The Master of the Strange Realm

She looked up at Jenkins' expression, but neither the young writer nor his cat was surprised, they both had the same expression of curiosity being satisfied.

"I think you have probably had many magical experiences, which no gifted person can escape. My lover and I also tried to pursue mysteries in the era we lived in. We succeeded, but this also brought disaster. ”

She said sadly, rubbing the surface of the painting with her hands:

"There are thousands of ways to pursue the mystery, but we chose the wrong one. We signed a contract with an ancient alien species and became the Giver at the cost of love. But that alien species has been desecrating... A powerful false god came to gain power, and when the punishment came, Spade and I also met our doom, and the gods cursed us from that time..."

The man in the painting really moved, shouting in vain in a two-dimensional space.

"From then on, the two of us will be locked in this painting in turn, with a one-hundred-year interval each time. During these hundred years, the painting and the person can only see each other for one day every ten years, and after that day they must meet again Separate, otherwise you will suffer even more horrific torture. Those who can 'live' will definitely meet another lover within a hundred years, until they are imprisoned in the painting again in the next hundred years, and then watch the lover from long ago regain their freedom. , and find a new love.”

This kind of punishment really scared Jenkins. He couldn't imagine how much the god who made the curse hated the two people in front of him to do such a thing.

But he didn't believe that these two people were simply implicated. After all, gods rarely pay attention to specific humans alone, let alone such special curses as ingenious designs.

"Is that why you kept this painting with dad?"

He asked in a low voice, feeling that this story was really novel.

"Yes, the ten years have expired, and I have come to pick him up... There are still three decades before he is free, and I can still find a lover again in these three decades."

Jenkins didn't know the woman's mood at the moment, and it was difficult to judge the mood of the man in the painting. He probably guessed how desperate it would be to live in the dark space with nothing in the painting, and what was even more desperate was that his other half could live freely and find a new love.

"Young man, you can spread or keep our secrets, it doesn't matter. I hope you can cherish the love you have already grasped and don't find out in the future that we can never meet again."

She whispered her warning, picked up the painting again and prepared to leave.

"Have you not found a way to escape after all these years?"

Jenkins remained curious, but of course, cautious.

"There is no escape. Even if we take the initiative to tell our experiences, people will forget it in a very short period of time. Just like the conversation between us, when I leave your sight for more than five seconds, all memories and records It will all disappear, and that’s part of the curse.”

She nodded to Jenkins again, then walked out of the store holding the painting.

"five four three two one."

Counting five numbers silently in your mind, what happened just now is still very clear in your mind.

"Well, it seems I can't tell dad about this, otherwise it won't explain why I can remember it."

Jenkins shrugged, but actually had no desire to continue exploring this. He is only interested in the story behind it, and excessive exploration may lead to troublesome follow-up.

As for helping the woman just now, he didn't have the leisure to do so. Since there must be a reason for being cursed by God, since the woman doesn't tell the truth, he has no obligation to get involved.

"Travel is the most important thing. I hope the weather will be fine and the journey will be smooth."

As he prayed, he tapped the table next to Chocolate to remind him not to fall asleep, because they would be leaving the store soon.

Although the New Year's Day holiday only lasts for three days, the residual warmth of the festival can still be felt today a week later. A rare customer came to the antique store early in the morning. Although no goods were purchased in the end, it was enough to make Jenkins feel happy.

As the time approached ten in the morning, he was preparing to leave for the club. When he was slowly putting on his coat again, the woman who had just taken the painting opened the door again and hurried in.

"please help me!"

Her face no longer showed sadness, but extreme panic, "Sir, you may not remember the story I just told, but please believe me!"

Chapter 668 Chapter 656: Entanglements

The woman fell down before reaching the counter. It was only when Jenkins stepped forward that he saw a large hole in her abdomen, from which he could see the internal organs of the body. But because she was not completely human, she was merely comatose but not dead, and no blood was flowing out.

"What's wrong with you?"

He crouched down to try for treatment, but at this moment the door of the store was pushed open again, and an elderly gentleman he had never seen before walked in. All his clothes were black, including the hat. He was dressed like an old-school aristocrat.

"Sorry to bother you. Whether you are an ordinary person or a gifted person, please give me this woman and that painting now. This matter has nothing to do with you, and none of us want to cause trouble."

He was straightforward and saved everyone's time.

"is that so?"

Jenkins asked as he knelt down next to the woman and checked on her. When I said this, I looked out the window and saw that it was the morning of the first weekday after the New Year's Day, and there were indeed no pedestrians on Fifth Queen's Avenue.

Looking down again, when the woman fell, the picture frame was thrown beside her. The man in the picture looked worried, but unfortunately he couldn't do anything. The old gentleman who pushed the door in was a benefactor, level 5, exactly one level higher than the newly promoted Jenkins.

