I changed the world.

Page 429

Due to the time difference, 21:10 in Dazhao time is 15:10 in Bergopelli time. At this time, Father Simon is in his office in the Department of Human Development, drinking coffee and flipping through the Grey Book.

As he flipped through the pages, he would subconsciously glance up at the decorative oil painting "Lady with Water" on the opposite wall. He didn't know if it was just his imagination last time, but he now had a psychological aversion to the half-naked lady in the painting. He always felt that the serene and gentle face in the painting might turn around at any moment and give him a strange smile.

Last night's bizarre experience made him try to find an answer to what exactly happened to him.

After much deliberation, he decided to start with the Grey Book in his hands. Of course, he hadn't dared to continue reading it while alone at home last night, but today, in the office, he felt it would be much safer than being alone at home. Besides, he was genuinely curious about what Father Alain René Jacques Jean de Polignac had written in the back. So he continued reading the ancient book.

In later chapters, Father Depoliniac watches as people die one after another in the city. At first, there were people responsible for handling the bodies and carrying them to the church for burial. However, as the epidemic spread, the church cemetery quickly became insufficient, and he was eventually the only one left among the church staff. As a result, people had to bury the bodies on specially designated land outside the city.

However, the workers responsible for handling the corpses also fell ill and died one after another. After that, the bodies in the city could only be moved out by the families of the deceased. Those whose families also fell ill, or even died as a result, had their bodies left in the city. This directly led to a strong stench of decay permeating the entire city.

In an attempt to escape death, people tried all sorts of methods. In the city, they tried everything: praying for divine protection, drinking fine wine… Even Father de Polignac began to try some ancient folk remedies that had been popular in the West since ancient times, such as laxatives, emetics, bloodletting, fumigating rooms, burning lymph nodes, or placing dried toads on them, or even bathing in urine… However, the disease still could not be contained.

As a result, Father Depolignac's church became virtually deserted, with no one coming to pray anymore. Even the priest himself began to peruse scriptures that, strictly speaking, were considered forbidden, and started experimenting with concocting medicines that were difficult to categorize as either herbs or witchcraft...

Meanwhile, Father Depoliniac recorded in detail the situation in the city at that time. At this point, less than half of the city's residents remained. Someone suggested that the disease might have been brought by animals, so people focused their hatred on domestic animals such as cats and dogs. They killed all the domestic animals, and the streets were full of rotting cat and dog corpses. Combined with the smell of human corpses, the stench was suffocating.

From time to time, panicked cats or dogs could be seen leaping over corpses in the streets, pursued relentlessly by a group of people with their mouths and noses covered in cloth and carrying wooden sticks. At this point, no one pitied these vulnerable creatures, for they were seen as spreaders of the plague.

At this very moment, Father Depoliniac began to peruse ancient texts, seeking solutions to the problem within the wisdom of his ancestors. Coincidentally, the church he worked at had been converted from a pagan temple in the 5th century AD. Historically, during the 4th and 5th centuries AD, the Revelationist faith swept across the western continent, resulting in the destruction of numerous statues of ancient gods and the conversion of temples into churches. Father Depoliniac's church was precisely such a converted church.

One night, Father Depolignac was browsing through books in the church library when he heard strange noises. At first, he thought it was rats gnawing on the books. Rats were quite common in the city at the time, and many households kept cats to catch them. However, recently, cats and dogs had been killed in large numbers, causing rats to become more rampant and their numbers had increased significantly.

At that time, all books were extremely valuable assets, and some precious books could even be exchanged for an estate. Therefore, Father Depoliniac quickly began to search for the source of the sound.

Then, he followed the direction from which the sound came and finally, in the corner of the library, under a large pile of books, he was surprised to find an extremely old and worn-out book that had been there for who knows how long.

Volume Two: The Truth Hidden Behind History: Chapter 893 The Demon God

He did not recall ever having such an ancient book. Of course, he had not been in the church for very long, only four years, and had not systematically organized the library before, so it was normal that he did not know it.

Out of curiosity, he opened the ancient book, and the first problem he discovered was that the book did not describe knowledge related to traditional Holy Revelation.

Because schools in the general sense did not exist during this period, the transmission of knowledge in the Western Continent was quite clandestine. To some extent, the clergy of the Church were the true holders of knowledge in the Western Continent during this time. Consequently, most books in the West during this period, and the majority of their content, were more or less related to the theology of the Church of Revelation.

According to Father Depoliniac, the contents of this book were obscure and difficult to understand, but they were indeed related to theology. However, the theology contained therein was not the theology of the Holy Revelation Church, but rather a pagan theology that had been passed down for hundreds of years.

To put it bluntly, this is a pagan book originating from the belief in the Old Gods. For some reason, it was not burned back then, but has remained in this corner of the library ever since.

Father Depoliniac glanced through the book, intending to seal it away and destroy it later. However, during his brief browsing, he came across some records describing "demons on clay tablets."

At any other time, out of pure faith in God, Father Depoliniac would certainly have chosen to stop reading this ancient book and seal it away immediately.

Because, in the Church's understanding, this knowledge about the 'demons on the clay tablets' is purely heretical knowledge. Simply knowing this knowledge could lead to being labeled as blasphemous, especially given the Inquisition's activities and the extremely tense social atmosphere caused by prolonged epidemics. Reading this knowledge carries even greater risks.

However, faced with the increasingly severe epidemic and the death toll of more than half of the city's residents, Depoli Nia ultimately chose to carefully read this ancient book.

When Simon saw this part, he even went to Shaanxi to look up some information about the "demon on the clay tablet".