Solflare: The Painter's Secret

Chapter 187: The Fallen Halo II

Heavy wind blew at the front of the cave. Right after it, stones began falling from the cave’s walls and rained on the ground.

Insects with hardened skin crawled out of the fallen stones as soon as they cracked. Sharp tentacles erupted from them as they fight themselves.

As the insects dissected themselves outside, Wu Ze also tended to the stranger’s chest wounds.

"Does it hurt?" she asked, putting the tourniquet on the man.

The man’s face remained still at first, then changed into one that gave him the look of an injured person.

"A lot." He watched Leon using the corner of his eye, while his lips gave him a pretender’s expression.

"Sorry," Wu Ze kept on repeating the same word over and over until she noticed the blood had stopped.

An Lang closed in and leaned against the back of Wu Ze’s left ear. "Be careful, he might not be a human as we see him."

Wu Ze shifted her head slowly and looked at An Lang with a disgusted expression.

Before she could speak, An Lang walked back, raising his hand.

Liu Yan moved to An Lang’s side, while fixing her gaze on the stranger’s tattoos. She pinched An Lang by the arm and pointed a finger at the Baphomet symbol on the man’s lower chest.

"Ouch!" An Lang drew his hand back, then frowned.

Liu Yan leaned against his ear and whispered. "That symbol looks like the sign of death."

An Lang squinted as he focused on the symbol Liu Yan was referring to. "That?" he said blatantly and blinked twice. "That’s just a tattoo I would love to have on my body."

He laughed it off, stepping toward the cave’s entrance.

A few meters away from Wu Ze and the stranger, Leon had bent down, brushing the dirt off his arms.

He had studied the stranger through the information he received from his panel, assessing his reaction and how his eyes seemed to watch everyone around him.

...

The air outside was still when An Lang exited.

"Haaa!" he yawned heavily, but covered his mouth when he spotted the dead seven-inch creatures scattered on the ground like ants.

His stomach grumbled for minutes before he vomited the little food that had given him strength. After all the green sticky liquid carrying the pieces of rice and undigested meat left him empty, he leaned against the single pillar of rock by his side.

His heart rose and fell as he gasped for air. His vision swam, but not so much to blind him.

Through the hazy vision, he saw countless tiny black objects approaching from a distance.

"I can’t collapse now. Stop tricking me." He thought it was his mind playing games until the ground beneath his boots began shaking.

The air electrified when the distance between the cave and the black objects closed. An Lang rushed back into the cave, his hand pressed hard on his stomach.

"GUYS!" he screamed, collapsing on one knee. "We have to move NOW!"

Liu Yan rushed forward and wrapped her arms around him. "You look pale," she whispered, but drew her hands back when she noticed traces of saliva or remains of vomit on the tip of An Lang’s shirt.

Before An Lang could say another word, the cave shook.

"Fuck!" he pushed himself up and moved toward the entrance to check.

There, right at the front, were thousands of the black-horned beings with faces that needed no mask to scare.

He stormed back into the cave. "Guys, we are doomed."

Leon had already drawn the only weapon he carried for the mission, the black dagger. He moved forward to check but froze.

Before he could move past An Lang, he saw the stranger, the one he had classified as a threat, also standing up.

"This isn’t your fight," the young man stated. He looked at Wu Ze, smiled, then placed a hand over her shoulder. "Thank you."

Wu Ze looked at him with a confused expression. And just as she opened her mouth to speak, she noticed the man’s skin healing itself.

"What... how!"

The young man didn’t answer. He simply walked past the three who stood there as if petrified, then giggled. "The name is Aurelian."

The name he mentioned carried the sensation he hadn’t carried across the room as he exited.

A few seconds after he vanished, screams and loud blasting sounds shook the cave.

Liu Yan ran to check, but bounced off an invisible force that seemed to have created a barrier separating the cave from the outside world.

"Guys, check something out."

Everyone closed in on Liu Yan’s direction and tried to move forward. They got bounced back like a ball thrown on a wall.

While everyone remained still, trying to assess what they were experiencing, An Lang used the opportunity to relive the childhood moment he had long forgotten.

He kept on throwing himself forward and getting bounced back. Even as he got bounced and hit his shoulder on the wall, he didn’t stop. Instead, he welcomed the pain with laughter.

"OOoyeah."

...

Ten minutes passed like water, while they kept investigating their way through the invisible and invincible barrier.

After another ten minutes had passed, white and black feathers rained down where the barrier was.

Stepping outside was like stepping into a collapsed world that was repairing itself. The same mixture of black and white feathers they saw flew across the cave’s entrance like sand.

Heads with horns scattered like the sea sand. Black body parts that didn’t look human but like meat lingered on the ground and the walls of the cave.

Some were even perched on the countless independent stone pillars, almost as if the bodies were part of the element the earth used to carve the pillars.

An Lang slowed his steps when he first saw what was outside. Liu Yan tugged at Leon’s back, as if she would be abducted by the wide eyes on the heads.

Leon felt a bit of fear, yet he looked into the eyes like staring into his own reflection.

Wu Ze was the only one who could move five meters away from the cave. She swallowed hard when she noticed a black thirteen-foot feathered being peeling its body apart.

It had feathers all around its body. The back of its head was like the hair of a king lion. The arms of the being had sharp metals raised almost in ways that looked as if its bones were exo, instead of endo.

Above the feather-like head were rings that seemed to move as the being transformed. In two seconds, the area went completely dark as smoke captured the light.

When it cleared, the thirteen-foot feathered being with wings was no longer there. Instead, it was Aurelian. And he was kneeling on one knee.