From the end of the world

Chapter 514 Abandoned Gospel House

If you can accept it willingly, then what kind of punishment is it? It is a punishment if you have to eat it unwillingly. This is my first reaction.

It was a new experience to be begged for mercy by someone who was not my enemy, but I never thought that I should punish him. To put it another way, I didn't think of myself as a high and mighty person who had the power to reward or punish.

"Do you want to die after recovering your memory in order to repay Xiaowan?" I asked curiously.

The wandering soul nodded, then shook his head, and then said: "More than that... Knowing who I am and where I came from, and then taking the last step of my life towards death... This is my complete wish.

“I don’t want to be a wandering ghost, but rather I want to face my own death as a living human being.

"...I am also aware that this is a very extravagant wish, but this is my only obsession."

I roughly understood what he wanted to say, "In other words, you want to die with a clear conscience."

For ordinary people, this wish can be said to be as low as it can be; but for doomsday survivors, it is indeed a very luxurious wish.

"That's right." replied the wandering soul.

"I understand. This matter is also directly related to resolving Xiaowan's crisis. I will help you realize your wish." I said.

Youhun bowed his head deeply, "...Thank you very much."

Then we continued to move. The wandering soul held the cartographer's map and repeatedly compared it with the scar map on his arm to determine the direction to move forward. The surrounding scene was also constantly changing.

There were still strange things coming to attack us on the road, just like traveling through a horror movie about the zombie apocalypse, trying to walk through a town full of zombies. And the strange power is much more treacherous and dangerous than zombies. Although Sandalwood was protected by me and Youhun, he almost died two or three times.

After a long time, we finally arrived at our destination.

Tan Xiang looked quite miserable, almost as miserable as the wandering soul next to him with disheveled hair and face covered in blood and dust.

His anxiety and fear seemed to be reaching their limit.

Before he met me and the cartographer, he had a short period of difficult experience surviving alone in the apocalypse, and knew how often survivors would encounter strange things under normal circumstances. Last time on the way to the safe house, he could still convince himself that it was just bad luck, but now that he knows that the problem lies with me, and he has encountered threats again one after another, the urge to leave me seems to gradually overwhelm the fear of being alone.

If he wants to leave later, then let him go. I thought so and looked towards our destination with the wandering soul.

We are now on the shore of a huge lake. With the help of the lighting released by the fireball sent forward, we can see a large building complex covering a huge area in the center of the lake in the distance.

It looks like an ancient military fortress and a magnificent religious temple. If it were in the modern world, it would surely be a tourist attraction popular with many tourists; but in the apocalyptic era, this ancient building complex seems to have been abandoned due to lack of maintenance, and a large number of plants are crawling all over the outer walls and the ground.

Also, it may have been hit by natural disasters or man-made calamities. Even if you just look at it from a distance, you can see that this large complex of buildings is full of signs of destruction, which makes people wonder whether there has ever been a war there.

What is even more horrible is that most of this large complex of buildings is submerged in water. If you look closely, you will find that although the buildings on the opposite side are located in the center of the lake, there is not an island in the center of the lake; on the contrary, this huge lake seems to have been formed later than the buildings.

"There is……"

Youhun looked at the buildings opposite, complex emotions like nostalgia emerged in his eyes, and he fell into thought.

"What do you think of the buildings there? You seem to know where that place is?" I asked.

The wandering soul seemed to be trying to dig out his memory. After a moment, he answered: "...Yes, I know where that is. If nothing unexpected happens, it should be the Gospel Temple."

"Gospel House?" I didn't expect that I would suddenly run to the lair of the hostile forces.

Fortunately, Youhun immediately added: "To be precise, that was a stronghold building that used to belong to the Gospel Institute.

"The Gospel Institute has more than one stronghold building for gathering, training, and commanding members. In addition to the headquarters where the head of the Gospel Institute, Yama, personally sits, and the Chakravartin as an exception, each individual god has his own branch stronghold, and is named after himself. For example, Huangquan Gospel Institute, and Shentu Gospel Institute...

“And this place, according to my impression, should be the place that was once called Tai Sui Gospel Temple, and I seem to have been a member of it in the past.

"Because Tai Sui and his followers were liquidated by the headquarters, the monks and survivors who originally gathered here were displaced, and the stronghold building itself was destroyed, and then fell into a state of desolation as you can see."

I then asked, "So...are you sure the Sansheng Stone Powder is in there?"

Youhun lowered his head, looked at the scar map carved on his arm, and nodded confidently: "It's in there."

Originally, he might have thought that the map Xiaowan gave him might be a white lie to comfort him, but now, after discovering that the map actually led him to this place of special significance, he seemed to have some confidence in this.

