Page 509

Page 509

When Dr. Duden announced the result, the middle-aged woman did not look relieved. Instead, she turned pale, as if all her bones had been pulled out.

"Then we have one last step before we end. Among the jury members listening is our criminal investigation master, who can draw a portrait of the devil based on your description." Dr. Duden waved his hand toward the back, and the man in the corner stepped out and handed the sketch to Lu Mingfei.

"My dear child, can you take a closer look and see if it's him?" said Duden.

It was indeed a sketch.

A strange-looking boy, wearing a somewhat stiff suit and square-toed leather shoes, sat on the windowsill, with vines hanging from above. His pupils were replaced by messy pencil lines to replace the golden pupils that Lu Mingfei mentioned. His cheeks were soft, and his facial features were 70% similar to Lu Mingfei.

He had very obvious slanted eyes, as if he was staring at Lu Mingfei outside the portrait.

The moment he saw this thing, he was not stunned. His pupils dilated slightly. He obviously didn't understand how a criminal investigation expert could draw such a similar portrait with just a few words.

"I had some more questions for you, but judging by your expression, I already know the answers." Dr. Duden came to Lu Mingfei with a smile and patted the man on the shoulder. "You are wondering why we can make the devil's appearance appear so clearly and realistically in front of you, right? It is exactly the same as those you have seen and experienced before, so lifelike."

“I heard that some word spirits or alchemical matrices can help users see into other people’s hearts. Have you used similar abilities?” Lu Mingfei tilted his head.

This was the second time he saw Lu Mingze’s shadow in a portrait. The first time was on his own 3E test paper. It was a bit strange to say that the two pictures were exactly the same in terms of composition and the characters’ expressions and movements.

"Secretary Lu, just now when the committee voted, it also passed a resolution to allow Mr. Lu Mingfei to visit the final sanctuary. The result of this resolution will be valid within 24 hours." Dr. Duden looked at Lu Lincheng, and after saying this, he turned around and straightened Lu Mingfei's collar.

"I can guarantee that there is absolutely nothing in the safe haven that can spy on other people's minds. That ability is beyond the scope of human beings. Next, your father will take you to the lowest level of this shelter, which we call the Final Sanctuary. Once you reach the Final Sanctuary, all your doubts will be resolved."

Lu Mingfei's heart moved.

He had a vague premonition in his heart.

Tuqiongdagger met.

The guy hiding behind the safe haven is finally showing his true colors.

Chapter 612: Well of Oblivion

The hiss of the evaporating liquid nitrogen echoed under the granite dome, reminiscent of a sharp whistle sounding in the wasteland far away.

This containment room, code-named "Well of Oblivion," is located 320 meters underground at Kassel College. Six layers of lead plates and graphite are embedded in the several-meter-thick concrete walls. Even if a nuclear war breaks out and the world ends, this place will remain safe.

At this moment, the isolation layers were absorbing trace radiation escaping from the two quartz glass coffins in the corner of the alchemical matrix.

Baroness Elizabeth Laurent tapped the coffin lid with her slender white fingertips. The mithril patterns etched by alchemy glowed with rippling blue light under the girl's fingertips.

Henkel brought back the video materials and three bodies from Siberia. The remains of St. Beowulf were sent back to his old house in Oslo, while the two elders from the Gattuso family were secretly sent to the ice cellar.

Their facial features were completely changed, but their identities could be easily identified through genetic comparison. The old man who could trigger the alchemical matrix in the ice cellar to riot even though he was just a corpse was β, whose face was shot through by the Philosopher's Stone bullet fired by Hen Gao. The guy whose throat was cut and heart was dug out was θ, who was killed in the battle with Lu Mingfei.

But no one could guarantee whether the thing in the coffin was really dead, so the Night Watch sealed the two bodies with runes excavated from the ancient tombs.

Charlotte was actually wearing a white coat, with dark brown stains on the corners of her coat.

It was hard to imagine that she was the youngest member of the board of directors, Angers' most loyal supporter, and the actual ruler of the Gottingen family, and it was she who finally completed the autopsy.

