The city of Thraben sits on the edge of a cliff where the River Ghir falls into the sea.

Atop the cliff stood a massive silver monolith, ringed by the columns of Avacyn's Cathedral.

Long before the cathedral was built, long before the first human settlement was established in Thraben, the monolith had stood on the cliff.

It was generally believed that it was a piece of the moon (Innistrad's moon is composed of a special kind of silver particles) brought by Avacyn to use as a prison to imprison the enemy.

But in fact, this huge stone was not created by the Archangel Avacyn. Even Sorin Markov was not very clear about its specific origins. He only knew that the "moon silver" in the huge stone had a magical power that could resist and weaken the power of werewolves and vampires, and it also gave the Archangel Avacyn similar abilities.

Later, Sorin made a series of reinforcements and modifications to the boulder, especially strengthening its magical properties of binding and confinement, so that Avacyn could more easily imprison enemies who were not so easy to kill.

And this stone is the famous "Prison Cellar".

Any creature thrown into the Hellvault will inevitably fall into a state of mental stagnation, with the body and soul completely separated and trapped in a super-dimensional space.

During this time, the trapped creature has only a very vague sense of its surroundings and the passage of time, but is extremely sensitive to strong emotions.

In other words, if a large number of twisted and evil creatures like demons were sealed in the Hellvault, and a mentally normal human was thrown in, the latter would likely be polluted and assimilated bit by bit over the long years of erosion.

Zuo Si had every reason to believe that the reason why the Lithomancer Nahiri became so crazy after escaping from the Helvault was not only because she saw her hometown Zendikar being ravaged by the Eldrazi to the point of near collapse, but also because she was exposed to too many demons and their twisted and extreme thoughts while imprisoned.

When Zuo Si followed the pilgrims who had come from afar into the cathedral, he immediately felt the faint energy field radiating from the Hellvault.

There is no doubt that the moonsilver of Innistrad is not ordinary silver, but a magical substance that contains powerful energy.

As for what it is, it's hard to say for sure until you check it out for yourself.

But one thing is certain, weapons made with this moon silver are definitely the nemesis of vampires, werewolves, demons and other evil undead creatures.

In particular, the holy sword formed by the fusion of Daylight Star and Casomir has been sending out strong resonance signals, as if calling for and craving the power of Moonsilver.

"Interesting... Could it be that the moonsilver of Innistrad can further enhance the power of the holy sword?" Zuo Si showed a curious expression on his face.

As far as he knew, the spear weapon in the hands of Archangel Avacyn was made of moon silver, and judging from her battle record, it perfectly matched her sacred white positive energy.

Plus, Innistrad itself is a world with relatively scarce resources, so there aren't many things worth collecting.

So far, the only targets targeted are the knowledge and magical powers contained in the mind of the ancient planeswalker Sorin Markov, and the mad genius of the necromancer Ludevic.

Now it seems that a special magical substance called moon silver must also be added.

The reason why Zuo Si wanted to get the necromancy genius Ludevi was mainly because he was attracted by his attainments in necromancy research and his crazy but talented mind.

This guy can even create a large number of corpse-snaking creatures that are comparable to high-level undead with just the pitiful magical energy and limited knowledge, technology and resources in the Innistrad environment, and he has also pioneered the production line of corpse-snaking creatures.

Yes!

You heard it right!

It was a 100% pure industrial assembly line! It was fully automatic and did not require human supervision! If he was born in Faerun, a genius like Ludewi would definitely become a legendary necromancer.

What Zuo Si needs to do is to take him to Faerun or the floating city of Plantia and teach him more profound knowledge and techniques of necromancy, so that he can be reborn and grow into the talent he needs, and build a powerful army of corpse-smacking undead from scratch.

Anyway, the world where the floating city is located is now short of everything, except corpses and low-level undead that have come back to life.

Just as Zuo Si was thinking about whether to cast an invisibility spell and directly bypass the obstruction of the Skitarii Knights to take a small piece of moonsilver back for research, he suddenly saw a blood-soaked guard rushing in from outside, shouting like a madman: "Lord... Bishop! It's bad! There... There is a large group of Skullclaw creatures and a large number of awakened corpses rushing towards the Holy City. They have captured several towns and all the residents have been slaughtered mercilessly."

"What?!"

The bishop, who had been explaining the Archangel Avacyn and the history of the church to the pilgrims, suddenly looked terrified.

Not only him, but the other pilgrims and crusaders present also showed expressions of shock and disbelief.

Because since its establishment, the city of Thraben has never suffered any external attacks, let alone the siege of such a large army of undead.

In addition, judging from the posture, the one who can control so many undead creatures must be a very powerful ghoul herder, and the swarms of corpse creatures mean that a splicer is involved.

In addition, the attack was launched at a time when the Archangel Avacyn no longer responded to prayers. Anyone with a bit of common sense would realize that this attack was definitely not a spur-of-the-moment attack, but was long-planned.

