Chapter 182 — Letters and a Mess
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 3
Seeing the figure of Lilith Kant vanish into nothing along with Viscount Kant, Gao Yang looked a little surprised.
He had not expected that Lilith Kant was also a product of the nightmare.
In his original deduction, Lilith Kant should have been a living person, the only "dreamweaver" in the whole castle who remained awake, but clearly his judgment on this matter had been mistaken.
He and Amber came together to the great stone coffin and saw the two skeletons inside as well as the Viscountess's corpse, still uncorrupted and protected by magic, and only then did it dawn on him: Lilith Kant really was dead. Perhaps it was to set this terrible dreamweaving ritual in motion, or perhaps it was to "reach" her husband and son more closely—whatever the reason, she had truly given up her own life.
What lingered in the cellar of the North Tower, what carried a lantern through the halls of the castle, was nothing but her shadow. No wonder this Viscountess, as a "dreamweaver," had not left Xuanque Castle in thirty years. It was not, as Gao Yang had imagined, that she was unwilling to leave—she had become unable to leave.
But none of that mattered anymore. The dream was over, and the sunlight of the real world was shining upon this dark and ancient fortress. Dreamweaver and dreamers alike had, with the ending of the dream, returned to where they belonged.
All they had left behind was a mess in the real world.
Amber was still a little dazed. This incredible adventure had left her head in a jumble (though, of course, her head was probably often in a jumble). Staring at the stone coffin before her and the three corpses inside it, it was a long while before she managed to blurt out: "So we've actually been tangled up with three dead people this whole time?"
"It's this whole stretch of land that's been tangled up with them for thirty years," Gao Yang shook his head. "The Eternal Sleeper... truly the most dangerous of the Three Ashes Cult."
"A man who crawled out of a coffin sighing over three people lying in coffins about how cults ruin lives—I've never in my life seen anything more ghostly than that..." Amber had no idea what nonsense she was thinking, but suddenly she gave a shudder and frightened herself with her own words. Then she looked down at her feet and made a sudden discovery. "Hey, Gao Yang, there are some papers here!"
Several sheets of enchanted parchment giving off a faint glow lay scattered before the stone coffin—exactly where Viscount Victor Kant had vanished. Gao Yang picked them up in surprise and saw Viscount Kant's handwriting upon them: "These are... left by Viscount Kant?"
"Left by him? Are they letters for you?" Amber blinked, dumbfounded. "Hurry up and see what they say!"
"They really are letters, but not all of them are for me. There are also letters addressed to the King and meant for public release." Gao Yang flipped rapidly through the parchment, the neat handwriting entering his view:
"I am Viscount Victor Kant, a noble ennobled by the royal house of Ansell, lord of Kant Town and the surrounding farmsteads, manors and villages of the southern frontier. I swear by the names of the ancestors of House Kant through the generations that all I set down here is true, and that these truths ought to be made public, to warn the world.
"My family has been cursed by the Eternal Sleeper.
"...The cultists corrupted my domain with their sinful ritual magic. For thirty years, countless innocents have perished within this ritual magic. My wife was controlled by their dark arts, and my soul could not escape the curse either—I became its accomplice...
"...Were it not for the aid of Duke Gao Yang Cecil, I would never know peace. The Duke answered my plea for help, and it was through his sacrifice and his courage in the face of death that the curse hanging over me and my family was lifted..."