There was no sense of time in immortal cultivation, and the same went for Vampires.
In the twenty years since he had transmigrated, this was the second time Norton had left home.
Norton carried his wooden coffin through the forest, deliberately choosing secluded routes and high ground.
As he saw it, he would either hide his sleeping place underwater or on a sheer cliff.
Physical attacks did him no real harm, so he could recover from a fall in the blink of an eye as well.
So if there were no rivers or seas, he thought hiding on a sheer cliff would be the safest option.
Then, when the church came after him, he could jump straight off the cliff and flee.
He might be smashed beyond human shape, but it was still a good way to escape.
But the strange bird he had encountered and the terrifying creature that killed it had left him wary of the wilderness in this world.
The monsters on land were already so enormous. Who knew how terrifying the water monsters in the lakes and waters might be?
Although he no longer needed to breathe, humanity's natural fear of deep water made Norton reluctant to make his home in a lake or river.
Besides, on land, his extraordinary sight, hearing, and sense of smell could help him fight and flee. That was far better than being underwater, where he could neither see nor hear clearly and could not smell anything.
Even after becoming a Vampire, a humanoid creature's home ground was still the land, not the water.
So Norton thought it would be better to make his home on a cliff. He could dig a cave in the cliff, jump off if an enemy that couldn't fly came after him, and dive into the cave if a flying monster showed up.
The best of both worlds, an unbeatable solution!
The forest was deep and dense, and Norton did not know exactly where he was.
Wild grass and lakes lay amid an abundance of beasts. But whether jackals, wolves, tigers, leopards, bears, or wild boars, they all seemed to sense something about him. When they saw him, they either fled in every direction or charged him in a frenzy.
It always felt as though these things were coveting Norton's body the way they coveted Tang Sanzang's flesh.
Those terrifying strange birds had been like that before, and these beasts were the same now.
Seen that way, it really was impossible for him to hide underwater. After all, underwater monsters were bound to be much bigger than those on land.
That was the difficulty of surviving between the two.
Farther into the wilderness lay all kinds of unimaginable dangers, while closer to the city there was the church.
After traveling through the mountains and forests for he knew not how many days and nights, he finally climbed to the summit of a high mountain with a cliff.
The moon was bright and the stars sparse beneath the night sky. At the summit, a little starlight was enough to make out the surroundings.
But light or no light made no difference to Norton. If anything, he was a child of the night.
"Squeak, squeak, squeak..." A bat's cries rang out high overhead. Having returned from hunting, it landed on Norton, hooked its barbed claws into the folds of withered skin on his back, and hung upside down from him.
Bang! Norton set his wooden coffin on the ground, and the heavy coffin board struck the earth with a dull thud.
Norton straightened up and turned in a circle.
He was standing at the mountain's summit. One half of the mountain was a sheer cliff, while the other was a gentle slope.
The cliff was steep, though not very high, probably only one or two hundred meters.
Looking forward from here, he saw a pitch-black forest sloping down into the distance. Looking back, he saw an endless starry sky and dark mountain slopes farther away.
This was already the tallest mountain in the area.
Judging by its height, the area was probably on a plain.
"Playing Chopin for you..."
Leaning against the coffin board, Norton looked up at the star-filled sky in such a good mood that he even felt like humming.
But his throat had also shriveled, leaving his voice somewhat hoarse. It sounded less like a human voice than the roar of some terrifying creature.
"From up here, I can actually see the city in the distance! That should keep me from getting lost."
Norton looked out in the direction of the cliff. From this height, his view stretched into the distance, and there was not a cloud in the sky tonight. From where he stood, he could clearly see distant pinpricks of light outlining the city.
If his appearance had not been so terrifying now, living here really would have felt like being a carefree immortal.
Norton settled on the mountaintop.
It was the most satisfying place he had lived in for some time.
The scenery was beautiful, and a cool breeze brushed against him. When he loosely cupped his hand in the air, the passing breeze felt as soft as holding a snowflake.
