novelraw Chapter 118: The Rewritten "Dirge"
Chapter 118: The Rewritten "Dirge"
The night was as dark as ink, a cold wind laced with sleeting rain tirelessly sweeping over desolate hills and peat bogs, issuing a long, mournful wail like a ghost.
In this wilderness, far from city lights and civilized order, a vast quarry abandoned for decades now flickered with hundreds of torch flames.
This was the Fenian Brotherhood’s secret site for tonight’s sacred assembly, where hundreds of brave, zealous Irish nationalists from all walks of life in Dublin had gathered.
Among them were dockworkers, small shopkeepers, disillusioned poets, and several young students from Trinity College brimming with idealistic fervor.
Each face carried the solemn fanaticism of people awaiting a miracle.
Lin Jie and Julian were mixed into this restless crowd that smelled of gunpowder and whiskey, still disguised as the most inconspicuous foreign scholars and followers.
Their position was neither too good nor too bad, not far from the improvised altar built from square stone blocks—just close enough to see everything clearly without attracting undue attention by being too forward.
Lin Jie’s heartbeat was unusually steady. His right hand seemed casually tucked in his pocket, but his fingers were tightly wrapped around a makeshift weapon of uncertain consequence.
The negative copper wire end of the simple device made from tuning-fork wire and a battery had been covertly wound around his index finger, while the flickering fragment of the Nightingale lay pressed into his palm.
As soon as he let his wired finger touch the fragment, a spiritual closed loop would form instantly.His gaze swept over the flushed faces of the revolutionaries; he felt neither pity nor scorn.
Someone in the crowd gave an excited low call: "He’s here!"
All eyes immediately focused on the crude altar, lit by dozens of torches so bright it looked like daylight.
An elderly historian whom they had briefly met earlier at the Gaelic Lion antique shop was being escorted up to the altar by several armed, expressionless guards.
He held a sumptuous swath of deep green velvet embroidered with golden Celtic knot patterns, solemnly wrapping a long, rectangular holy relic.
The whole place fell silent, only the wind howling past the quarry’s great rock faces.
The aged republican leader stood at the center of the altar, his scholarly, refined face flushed with excitement and a sense of sacred mission.
With solemn bearing he unveiled the green velvet that wrapped the holy relic.
The miracle arrived.
An ancient harp so beautiful it seemed to take one’s breath away appeared before them.
Its body was carved from a single block of milky, moonlit, translucent wood, its surface flowing with natural spiral grain.
Its strings were thirteen gleaming silver wires that shimmered like stars.
The whole instrument exuded an ancient, naturistic divinity and a tragic beauty; it was not merely an instrument but a living artwork and a curse that had slept for three hundred years.
The republican leader’s voice trembled. "My brothers! My countrymen!"
"Tonight, on this ancient soil that has also witnessed Ireland’s history of oppressed blood and tears, I will, with these hands that share the blood of the Gaels, play again the indomitable battle song that has slept for nearly three centuries!"
"This Silver-Stringed Harp is the last legacy left to us by the blind bard Tarlough, that great poet and patriot. Its song was once stained by a traitor’s blood, sealed by the conqueror’s lies, but tonight it will be reborn here!"
"It will, with its song, awaken in each one of us the long-forgotten wildness that belongs to the wolf, to the hawk, to our great Celtic ancestors!"
"It will sound the first horn of our generation’s uprising against English tyranny!"
His incendiary speech ignited the atmosphere instantly.
"Roar!!!"
Hundreds of fervent Irish raised their weapons and bottles, unleashing a thunderous cheer that shook the ground.
Meanwhile, in the O'Connor Manor’s wine cellar.
William stood silently guard by the only exit to the outside, a heavy oak and iron-reinforced door, his Winchester rifle always laid across his arms.
At his feet, a young assassin named Patrick was bound in a coarse hemp rope like a dumpling, gagged with a scrap of cloth and able only to emit muffled whimpers.
At the deepest corner of the cellar, the tragic core of this story, Kevin, was curled up behind a stack of oak barrels.
His face was marked by fear and nervousness, hugging his knees tightly as his whole body shook violently.
He knew the time had come.
The last night of his prophesied life had arrived.
He was waiting to die.
Back at the quarry, the republican leader slowly sat down and cradled the Silver-Stringed Harp.
Then his fingers lightly touched the thirteen strings that shimmered like stars.
Silence fell again across the crowd; everyone held their breath.
In the crowd, Lin Jie’s right hand tightened in his pocket.
The distance between his wired index finger and the fragment pressed to his palm was less than half a centimeter.
Success or failure hinged on this moment.
Finally, the republican leader’s fingers moved.
"Zheng—"
A long, piercing, otherworldly lament, as if not of this world, immediately rang throughout the quarry.
At the sound of that wail, the bodies of the hundreds of Irish in attendance stiffened; fanatical zeal was replaced by sorrow and terror that rose from the depths of their blood.
They felt their souls gripped by an invisible cold hand and then torn outward.
At the same instant, several kilometers away in O'Connor Manor, the trembling Kevin O'Connor behind the oak barrels also stiffened.
A pain that threatened to shred his entire soul erupted from deep within his skull.
He could not make a sound, only clutching at his throat with both hands as his eyes bulged in agony.
His life was about to meet the prophesied end in the most bizarre way.
And in that last, utterly desperate second.
Lin Jie’s right hand clenched.
The wired index finger and the fragment completed the final loop.
"Vvvvv—!"
A high-frequency sound wave radiated outward from Lin Jie’s body.
This wave did not destroy anything.
Instead, it acted like a tuner, forcibly inserting a new contrapuntal voice into the symphony of a curse that was about to drag everyone into hell.
Then an incredible scene occurred.
Those Irish in the quarry who had been suffering unbearable torment suddenly felt the madness-inducing sorrow and fear rapidly ebb away.
What remained was an epic, indescribable sense of grandeur—majestic and tragically heroic.
They felt their souls possessed by Tarlough’s indomitable heroic spirit.
They saw, with their own eyes, their ancestors charging bravely on battlefields resisting English rule.
They heard, with their own ears, the ancient war horns blown by the Celtic deities on Tara, the sacred mountain.
The lethal core of the curse was unexpectedly neutralized by the soothing sonic lure that the Catacomb Nightingale used to entrap others.
Stripped of its malice, the Blood-Tear Dirge’s intrinsic artistic power—the pure national lament and rebellious spirit of the bard—remained intact and was even amplified.
In O'Connor Manor, Kevin, who had been on the verge of suffocating to death, felt the change as well.
His soul, nearly torn apart, was suddenly healed by an inexplicable warm force; he felt his heart struck hard by something, a violent but nonfatal palpitation spreading through his body.
The pain and fear of death vanished.
He collapsed in a limp heap, gulping air with big breaths.
He was alive.
He was safe.
Under Lin Jie’s alteration,
the curse was changed.
From a malevolent act of murder,
into a passionate baptism of patriotic spirit.