"Gather the Crusaders and prepare to leave the city immediately! We cannot let those damned undead souls defile the holy city at any cost!"

The bishop made a prompt decision, which he believed was the most correct judgment.

As a city that rose to prominence with religion at its core, the Church of the Archangel Avacyn has always held the highest authority in Thraben.

So when he gave the order, the warning bells that had not been sounded for hundreds of years finally echoed over the city for the first time.

At the beginning, many people didn't even understand what was happening, and they stopped and looked towards the clock tower.

But soon, groups of soldiers rushed out from all directions and gathered in the small square near the city gate.

Not long after, an elite crusader army of 3,500 men, led by four high-ranking inquisitors, set out, intending to destroy this group of disgusting undead on the way, and capture the evil ghoul herders and splicers and execute them.

But what they didn’t know was that the two people who caused trouble this time were not ordinary people.

Instead, they were Gisa and Geralf, who were born in the city of Thraben and were later expelled and exiled because of their obsession with necromancy and corpse splicing technology.

The former is a rare necromancy genius that only appears once in a century. With just a wave of his hand, he can easily make the corpses within a radius of hundreds of meters crawl up and work for him. He can summon and control an army of zombies and ghouls by himself.

The latter had even received instruction from the necromancer wizard Ludevi, and was a rising star in the industry of splicers, very good at creating corpse-smacking creatures with various functions.

The most important thing is that this brother and sister are not normal people.

When most children were still playing with dolls and pretending to be together, sister Kisa began to secretly practice necromancy using the corpses of cats and dogs, while brother Kiraf was responsible for sewing up the broken corpses and burying them.

As a result, Gisa mastered the art of summoning dead spirits through the corpses of cats and dogs, while Kiraf developed stitching skills that would put many splicers to shame.

Until one day at a relative's funeral, Kishka, who had a mental breakdown, suddenly woke up the corpse, and then performed a disco dance on the grave in front of countless people.

Not willing to be outdone, Gerald immediately released the first corpse creature he created, intending to settle the grudge between the two of them over the years with his sister.

Although in theory the modified and strengthened corpse creatures are far more powerful than ordinary zombies, Gisa is obviously not a pushover. He simply pulled up several ancestors in the cemetery to fight together.

The fight between the siblings directly led to a fire in the family's old house, and their parents also died in the fire.

Normally, children who accidentally kill their parents should feel sad and painful, right? But this filial son and daughter did not show any sadness or regret at all.

After being expelled from Thraben, he became even more aggressive and began to collect corpses to expand his own power. He actually carved out a place for himself in Innistrad, where demons and monsters were rampant.

The purpose of their attack on Thraben this time was very simple, which was to retrieve the mountains of corpses in the huge cemetery.

You have to know that on Innistrad, corpses affected by its negative energy will not rot and decompose easily.

Shortly after the Crusaders set out, a woman with long black hair, wearing a sexy purple dress and a metal headdress that looked like sheep horns, walked through the city gate and entered Thraben.

No one noticed that when her eyes began to glow, very strange patterns appeared on her entire face and neck.

There was no doubt that this human woman was none other than Liliana Vess, a dangerous person who could charm a smart man like Jace Beleren.

Although she looks to be only in her early twenties, she exudes an amazing charm that cannot be described in words, and her every move embodies the word "elegance", but her actual age is already over a hundred years old. The reason why she can stay young is entirely because she signed a contract with four demons and obtained extra power from them.

Of course, the price is that if she dies one day, her soul will be divided among four demons.

Today, the reason why Liliana appeared in Thraben City was to look for Grisel, one of the four demons with whom she had signed a contract.

But just as she was pondering where to start, she suddenly saw a cloaked figure on a high platform in the distance, looking down at her, and writing a line of small words in the air with his fingers.

"Welcome to Thraben, Lady Liliana Vess. If you wish to know the whereabouts of the demon Griselda, please meet me in the gardens outside the cathedral at midnight. No later than midnight."

moment!

Liliana's eyes became sharp, and she subconsciously wanted to use necromancy to keep this stranger of unknown origin.

Because the other party not only clearly revealed her identity, but also saw through the purpose of her trip.

Unfortunately, before the idea could be put into action, the figure on the distant platform disappeared out of thin air.

"Damn it! What on earth is going on? Has my intention been exposed? Or has the devil noticed something in advance?"

Liliana's mood instantly fell to the bottom.

After all, the most taboo thing in an assassination plan like this is to leak information in advance.

But she is not one to give up easily.

After a brief thought, I decided to meet first.

No matter who the other party is, as long as he dares to stop me from killing Ji Ze, I will die with this devil.

On the other side, Zuo Si, who had just sent the appointment message in a mysterious manner, had now completely left the cathedral and was sitting on a bench in a park, eating orange-flavored shaved ice bought from a roadside stall, enjoying a moment of leisure in a very lazy manner.

