dong Zheng still tried his best to appease Linhai before leaving, saying, “Don’t worry. Nothing will happen. I’ll come back with Victor as soon as possible.”

“Rest assured, brother,” Dong Linhai said in a hoarse voice. His panic and fear of death had already reached its peak when he was spitting up blood, and now it had fallen to a normal degree.

After staying Pure White Realm for three year, he knew there was a chance that he might die, especially after Allen’s death. After seeing his partner’s tragic death in Snow Parasite Trail with his own two eyes, Dong Linhai suddenly realized that fate’s sickle might fall on anyone at any time, anywhere.

At this point, he could only try not to let himself affect Dong Zheng. At least his brother was still fine, so he absolutely couldn’t drag him down.

“Okay, then I’m leaving.” Dong Zheng was about to turn around and leave, but at this moment, Dong Linhai reached out and grabbed him. “Wait! What’s that on your face?”

“What?” Dong Zheng raised his hand to rub at his face, but he didn’t feel anything at all.

As Dong Linhai watched, dark red lines slowly crawled up Dong Zheng’s neck to one of his cheek, the mark just like a permanent criminal brand from medieval times.

“There’s a pattern on your face…” Dong Linhai wanted to reach out to the growing mark, but then he remembered that he was infected with a pestilence, and so he retracted his hand midway. After pulling back his hand, his expression was grave as he said, “As the Holy Son, I saw this pattern in the secret room where I woke up. It represented an unforgivable sin.”

“Have I committed a crime?” Dong Zheng suddenly realized something. He took out the Pinocchio puppet he’d take from the other secret room and saw that the puppet’s nose had grown longer.

“You lied?” Dong Linhai was surprised. “When did you lie? Was it when you comforted me? This can also be considered a lie?”

“There’s no time to worry about it right now. I’ll go find Victor. You be careful.” Dong Zheng couldn’t be bothered to think about the variables that the mark would bring. He raised his hand and touched his cheek. The mark was branded directly on his skin and he couldn’t feel it at all.

After making sure the hidden room was closed from the inside, Dong Zheng immediately set off to look for Victor. The brand made him uneasy. He’d come to confess his sin, but instead had committed a new sin. Whatever came next definitely won’t be a good thing.

He ran hurriedly through the first floor. He’d already explored the entire church when he was following Cui Zuojing’s marks. The only places he hadn’t been to was the rose field and the cemetery.

Dong Zheng ran toward the back. The sky outside was still the same pink. When he passed by a window, he suddenly stopped and stared at his reflection in the glass. He finally saw the mark on his face.

Just then, a sound of heavy footsteps reached his ears.

Dong Zheng looked vigilantly in the direction of the sound, which seemed to be coming from the stairs. It was accompanied by a dragging sound, as if someone was dragging something very heavy.

He dodged and hid in the small, unlocked room next to him. Then he opened the window to make it easier for him to jump at a moment’s notice. The sound came closer and closer, approaching him.

When the giant armor filled with black mist came into Dong Zheng’s line of sight, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to handle that thing. The armor came straight toward him. On its two helmets were two scarlet lights like soul fire, cold and dead.

His sins had attracted it. Dong Zheng was clearly aware of this fact, and he knew that this was the next progression. This thing’s purpose was to chase after him and execute him.

Dong Zheng stopped hesitating and jumped out the window. When he landed on the other side, he heard a scream coming nearby from behind him.

Someone was there?

Dong Zheng estimated that it would take a bit of time for the armor to reach him. In less than half a second, he made a decision, and directly ran toward the direction of the sound. The sound that he heard when he jumped out the window seemed to be only a hundred meters away. When Dong Zheng was halfway there, he saw a black figure flying out from behind the pillar like a meteor!

The man with short platinum blonde hair immediately came out from behind the pillar. He walked to the ground where the man in black robes had fallen, grabbed him by the collar, and slammed him into the pillar!

The black-robed man trembled like he was being electrocuted, and blood spurted out from his mouth. He struggled to get rid of Victor’s claw-like hands, but he couldn’t shake the Russian man in front of him.

“Victor!” Dong Zheng called out.

Hearing a familiar voice, Victor turned and saw Dong Zheng running toward him.

He loosened his hand, and the black-robed man slid weakly to the ground, nearly boneless. Victor could control his body power very well, so that when he used his hands, the person would only be beaten miserably, completely non life-threatening.

Victor saw the mark on his face and said in surprised, “This is—”

Dong Zheng glanced down and stared at the heretic, but he didn’t waste time. He said in a low voice, “Linhai is infected with a pestilence. He needs treatment as soon as possible.”

Dong Zheng’s words seemed to have lifted a veil. The heretic suddenly lifted his head and looked at Dong Zheng with horror, and in his gaze was a sense of…compassion?

“Can you understand our words?” Dong Zheng knelt down, looked the heretic in the eyes, and asked, “Did you guys bring this pestilence?”

Seeing that he would not get a response from this person, Dong Zheng quickly gave up. He couldn’t waste time here. The sounds of footsteps were already close at hand. Victor glanced over and then he and Dong Zheng ran to the window that Dong Zheng had jumped out from, leaving behind the heretic who still couldn’t get up.

Just as they were about to flip over the window to re-enter the church, the giant armor filled with black mist appeared. It saw the heretic lying on the side of the pillar, and it’s soul fire eyes swayed coldly as it lifted it’s heavy sword—

“How is Linhai’s condition?” Victor followed close behind Dong Zheng as they hurried to the secret room where Dong Linhai was hiding.