Even when a flight took off, he could use the breeze to try a different takeoff method.
But living in a coffin up here really was rather crude.
Even if he dug a hole in the cliff and put the coffin inside, it still would not feel solemn. Instead, it would somewhat resemble the way some peoples buried their dead.
The Chinese blood in Norton's bones rose up again in less than a day.
The urge to undertake a major construction project grew stronger and stronger in his mind.
At last, after spending three days grinding a stone into an axe, Norton began his great building project!
He felled trees and cut them into smooth, even pieces. As the sun and moon alternated, the outline of a house slowly took shape on the mountaintop.
On the mountain, Norton experienced the happiness of freedom for the first time in twenty years. Never mind playing on a phone-even the physical labor of building a house made him feel as happy as could be.
Twenty years of secluded life in the church had become the nightmare of his life.
And now, the church was becoming a nightmare for even more people.
Holy Lord City.
The weekly Mass was held once again. Flowers blanketed the filthy ground as far as the eye could see, setting off God's holiness.
Newly ordained missionaries followed at the rear of the procession, conducting the Mass Norton had once conducted.
But today's Mass was interrupted halfway through.
"Swish, swish, swish..."
There was something strange about the perfectly synchronized footsteps. They faintly drowned out the people's chanting during Mass.
What sounded like steel-armored church knights marching in formation seemed to be approaching Holy Lord City's main road. Even Father Andrew, who was conducting the Mass, stopped chanting and raised his hooded head slightly to look toward the end of the road.
The silhouettes of a golden formation of knights were already appearing and disappearing amid the rain of flowers filling the city.
The heavy footsteps grew clearer and clearer. They were perfectly synchronized, so much so that they seemed almost mechanical.
Their golden armor gleamed in the sunlight, displaying a holy power.
As the sounds drew closer, the formation of five hundred golden knights finally appeared before everyone.
"Swish, swish, swish..." It was not just their footsteps that were perfectly synchronized, but even the sounds of their armor rubbing together.
The formation of five hundred golden knights stretched for a hundred meters. The distance between each golden knight and those beside him was so precise it could have been measured with a ruler.
Their mechanical movements were more like those of robots controlled by modern AI. Each time they raised a leg and set a foot down, not only was the direction exactly the same, but even the distance did not differ in the slightest.
As they came to a halt in the middle of Holy Lord City's main road, a steam-like hiss burst forth in unison.
Pfft!
The force of their breathing even made people's ears ring.
It was terrifying and suffocating.
The people of Holy Lord City, seeing such a sight for the first time, panicked. One after another, they hurriedly lowered their heads and prostrated themselves to express their respect and submission.
Father Andrew, who was in charge of the Mass, stopped everything he was doing. Then he knelt where he was, devout and excited, took the cross from his chest and clasped it between his palms, and devoutly prayed to God in his majesty.
The Holy Judgment Order!
Having received the news in Holy Lord Cathedral, Bishop Rosen strode out of the cathedral toward the Holy Judgment Order, which had stopped on Holy Lord City's main road.
The Holy Judgment Order was the only group of servants within the church that did not belong to the church itself, but to God!
Even His Holiness the Pope only had the right to use the Holy Judgment Order for twenty-four hours a day!
The history of the Holy Judgment Order could be traced back to the church's beginnings. It had come into being alongside the church itself.
When the Holy Judgment Order was first established, it was not under the church's jurisdiction. From the moment of its founding, it was a force belonging to God, passing judgment on the world's unclean things!
But as thousands of years passed and countless successive popes worked toward that end, the Holy Judgment Order had by now become, for all practical purposes, the pope's personal force.
After the Holy Knights came into being as a species, the Holy Judgment Order became the greatest power in the Papal State and His Holiness the Pope's greatest source of support.
That was right. All five hundred knights of the Holy Judgment Order were Holy Knights.