About two or three minutes later, the whole bowl of shaved ice was finished. He smiled and asked the diary he carried with him, "Do you think Liliana will start fighting as soon as we meet tonight?"

"It's hard to say. Liliana is a very complicated person. Sometimes she behaves irrationally due to emotional impulse, but she may also choose to betray you at any time. When dealing with such a woman, you need to be fully prepared mentally and never give her the slightest chance to take advantage of you." The diary warned in a serious tone.

"That's true. But I'm curious whether the legendary artifact [Chain Veil] is really as powerful as the rumors say." Zuo Si's tone revealed a hint of eagerness to try.

"Hmph! You'd better not hold your hopes too high. The so-called Chain Veil is most likely a necromancy magic item with a strong curse effect. It's not even worthy of the word artifact. It's just that Liliana's sacrifice was relatively strong, so the effect obtained was particularly amazing. If it weren't for the longevity and eternal youth granted by the contract, she would have turned into a dried mummy long ago after repeated excessive sacrifices."

The diary expresses the author's contempt and disdain for the Chain Veil without any disguise.

After all, among the many artifacts owned by a planeswalker, the ability and effect of this thing can be said to be the worst, no doubt about it.

Apart from Liliana, who specializes in necromancy, there is no other planeswalker who can control this cursed item.

"Okay, I have to admit that this time what you said makes more sense."

Zuo Si casually threw the wooden bowl of shaved ice into the trash can next to him, then raised his hand and waved to the elven mage who was carrying a bunch of bags and packages not far away.

Nisha, who was wandering aimlessly in the previous second, ran over excitedly in the next second and piled up the things she bought next to the chair.

Because she bought so many things and they were quite heavy, her whole body was already soaked with sweat. Her robe and clothes were stuck to her skin, outlining the graceful curves unique to elves.

Especially the chest, which was pulled down to a very low level for better heat dissipation. In addition, the elves of Zendikar were not as thin as the surface elves of Faerun, but were of the muscular type with protruding chests and curved backs. Therefore, Zuo Si could only feast his eyes.

But Nisha, who was a bit naive, obviously didn't notice this. Instead, she happily introduced the things she bought.

There were as many as ten rolls of beautiful silk and printed fabrics alone.

After all, in Zendikar, cloth is an absolutely scarce commodity, especially fine silk and printed cloth, which only a very few large settlements have the production capacity, so it is one of those good things that you may not be able to buy even if you have money.

In addition, there are a large number of porcelain, tea sets, musical instruments, and a variety of daily necessities, tools, and so on.

Basically, these are things that are very common and cheap on Innistrad, but very scarce on Zendikar.

Seeing the elven planeswalker looking so elated, thinking he had gotten a great bargain, Zuo Si couldn't help but interrupt with a twitch in his mouth, "You have already recorded the coordinates of Innistrad's time and space. You can travel back and forth between the two places at any time to exchange scarce materials. Why do you need to buy so much at once? And... don't you even have a dimensional bag to store items?"

"ah?!"

This sentence immediately made Nisha dumbfounded.

Because although she had experienced several brief times of time travel, she had never thought of using the abilities of a planeswalker to trade between the two worlds.

As for spatial items such as dimensional bags, she had never even heard of them.

"Well, it seems I need to teach you some common sense about the application of planeswalker abilities. Otherwise, given your current state, I'm afraid you'll be sold out one day and still be counting money for others."

Zuo Si held his forehead and sighed helplessly.

Although at the beginning, he still had a prejudice against the culprit who released the Odrazi, and even wanted to kill him at one point.

But as they spent these days together, he discovered that she was actually a simple-minded girl who always showed her emotions on her face, and she was not too defensive towards outsiders.

Of course, it was this naivety that led Nissa to release the Eldrazi, nearly destroying Zendikar.

If trained well, it might become a good companion for a planeswalker.

At least in terms of loyalty, Nissa is definitely much stronger than Jace Beleren, who is full of tricks.

Moreover, the green mana she is good at is more compatible with Zuo Si's style of doing things than Gideon Jura who uses white mana.

With a try-it-out mentality, Zuo Si used the afternoon to teach this planeswalker, who was even more of a novice than himself, a lesson and impart some experience to him. Finally, he gave him a large dimensional bag as a gift.

Nisha was obviously a little moved, because after automatically igniting the spark, she had been trying to suppress the power and integrate into the tribe as a "normal" elf.

But no matter how I try to integrate, I can never gain real trust, and that intense feeling of loneliness will always be with me.

The kind of teaching and care that Zuo Si now received was something she had not felt since she was first expelled from the tribe, and she couldn't help but feel a warmth welling up in her heart.

Especially the dimensional bag that was relatively common in Faerun, which was also regarded by Nissa as some kind of rare treasure...

(End of this chapter)