The Shepherds Are Dense

Chapter 121: New Moon Ritual

Time passed quickly, and it was now Sunday.The attack that Lloyd’s had planned in advance should take place the following week.

The Crimson of Nobility Society had suddenly gone quiet.

There was still no news about Professor Moriarty’s death.

The Minister of Trade remained unmoved.

And the superior of the lady assassin still had not approached them.

It had been an unusually quiet and peaceful week.

So quiet, in fact, that Lily felt a little uneasy.

But everyone else seemed to enjoy the calm.

Perhaps the only one who found it unpleasant was Sherlock.

He was the sort who could never sit still.

Usually, he had to find things to do to keep his unstoppable mind occupied.

Now that he had forced himself to take a break and couldn’t stir up any trouble — according to Haina, by the weekend he was already bored enough to be studying spells at the bishop’s house.

He even asked Haina to deliver a very long reply to Aiwass.

The letter was packed with possible problems Aiwass might encounter at Lloyd’s and how to handle them, as well as seven hypotheses that only someone with Lloyd’s credentials could verify — suggesting Aiwass test them whenever he had time.

From the length of the letter alone, one could see both his concern for Aiwass and how desperately bored he was.

Aiwass, of course, had no time for it.

He had spent a rare, uneventful week quietly attending classes.

He continued his study of occult knowledge through the school library in an orderly manner.

Without spending much experience at all, he had naturally advanced to Level 9.

Aiwass absorbed knowledge like a sponge.

After reviewing his schoolwork and finishing the two books he had planned to borrow earlier, he began using his spare time to teach himself Elvish — because his prayer studies lecturer, Miss Meya, intended to lend him a book of the Path of Devotion scriptures, and the copy was in Elvish.

To read it, Aiwass had begun preparing in advance.

What surprised him most, however, was that Lily had truly reached the peak of First Rank in just one week.

Strictly speaking, it was even less than a week.

By Thursday, she had already touched the wall to Second Rank — three days earlier than Aiwass’s best estimate.

That meant this New Moon Ritual could indeed be used for them to ascend together.

After all, in Avalon, both Path Adaptation and Path Transcendence were extremely rare, which meant they would almost certainly be placed side by side tonight.

And considering that Isabel had a key to the house at 14 Ronin Street…

The odds were low, but given the possibility she might come over on Sunday night to visit, Aiwass still took the precaution of requesting Monday off from his tutor in advance, so he could take Lily home to prepare for the ascension ritual and to seal the Contradictory Flame Butterfly.

When they arrived home, Aiwass found that the painting that Master Yanis had promised had already been delivered and installed.

When Aiwass returned home Sunday morning, the living room was dazzlingly bright.

It was as if the wall had become a vast window spanning time and space.

From the golden sacred buildings rose a mix of deep crimson sunrise and pure, brilliant golden light.

Below, the Nephthys Guards of the Horus Empire worshipped the sun — their figures tiny and blurred, yet strangely lifelike.

The light pierced the crystal-and-gold buildings around them, refracting again and again, shining with a misty halo.

Even though it was a silent painting, it was as if one could faintly hear solemn chants.

The “window” created a strange visual illusion — it seemed like looking out from within, yet it also felt both like a level ground perspective and a bird’s-eye view from the sky.

As Aiwass walked in from the doorway, the angle of the light in the painting and the perspective of the surrounding architecture shifted with his position, as did the way the buildings reflected light.

The details were so realistic that even a protruding brick on a wall or a small patch of chipped gold paint could be seen clearly.

Yet if one took in the whole painting at once, it seemed that from the layered brilliance reflected off these sacred structures, one could faintly discern a golden hawk soaring in the blue sky.

It was Aiwass’s first time seeing in person.

It was so sacred and magnificent that just looking at it seemed to purify and calm his mind.

Even someone with no knowledge of art could understand the timeless beauty it contained.

This was indeed the pinnacle of Yanis’s magical paintings in terms of pure technique.

"This painting astonished young master Edward when it arrived,"

Old butler Oswald followed like a silent shadow, speaking in a low voice.

"He repeatedly confirmed that it was a gift from Master Yanis to young master Aiwass, muttering ‘unbelievable’ and ‘how could this be’ again and again.

He spent half the night making calls before figuring out what had happened."

His withered, wrinkled face was creased with a smile, his wolf-like green eyes narrowing in amusement.

"Does young master Aiwass like it?"

"Of course I do."

Aiwass smiled.

"Not just this one…"

He turned to look at another painting hanging on the opposite wall.

It was the portrait Isabel had painted of him.

In it, she had not included the wheelchair behind him, nor Lily, who had originally been standing there.

The background was not a classroom but a sky filled with morning glow.

Whether by design or coincidence, the background resembled a faded version of .