The butler, who even brought a dangerous aura to the elders, served as Miss Charlotte's assistant in this work.

The temperature around was terribly low, everyone was exhaling white air, and the constant temperature system lining the protective clothing was unable to prevent the ice cellar cold from penetrating into the bone marrow.

Some members of the school board and all the elders sat silently around the round wooden conference table that was moved from the principal's office to the Well of Oblivion. The four high-hanging display screens were repeatedly playing the scene of Charlotte performing the operation to cut open the beta left ventricle. These bigwigs, who gradually faded from the students' sight after handing over their power, frowned and stared solemnly at the slow motion on the screen.

Under the scalpel, some kind of biological tissue growth with a metallic luster appeared, which was highly consistent with the characteristics of the myocardial corruption of pure-blooded dragons in dragon tombs of past dynasties that eventually died under the erosion of time.

The metallic sheen is because the dragon's spiritual element collapses after its death, eventually merging into the collapsing flesh and blood.

The fluorescent light of the data screen cast a green shadow on Charlotte's nose. She looked up calmly and stared at everything that had been accomplished in her hands not long ago. There was even a trace of shyness on her petite cheeks.

The board of directors did not trust anyone except themselves in this matter. Time was of the essence and transferring people from their respective families or institutions seemed redundant. Therefore, Charlotte Gottingen, the only one who had studied anatomy in depth, took on the important task without hesitation.

On the display screen, β had all his clothes removed and his whole body washed by the butler's gentle method. His facial features were crushed, half of his brain was shattered by bullets, and his shriveled brain tissue was completely dead, but it still retained its fresh pink color. Even when Henkel and his people traveled thousands of kilometers to deliver this thing to Chicago, β's brain still retained a certain activity and was able to respond to the stimulation of electrical signals. He did not die completely until he entered the ice cellar and was completely covered by the alchemical matrix.

Under the dim light, the ice cellar was dead silent.

The chest and abdomen of β on the screen were shriveled, his skin was covered with corpse spots and age spots, and his bones were protruding from the skin, looking old and dry, yet still standing tall, as if calcium loss did not exist in this man who was over 500 years old.

The shackles forged from pure silver sank deeply into β's flesh and blood. Even though he was dead, Han Gao, who sent him back, was still horrified, and had to seal him in the coffin in this slightly superstitious way.

In addition, black iron nails forged from cast iron were pierced into every joint of the corpse, and those crude alchemical tools tempered with mercury were penetrated into the remains of the old man, leaving only the nail heads outside.

Elizabeth put her arm around Charlotte's shoulders, and held the child close to her.

Her mink collar rose and fell with her deep breaths, and the fluctuations in pump pressure from the liquid nitrogen circulation made her inexplicably irritated.

The slender and soft hand on the screen held the sharp blade and pointed it at the old man's chest. Charlotte applied force lightly and the blade sank into the shrunken and dry tissue.

Perhaps because it had been too long since death and had experienced heavy bleeding before death, β's muscles were pale and had no traces of blood, making it look more like livestock that had been killed and decomposed in a freezer.

Elizabeth frowned and looked again at the quartz coffin filled with liquid nitrogen behind her. The ribs of β inside were propped open by titanium alloy brackets, and the surface of the bones was covered with meaningless dark golden lines, like walnut rings struck by lightning.

It is almost exactly the same as the skeletons left by the pure-blooded dragons collected in the academy's ice cellar.

In fact, the corpses of the elders of the Gattuso family are enough to prove that Pompey and his ambitions come from his bloodline. People think that the mixed-race prince Gattuso relied on the wealth that swept the world to obtain the power that was gradually stripped away from the ancient families, but the naked evidence shows that they are clearly the real gods.

The Gattuso family is a group of dragons hidden in the human world.

But Elizabeth still remembered the rainy night many years ago, in the safe house outside Chicago, when Pompey, wrapped in bandages, had just conquered another resurrected prince. He used a large-caliber pistol to blast open the solid wood security door weighing hundreds of kilograms, and signed his name in the supplementary clause of the "Abraham Bloodline Deed".

He was so righteous, as if the playboy was wearing a hero's mask.

