548 The Remnants

The room was so noisy. A giant table was in the huge basement, on the walls of which were numerous maps with all kinds of marks on them. Documents and files were scattered on the floor, leaving barely any room for Ye Qingxuan to stand.

Everyone in the room was so busy and anxious. The cigarette smoke mingled with the unpleasant smell of saliva and sweat. Combined with the hot air from the thermostat matric, the air was stifling.

"Our defense collapsed!" the bald old man beside the table cried, with a copy of a document in his trembling hand. "The defense line fell completely due to the mistake of the commander of our fleet in the West! Avalon was lost!" The old man lost his voice and beat his chest. He suddenly vomited a lot of blood and fell on the wheelchair.

"General Norin! General Norin!" The people around him panicked and shouted, "Medic, medic!" Two old men limply got up and pushed general Norin away.

In the chaos, one old man swept the document off the table and shouted, "Coward! Coward! Where is this commander of the west fleet? Get him on the stake! Burn him!"

"Burn him!" Other people waved their hands.

"No! You cannot do this!" The commander shouted, "I have my strategic considerations! Anglo cannot fight against this catastrophe now. You cannot do this! Let me see the Grand Inquisitor! Let me see the Grand Inquisitor!"

"Go to hell, you coward!" An old man with an oxygen mask on his face got up angrily. He took the decorating sword on the wall and stabbed the commander in the stomach. There was no blood but only wires of some mechanical entrails coming out of the hole produced by the sword. The sword went through the gap between the entrails, causing almost no damage at all. Yet the commander, overplaying his role, screamed and fell on the ground.

"Carry him out!" An old man with a metal pipe on his neck, wearing the hat of the top commander, waved his hand and said, "Now we can only count on the southern corps. Get me the map of Asgard!"

"Sir, we have no map of Asgard. Please make do with the map of Caucasia."

"You fool! How can that work!" The top commander shouted angrily, "This is serious negligence! Military police! The white-haired kid, you, come here! You are the military police now. Get this guy away and burn him!"

Not knowing what to do, Ye Qingxuan paused. The old man urged him again, and the old man accused of negligence cocked his eye at Ye Qingxuan and gestured to him. Ye Qingxuan reluctantly pushed him to the side and two other old men who had been eating sunflower seeds covered the accused man with a sheet of red cloth to imitate the fire. Under the red cloth, the old man screamed as if he were really burned alive.

What the hell was this?

Ye Qingxuan was totally shocked while the commanders were still giving orders at the headquarters. Reports and urgent orders came and went, deploying troops. Yet all the reports and telegraphs, after they were signed out, were dumped in a dustbin in the corner along with cigarette ash and fish bones.

Pretty soon, things turned for the better under the "command" of the headquarters. Yet ten minutes later, the situation went out of control. Following the fall of Anglo, the Western Desert and North Ice Field were both lost to the enemy. Then Asgard was occupied, Burgundy was divided, and all of Caucasia was set on fire as a strategy to defend the enemy, leaving no one alive there. Finally, only the Sacred City remained, fighting alone against the dark world.

Silence fell. The commander in chief took his hat and shouted hoarsely, "Comrades, we are now in grave danger. We must guard the Sacred City! We shall not lose! The 10007th Crusade will not end here!"

All the other old men followed him enthusiastically. Then in harmony, someone shouted, "Wait a moment!" The old man who had been "stabbed to death" got up with a huge book in his hands. "You made a mistake! I had six Instruments of harmonious melody for enchantments fully charged. How was it possible that I lost all my troop after one assault by the enemy?"

The old man in charge of calculations glared at him and said, "Out of 100 points, you got only nine for weather conditions! Failure! The enemy was helped by the storm. You didn't have enough supplies and lost half of your musicians. The instruments self-destructed!"

"I had topographical advantages!"

"That was canceled out!"

"Sh*t! This is against the rules! You son of a b*tch, your calculations were wrong! I also bought two airships! But you didn't count them! Get them back to me!"

His mistakes exposed, the calculator felt embarrassed and shouted angrily, "I made the rules for sea battles! I modified them! You got a problem with that?"