It was as if the two paintings depicted the same time and place, only Aiwass was a little farther away in Isabel’s work, gazing down from a higher vantage point.

Placed side by side, Isabel’s skill was clearly less mature.

In her painting, Aiwass’s figure moved and breathed slightly, blinking now and then, his hair at his temples swaying in the wind — like the L2D animations of mobile game characters.

It was beautiful, but only beautiful, with motions that weren’t entirely natural.

The outstretched hand looked less like a greeting or a lecture, and more like offering someone a helping hand.

Even so, Aiwass preferred it.

"Because the temple of Horus doesn’t belong to me, and that dazzling sun doesn’t belong to me.

But she is entirely mine."

He said this seriously, looking at the painting.

When she had finished it, Isabel herself had admitted it wasn’t good enough, and said she planned to paint him another once she advanced again.

But from what Aiwass knew, she would not stop there.

Once her skills improved further, she would paint a better one.

Eventually, Aiwass would line them up together — his album of memories.

Behind him, Lily silently pursed her lips without a word.

She didn’t think she ought to be in that painting either, but she still felt the princess removing even Aiwass’s wheelchair made it somewhat unrealistic.

Still, an inexplicable sense of joy welled up in her heart.

Though Princess Isabel’s relationship with Aiwass was growing closer, the identity of Aiwass as a hidden demonologist was something only she knew.

And now, only she could accompany him to this most dangerous New Moon Ritual.

Aiwass even rose from his wheelchair himself to help her set up the ritual in his room.

The New Moon Ritual was entirely different from the Full Moon Ritual.

Because there was no such thing as teammates, there was no need for sacrifices.

Compared to the Full Moon Ritual, the New Moon Ritual leaned more toward darkness, and therefore required a harsher and more dangerous ceremony.

Under Aiwass’s direction, Lily fed poison to a rooster and a hen, killing them with a knife while they were still alive and spilling their blood on the floor.

They soaked the two inscribed ritual circles with chicken blood.

After the blood dried, they scraped away the excess outside the circles, leaving only a complete dark red ring.

The carved lines of the ritual, holding more blood, turned black.

Aiwass coated a silver ritual knife with essential oil, roasting it repeatedly over a candle until the blade was slightly blackened, then set it aside.

He roasted a small silver hammer over a sage bundle made from black sage, smoking it until it blackened, then burned the rest of the sage into ash and smeared it onto a rope.

He coated thick iron nails with the poisoned rooster blood — nails thicker and longer than a human finger.

He made six of them.

The other ritual tools he prepared in duplicate as well, not entrusting this precise work to Lily to avoid mistakes.

He covered the windows with translucent red paper, even placing some over the lamp shades, and boarded up the interior-facing window of his bedroom just in case.

He had prepared two sets of ritual materials.

Each set included a live tern, the freshly removed heart of a deer that had died that day, a miniature philosopher’s wax figure, a snake, a handful of black salt, a horse phallus, a well-fed rat, an oyster, and a mirror.

Only the tern could not be duplicated — he substituted a passing pigeon for the second set.

The New Moon Ritual materials were harder to find than those for the Full Moon, but their symbolic meaning was what mattered, so close substitutes could be used.

The catch was that they could not all be bought from the same place, and many were time-sensitive.

He placed them in order at the nine points of the ritual diagram — a single-stroke nine-pointed star, the angles unequal.

From smallest to largest angle, he placed the seabird, mirror, deer heart, wax figure, black salt, rat, horse phallus, snake, and oyster.

They waited in silence until night.

Aiwass and Lily agreed on a passphrase to confirm identity when meeting, then changed clothes — Aiwass found a red-and-white robe at home and dyed it completely red with the leftover chicken blood, while Lily wore a loose gray hooded robe that hid her face and figure.

When the sun set and the new moon rose, the red light outside seeped into the house.

Aiwass lit the gas lamp with its red shade.

As red light filled the room, the ascension ritual officially began.

"——The Nine are complete."

Aiwass chanted softly.

"I am among them."

Lily followed his chanting and movements.

He strangled the bird with the rope.

Smashed the mirror with the hammer.

Drove the nails into the deer heart.

Melted the wax figure slightly over the candle.

Cut his own finger to soak the black salt in blood.

Killed the rat with the black ritual knife.

Pierced the horse phallus through from the tip with a nail.

Opened the oyster and dripped his blood into it.

Aiwass did not touch the snake, and Lily did not touch the rat — she nailed the frozen-stiff snake to the floor and skinned it with the ritual knife.

But Aiwass’s snake stayed still, coiled quietly, while Lily’s rat lifted its head, eyes gleaming with a disturbingly human vitality.

"All but I are dead."

They spoke in unison.

In the next moment, eight black-red flames blazed up.

The ritual array lit up, shining red.

——

(End of Chapter)