"But...how are we going to get to the center of the lake? There don't seem to be any ships nearby..." Tan Xiang said, as if she was sure that I had a way, and she glanced at me secretly.

Of course, such a small matter would not be difficult for me. I gently pushed Youhun from behind, then pushed Tanxiang from behind, and then took a step forward, ignoring the distance between us and the abandoned Gospel Hall, and came to the platform part of the abandoned Gospel Hall that was not flooded.

"Ah? We... are here already!?" Tan Xiang was a beat slow to react.

The wandering soul seemed surprised as well, but seemed to take it as something that could be done by humans and gods as a matter of course, and did not react as strongly as Sandalwood.

It is not easy to perform this ability in a chaotic space-time background. This is also the result of my analysis of the doomsday space-time with the blessing lantern. Now I can restore this spatial movement skill based on the remaining order of the doomsday space-time.

We arrived at the observation deck of one of the halls of the abandoned Gospel Temple. The hall looked like a place used for some kind of religious ceremony, but now it was full of traces of mess and disorder.

"Youhun, do you know the exact location where the Three Lives Stones are scattered?" I asked.

The wandering soul said with difficulty: "The map doesn't give such precise instructions... I can only look around for now."

I didn't worry that I and others wouldn't be able to find the Three Lives Stone Powder. As long as we keep looking, we will definitely find it. Then, according to the suggestion of the wandering soul, we began to move around and search inside the abandoned Gospel Temple.

After all, most of the buildings were submerged in the lake, and many places were inaccessible, which hindered our movement. I thought that the Sansheng Stone Powder might be more likely to be in places that were not flooded, so I planned to explore these parts first. If I can't find it, I will explore the underwater part. If the water is a problem, I can also consider evaporating the lake itself first.

Since we were exploring indoors, the light from the blessed lanterns held by the wandering soul and I was more than enough. Occasionally, we would have to enter narrow places, so I would remove the lighting fireball that was floating around me.

During the search, Tan Xiang looked at the flooded areas and said, "That San Sheng Shi San... sounds like some kind of medicine, right? Like Wu Shi San or something... If it is soaked in water, will it lose its effectiveness? And..."

He touched the rough wall beside him.

"I've traveled to places before and visited some historical sites that weren't in good condition," he said. "This place felt like one of those places. It didn't look like it was destroyed a few years ago, or even decades ago... It felt like it was destroyed and abandoned centuries ago."

"This may also be one of the effects of chaotic time and space." Youhun explained, "In some places where no one is watching, time may pass abnormally fast or abnormally slow. You don't have to take these traces of the passage of time seriously. Anyway, even if we analyze something, it will be meaningless to us."

"But if the San Sheng Shi Powder is here, even if it is not submerged in water, it may have expired, right?" Tan Xiang offered a common-sense opinion.

This sentence seemed to stump Youhun.

I thought of the time in the modern world. The time in the Doomsday era and the time in the modern world cannot be compared and referenced. Although from my own physical feeling, it has been less than a day since I came to the Doomsday era, how much time has passed in the modern world now?
Days? Months? Even years?

The most that Luo Shan in the modern world could know is that I disappeared after attacking the Taoyuan Township headquarters with Liu Shuying. Even if he could really infer that Huang Quan banished me to the void, it would be impossible to calculate that I still had a chance to survive from the void and reach another era. It is relatively normal to think that I have died in battle.

Would Ma Zao also think that I was dead? What would she think of this?

She must be extremely sad about this, and my sudden "death" may cause indelible trauma to her heart.

However, despite her fragility and fear of loneliness, she occasionally showed her resilience. Maybe if she is given time, she can get over the sadness and pain of my "death". Thinking of this, although I probably shouldn't say this, I still can't help feeling a little lonely.

What about Zhu Shi? If I die, will she cry for me?

What would Chang'an's reaction be if he knew about my "death"?
Have they forgotten me?

This kind of anxiety about gain and loss is really not my style. However, my heart is not made of iron, and I occasionally feel fragile. There is a saying on the Internet that "only those you really care about can hurt you." I care about Ma Zao, Zhu Shi and Chang An very much, so just imagining that they will forget me makes me feel sad.

Just then, I suddenly heard a calling voice, as if someone was calling my name.

"Zhuang Cheng... Zhuang Cheng..."

The sound was so faint that it seemed like an illusion.

Hearing this vague voice, I looked at the wandering soul and sandalwood beside me and asked, "Who of you is calling me?"

The two looked at me in confusion.

And that voice still rings.

“Zhuang Cheng…Zhuang Cheng!”

(End of this chapter)