“Earlier, he had a cough, followed quickly by fever and hemoptysis. He became very ill and in only half an hour, it became very serious,” Dong Zheng said. “At that time, we were looking at the coffin in the nave. Those infected with this pestilence will leave behind a green mucus, and there was also a dead body of the infected in the kitchen. Linhai might have accidentally touched something.”

Victor frowned. All this time, he’d been exploring the graveyard behind the church. He had intended to enter the church to explore some more, but was stopped by a black-robed man who wanted to attack him. After listening to Dong Zheng describe Linhai’s symptoms, he didn’t find any clues that it was a virulent disease. “Are you sure it’s a pestilence?”

“Except for this, I can’t think of anything else.”

Victor said, “But it takes a certain amount of time for the virus to enter the body, invade the cells, replicate, and then multiply. The most potent virus, Ebola, currently takes at least one to two days to manifest. It’s only been about an hour since we entered this box. This infection rate exceeds medical rules.”

Dong Zheng also thought it was really fast. “Is it possible Kether had a hand in accelerating it?”

“First, let’s take a look at Linhai. If it’s a virulent disease, it’ll still be easy to handle. I’m just afraid that it might be something else.”

The two of them used the fastest speed possible to arrive at the place where Dong Linhai was hiding. Dong Zheng turned the mechanism. The gears turned and then the door slowly opened.

But there was no one there.

“Linhai?” Dong Zheng walked in. He looked around but found no traces of Dong Linhai.

There was only a pool of blood on the ground, revealing some kind of terrifying information, and the upside-down Jesus Christ on the quiet cross. But none of these could tell them exactly what happened here.

Would Dong Linhai leave the secret room despite being ill and promising Dong Zheng that he would wait for him?

The answer was self-evident.

Linhai…Where did you go?

Although Dong Zheng didn’t show it, Victor could still sense his panic. He placed his hand on Dong Zheng’s shoulder and said in a low voice, “If Linhai took the initiative to leave or is forced to leave, he would definitely leave a mark for us.”

Dong Zheng took a deep breath. He and Victor searched the secret room together, and soon, they discovered that there was a secret mechanism in the corner near the ceiling.

The moment the mechanism was touched, a secret tunnel appeared in front of them. The dark tunnel was very narrow, so that only a small person could fit inside.

Victor changed into his cat form and entered the tunnel to investigate. Two minutes later, he came back out and said, “It’s sealed inside.”

Their only hope bursted like a bubble. Dong Zheng’s hands clenched into fists. He still clearly remembered that his younger brother was sitting right here just twenty minutes ago, telling him to leave with peace of mind and that he would wait for him to come back.

But he lost Linhai.

For a long time, Dong Zheng couldn’t say a single thing. He had never recognized this reality so clearly–this box must have been manipulated by the Queen and her heirs. The last time Kether intervened in the previous box, they ended up losing Allen.

After some time, Victor whispered, “Let’s go look somewhere else.”

Dong Zheng took a deep breath. The brand was still on his face. The giant armor full of black mist was still chasing after him, and besides Linhai, he still had other companions whose whereabouts were currently unknown.

He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, and when he finally opened them again, there was no trace of sorrow or fear.

“Then let’s go.”

——

“Ke…keke!”

Dong Linhai woke up choking on his own blood.

He opened his eyes and saw that his surroundings had somehow changed.

After Dong Zheng left, his fever got worse, and although he knew that he must not close his eyes in this situation, he still lost consciousness.

Mixed in with the blood that he coughed up was something else. Dong Linhai looked around with some difficulties. Compared to the secret room he was in before, this place was a small but slightly more spacious room. The corpse of a priest sat in front of him, it’s neck dark green with rot.

This was a…confessional.

A cross pendant hung between the priest’s neck, and from the window behind Dong Linhai, the light from the pink sky threw his shadow on the floor.

…How did he get here?

Dong Linhai wanted to stand up and leave, but he had no strength at all. He was tormented by an unspeakable pain, as if all his bones were melting, and his internal organs were being squeezed into bloodied mush.

He started coughing again, and again, he coughed up something along with blood. Dong Linhai stared at the floor, looking at the thing that was stained with blood. Finally, he realized that it was his internal organ.

It seemed…that he wouldn’t be able to go on anymore.
His consciousness gradually blurred. Dong Linhai didn’t know how long it’d been since Dong Zheng left. When he finally found Victor and returned to the secret room, was he very worried when he saw that Dong Linhai wasn’t there?

Dong Linhai leaned weakly against the wall. With his priest robe soaked in blood, he could only face the priest’s deadly corpse and pant for breath.

The air that entered his nasal cavity into his lungs and organs cut like a knife, slicing the fragile tissues one cut at a time into chunks of bloody flesh.

Dong Linhai could imagine that, at this moment, his body probably looked like a cloth bag stuffed with a mushy pool of flesh and blood, and his skin would break with a single poke.

It hurted so much.

He never thought that humans could endure this much pain without dying.

The wristbands on both forearms fell off, and the silver metal gathered in his hands. The metal slowly struggled into the shape of a handgun. He couldn’t remember who it was who said that if you want to prepare a glorious bomb, you must prepare two.

After doing all this, he was paralyzed for a long time. He didn’t think about all the important scenes of his life like what those literary works had claimed. Because the pain already occupied his entire being.

He held the gun and forced the muzzle into his mouth.

And then he pulled the trigger with all his strength.

————–
Xixi: I’m bawling my eyes out. Things happened so fast, I’m not prepared at all.

Translation Notes:
Plague has been changed to pestilence. Victor mentioned a virus, which made me reconsider my translation since a plague is actually due to a type of bacteria. Also, considering that the background is of a religious nature, pestilence seemed more apt. At the same time, pestilence denotes any highly contagious diseases that are virulent and overwhelmingly deadly in nature.

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