At this moment, the original contract is locked in a safe deep in the ice cellar.

Relying on the restraining force and law enforcement power of this contract, the academy has killed countless dragons who wanted to return to the era of the Holy Empire in the past ten years.

"At this point, we have watched this image at least three times. Isn't it enough for you to make a decision?" Saint Cadmus' voice was like sandpaper rubbing against bronze. His brilliant golden eyes swept across everyone's eyes one by one. His old face, which could be said to be dragon-like even in ancient China, was more serious and cold than ever before.

"We have lost our power, our credibility among our peers, and the most prestigious dragon slayer of this era...Angers has fallen in the conspiracy of the dragons, Beowulf has fallen, the executive department has become the Gattuso family's lackeys, and I have even lost my closest descendant, my dear little Pierre!"

Cadmus' fingertips tapped on the alloy conduits at the base of the quartz coffin, which contained liquid mercury used to form the alchemical matrix circulation system inside the coffin.

Mercury solution will always be the nemesis of dragons. Even a strong man like Vidoflnir would commit suicide by slashing his throat at the Wujiang River because he was driven into the mountains and rivers outlined by mercury by hundreds of thousands of Han troops. The elders of the Gattuso family will be buried forever under the mercury matrix.

The sharp scalpel on the display had completely cut open β's chest cavity. The old man's internal organs were surprisingly quiet like a sculpture, shrunken and wrinkled, with a kind of dead gray color.

β's heart is different from that of an ordinary person. In the slow motion presentation, the elders clearly saw that it had only one ventricle, while humans always have plural ventricles.

The presence of a septum in the ventricle makes the beta's systemic and pulmonary circulation very different from that of any other warm-blooded mammal.

This was the third time that the dragon's features had appeared before the eyes of all the elders and directors of the Well of Oblivion.

The picture pauses at this moment.

Elizabeth stood up and frowned. "I think it is just as Mr. Cadmus said. It is indeed time for us to make a decision."

With the help of a mechanical transmission device, the quartz coffin was brought to the elders to replace the round table. A pale wave of liquid nitrogen flowed over the jaw of the corpse. The ribs spread out like wings in the faintly visible nitrogen vapor, reminding people of the Blood Eagle punishment used by the Vikings in Scandinavia on their enemies in the Middle Ages.

The Vikings would tie the victim face down on the rack and make him take herbs to delay death, thus prolonging the torture process. They would cut the skin on the back along both sides of the spine to expose the rib area, then use tools to break the ribs from the spine and flip them outward to form wings. After that, they would pull the victim's lungs out of the chest cavity and place them under the flipped ribs. Because the lungs contract and rise and fall with breathing, they look like flapping blood wings, so they are called "blood eagles."

"It is obvious that the Gattuso family has betrayed us. All charges and wanted warrants against Lu Mingfei should be cancelled. The school board should immediately deprive Pompey Gattuso of all his positions and rights. The war has begun. This is a fork in the road of human destiny. One step forward will lead to an abyss of no return. Ragnarok has already sounded the drums of war, and we have no way to avoid it!" Baroness Laurent knocked on the table with the ancient silver ring engraved with the Laurent family emblem on her left index finger. The crisp sound of the rings echoed in the depths of the Well of Annihilation.

St. George rang the bell in front of him.

"It should be Mentor Flamel who invited Beowulf and Mr. Henkel to go to Siberia to help Lu Mingfei assassinate the two elders of the Gattuso family at the same time, right? Why didn't I see him in such an important meeting?" He stared into Elizabeth's eyes, his eye sockets so deep that he seemed to be able to see through everything.

"He has more important things to do." Lady Laurent said without hesitation.

"What could be more important than convincing us old guys to crawl out of our graves, pick up our weapons again and charge towards the dragon clan?"

"To retrieve our own vengeful god," Elizabeth said coldly.

St. George was stunned. "You mean..."

"Hilbert Jean Ange." Baroness Laurent bowed her head. "Teacher Flamel has already left for Tokyo after the last meeting... How could someone like Ange be willing to miss such a magnificent war?"

