Holy Swordsman

The Lamp Room was dimly lit, with an eerie air of death hanging within.

The surrounding walls were covered in Holy Lamps, their flames arranged in rows, their white light painfully glaring.

A huge silver cauldron stood in the center, filled with boiling milky-white grease. Several lamp-keeping monks stood around it, stirring with long-handled silver ladles.

Fine golden flecks floated on the grease's surface, carrying remnants of the Unicorn's holiness.

The moment Isolde stepped inside, she paused.

A thick stench of blood wafted from the shadows on the right.

Without showing it, she turned her head slightly.

On iron racks deep within the Lamp Room, more than a dozen ordinary civilians had been bound haphazardly.

Men and women alike, their chests had been brutally cut open into bloody holes. They had long since stopped breathing, their bodies already stiff.

On a long table near the silver cauldron sat several hearts that were still faintly beating.

A lamp-keeping monk used a small knife to scrape off a little grease and carefully smeared it across a heart's surface.

The heart, which had nearly failed, began pounding violently the instant it touched the grease, as if it had been refueled.

The monk opened a Holy Lamp, removed a lump of black material from inside, and tossed it into a box at his feet.

Then, as though holding a sacred relic, he raised the heart in both hands and steadily placed it inside the Holy Lamp.

The next second, the previously extinguished Holy Lamp flared to life, bursting with blinding white light.

Isolde suddenly found the Holy Lamp in her hand utterly disgusting.

So-called "Holy Lamps" were made by using living human hearts as wicks and Unicorn corpse oil as fuel.

No wonder they could reveal so-called "contamination." No wonder they could burn forever in the wind.

Because they were not burning holy light at all. They were burning human lives.

A lamp-keeping monk looked up and noticed her, his tone hurried.

"New lamps? Put them over there and wait."

Isolde lowered her head in acknowledgment, walked over to the designated stone platform, and impatiently tossed the lamp in her hand onto it.

More than a dozen Holy Lamps awaiting renewal sat on the platform, and every one of them represented a living person about to be harvested.

In her previous life, she had seen players kill for loot, and she had seen monsters devour people.

But the Holy Court's practice of slaughtering its own kind like an assembly line while draping itself in merciful, holy pretense still made her physically sick.

Isolde suddenly thought of the original owner of this body. She, too, had been a lunatic who enjoyed meddling with corpses.

She liked sewing lingering souls into exquisite Puppets, turning defeated generals into obedient toys, and even when she watched those so-called "strong people" being tortured, her eyes had shone with nearly obsessive fervor.

The memories of this body remained.

Those spells, those techniques, that nauseating knowledge all lay quietly in her mind now.

If she wanted, she could even point out where these lamp-keeping monks' procedures were crude and which methods of cutting out hearts were better.

A mocking smile tugged at Isolde's lips.

Unbelievable.

What was this?

A pervert looking at perverts and somehow developing an occupational habit.

But that had been the old "Isolde," not her.

Now, she had the right to choose what sort of villain she wanted to be.

"Hey, you over there! What are you spacing out for? I'm talking to you!"

An angry shout abruptly pulled Isolde from her thoughts.

A burly lamp-keeping monk stood beside the silver cauldron. Half his face was covered by an oilproof mask, exposing only a pair of eyes reddened by the heat.

He held a long, slender heart-cutting knife, thick blood dripping from its sharp tip.

"Come lend a hand!" The monk impatiently tapped the iron rack beside him with the knife tip. "This one's got good stock, a strong heart. Just right for renewing the main lamp in the Main Chapel."

Following the direction of his blade, Isolde saw a young man bound to the nearest iron rack.

He looked about twenty-seven or twenty-eight. His face was pale as paper, and sweat had plastered his messy black hair to his forehead.

A shallow cut had already been made across his chest, blood running down along his ribs.

The heart-cutting monk casually grabbed a silver tray and shoved it into Isolde's hands without explanation.

"Hold it steady! Once I dig out the heart, you take it over and coat it with grease immediately. If you're too slow and the heart stops beating after leaving the body, then if the Main Chapel's Holy Lamp misses even one renewal, we'll both be sent to the Discipline Office for a whipping!"

Another lamp-keeping monk nearby could not help urging him on. "Hurry up. Someone from the Discipline Office corridor just delivered a message. Once we finish this batch, we need to hurry to the dungeon and assess the newly captured batch of 'witch hunters.'"

The man on the iron rack seemed to hear them. His eyelids trembled violently, and his cracked lips moved, producing an almost inaudible whisper.

"Got it, got it, stop rushing me. Those witch hunters hang around with mongrels all day. How clean could their stock possibly be? Finding one like this is already a blessing bestowed by Holy Radiance."

Isolde carried the silver tray and stepped closer.

But when she saw the face on the iron rack, obscured by blood and sweat, her gaze tightened slightly.

That face... looked familiar.

Aiven?

Could Colin's brother, the one he had been desperate to save, really have stumbled into her path by chance?

The heart-cutting monk did not notice Isolde's abnormality at all, nor could he be bothered to listen to a death row prisoner's final words. With a cruel grin, he raised his long knife and pressed its cold tip to the man's chest.

"Hold down his shoulders. Don't let him thrash around."

Isolde stood where she was, holding the tray without moving.

