novelraw Chapter 230: A Fragile Alliance
Chapter 230: A Fragile Alliance
When Lin Jie and his group stepped once more into the Hall of Light in Luxor, three days had already passed since their survival in the Sea of Death.
During these three days, they had received high-level medical treatment and rest.
Lin Jie and Julian's external injuries had healed. They used this recovery period to seize time for sleep and meditation, attempting to replenish the energy exhausted by their desperate escape.
Everything seemed to be moving in a positive direction.
However, when they were once again invited by the High Priest to this grand hall symbolizing royal authority and order, Lin Jie keenly sensed that the aftermath of that failure was only just beginning to ferment.
At this moment, the atmosphere inside the hall was completely opposite to the tense, awe-inspiring majesty of their first visit.
The air was thick with a suffocating, oppressive weight.
Dozens of high-ranking priests clad in linen white robes with golden masks and Temple Guard elders stood in two rows on either side of the hall. They were silent, like lifeless statues, but the gazes projected through the slits of their masks carried complex emotions.
There was astonishment at their survival, scrutiny of their mission failure, and even a trace of poorly concealed schadenfreude.
At the very depths of the hall, the High Priest, having removed his mask, sat quietly upon his golden throne.His face betrayed no expression, his turbid eyes fixed on Lin Jie and Julian as they walked into the center of the hall.
William and Ethan, due to their severe injuries, were currently receiving meticulous herbal and esoteric treatments from the Court in a secret chamber at the rear of the temple.
This was both an obligation of their alliance and, undeniably, a form of disguised house arrest and hostage-taking.
"It seems you experienced a war far exceeding expectations."
The High Priest broke the deathly silence.
"The divine artifact, the Scales of the Dead, has been forever buried beneath the yellow sand along with the Temple of Osiris. And your enemies, whether the Descendants of Apophis or that Eastern Black Lotus Sect, appear to have successfully... escaped with what they desired."
His tone held no reproach, but every word made Lin Jie and Julian feel deeply uncomfortable.
Losers are not entitled to respect.
Even if they had once demonstrated the qualification to gaze upon a deity.
Julian's face paled slightly. His pride as a French scholar made him want to retort.
But Lin Jie took a step forward first, neither subservient nor arrogant, meeting the High Priest's gaze directly.
"High Priest, you are correct. We did indeed fail."
His voice was steady and composed, without evasion or excuse.
"We underestimated the cunning and madness of the enemy and overestimated our own strength. For this, my two companions suffered severe injuries, and we lost the best opportunity to seize the divine artifact. I, as the field commander of this I.A.R.C. operation, take full responsibility for this."
This frank opening statement, essentially admitting guilt, caused a subtle shift in the eyes of the scrutinizing elders around them.
Even the High Priest on the throne flashed a hint of veiled approval.
In the world of deities and pharaohs, the courage to take responsibility often earns more respect than clever rhetoric.
However, Lin Jie did not stop there.
He paused, his gaze sharpening, his voice gaining an edge.
"But, Your Excellency High Priest, I believe we also need to clarify one point."
"What I am taking responsibility for is the failure resulting from 'tactical misjudgment' in my capacity as an I.A.R.C. Investigator during the mission execution. This does not mean your side can place yourselves entirely upon the lofty position of a judge in this shared disaster."
"Please do not forget. From the very beginning, this operation targeting the Scales of the Dead was a cooperation based on our mutual interests, not a commission undertaken unilaterally by I.A.R.C."
Each of Lin Jie's words struck precisely at the hearts of the Court members.
"You provided intelligence, hoping to use our I.A.R.C., an external force, to eliminate your greatest internal threat and protect your sacred legacy."
"And we entered that temple to prevent a potential crisis that could spread globally, and to save my personal 'balance'."
"In this cooperation, our status was equal. I.A.R.C. Hunters shed blood and paid a painful price. My teammate lies on a sickbed now, his life hanging in the balance, precisely for protecting the 'sacred legacy' you mentioned."
Lin Jie's gaze swept over the elders on both sides, whose expressions had shifted at his words, before finally returning to the High Priest's face.
"Therefore, I accept my tactical responsibility. But this does not mean that I, or the I.A.R.C. behind me, need to apologize to your side for this shared failure that neither of us foresaw."
"Now, if the two sides can still be called allies."
Lin Jie's tone returned to its initial calm and composure.
"I suggest we shift our focus from assigning blame for the past to addressing the greater crisis of the future."
"Because," he pivoted sharply, "what we brought back might be far more valuable than a single lost divine artifact."
He offered no further preamble, but proceeded to recount their experiences in the temple in detail to everyone present, especially the part concerning Yan Xilou.
He first described Yan Xilou's cultured and refined disguise.
Then, he mentioned that Grotesque Armament, the Nine-Bend Yellow River, which could bypass physical blocks.
