### Chapter 66: The Cognition Hell (Part 3)
“Sin…”
I murmured softly, then stood up, staring at the towering castle walls in the distance, biting my pinky finger as I sank into deep thought.
That scent…
Although faint, it definitely resembled the aroma of bl**d-soaked Sin Fire when it rekindles.
Evil…
A chilling scent.
Yet for me right now…
It felt strangely familiar.
“Sin?”
Sword Demon Miss strolled over beside me, peering at the walls as well.
Those ancient walls stood majestically in the distance, like timeless giants refusing to bow to the winds for a thousand years. Actually, the history of the Silent Fortress runs deep; it supposedly traces back to the twilight of the Divine Era or perhaps the very inception of the Church.
However, upon closer inspection, some battlements had become riddled with gaps, with cracks splitting the walls in places. Between the massive stone seams, moss and what looked like climbing ivy flourished – tokens left behind by the ravages of war and time. When I was last here, those marks had already been present.
But at this moment…
The imposing walls, when viewed in their entirety, seemed to be bathed in an eerie bl**d-red glow.
That crimson, bl**d-like hue didn’t look like it was actually on the walls. At first glance, it resembled some kind of “filter” that wrapped around the walls like a flowing red mist, slowly undulating with the air.
I couldn’t clearly describe the sensation.
But as I gazed at the walls from here, it felt as if my eyeballs were bleeding, coloring the view with a faint red hue.
Plus, as I raised my gaze higher toward the wall’s skyward expanse, the red intensified, and I could vaguely hear bizarre… hallucinatory buzzing distortions in my ears.
“Mmm…”
Suddenly, I felt a headache creeping in.
I quickly averted my gaze and focused again on the nearby distribution point, less than two hundred meters away. Instantly, the “red mist filter” vanished without a trace, and the slight buzzing in my ears silenced, restoring clarity to my vision.
What’s going on…
Hallucination?!
“What you just mentioned about Sin, what do you mean?”
The Female Swordsman didn’t seem to notice my abnormal state and appeared oblivious to the bizarre situation beyond the walls. Her expression remained unchanged, and sensing that I ignored her, she reiterated her earlier question.
“…The Power of Sin is contaminating this place.” I answered somewhat distractedly, biting my nail harder, “crunch, crunch,” as if I wanted to swallow my whole pinky finger.
Why can’t she sense it…
It was just like before; only I noticed the changes happening here first, and after telling the Sword Demon, she finally realized something was off…
So, what if I didn’t tell her about the changes?
What would happen…
“The Power of Sin?”
The Female Swordsman’s confusion deepened: “You mean the Sin Fire of those Heretics…”
“No.”
I took a deep breath, then continued walking forward: “What kind of Heretic could do something like this? If there were any, they’d be dead in the Eastern Continent. What’s showing up here is clearly a higher-level force… the so-called divine essence of the ‘goddess.’”
Yes!
I was sure my judgment was spot on.
Because this power was slowly stirring my instincts…
The instinct to draw nearer to it.
“Deity…?”
The Sword Demon Miss followed closely behind, her voice filled with surprise, her blade still tightly gripped in her right hand. As we approached the bl**d-soaked ruins of the camp, she seemed increasingly tense and alert.
“But Sin is a power that only demons possess, isn’t it… you killed the power source of the demon in the Northern Region of Silgaya. I saw that dreadful thing.”
“Yeah.”
I nodded: “But who told you that thing was really a demon?”
The Deity Body had indeed perished, shattered in Woodward Forest. Moreover, even that “spirit core” had fused into my body, becoming part of my strength and continuously affecting my mind.
So strictly speaking, even though I couldn’t figure out exactly how this power was contaminating everything, if it truly happened, it had to be my doing…
But obviously, that wasn’t the case.
I had just arrived here…
Then there’s only one possibility left.
“The Church…”
As I struggled to clear my thoughts, I heard the Sword Demon Miss instinctively respond.
Two seconds later, she seemingly realized: “…Ah.”
“Figured it out?”
I subtly glanced back at the Female Swordsman’s expression.
She looked as if she had just been hit by a bus…
Her face froze, and her steps slowed.
…Not pretending, I guess.
The Female Swordsman might really have been oblivious to all of this until a moment ago, kept in the dark by the Church…
I could tentatively conclude that.
After a moment, once I had walked quite a distance, the Sword Demon Miss suddenly snapped back to attention and hurriedly caught up, walking beside me. Her tone was urgent, as if her tongue got tangled: “The demon… is actually a deity… the Church… deceived everyone?”
“Or else, what other reason could there be?”
I shrugged: “But strictly speaking, that doesn’t quite count as a deity.”
Maybe I overshared there…
Better change the subject.
“About the goods sent by the Church from Woodward Forest to the Silent Fortress, try thinking about it again. Can you recall anything?”
“Uh…”
The Sword Demon Miss’s mind seemed a bit scrambled, as her hesitant facial expression showed. It seemed like an overwhelming amount of information had struck her, leaving her not-so-bright head spinning.
But being the Sword Demon Miss, she ultimately couldn’t maintain the confusion for long. She quickly cast aside those questions and went on her way.
“I haven’t seen the goods; I can’t remember anything about them.”
As she spoke, she accelerated her pace, eager to uncover something.
So I followed her, and soon we stepped onto the bl**d-root-infested ground, entering the ruins of the fortress’s outer camp.
We became even more cautious, carefully exploring the outskirts of the camp for a long time, entering various tents or wooden shacks that could still barely fit a person, and finding remnants of past lives, like burnt charcoal, soup bowls, tea cups, or wine jugs. Occasionally, we even unearthed scraps of what looked like worn clothes from the collapsed wooden debris.
Yet…
There wasn’t a soul in sight.
The bl**d-red root-like things winding around the tarpaulins and walls made the Female Swordsman hesitant to touch them, and she would walk around those sprawled across the ground. I, however, was unbothered, having casually grabbed a branch tangled among the ruins as we entered, examined it thoroughly.
Though it turned to ash in my hand almost at once, blowing up toward the heavens.
But I recognized what it was.
In my memories, in a space called the “Land of Dragons,” which was really a “Dragon Tomb,” I had once been relentlessly pursued by similar entities—the grotesque, massive tumor that eventually hatched into a Deity Body, with countless tube-like tendrils extending from the tumor.
The difference being, those tendrils were alive.
While the “roots” spreading here appeared to be withered or already dead. They didn’t move anymore, and if torn away, a gust of wind would swiftly turn them into dust.
As yet another “withered root” crumbled to powder in my palm, a dust-coated Sword Demon Miss stepped out from a half-collapsed shack she’d been searching, her hair a mess of falling dust.
“Ah…”
She noticed the “root” turning to ash in my hand, hesitating for a moment, but then quickened her pace, hurrying back to my side, her excitement palpable: “Hey, I suddenly remembered—”
Just as the words slipped out, she abruptly stopped.
At that moment, we both turned our heads back towards the road we had come from outside the camp.
From there, faint sounds of chaotic hoofbeats drifted over.