The heart-cutting monk frowned. "Are you deaf?"

The other monks stirring the silver cauldron also stopped and looked over.

For a moment, heat rolled through the Lamp Room, while countless blazing white Holy Lamps all around made the atmosphere suffocatingly oppressive.

When this "subordinate" still did not move, violent fury finally flared in the heart-cutting monk's eyes.

He tossed aside the tray and reached for Isolde's wrist. "What the hell are you—"

Before he could finish, a faint crack, like glass breaking, sounded from the Lamp Room entrance.

The heart-cutting monk sensed danger and whipped around. "Who?!"

But what greeted him was a silver-white sword flash carrying fierce wind pressure, violently slashing in through the crack in the door.

The two lamp-keeping monks closest to the entrance did not even have time to scream before they were sent flying and smashed heavily into the stone wall.

The sudden change made everyone in the room turn pale, and shrill alarms burst from their mouths.

"An intrud—"

Unfortunately, the newcomer was faster than reason allowed.

A second crescent sword flash swept across like a full moon, cutting throats in an instant.

Within two or three breaths, the once stifling Lamp Room contained nothing but Isolde and corpses still steaming on the floor.

Isolde still wore that distinctive gray clerical robe. A Holy Lamp rested at her right side, while she even held the heart-cutting knife she had casually picked up in her left hand.

No matter how one looked at it, she resembled a fish that had slipped through the net.

Having landed the strike, the black figure did not pause in the slightest. The chilling blade closed in on Isolde's throat.

It was too fast. Before Isolde could even activate the Soul Threads within her body, the longsword emitting a faint silver glow was already pressed against her neck.

The sharp sword aura silently severed several loose strands of hair beside her ear.

"Don't move." Beneath the hood, a pair of astonishingly bright eyes stared at her. "Behave yourself. Where's the Relic Chamber?"

Isolde lowered her gaze slightly, looking at the blade only millimeters from her skin.

This sword was no ordinary weapon. Armor Break and Sharpness enhancement runes were carved into its hilt.

And then there was this neat, efficient nighttime gear...

At that moment, the other person's hood, having slipped back from her sudden killing spree, revealed most of a young face.

The woman had sharp brows and eyes, with an indescribable resilience in her gaze.

Isolde withdrew her gaze, instantly understanding.

This was no native resistance fighter.

She was a top-tier player with excellent equipment, following an agility burst-build path.

Judging by the fluidity of her technique and skill combinations, she was probably a ruthless character who could rank among the top hundred players even in the late game.

Seeing the "gray-robed NPC" in front of her remain silent like an idiot, the hooded woman impatiently pushed the blade closer, drawing a thin line of blood.

"Playing dumb, are you?" She stared at Isolde with the oppressive air of an interrogation. "Talk, or I'll cut you down right here."

Isolde looked at her and suddenly spoke. "Turn left when you leave."

"And then?"

"Take Chenghua Avenue to Erxian Bridge."

The hooded woman froze.

The hand holding her sword stopped in midair, and the coldness on her face gradually cracked, as if she had heard something utterly absurd yet profoundly familiar.

She sucked in a breath, her eyes nearly popping out of her head.

"Holy shit! You're one of us?!"

Isolde had only been testing the waters with a cross-server meme, hoping to avoid a vicious fight. She had not expected the other woman's reaction to be even more intense than she imagined.

She raised a hand and pushed away the sword hilt, rubbing her neck, which had nearly been relocated, with helpless annoyance as she sincerely complained.

"Your way of recognizing a fellow countryman is a little too sharp."

High-ranking Holy Swordsman Luo Jiuge had never been this embarrassed in her life.

She actually blushed, looking a little awkward. "Ah, sorry, sorry! You were dressed exactly like an NPC. What's your deal? Hidden identity? An infiltration-faction spy mission? Or did you get unlucky at the start and get captured to work in this black-hearted factory?"

Isolde rolled her eyes. "You ask way too many questions."

Seeing that her compatriot did not wish to elaborate, Luo Jiuge did not mind. Instead, she grinned.

Who knew how long she had been holding it in within this bizarre world full of cryptic weirdos and lunatics? Today, she had finally found someone who could speak like a normal person.

"Isn't it because when fellow countrymen meet, their eyes fill with tears? If you don't want to talk, I won't ask."

She casually slapped her sword against her waist and glanced down at the monks' corpses strewn across the floor.

Normally, she would have squatted down and thoroughly looted the materials and wallets off these elite monsters, but right now, all her attention was on Isolde.

"Let's properly introduce ourselves. I'm Luo Jiuge. My class is [Holy Swordsman]. A while ago, I picked up a hidden bounty outside. I heard Grey Dove Monastery had a piece of high-level equipment hidden here, so I figured I'd come solo this dungeon."

As she spoke, she turned her head and looked at the civilians' disemboweled corpses.

The trace of a smile on her face gradually chilled away, becoming pure disgust.

"I thought it was just an ordinary cult hideout. Clear it, take the reward, and leave. I never expected... these people to be this disgusting."

Isolde glanced at the silver cauldron still boiling with Unicorn grease and gave a cold laugh devoid of warmth.

"You'll get used to it. In this broken world, methods more despairing than this stopped being anything new a long time ago."