"Yo, heretic! I'll kill you!"

"Come and get me then! You are a son of a bitch if you don't!"

They got more and more excited and began to fight in no time, despite their old age and deteriorating health. Those around them wanted to pull them apart, yet those who were "dead" were also making trouble, leading to total chaos in a few minutes.

It seems the 10007 crusade will end here. Ye Qingxuan shouted at them from aside but he was completely ignored. He heaved a sigh and had to wait. Then, a sunflower seed shell was thrown on his head. He turned back and saw an old man waving at him, sticking out his head from behind a curtain.

"Hey, young man. You, come here."

Ye Qingxuan lowered his head in dismay, wondering what the old man would ask him to do. Yet after he got behind the curtain, he couldn't help but hold his breath.

It was only a curtain away, yet it was totally different here.

He saw, besides piles of untended documents and files, numerous machines piled up with all sorts of wires. He was quite familiar with them as he had seen them in the hospital. An oxygen maker, a heart rate monitor, a blood pump… Numerous wires stretched out from above the ceiling, beneath the floor or behind the walls, and were connected to the old man in the heavy iron chair to support his life.

The half face Ye Qingxuan saw might be the only flesh left of the old man. Half of his cheek was replaced with metal and many other parts of his body were also patched with metal. The skinny old man was almost wrapped up by the machines. He had an artificial heart, a lung made of steel, a man-made spinal column and half of his skull was transparent, through which the silver electrodes in the withered brain could be seen…

Sitting on the chair facing the wall, he could hardly move any part of his body. On the wall was a narrow window through which he could see the ocean where some fire was burning.

It was torture to live like this.

"Scared?" The old man signaled Ye Qingxuan to sit, then said in his odd voice produced by metal vocal cords, "You have come here from afar. Sorry that I could not get out to meet you."

"It's okay. I'm still young. I'm able to cover long distances as long as I can see the one in charge here." Ye Qingxuan looked at him carefully. He could see the wrinkles and the age pigmentation on his face, yet he could not tell how old the man was.

"I know why you are here." The old man heaved a sigh and patted the armrest with his left hand. "Mr. Ye, you want to see us, but we are not what you expected. There is no one in charge here. We are only a bunch of defeated losers.

"The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has collapsed. We hide in this neglected corner only to heal our wounds. Even our leader has died in the Sacred Court. You want to find a glorious temple, but we only have the ruins; no value at all. Am I not right, Mr. Ye?"

After a short silence, Ye Qingxuan took off the Sacred Belt and put it aside. Looking at the old man's eyes, he said, "I need your help."

"I know." Seeing the Sacred Belt beside Ye Qingxuan, the old man seemed to be a little emotional. He moved his figure and pointed at it. "May I have a look?"

Ye Qingxuan put the Sacred Belt into the old man's hand. The old man held it tightly. Feeling the texture of the belt with his fingers, he smiled with a hint of nostalgia.

"The Sacred Belt of the Grand Inquisitor. It has been 100 years since I last saw it."

Ye Qingxuan sat there quietly without any movement, leaving him undisturbed in his memory of the old days.

Quite a while later, the old man stopped thinking.

"Thank you, Mr. Ye. You may call me Shi Dong." The old man introduced himself, "Like those old men outside you just saw, I am…sort of the remnant of the Religious Court of Inquiry."

Ye Qingxuan was shocked. The remnant not of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, but of the Religious Court of Inquiry!

That was dismissed more than 90 years ago!

How long has this bunch of old fellows lived? When the people of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith left the Sacred City, they had almost nothing valuable on them. Yet those machines supporting those old men were enormously expensive.

Who are these people that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith spends so much money to keep alive and feed?

"Please don't mind, Mr. Ye." Shi Dong produced a weird sound of pumping air from his lung, which was like a laugh. "If we have any merit, it is that we live a long life. When we were in the Religious Court of Inquiry, some of us were ascetic monks, some were inquisitors, some were purifiers, and some were cavaliers of the Witch Hammers. Now, we are only a bunch of old bones who cannot survive for five minutes."

Ye Qingxuan smiled, not taking what he said seriously.

He would be a fool if he did.