By the time the two of them reached the back of the artificial mountain, night had fallen. There was no telling exactly what time it was, but Archbishop Adam had certainly worked up an appetite from the walk.
The back of the artificial mountain differed from the front. The front was a sloping mass piled over two hundred meters high, while the back was a sheer cliff.
The exposed rock was flat and vertical, with no apparent way to climb it.
Dense woods surrounded them, and nightfall had plunged the area into darkness. If two Holy Knights carrying torches had not been following them, Archbishop Adam might well have feared running into some man-eating beast out here.
His Holiness the pope seemed either to have timed it perfectly or to have sensed something. His eyes, which had been closed in feigned sleep, slowly opened.
"Adam."
"Your Holiness, I'm here," Archbishop Adam said respectfully, bowing low.
"You say you are always studying the church's scriptures. Do you think they are true or false?" His Holiness seemed less energetic than he had been that afternoon. His deeply wrinkled eyelids were struggling to open, and he squinted through half-closed eyes at the dense forest ahead.
Hearing the pope's question, Archbishop Adam hesitated before answering, "Well, I believe they're true, Your Holiness. And they have to be true."
"This is no longer a test, Adam."
"Even so, I believe they're true, Your Holiness. When most of what a book says corresponds to reality, whether it's true or not no longer matters."
Archbishop Adam answered respectfully in a low voice.
Didn't matter? How could it not matter? Although the four gods alone had left no trace throughout the entire book, everything originated with those four deities. So Archbishop Adam's statement should have been reversed: if those four deities really did not exist, then the book would be meaningless.
"Hmph, you are a clever man, Adam. That's the main reason I chose you." His Holiness chuckled twice, then let out a deep sigh.
"Clever people are often undone by their own cleverness, Adam. I hope that day never comes for you. Now, go forward. Past the woods ahead, there's a crevice in the cliff. Our destination this time is inside this mountain."
His Holiness seemed finally to have grown tired. His energy visibly waned.
In fact, the amount of exercise he had gotten today was practically equal to what he usually got in a month.
Adam looked at the dark mountain forest ahead, then pushed His Holiness into it without the slightest hesitation.
As the two of them went on, His Holiness visibly weakened.
His eyes could no longer open all the way, leaving only two narrow slits as he continued to look into the darkness ahead.
As Archbishop Adam went deeper into the woods, he had not gone far before he spotted a man-made path, just as the pope had said.
They continued along the path through the woods, and before long they reached the edge of the cliff.
A crevice appeared before Adam, as though the cliff had split down the middle. It was not wide, but just large enough for them to pass through.
Besides that, two Holy Knights were actually guarding the entrance to the crevice.
The surroundings were dark and unlit. The two Holy Knights stood silently on either side of the entrance, as if they were dead. Even their steel armor was covered in dust.
If not for the occasional hissing breaths they let out, like steam engines, Adam would really have thought the two Holy Knights had withered away.
Who would have thought the Holy See had a place like this hidden inside it!
Adam looked around with fascination. Deep down, he had a bold guess, but he still did not dare to be certain.
Perhaps because Adam was pushing the pope, they entered without meeting any resistance.
The Holy Knights following them stayed close behind with their torches, lighting the way ahead and illuminating the inside of the crevice.
To Archbishop Adam's surprise, the torchlight revealed clear murals on the rock walls on both sides of the cave.
The murals did not look as though they had been carved in the present age. Their style and imagery were more in keeping with the savage tribes of ancient times.
Little figures covered the walls in an abstract style. Some were gathered together, some were worshipping, and some had circles drawn above their heads. The most conspicuous was a figure with half a wing, hanging from a cross. This was a classic depiction of God from ancient times.
If Norton were here now, he certainly would not understand what the paintings depicted.
But the knowledgeable and well-traveled Archbishop Adam could understand them.
The murals depicted scenes from Ascension, the book Norton had once read.
As mentioned before, the story went roughly like this: God developed desire and lay with a lamb until nightfall. Then the lamb's blood attracted Kuba, the progenitor of vampires, who was hiding in a cave. Kuba was deeply dissatisfied with God: they were both his sons, so why was he so biased?
So Kuba grew wings on his back and killed God in the sky.
Then God's eldest son, Shenyin, retrieved God's corpse, nailed it to a cross, and exposed it to the sun every day, calling it Ascension.
The little figures in the murals depicted this entire sequence. The figure representing God not only had a small circle drawn above his head, but also had only half a wing, on his left side.
The small circle above his head might have represented death. In the preceding picture, when God was still alive, there had been no small circle above his head. Besides, the sun was also drawn as small circles nested inside one another.
That was easy to deduce.
What was puzzling, however, was that only one pair of wings appeared among the densely packed pictures.
Neither the figure representing Shenyin nor the one representing Jonah had wings. Of the pair that did appear, the left half was on God, while the right half was on Kuba, the progenitor of vampires.
If Norton were standing here and drawing conclusions, he would most likely think it was simply because God and Kuba had wings.
After all, the book had already described in detail how Kuba grew a pair of wings large enough to blot out the sun. And God was Kuba's father. If the son could grow wings, his father surely had them too.
But in the Holy Lord Church, wings growing from one's back actually had another meaning.
That was: divinity!