"Yes, give me the woman and the painting, then it will be as if we have never met."

He didn't want to make matters worse, or he couldn't figure out the details of the young man in front of him.

The woman suddenly woke up from her coma and looked at Jenkins with a pleading look in her eyes.

"Your suggestion is great, but I really want to know what the grudge is between the two of you. After all, this matter involves this store, and I must understand the reason why it is involved, otherwise I will not be able to explain it to my boss."

Jenkins stood up and put forward the conditions. To show his sincerity, he even stepped back to the counter and stopped direct contact with the woman.

"Reason? Oh, don't worry, this is just a coincidence. You must have noticed that this woman is not a human at all, she is actually...well, I can't explain it well, probably The grudge between me and her started a long time ago..."

"Are you also an immortal?"

Jenkins points this out.

"No, no, of course not."

The old gentleman immediately denied this, and showed his sincerity by taking off his hat and indicating that he had no weapon in his hand.

"Of course not. More accurately, she has a grudge against the person in the painting and my family. That happened in an earlier era, involving gods, alien species, witchcraft, family scandals, and a little bit of love and hate. Entanglement, just like the stories in those novels. All this resulted in women and men being cursed by God, and my family was burdened with a permanent task-we have to trace the traces of this woman and that man for generations. It is my duty to destroy the love between them and mortals after they are happy. I know it is cruel, but it is also part of the curse, and my family is just an innocent person who is unfortunately involved. "

"Honestly, I'm surprised you told me this. I thought we were going to fight."

Jenkins felt that the people he met today were very good-tempered, because the priest reminded him that everything was not a lie.

"It's absolutely okay to tell you this. After all, you will naturally forget it after a while. As for the fight... why do we have to fight? We don't want to cause trouble. This is a shop next to the main road. The police will always Patrols will pass by every half an hour, and it is completely unnecessary. You and I are just strangers who met on this bad morning because of fate, and there is no need to live or die because of a joke of fate."

He probably also saw that Jenkins was not a bad person, so he took the initiative to smile at him.

"You want to kill this woman?"

Jenkins asked, pointing to the gaping hole in the woman's body.

"I don't have that ability. Killing her is equivalent to freeing her. If it could be done so easily, they wouldn't be tortured by the curse for thousands of years."

"That's right."

Jenkins nodded, and that was the truth.

He had nothing to do with it, he was just attracted by the thousand-year curse and the story behind it. Therefore, whether he rescues the woman forcefully or lets the old gentleman take the woman and the painting away, they are all reasonable options.

And Jenkins has been very tired recently. He has wasted a lot of energy on the Evil God, Miss Fabry and those vampire aliens. Now he just wants to go to the Blizzard Villa in the mountains for a vacation, away from all the right and wrong.

"Hey, why do I think it's 'Blizzard Mountain Villa'?"

He was puzzled by his strange thoughts, and what was important now was to solve the matter at hand.

"Well, you can take this woman and this painting away."

He hesitated for a while, ignored the woman's plea on the ground, and agreed to the old gentleman's proposal. In addition to not wanting to get involved in troublesome matters, it was also because what the old gentleman said was all true, while what the woman just said contained some dishonest content.

"But I'm curious, have you never thought about lifting this curse?"

He leaned back, put one arm on the counter as support, and asked in a relaxed tone:

"I think both your family and this couple are tired of this cycle, right?"

"certainly."

The old gentleman didn't mind chatting with Jenkins for a while, but when it came to this issue, he was also quite troubled:

"But that is a curse from God. We have begged God for forgiveness. Probably in the last era, God really responded to my family - at the end of the 20th era, He will cancel the curse on the family and this man and woman. The curse. I think you should also know the current rumors about the end of the era. This cycle has passed half of the time, and I think the family and they will still be suffering for a long time.”

He looks very optimistic, and the appearance of the woman and him in Nolan may also be related to the local legend about the end of the era.

"You just wait until the end of the 20th Era? To be honest, judging from the current rumors, even the end of this era has the same probability of happening tomorrow as it will happen three hundred years later, let alone the distant 20th Era. , that may take tens of thousands of years.”

"I know this, but what can be done about it? We must bear the responsibility for the mistakes made by our ancestors, and those alien species that offended the gods did not even leave the name of the group. In comparison, This is already a very good result.”

PS: The next chapter is the end of the volume. I revised it for nearly an hour in order to fix the question in the last paragraph of the end of the volume.

Chapter 669 Chapter 657 The Real Phantom (End of this Volume)

"Your family and this man and woman can only wait for such a long time?"

Jenkins asked again, knowing in his heart that the god was probably really angry.

