Ashes Of Deep Sea

Chapter 145 - 149: Behind the Curtain

Chapter 145: Chapter 149: Behind the Curtain

The community church, apparently abandoned for countless years on the outside, was brightly lit and clean inside. At the same time, in Duncan’s eyes, the brightly lit interior was distinctly overlaid with a dilapidated scene as if “another reality.”

It gave Duncan a feeling that this small church seemed like an “erroneous space” superimposed upon reality or a forgotten place stuck in the cracks of time and space. Two entirely opposite histories had once intersected here, yet the church remained at the point of intersection, its internal time having never moved forward since then.

It had neither been destroyed nor survived that great fire.

Then… did the nun who stayed alone in this church know anything?

“It’s been a long time since anyone has visited this church,” the nun in the black priestly robe repeated softly again, smiling as she lifted her head, her gaze seemingly passing through Sherry and Duncan standing in front of her, “Where do you come from? Strange faces… You aren’t residents here, are you?”

Before her was a bright and warm scene, yet Sherry suddenly shrank her neck under the nun’s smiling gaze, inexplicably feeling a chill and nervously whispering to Duncan, “I… I feel weird about this place… It looks so dilapidated from outside, but inside…”

Duncan didn’t respond, merely patting Sherry’s shoulder casually. From the girl’s reaction, he guessed she could probably only see one “side” of the church, likely the side that wasn’t destroyed. But now he didn’t know how to explain his guess to Sherry—would releasing the Abyssal Hound now allow it, with its “eyes,” to see the true situation here?

However, it was better not to let Sherry rashly summon the Abyssal Hound until he understood more about the nun’s background.

“We’re just passing through,” Duncan said calmly to the nun, as if he was just a normal visitor to the church, “Have you always been here?”

“I? I’ve always lived in this church,” the nun nodded gently, “I’ve always been here praying to the great existence.”

“But people in the district say that the nun of the church hasn’t been back for a long time,” Duncan said, observing the nun’s reaction, “They say the church has been neglected, as if it has been abandoned for a long time.”

The nun listened quietly to Duncan’s words, yet there was no strong reaction, as if her heart had eternally calmed.

She just showed a faint smile, “Oh, is that so, but I’ve always been here… Perhaps they’ve forgotten the days of prayer and mistakenly thought the church was closed.”

Duncan neither agreed nor disagreed, but he had already confirmed that not only the church but even the entire Sixth District outside had issues.

This abandoned church was deep within the district, visually seeming abandoned for over a decade! For the ordinary people of this world, a church was not just a place for spiritual comfort—it also functioned as a facility to maintain regional safety, to ward off evil forces after nightfall, and as a healing place for civilians troubled by mental issues or nightmares… such an essential facility lay wasted for eleven years, yet the residents of the Sixth District strangely felt nothing amiss, merely casually stating, “the nun hasn’t been around recently”?

Imagine a community without water or electricity for eleven years, yet the local inhabitants felt nothing wrong, and when asked by outsiders, they would simply mention, “The utilities department hasn’t been working recently.” How bizarre is that scenario!

As for the nun inside this church… Duncan still wasn’t certain whether this occasionally visible figure of human ash was what it appeared to be, but through initial conversations, he could feel that she seemed… to harbor no hostility.

Not only was there no hostility, but her line of thinking also appeared to be in a strange state. It couldn’t be said she lacked rationality, but she was definitely not lucid.

Duncan indirectly asked a few questions, and the nun in the church calmly answered each one, and her calm response itself… was a manifestation of her lack of lucidity.

Because under normal circumstances, if a stranger suddenly ran into the church and bombarded the attending nun with a bunch of irrelevant questions, the nun would have found it extremely strange.

She had rationality—but not much of it.

“Would you like to pray? Or do you need help with calming and exorcising?”

The nun asked softly with a smile.

“Thank you, but it’s not necessary,” Duncan shook his head and then looked around, as if asking casually, “By the way, where are the guardians of this church?”

Every church should have guardians stationed within, even the smallest community church in a slum area had a troop of guardians sufficient to handle common threats, and this church was no exception.

“Guardians… the guardians are resting in the church, they will only appear after nightfall,” the nun’s smile remained unchanged, “Are you looking for the guardians for something?”

Duncan didn’t reply, just slowly scanned the benches next to the nun.

In his sight, the phantasms of a great fire destroying everything, of ash and ruins piling up, overlaid on the brightly lit church like layered films, and in that overlapping other dimension, there were scorched corpses.

“Are the guardians resting there?” Duncan raised his hand, pointing nearby, but in Sherry’s eyes, there were only two rows of empty benches.

The nun paused, looked where Duncan had pointed, and after a moment softly said, “Shh… they are sleeping.”

Duncan hummed in response, then casually asked, “Can we look around?”

“Of course, the church is open for visitors,” the nun nodded gently, “Please feel free to explore. I must continue praying—if you need any help, please call for me.”

After saying this, the strange nun truly turned and walked toward a statue of the goddess not far away, leaving Duncan and Sherry to themselves.

It wasn’t until the nun had left that Sherry, who had been tense the whole time, suddenly let out a breath of relief. At this point, she couldn’t be afraid of Duncan, as the church’s omnipresent eerie atmosphere had even put their hidden dog, Abyssal Hound, on edge. The unusual tension was transmitted directly into her mind through their psychic link, causing her to instinctively draw closer to Duncan, “What… what is going on with this place… this nun feels creepy, she looks normal but seems entirely not normal…”

“It seems there are two churches here,” Duncan said in a low voice, explaining simply, “One has been burnt down, and one is still intact, both overlaying this point in time and space, and the nun in the church… neither alive nor dead.”

Sherry was stunned, and after a full half-minute, she spoke in confusion and astonishment, “What do you mean?”

Duncan glanced at her, “You should read some books sometime—or I can teach you.”

Then, without waiting for Sherry’s reply, he walked deeper into the church.

The nun had said the church was open for viewing, so he was certainly going to “look around.”

Sherry hesitated for a moment before quickly following Duncan’s footsteps. They crossed the neatly placed benches, passing by statues and prayer podiums at the end of the benches.

The serene nun was already kneeling before the Storm Goddess’s statue, hands pressed against her chest, devoutly praying to the divine as if she had completely forgotten about their visit, as if she had been kneeling there continuously for the past eleven years, maintaining an unbroken prayer.

Duncan blinked, and the nun turned into a writhing human-shaped pile of ashes stacked next to the charred praying podium, with flickering bits of firelight falling from the dome like scattered leaves.

He suddenly felt a sensation, lifting his head to look at the statue of the Storm Goddess above.

The long-robed statue stood quietly on a high pedestal, with a stark crack abruptly running across its head!

In that brief moment, Duncan saw a core truth overlaid on the twin churches. He clearly saw that a dark, dim crack had opened in the position of the goddess’s head, within the crack were faintly discernible shadows of chaos, like the orientation of a terrifying eye, its pupil reflecting scenes that should not belong to this reality. The aura of “Holiness” that should envelop the statue of the goddess had completely vanished, leaving only coldness and emptiness on this eerie stone sculpture!

In the next instant, that horrific scene disappeared completely, and Gomona’s statue still stood quietly on the high pedestal, majestically overlooking the surroundings, emitting a reassuring and awe-inspiring dignity.

Suddenly, the nun kneeling before the statue of the goddess opened her eyes, she turned her head slightly and calmly looked at Duncan.

“Do you wish to pray to the goddess?”