Finally, Lin Jie revealed the Eastern mysterious organization behind Yan Xilou, named the "Black Lotus Sect," and its scheme to steal spiritual essence from other places to carry out the "Living Holy Embryo" plan.
Lin Jie's narration was calm and detailed. He laid bare that battle interwoven with betrayal, slaughter, and ideological clashes before these Egyptian guardians who had been isolated from the world for centuries.
The entire hall fell silent, not a sound to be heard.
All the priests and elders listened quietly.
When Lin Jie described the Nine-Bend Yellow River's flowing-water-like attack method that could circumvent defenses, the battle-hardened Temple Guard elders instinctively tightened their grips on their scepters, wariness flashing in their eyes.
And when Lin Jie mentioned the "Black Lotus Sect" and the "Living Holy Embryo" plan, the High Priest on the throne furrowed his brow slightly.
"A black lotus..." he murmured, his voice carrying a trace of loathing from distant memories. "So, it was them..."
"High Priest, you know of this organization?" Lin Jie, keenly catching the other's emotional shift, immediately pressed.
The High Priest slowly closed his eyes, sinking into deep recollection.
After a long moment, he reopened them.
"That is a history soaked in blood."
He signaled to an attendant priest beside him. The latter, understanding, turned and entered the darkness behind the throne, soon returning reverently with a heavy, ancient papyrus tome.
"This is the 'Register of Foreign Threats' passed down through generations of our Court," the High Priest said, opening the tome and accurately finding a specific page. "It records all foreign intruders who have ever attempted to lay hands on Egypt's sacred legacy."
He showed the tome to Lin Jie.
On the yellowed papyrus, written in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, was depicted a sinister, blooming black lotus.
Beneath the lotus were passages of text bearing warnings and bloody implications.
"According to the records, approximately three hundred years ago." The High Priest's voice was low and solemn. "The first envoys of the Black Lotus Sect once set foot upon this land."
Lin Jie's heart tightened.
Three hundred years ago.
That was the mid-17th century. For the Western world, that era marked the end of the Thirty Years' War and the beginning rise of modern nation-states.
And for Lin Jie's distant homeland, it meant a period of bloodshed and turmoil.
The late Ming, early Qing dynasties.
It was a time of dynastic transition, roving bandits everywhere, thousands of miles of famine-stricken corpses, tens of thousands of miles of scorched earth.
It was a dark, unbearable history to look back on, a time when Han culture and tradition sank beneath the hooves of invading armies.
So even in that era, while his countrymen were suffering the agony of national subjugation and potential extinction, these people of the Black Lotus Sect had already extended their ambitions to this foreign land thousands of miles away?
"They disguised themselves as silk merchants and scholars," the High Priest's voice interrupted Lin Jie's thoughts. "With astonishing speed, they mastered our language and culture and attempted to infiltrate the Egyptian inner world, which was still under Mamluk rule at the time."
"Their goal was identical to today's—to steal the spiritual essence from the pharaohs' tombs."
"To open a certain ancient burial chamber beneath Memphis, they required a great number of living lives as a 'key'." A flash of irrepressible anger and sorrow crossed the High Priest's face.
"And so, in the year later historians would call the 'Great Plague of Cairo,' they secretly aided the spread of the plague, and in one night, blood-sacrificed an entire three districts of innocent civilians!"
"Nearly a hundred unarmed ordinary people, including the elderly, women, and children, had their lives ended in their sleep, becoming consumables to open the tomb's gate."
This bloody, cruel description turned Julian's face deathly pale.
"The Court at that time waged an extremely fierce secret war against them."
"The power system those cultists used was different from ours. They did not possess indestructible Grotesque Armaments, but each of them was a top-tier assassin and deceiver."
"They traded minimal cost for lethal victory. In that war, although the Court ultimately expelled them all, it paid the painful price of three elders and nearly a hundred Temple Guard members sacrificed."
"And according to the accounts of survivors from that time, the most terrifying aspect of the Black Lotus Sect was not their martial skills, but their intimate, seamless cooperative relationship with the Eternal Serpent cult."
Julian exclaimed involuntarily, "Three hundred years ago, they were already colluding?"
"Yes." The High Priest nodded. "According to the records' deductions, the 'Mentor' worshipped by the Eternal Serpent and the 'Living Holy Embryo' pursued by the Black Lotus Sect likely point to the same... indescribable existence."
"These two organizations are like two sides of the same coin. One spreads the gospel of destruction and termination in the Western world, while the other conducts experiments of theft and fusion in the Eastern world."
"Their ultimate goal might both be to create a perfect vessel capable of bearing the descent of that 'New God'!"
This shocking deduction connected all the clues in Lin Jie's mind.
Yan Xilou, the Eternal Serpent, the Living Holy Embryo, the New God Mentor...