"The St. George family will join your great cause, dear Elizabeth." St. George suddenly became solemn. He stood up and paid the highest courtesy to Baroness Laurent. It was as if a wild beast had come alive in this old man. His breath was surging, and the alchemical matrix around him was suddenly activated, which was affected by his rekindled bloodline.

"The school directors see themselves as the new dragons, but the elders always stand with humans." Saint Siegfried smiled. This hunchbacked old man looked somewhat similar to Han Gao at first glance, but he was always so gentle, which was incompatible with the legendary hero who bathed in dragon blood. "But where is our battlefield? Are we going to fight the Executive Department in the academy with Frigga bullets?"

"Twelve hours ago, two documents with the same content were transmitted to me through an encrypted channel, signed by everyone's old friend." Baroness Laurent also smiled, "Eva sent me a coordinate from Cuba and the northernmost coastal area of ​​Siberia, and also added a very interesting sentence."

"What?"

"When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison."

-

The huge steel elevator made a rumbling sound as it sank. It was obviously created to be used as a freight elevator for transporting large items.

The silence between father and son pierced Lu Mingfei and Lu Lincheng's hearts like a needle.

The expressions on the men's faces were terrifyingly serious, like a pair of mirrors standing facing each other.

"I thought the final sanctuary would be some kind of place like the kingdom of the dead..." Lu Mingfei decided to break the silence.

Lu Lincheng hesitated for a moment: "I heard that your authority in Kassel Academy is S-level, so you are qualified to enter the ice cellar. The deepest space in the ice cellar is called the Well of Oblivion. It stores precious collections that Angers have collected from all over the world over the years. Some are extinct alchemical relics. Others are the remains of pure-blooded dragons and even the Philosopher's Stone obtained from the dragon tomb. The Final Sanctuary is a place similar to the Well of Oblivion. The committee stores all kinds of rare treasures we have obtained from all over the world there. It is also the foundation for the existence of this safe haven."

Lu Mingfei's heart moved slightly, and he had some vague guesses in his mind about what he might see.

When the elevator gradually descended to 100 meters below the ground, Lu Mingfei suddenly felt a sense of danger in his heart. It was not an illusion, but with his powerful sixth sense, he could realize that there was something terrifyingly powerful approaching below.

Or it would be more accurate to say they were approaching that thing.

Lu Lincheng took off the mask and gloves hanging on the wall of the elevator. They were ridiculously thick and made of rubber. They were obviously used to prevent some kind of gas from invading the human body.

He handed one of the pairs to Lu Mingfei.

"You should be able to feel the turbulence of elements everywhere," he said. "We are about to reach our destination, which is also shrouded in a cloud of mercury vapor."

Chapter 613 Brother and Brother

The elevator stopped and the door opened, revealing a tall and spacious space.

This is an extremely huge underground space. Tens of millions of years of flowing water have eroded out an incredible underground cave.

The safe haven should be located on a ground fissure left over from geological movements who knows how many years ago. The surging geothermal heat surged upward like a tide, thawing the permafrost hundreds of meters underground.

Regular shapes were cut out on all sides by engineering machinery. Towering scaffoldings dozens of meters high, on which hundreds of people can move freely, were fixed tightly against the walls. Bright lights surrounded this so-called final sanctuary in a complete circle.

But these lights could not penetrate the thick darkness of the dome. Any sound was deafening in such silence and accompanied by thunderous echoes. The ubiquitous sound of water was like an underground river running through the sanctuary.

In the center of the final sanctuary is an extremely thick load-bearing pillar, which is always in the shadow due to the inclination angle of the lighting.

After Lu Mingfei stepped out of the elevator, he stomped his feet. The ground was surprisingly made of bronze, making a dull, hollow sound.

The bronze ground was etched with snake-like winding lines using ancient techniques, and dark blue mercury was flowing in the lines. The sound of water that they heard just now, which was suspected to be an underground river, was the sound of mercury flowing in the alchemical matrix.

Lu Mingfei had seen similar things more than once. Only a master with extremely high attainments in alchemy could build a matrix of this scale.

This means that there should be at least one person similar to the Night Watchman among the Doomsday faction.