174: Chapter 174 The Second Resurrection

In the central square of the Old Capital Comorion, the ash-blue morning light brushed down from the tops of the stone pillars, shining on the newly filled grave.

The grave had only been dug late last night; several wizard assistants worked through the night to take Kengaxin Zaun's head and body down from the stone pillars, roughly stitched them together with a few coarse hemp threads, and buried them in the potter's field on the west side of the square, which was specifically used for disposing of death row inmates.

It was buried very shallowly, held down by a few gravel stones on the mound, and an obsidian pillar planted nearby was inscribed with "Bastard, forever fall into the frozen soil".

The mound moved.

A few tiny gravel stones rolled down from the mound, making a rustling sound as they tumbled onto the frozen soil.

The entire mound began to tremor slightly at a frequency visible to the naked eye, and a gap split open from the middle of the newly filled soil, gushing out a wave of cold, damp, and fishy chill from the fissure.

A hand reached out from the gap, its fingers more than a joint longer than those of a normal human, the back of the hand covered with sparse, rough, and messy short brown hair.

The skin on the body's surface turned black.

That hand spread its five fingers and grabbed the frozen soil at the edge of the grave, exerting force with its knuckles, and the muscles of the entire arm bulged violently beneath the skin, sending the gravel and soil on the surface of the grave flying several feet away.

The few vendors setting up stalls in the square were stunned by this scene.

An old woman selling tundra herbs let out a shriek, grabbed her herb basket and ran, scattering dried herbs all along her path.

Several wizard assistants cleaning the altar beside the stone pillars turned their heads, seeing that the mixed-breed bastard who had been buried for less than half a night in the grave was standing up from the soil with both hands supporting the ground, a few grains of fresh mud still hanging on his pale, greenish-blue face.

A young assistant dropped the broom in his hand to the ground, took several steps back, his voice trembling so much it was almost inaudible: "H-He wasn't beheaded?!"

Kengaxin Zaun stood in the center of the square, the cut on his neck, roughly sutured with coarse hemp thread, still oozing viscous, pitch-black blood threads, the hemp thread tightening and loosening with the ups and downs of his breathing.

He tilted his head, as if exercising his stiff cervical vertebrae, and then slowly turned around, his brown eyes—which did not belong to a purebred human—staring straight at the stone building of the Wizard Association on the north side of the square.

He did not go after the scattered vendors fleeing in all directions, nor did he look for the militiamen standing in the distance holding throwing spears and daring not approach.

His gaze was locked solely on the middle-aged wizard who had chopped off his head with an obsidian dagger on the obsidian altar just the day before yesterday.

At that moment, the wizard was standing on the stone steps at the entrance of the association, followed by several association members who had just been awakened from their sleep, holding a freshly opened roll of parchment register, the expression on his face changing from initial bewilderment to gradually solidifying fear.

Kengasing took a step toward him.

Then another step.

His pace was stiff at first, like a living corpse that had not fully adapted to the rhythm of resurrection, but after each step it became faster, turning into a swift and violent sprint by the tenth step or so.

The wizard threw the parchment register onto the stone steps, raised his hand to condense a ball of dark red magical fireball and smashed it toward his face. The fireball hit Kengasing solidly on the left shoulder, burning through the animal skin robe and the skin beneath.

The dark red flames burned on his shoulder for several breaths before he rudely and impatiently patted them out with his right hand.

He did not stop, nor did he even slow down, lifting the wizard up from the stone steps.

The subsequent scene was witnessed and imprinted in the minds of several vendors and militiamen who had not yet managed to escape the square, and was later repeatedly described, exaggerated, and embellished countless times in the taverns of the New Capital Uzzur-Dahlum and beside the campfires of the snake-man tribes.

But all versions were basically consistent on the core plot:

The mixed-breed bastard lifted the wizard up from the stone steps, grabbed the wizard's chin and the top of his skull with both hands, pried the wizard's mouth open to a size completely beyond the range of human jaw movement, then brought his own face close and pressed his own mouth against it.

Swallow.

He dislocated his own chin.

The mandible detached from the temporomandibular joint, and his entire mouth opened like a snake to a degree that completely did not conform to any human skull structure, and then he stuffed the wizard's head along with his shoulders into his own mouth.

The wizard's screams were swallowed deep into Kengasing's throat, leaving only his legs kicking wildly outside.

Kengasing held down the wizard's waist with one hand and supported his own lower jaw with the other, swallowing the wizard whole like swallowing a whole chicken.

The sound of shattering bones kept coming from deep within Kengasing's throat, and the wizard's spine was crushed section by section in his esophagus, each crushing causing the people in the square who had not run far enough to emit tragic screams.

This all took place amidst the frantic siege of a large crowd of people.

The screams in the square finally alarmed the entire Old Capital.

Dozens of association wizards swarmed in from all directions, led by several elderly and senior mages. Their Spells far exceeded the rank of the middle-aged wizard, and together they released several extremely powerful binding Spells, causing dark red magical chains to extend simultaneously from the stone pillars and the frozen soil, tightly entangling Kengasing's limbs and torso.

Two guards rushed forward, hacking fiercely into his back with stone axes.

Only after satisfying his cruel appetite did Kengaxin Zaun allow the guards to take him away.

The wizards swarmed forward, pinning him onto the altar. An aged and steady senior mage personally carried out the execution, using an obsidian broad-bladed knife engraved with ancient runes of the northern continent to cut off Kengaxin Zaun's head for the second time.

The stone bricks in the square were soaked in blood through two layers: one layer was the old blood that hadn't dried the day before yesterday, and the other was the fresh blood that had just flowed out.

The blood was still as black as kerosene.

This time, the wizards did not hastily bury the corpse again; instead, they stuffed the head and body separately into two stone coffins pieced together from obsidian slabs, engraved six Seal runes on the outside of the stone coffins, and buried them beneath the frozen soil layer several feet deep right in the center of the square.

The ten-foot-deep pit storing the coffins was filled with selected cobblestones.

Even the smallest of these cobblestones required three men to lift.

Everyone felt that Kengaxin Zaun, who had been so difficult to subdue, had finally reached his end this time.

The ash-blue morning light had turned into ghastly white daylight, and the crowd in the square fell quiet once again.

No one dared to say another word, nor did anyone dare to look at that huge stone again.

Kengaxin Zaun had died a second time, but there was no third resurrection yet.

He lay in his own blood, dying again and again, yet never truly leaving this Old Capital destined to be buried by his own hands.

He must have died this time.

Hopefully.

No.

Definitely.

Absolutely.

Right!

Right.

Right?