"There are other ways. While those aliens blasphemed the gods, they killed a pair of lovebirds blessed by God and made their bones into a comb. If that comb can be found and the soul trapped in it can be liberated, I think we can be forgiven for this, but for so many years, the family and this man and woman have never received any news about that thing. I think it is probably buried deep in an unknown ruins, or lying in a gift. in the treasure trove of

He rewrapped the painting in canvas and tried to lift the woman up. Jenkins leaned on the counter and looked at him with his head tilted, feeling that life was very strange.

"Lovebirds, comb... is it fate, is it fate that makes me meddle in my own business?"

His feet kept tapping the ground. This was just a subconscious behavior and did not make any disturbing noise.

"What do you think of the Zhengshen Church?"

he asked suddenly.

"Opinion? I don't have any opinion."

replied the old gentleman.

"And would you ask them for help if necessary?"

"Maybe, it depends on what kind of trouble I encounter. The false god who cursed us is not an evil god. Even if the True God Church knew about it, it would not help."

He replied vaguely that it was not easy to lift a woman who fell to the ground.

"In fact..."

Jenkins decided he wanted to do something good, and what happened this morning was so unusual that it was destiny that put the opportunity to do something good into his hands. He was also willing to help this group of people once, seeing as how they never took action.

"Actually, I heard about the comb you mentioned last year. Yes, on the other side of Fifth Queen's Avenue, there was a fat woman who relied on the curse of the love comb to swindle money, and then was raped by Xian in the winter. The church caught him."

"Um?"

The old gentleman was stunned and looked up at Jenkins. The woman who had been lying on the ground also raised her head and looked at Jenkins with the same shocked eyes.

"It's true. In fact, I have a little bit to do with that incident. I've seen that comb, and it looks almost like this."

He casually picked up a piece of paper from the counter, drew a love comb on it and handed it to the old gentleman.

After looking at the result for a few seconds, he handed the paper to the woman. The woman nodded hesitantly and asked the old gentleman to untie the canvas from the frame and show the comb on the paper to the man in the painting. The man nodded in agreement.

"It is indeed the comb. Oh, I don't know what to say."

He was too excited to speak. His face turned red and he held on to the shelf on the side to prevent himself from falling. It took him a while to have a normal conversation with Jenkins.

"This is really...oh, God!"

He closed his eyes and raised his head, drawing a holy symbol that Jenkins didn't recognize on his chest. The woman also stood up, hugging the picture frame and crying. Her seriously injured look just now was obviously fake.

The old gentleman, who had not yet told Jenkins his name, soon decided to go to the Church of the Sage with the woman. They could not wait to lift the vicious curse that had lasted for several centuries.

They are all grateful to Jenkins, even the woman who was "betrayed" by Jenkins. Before leaving, the woman told Jenkins something in return.

"I noticed the lamp on the cabinet. It should be a shadowless lamp."

"Huh? Yes, do you recognize it?"

The age when Clemen was active was far earlier than the age when women were cursed. It was unexpected that she could recognize this thing that had been buried deep underground for many epochs.

"Yes, of course I know it. Although this is no longer popular now, in the era when I was still alive, in some areas, those who mastered shadow abilities liked to use such shadowless lamps as a means of sealing secrets. Of course. , This is very partial, and because it requires borrowing the power of the shadow world, the Zhengshen Church will not record this kind of thing."

The old gentleman had already taken the painting out of the door in advance, saying that he would not hear any secrets.

"You mean, shadowless lamps are not numbered items?"

Jenkins asked.

"Yes, this is a man-made extraordinary item with a limited time limit, but because it takes advantage of the characteristics of the shadow world, it can continue to function after several epochs. In fact, you can think of it as a sealed secret The notebook is just shaped like an oil lamp. Although I don't know the method of making this lamp, it is not difficult to check the information sealed in it. Use blood to draw the sealing rune selected by the maker on the bottom of the lamp. Place it in any shade and wait quietly for a few seconds."

After that, she nodded to Jenkins for the last time, and then set off with the old gentleman waiting outside the door to the Sage Church to solve the curse of ten thousand years.

Jenkins told them his church identity, and the two would probably mention Jenkins in the interrogation later. But the woman promised not to talk about the last conversation about the shadowless lamp, because it had nothing to do with their curse.

The curse that lasted for several epochs came to an end, and it was all simple, as if fate was playing a joke.

Jenkins also had this feeling, from the shadowless lamp to the love comb to this painting. Although all the decisions were made from his heart, he always felt that sense of fate.

"Is this the so-called fate?"

He didn't know what the seal rune of this shadowless lamp was, and he couldn't pull the dead Clement back to ask. Remembering that Clement's level of benefactor was not high, he turned over the ancient rune book from his father's bookshelf, found the commonly used spell runes when Clement was still active, and then tried to write the rune representing [Shadow] on the bottom of the lamp.