### Chapter 89: When the Flowers of Sin Bloom (Part 2)
After crossing the hall, we arrived at a half-open central garden, where the signs of being scorched by the heat were increasingly apparent. The flowerbeds on both sides were long dead, leaving behind only deep black soil that released a foul, putrid stench.
This place wasn’t as completely dark as the church hall; the thin sunlight streaming through the stained glass above still brightened the area somewhat.
The bright yellow light fell on the marble columns marked with black stains. In front of me, a pathway wide enough for two war chariots led to even more charred corpses sprawled out haphazardly. A filthy, unidentified red-brown liquid flowed from the twisted bodies, congealing on the ground and nearly infecting the entire path.
Every step I took was cautious, as I feared stepping in that filth.
Holding our torches, we slowly moved forward, with Sword Demon Miss following closely behind. This church was indeed much larger than it appeared from the outside; calling it a “small church” now felt rather inappropriate. The central garden occupied at least two thousand square feet.
Although I had never been here before, I could tell by instinct that it wasn’t this large back in the day.
The surrounding environment revealed many signs of hasty renovations, suggesting the garden never originally had a second story. Now, however, almost a complete ring of high stone walls was built around the marble columns, enclosing the central garden entirely. The architectural style was completely different from that of the hall, as if meant to hide something. From my estimate, the stone walls stood about five meters high, and countless iron-barred, prison-like doors, some ajar and others tightly shut, lined the walls.
I walked to the center of the garden and stopped to survey my surroundings. The stone walls blocked out much of the distant sunlight, casting shadows everywhere, with prison-like doorways all around. Most were firmly closed, but a few were slightly open, and some even had makeshift staircases leading to the second floor—wooden corridors along the upper level still bore the same barred doors.
This wasn’t just a stone wall…
It was essentially a stone house built in a wide circle, almost completely sealing off the central garden.
The realization hit me suddenly as I glimpsed through one of the partially open doors. I saw a hole in the wall where light from outside crept in. It was just enough to reveal a small, windowless, dingy room.
“…”
I quickly understood what these dingy rooms were for.
Silently, I stepped carefully towards the nearest barred door, my slow footsteps echoing in the empty garden with a long, resonant “tap, tap, tap…”
Behind me, Sword Demon Miss seemed distracted by a corpse on the ground and didn’t follow. I didn’t mind; she always had a strong interest in dead bodies.
I reached the barred door, not the one I had first noticed that was open, but another tightly shut one nearby.
Before getting close, I caught a whiff of an even more pungent odor than the outside filth emanating from within the door. As I approached, the flickering torchlight revealed that it was indeed a prison-like door, cold rusty iron fastened with a chain thick as my forearm, the kind used to lock up livestock. The other end of the chain was nailed into the wall, and whatever was kept inside, aside from mosquitoes and mice, had no chance of escape.
The overwhelming stench made me hesitant to take a deep breath; I covered my nose with one hand and stretched the torch forward, the dim light illuminating the interior of the barred room.
Inside was a simple, straw-covered bed, mostly burned away. A bundle of bedding, scorched and blackened from heat, lay on it, and curled within was a small, black-brown desiccated corpse. One of its legs was exposed, looking like a charred tree branch.
Not far from that leg was a filthy old bowl, remnants of food decaying within, crawling with maggots—there were even some around the corpse.
It appeared…
A very small child had been locked up here and had died.
I leaned in closer to the bars, wanting to see better…
Buzz—
In that moment, it felt as if everything went white before my eyes, and I was flooded with overlapping scenes. In my ears, I heard a girl’s heart-wrenching screams.
“Uh ah ah ah ah—!!!”
“It hurts, it hurts… I’m going to d*e…”
“Help me…”
In the darkness of the prison-like chamber, the scorched corpse that had stuck to the bedding suddenly sat up, twisting its dark head to look at me, crawling towards me with a disturbingly twisted posture!
Hospital beds, syringes, bloody bags, red pills, squirming, crawling, decayed flesh—someone was stuffing chunks of meat into the bloody abdomen of the test subject with countless unsettling images flashing before my eyes. A terrible noise buzzed in my ears “buzz buzz buzz buzz,” and then with a loud “thud—” the corpse slammed its dry hand against the iron bars, shattering all of these scenes. Its ghastly face leaned in through the bars, hollow, terrifying eye sockets fixated on me, teeth bared as it rasped a growl.
“Let me… out—”
“Ah!”
I couldn’t help but scream, hastily retreating two steps.
Rubbing my eyes vigorously, I looked again, and everything had returned to calm. The little corpse still lay curled deep within the prison, as if it hadn’t moved at all.
Crackle!
Out of the corner of my eye, a flash of blue light appeared, accompanied by a blinding lightning bolt, and Sword Demon Miss materialized beside me. She drew her sword, scanning the surroundings with a defensive look, and two seconds later, her expression turned to confusion as she looked back at me, puzzled, “Huh?”
“…I’m fine.”
I rubbed my forehead and said to her, “Put your sword away, it’s not an enemy.”
“……”
Sword Demon Miss obediently sheathed her sword.
“What’s this…”
She seemed to just notice there were prison cells here. After stowing her sword, she raised the torch, moving ahead of me toward the stone wall.
“Is this… the test subjects mentioned in the notes? Refugees, perhaps?”
“…Refugees, townsfolk from the castle, all of them, I suppose.”
Clearing my throat, I waited for my heart to settle before moving to the next barred door. The flickering light of the torch cast a red glow on the stone walls, revealing many more burn marks there, with black ash and other remnants, but more notably, moss-like plants sprouting from the cracks in the stone.
These plants looked similar to those outside the church, but had a tinge of bl**d red, with tiny dots of red scattered along the thin stems, resembling splashes of bl**d.
I arrived at the second cell door.
Standing at the edge of the bars, I peered into the dark stone room, and in the corner, another desiccated corpse lay.
This corpse appeared larger than the previous one, likely that of an adult male—perhaps a refugee who had been tricked into coming here. One of his arms was inexplicably swollen and bloated; even after the moisture had nearly evaporated from his body, that arm still retained a tumor-like shape. It was slightly shriveled yet seemed to carry the entire weight of his body, lying curled up in a painfully awkward position in d*ath.
…A creepy sensation crept over me.
I didn’t linger on the off-putting corpse. Holding my torch high, my expression unchanged, I continued along the stone wall.
In the third cell, yet another corpse lay waiting.
