Gun of Ashes

Static Holy Temple.

Here, it remains silent and vast, with ancient dust falling from the darkness above, evenly spreading into every corner, like a world that’s died.

Aside from the new pope, no other person is visible, yet you can hear faint breaths and heartbeats within the silence, as if unseen life exists in unseen places.

Underneath the steel mask, eyes coldly stare at the writing on the paper.

After so many days of organizing materials, reviewing past records, and interrogating those previously involved... through countless violent measures, the new pope finally obtained this, though it’s not the whole picture, it’s a highly credible assumption, and now he needs someone to verify these suspicions.

Thinking this, a blazing flame arose from his hand, burning the paper to ashes, the gray-black residue drifting away, but suddenly pulled by an inexplicable force, drawn into an invisible vortex, falling into the huge void before him.

Sainy Loter coldly observed the scene before him, a pitch-black well of pure darkness, below which seemed like an endless abyss, where even light is fully devoured.

Well of Ascension.

When the alchemists were still here, it was an altar for rituals, and through methods unknown to the new pope, they refined the mysterious Secret Blood from within this well.

If the Static Holy Temple was the source of Demon Hunters, then here it was the source of Secret Blood. Even abandoned for years, standing on the edge of the Well of Ascension, the new pope could still smell the strong stench in the darkness, as if countless corpses were piled deep within.

”Remove impurities, make substances purer, the beautiful ascends, the filthy descends...”

The new pope softly spoke, describing the core of Alchemy’s ”Ascension.”

That was the miracle every alchemist pursued. They believed that continually ascending a substance could obtain its ”soul,” and once a large amount of ”soul” gathered together, it would crystallize into something called a ”miracle.”

”Philosopher’s Stone, Philosopher’s Stone, Medicine of Immortality...”

The new pope recalled the names of those ”miracles,” all products of alchemical ascension. However, through different substances, different outcomes appeared, such as ascension from demons, yielding the miracle known as Secret Blood.

The Well of Ascension was a place for large-scale alchemical ascension, from which beautiful things gushed forth, while filthy things fell into the black deep well. The Evangelical Church had been extracting Secret Blood for thousands of years, and the impurities removed in the Well of Ascension were countless, yet they still could not fill the deep well.

It seemed like a bottomless pit, where if one fell accidentally, they would merely starve in the descent, never reaching the bottom.

But that was just legend. The new pope knew its true nature, so as he waited, the sound of mechanical turning arose, the aged structure reactivating, dust flying, and in the harsh scraping sound, numerous step-like protrusions extended along the well wall, spiraling downward, descending into the dark, unseen depths.

Without further delay, he picked up a bright lantern and directly stepped onto the ancient stairs, heading downward into the darkness.

The new pope did not know how long he walked; after fully immersing into the blackness, it seemed all his senses were stripped away. He wasn’t sure how long he walked, perhaps only minutes, or maybe ten minutes, several hours.

He stopped, looked up; the new pope had gone too deep, stepping into the deep well, and the light above had blurred almost beyond recognition. Except for the lantern in his hand, there was absolute darkness around, which seemed alive, writhing slowly, and no matter how the candlelight burned, it could only illuminate three steps at a time.

The new pope cautiously advanced; there were no railings, and after its creation, no one maintained it. Or maybe the original builders never imagined anyone would attempt reaching here.

The path he trod on was built in later times; each stepped stair had nearly a thousand years of history. Why people of that time decided to create this path to reach beneath the deep well, its purpose had long been lost to time.

The new pope stopped and started, extending his hand to wipe the well wall, removing solid dust. In the lantern’s light, one would discover that the Well of Ascension was constructed from a strange metal, gleaming silver-white.

Ordinary people might not recognize this material, but the new pope knew clearly it was Holy Silver.

The lantern continued to illuminate, the surface of the Holy Silver etched with cryptic symbols and patterns, recognized as alchemical symbols. Such things also existed in the observable well mouth, forming what seemed like a vast scroll together.

But what was even more horrifying lay ahead. The new pope descended at least several hundred meters deep, stopping periodically, observing the well wall.

The well wall was solid, cast from pure Holy Silver — an unimaginable vast quantity. The Holy Silver stored in the current church compared to that of the entire Well of Ascension was as different as a lake is from an ocean, and through the new pope’s observation, the entire well wall showed no signs of joining, as if, apart from the protruding steps, the rest of the structure was all a single piece.