High School of Demon Hunting

Chapter 1508: Chapter 252 Tombstone

The yellow-robed entity vanished behind the door.

The darkness that had hovered over the world with the iron gate at its center slowly receded. The pallid moonlight re-painted the visage of the night.

Zheng Qing felt that he could finally breathe again.

He began to suspect that the being in the yellow robe might have come from the starry sky, as his head began to throb faintly during the brief encounter with it.

The master had once told Zheng Qing that his headaches were due to the inadvertent germination of an ’Order Seed’, which sprouted from absorbing a vast amount of mystical knowledge. With Zheng Qing’s limited understanding of magic, he could only think of those beings from the depths of the starry sky, the Outer Gods, as the kind that could disseminate vast knowledge merely through contact.

But even if he guessed that the yellow-robed figure might not be a devil, Zheng Qing was decidedly unwilling to enter through that narrow door.

Perhaps the scene evoked certain feelings, for he suddenly remembered a passage he had seen in a Law book while purchasing it at Great Ming Pavilion not so long ago—actually, it was just last July or August:

’Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.’

These words came from the New Testament·Gospel of Matthew, printed in a Paris-bound edition of a Law book. At that time, Zheng Qing had inwardly mocked Sepulano’s brother, thinking that his figure would not fit through the narrow gate.

And then that impolite fat man turned into a wild boar monster.

The night breeze brushed the hem of his robe, and the young wizard couldn’t help but shiver, looking around subconsciously. Terms like ’inspiration’, ’intuition’, or ’Moody’ are all words to describe a wizard’s mysterious sense of events not yet witnessed but relevant to oneself.

At this moment.

Remembering that passage in this barren land suddenly seemed to him.

Intuition told Zheng Qing that this was not a good sign.

Under the moonlight, the scenery once shrouded in shadows was now fully exposed. As far as he could see, this was a completely unfamiliar world to Zheng Qing. Around the colossal iron gate lay desolate fields covered with thin, pitch-black, scorched grass, which looked charred as if ravaged by wildfire, yet also teeming with the vigor of green grass.

The grass rustled in the night wind, silently communicating with the jagged rocks strewn around them. Amid the sparse wind sounds and the rustling of the grass, Zheng Qing faintly heard many whisperings but could never find the speaker:

”When you’re alone, if death goes unwitnessed, then you’ve simply embarked on a long journey by yourself...”

”...A soul can perish with the body, or it can survive on its own... Pale souls awaken anew where bodies rot, wailing at the moon night after night...”

”...Between the stars, in lands mysterious and dark, our kind shall finally reach where gods despise and spirits abhor, humans disperse, Carcosa, where the Great Hastur reigns supreme...”

”...There, where the king’s tattered robes drift, must perish songs of spirits unheard, my voice is already dead, and soon shall you be... Unpraised one, your tears will dry before they fall, in the lost Carcosa...”

”Order... does not belong to this world.”

”Do not gaze directly at a God!!”

The sneaky whispers swept past Zheng Qing’s ears like the wind. He could only catch bits and pieces of the phrases. When he tried to find the source of the voices, all he could find were a few peculiar-looking stones or some dead, dried-out tree roots.

”...Carcosa... Carcosa...”

”...Great Hastur...”

”...The ragged monarch...”

The whispers grew increasingly fragmented, until only a few key words could be repeatedly heard through the night wind, echoing in the ears of the young wizard.

Zheng Qing sat under a withered comfrey wood, massaging his sore ankle.

He had wandered through this wasteland for a long time, never finding a way out. There was no sign of human activity here, no cooking smoke, no thatched cottages, no barking dogs, no crowing chickens, no fields being plowed, no water channels, no fruit trees, and not even the droppings of wild animals, the calling of birds, or the low humming of insect beasts.

All that met the eyes was the black grass that seemed scorched.

And those jagged strange stones among the grass.

Zheng Qing plucked a tuft of black grass at his feet, and a smoke-like breath flowed out from the soil. He faintly heard the plant screaming in the wind.

As he bowed his head.

The tuft of black grass in his hand had turned into a clump of black ash, slipping through his fingers. Amidst the smoky mist in the soil, the disturbed dirt quickly settled again, with a new, finer, yet darker tuft of black grass growing from it.

Zheng Qing picked up a strange stone at his feet and hurled it at the comfrey wood in a fit of rage.

The parched bark of the comfrey wood was smashed to the ground.

Behind the bark, on the pale trunk, there was a line of pitch-black characters that stood out under the pale moonlight. Zheng Qing approached eagerly, trying to see more clearly.

The next moment, he exclaimed in shock, stumbling backward several steps, nearly falling to the ground.

Carved into the pale trunk was an epitaph:

”×× (1990**—2009**) From First University, Jiuyou Academy, Astronomy Class 08-1, born in Huaxia Pingyang Prefecture, died in Dreamland Carcosa City, alas!”

The name and date of birth of the tomb’s occupant were still blurred, like ink smudged on Xuan paper.

But Zheng Qing recognized at a glance that it was his own gravestone. Those clear experiences, those vague descriptions, all the clues pointed to the same conclusion.

This encounter added an element of mystery and terror to the wasteland.

Zheng Qing even began to doubt everything he saw and heard, whether it was all his own fantasy or delirium. The overcast night enshrouded a gloomy landscape, and the various elements between heaven and earth appeared to be giving threatening omens.

Am I already dead?!

No, not yet! Zheng Qing suddenly realized—he wasn’t dead yet, but when his name on the gravestone became completely clear, that would be the time of his death.

This was a land filled with evil and disaster, and only by leaving this place could he survive.

The omen was so strong that Zheng Qing could almost hear his wizard’s intuition yelling in his ear: Leave this place now! Quickly!

”’Enter through the narrow gate’,” the warlock murmured, giving one last look at the bleak moonlight on the horizon, heading towards the small passageway beneath the iron gate: ”...no, not you all, it’s I who must enter through the narrow gate.”

”The Master said: If I don’t enter Hell, who will?”

”Immortal Emperor... Akbar.”

Having prayed with all his sincerity to every divine being he knew of, Zheng Qing, holding the imaginary Charm Gun, carefully wriggled through the narrow gate.