novelraw Chapter 700: His Fame Spreads Across the Wastelands
Chapter 700: His Fame Spreads Across the Wastelands
"That's enough, child. You just don't understand yet."
The old man spoke kindly and pulled two straw dolls from within his robes. "This is the Lord's reward for your devotion. Take them, and the Lord's punishment will no longer fall upon our souls and bodies."
Lu Li took the dolls and stared into their empty eye sockets.
The old man offered the other doll to Anna. In response, she pushed back her sleeve, revealing her ghostly hand.
"So you are one of the Messengers, madam!" The old man and the four cultists bowed slightly.
In the Church of Silence, supernatural beings held a higher status.
Anna, having seen messenger cultists before, knew how to act. Her cloak fluttered slightly in a gesture of acknowledgment.
Lu Li, clutching the straw doll, remained silent, for he was no true follower of Silence. When the tolling of the bell faded, Anna gently took his hand, and trusting her, Lu Li followed the cultists.
The soles of his boots crunched over the stones littering the wasteland, but Lu Li was still here. He had not vanished.
The old man had expected to see surprise or some other emotion on Lu Li's face, but he was lost in thought.The straw doll allowed a non-believer to evade the ritual of Silence. Did that mean faith wasn't actually necessary? What protected the cultists from the Third Calamity was not faith, but the straw dolls?
Lu Li examined the doll again. It was simple, as if woven by a child's hand, so crude it could scratch the skin.
It was not a commodity; it had no value.
Lu Li's gaze swept over the old man and the four cultists. Did they each have dolls just like it?
As Silence enveloped the world, seven figures walked calmly across the wasteland.
Twenty minutes later, the Anomaly Detector came to life. Silence had retreated, returning to an abandoned oasis deep within the Wastelands.
"What's that?" The old man looked at Lu Li, a childlike curiosity in his eyes.
"An Anomaly Detector. It senses the approach of evil spirits," Lu Li replied.
"An interesting little thing," the old man muttered, looking away.
The outline of a village appeared on the horizon.
"We have comrades in that village," the old man said, gazing into the distance. "They'll find us transportation."
An hour later, they entered a deserted, silent village.
There wasn't a soul in the village, not even the comrade the old man had mentioned.
Inside the houses, nearly burnt-out lamps flickered dimly. Pigs slept in filthy pens, and stray dogs watched the unwelcome visitors with wary eyes. A single horse was tied up in a stable.
It was as if the villagers had vanished in an instant.
After surveying the unsettlingly empty village, the old man made a sensible decision. "Take the food and the horse. We're leaving."
Quickly gathering some provisions, they left the village in a horse-drawn cart.
When they were a safe distance away, the old man whispered from the cart, "This is why we need the Lord's Redemption..."
They climbed into the cart, and as he settled in, Lu Li noticed the straw dolls hanging from their belts. Of course, they had them too.
The old man was quite talkative, at least compared to Lu Li and the other four cultists, who were as silent as Lu Li himself.
Contrary to Lu Li's assumptions, the old man did not hold a high position in the church, but he wasn't an ordinary follower either: he was a mentor.
The kind who guided lost non-believers into the embrace of Silence.
Over the day's journey, Lu Li learned something about the Church of Silence: they were expanding their number of followers, but true fanatics—the ones rewarded by the Lord—were few.
Lu Li had received his reward for saving the mentor.
But Lu Li suspected it had less to do with the rescue and more to do with the old man having spare straw dolls.
By evening, the cart had brought them to a dilapidated town.
Most of the residents had already fled, leaving only those who couldn't or wouldn't leave, resigned to their miserable existence. Every day, someone else vanished.
They paid no mind to the cloaked travelers, allowing them to settle into one of the vacant houses.
The house had long been looted; even the wooden frames and chairs had been broken up for firewood. Nothing remained in the empty living room.
The cultists lit a fire in the hearth and went to find water to make soup.
Suddenly, a knock sounded at the door, and dust sifted down from the ceiling.
The cultists, sitting on the floor by the fire, turned around.
One of them stood up and opened the door.
Outside stood a cart laden with goods, and next to it, a smiling, portly man. Upon seeing the cultists' cloaks and the figures behind them, he froze and hastily took a few steps back. "I'm just a merchant... Do you need anything? Or perhaps... you have something to sell?"
But out of professional habit, he couldn't resist asking.
"We don't—"
"Six blankets," Lu Li said, getting up from his spot by the fire.
The old man nodded at him gratefully.
"390 shillings," the merchant quoted.
The old man frowned, displeased with the high price. "On a good day, you can buy them for 90 shillings."
It was hard to imagine a mentor from a church that worshipped an evil spirit haggling over the price.
"We're taking a big risk," the merchant said, smiling as he accepted the shillings from Lu Li.
As long as there was a customer, the merchant didn't care if they were heretics or not. He ordered his assistants to bring six blankets and asked Lu Li if he needed anything else.
Lu Li looked at the old man, who shook his head. "No, child... That's enough."
Closing the door, they returned to the fire. Lu Li distributed the blankets. The cultists helped the old man spread his out, and some offered their own blankets to the mentor, but he refused.
The soup came to a boil. The cultists ladled it into bowls and began to eat in silence.
The hot soup warmed their stomachs, chasing away the night's chill.
Then, it was time for their ritual.
The four cultists stood in a circle by the fire, their shadows stretching long as a strange muttering began.
The old man didn't participate in the ritual. He noticed that Lu Li was unfamiliar with the church's customs but didn't object. Instead, like a concerned neighbor, he asked if Lu Li had any questions. "Child, I see your confusion... Don't be afraid to ask. The Lord forgives all sins of a believer."
The mentor's attitude only deepened Lu Li's conflicting feelings.
Throughout their journey, they had seemed utterly harmless to Lu Li.
They didn't attack anyone they met, nor did they try to convert them.
In fact, aside from the old man, the four cultists had been silent the entire time.
And this didn't match what Lu Li had seen and heard on his journey—they weren't supposed to be this peaceful.
Was the mentor hiding his true intentions, or had he discovered something?
Just then, a question suddenly surfaced in Lu Li's mind. It should have appeared and vanished just as quickly, but before the thought could fade, his reason caught it, and his humanity prompted him: "Ask him about it."
"...Why do you kidnap people?"
A look of bewilderment appeared on the old man's face.
"Kidnap? We don't..."