"Now, what should we do?"
After a prolonged silence, Ethan's weak voice sounded from the hall's side door.
He had somehow struggled up from his sickbed and, supported by a guard, was walking step by step into the hall.
"Although Yan Xilou escaped, his wounded accomplices—those remnants of the Descendants of Apophis—are still holed up in some secret stronghold on the Sinai Peninsula!" he said with firm resolve. "We must immediately organize a force, take the initiative, and wipe them all out! We absolutely cannot give them any chance to catch their breath or stage a comeback!"
However, his radical statement immediately drew collective opposition from the brotherhood elders present.
"Silence!" The most senior Temple Guard elder struck the ground heavily with his scepter. "Mr. Redgrave, we respect your courage, but you must understand that the highest mission of the Horus Court is protection, not conquest!"
"The collapse of the Temple of Osiris has already severely disrupted the spiritual balance of the Nile River basin. All our strength now must be devoted to repairing and stabilizing the seals of temples across the land, to prevent more UMAs from awakening due to the chaos of spiritual tides!"
"As for pursuing those defeated curs," another priest elder snorted coldly, "that is the duty of your I.A.R.C. What does it have to do with us? We have no obligation to waste the life of any single Court warrior for your failures!"
"You!" Ethan's face flushed red with anger, his hand reaching for the pistol, Morning Star, at his waist.
A faint ripple centered on Morning Star flashed momentarily.
Inside the hall, the brass candlesticks burning sacred oil were pulled by an invisible force, their flames abruptly leaning toward Ethan's direction.
The fragile atmosphere of intelligence-sharing, just established, tore apart due to ideological conflict, becoming tense and hostile.
"Outrageous!"
The Temple Guard captain was furious.
His scimitar pointed at Ethan, the turquoise at its hilt suddenly glowing with a piercing light.
Behind him, dozens of Temple Guard members uniformly raised their scimitars and spears.
Those sharp weapons gleaming with cold light aimed at Ethan, Lin Jie, and the others from all directions. The entire hall was thick with killing intent.
Yet Ethan remained utterly unmoved. His hand gripping the pistol handle not only didn't loosen, but tightened further.
His eyes stared back defiantly at the Temple Guard captain.
A bloody civil war between I.A.R.C. and the Horus Court was on the verge of erupting.
The alliance had cracked at the most critical moment.
Then the High Priest on the throne spoke again, suppressing the impending conflict.
"Enough."
He stood up, his gaze sweeping over everyone present.
"The elders' concerns are correct. The foundation of the Court lies in protecting the balance of this land. We can no longer bear any unnecessary losses."
He paused, then turned his gaze toward Ethan and Lin Jie.
"But the young man's fervor is not wrong either. Facing a venomous snake, constant retreat and defense will only allow it to press its advantage."
He pondered for a moment, finally making a politically astute decision.
"I have decided to adopt Mr. Lin's suggestion and conduct... a limited pursuit of the enemy."
"However," he emphasized, "the core pursuit and combat missions must be the sole responsibility of you 'outsiders' from I.A.R.C. The Court can provide you with precise intelligence, comprehensive logistical support, and a guide squad of the most elite warriors personally selected by me."
"We will not directly participate in any battle."
"This is my bottom line, and the only condition under which this alliance of ours can continue to exist."
This was a transaction based on mutual calculation and distrust.
The High Priest wanted to use I.A.R.C. as a "blade" to eliminate his greatest internal threat, yet did not want his own people to bear any risk.
An expression of anger and unwillingness appeared on Ethan's face, but he also understood that, on another's turf, this was perhaps the best outcome they could secure.
Lin Jie calmly accepted the condition.
Because from the very beginning, he had never expected these extremely xenophobic guardians to truly fight side-by-side with them.
What he wanted was merely their "eyes" and "ears."
"I, on behalf of I.A.R.C., accept your condition." He gave a slight nod, formally establishing this fragile alliance.
The meeting ended in an oddly harmonious atmosphere.
As Lin Jie prepared to leave the hall to discuss the next steps with Julian and the others, the High Priest's voice suddenly sounded behind him.
"Mr. Lin, please stay a moment."
Lin Jie turned to see the High Priest walking toward him, holding a papyrus manuscript even more ancient and tattered than the Register of Foreign Threats.
"This is the oldest, sole surviving handwritten copy in the Court's collection concerning 'Variants of the Osiris Myth'." The High Priest solemnly placed the manuscript, exuding a strong sense of history, into Lin Jie's hands.
"I can sense that the balance within you is still very fragile, like a seed that has just sprouted, liable to lose equilibrium again at any moment due to external shocks."
His gaze meaningfully glanced at Lin Jie's right hand, covered by the brand.
"That goddess's balance perhaps requires not just strength, but also understanding."