kingdom of nations

Chapter 40 The Chosen One (Part )
Cesar looked at the candlesticks on the altar. Most of the candles were still burning, but only a few remained. A normal candle could burn for four to five hours, but in such an important ceremony, the candles used were much thicker than ordinary candles, almost as long as an adult man's arm, and needed to be held with both hands. Such candles could burn for at least a day and a night...

He immediately realized he had made a mistake. Although he had asked Chirac about "grace" and "receiving" before the ceremony, the monk, a rare figure in his era who was bold in his faith, found it difficult to explain it clearly. Facts also told him that it was truly impossible to describe, and even if he did, it might not be correct and would lead others astray.

At this moment, he couldn't help but want to curse. Heraclius should at least tell him that when they fell into that state, they would lose consciousness for much longer than he thought!

Cesar was misled by his past experience. He thought that in all mental activities, the flow of time should be faster than in reality. He did not expect that the opposite was true here. He did not ask Heraclius about this matter. Out of trust in this new student, Heraclius did not say anything.

But those who set this trap knew this: they knew he and Baldwin would pray at the altar for a long time, and—if they were chosen—this time would be even longer. They also knew that to increase their chances of being chosen, Heraclius, a master of medicine, would certainly prepare a special potion for the two children under the king's order.

Heraclius was so careful and cautious when preparing the potion, because a little more or a little less of this potion could cause a tragedy that they did not want to see.

Their enemies took advantage of this. They filled the lamp bowls with opium and perhaps covered them with a thin layer of olive oil. Before Baldwin and Cesar entered the temple, the Templars checked every corner, even asking their nimble servants to check the rafters, but who would notice the shiny lamp bowls?
Even the unique, strong sweet smell of opium was covered up by the scent of other spices. Moreover, at the beginning, the smell of opium was very faint. It was not until the wick burned out the olive oil and burned to the opium, and it had to burn for several hours in a row, that the opium components in the air could break the balance in their bodies.

Their previous vomiting, convulsions, constricted pupils, and respiratory arrest were all obvious symptoms of drug overdose.

Baldwin also reacted. He raised his hand and wanted to insert his finger into his throat to induce vomiting, but was immediately stopped by Cesar. After more than ten hours, even the fish maw would have been completely digested, and the medicine would have entered the blood circulation. Vomiting would be useless except for wasting physical strength and injuring the throat. If there was a lot of water, they could drink it to at least dilute the drug content in the body.

But there is only lamp oil here.

Baldwin found strength from somewhere, he stood up holding the altar and pulled Cesar out.

The number of lampstands in the corridors and the nave was much smaller, and the smell of opium was also lighter, but Baldwin did not stop there. He reached out directly towards the glaring black silk rope, but Cesar grabbed him and said, "What do you want to do?!"

When the rope is pulled, the bell outside will ring and the door will be opened. Of course, the "selection ceremony" will be declared a failure.

Baldwin turned around and looked at Cesar with a firm gaze. If he had not met Cesar and he was alone here, he would rather die than walk out of this door with humiliation and infamy.

But Cesar, Cesar was a healthy boy with handsome appearance. Even if he was not chosen, he was already a student of Heraclius, and Heraclius could easily find a priesthood for him.

In the church, there were indeed "chosen" popes, but the majority were ordinary people. They controlled the "blessed" or "given" priests and monks just like controlling hounds and horses - who knows if Cesar will have such a day?

"You can't die here," Baldwin paused, then realized he had spoken his mind, and quickly emphasized, "We can't die here!"

Cesar stared at him without saying a word. He just leaned over and hugged his friend's shoulders. However, after a brief moment of warmth, he was hit by a bucket of ice water - he stretched out his hand for Baldwin to see. Before Baldwin could lower his head, he smelled a strong smell of blood. He thought Cesar was injured. "It came in through the crack in the door." Cesar whispered.

Guess what? You pull the rope, the door opens, and who's waiting for you: a guard or an assassin?
"This is the temple." Baldwin muttered to himself in a daze.

"So?" Are you still going to reason with these despicable guys? Cesar stood up and said, "Follow me."

He went to the side aisle, where the saints remained in solemn silence in their niches, and Cesar looked at them and pulled the axe from the hand of St. Jude.

Ancient Roman sculptors once "took out" tangled muscles, smooth skin, fluffy curls, and dense and charming folds from marble with great lifelike precision, but these exquisite craftsmanship seems to have quietly disappeared with the collapse of the behemoth.

Nowadays, a stonemason is considered a good craftsman if he does not carve a man into a woman, a child into an old man, or a saint into a devil. They are completely unable to do work like axes, swords, and clothes, which are familiar to people and require meticulous work.

If it can't be done, there is a way out, which is to hang cloth on the stone statue (which can be sold as a holy object later), and directly put the long sword, axe, skinning knife and other things in the hands of the statue.

Baldwin thought Cesar was going to use these weapons to fight the people outside, but unexpectedly, Cesar walked towards the wooden wall on the side of the corridor. There should be a long and narrow space behind the wooden wall. "You know the Saracen motto - Cleanliness is half of faith."

As the heir of King Alasarus, Baldwin certainly knew this statement, because it was said by their greatest prophet, so every Saracen had to bathe before worship.

Cesar raised his axe and struck the face of Our Lady of Mercy with it!
The drawings he obtained from Damara and provided to him by the Gerard family were not so much of the Temple as of Al-Aqsa Temple, or to be more precise, of the gray-domed temple that was converted into a church by the Knights Templar.

The Saracen doctrine did not have overly strict requirements for the construction of temples. It was only required that they must face east, have a preaching platform and a worship niche, and must have a "water room".

The gray-roofed temple looks like a rectangular building from the outside, but the Saracen chapel is a square. So what is the extra small rectangle used for?

There were two water rooms, a small courtyard and a pool. When the Knights Templar arrived, they demolished the walls of the chapel but sealed off the water rooms so that the interior space looked like a "cross".

It was said to be sealed, which means it was just covered with cedar board walls as mentioned above. The Grand Master of the Knights Templar at that time thought about it for a long time, and finally did not completely destroy the water room. After all, the Temple Mount - as the name suggests, is a hill, and all water had to be brought in from outside the city and from underground.

The Templars' current water supply comes from another source, but wouldn't it be better to have another secret water room?

While chopping, Cesar tried his best to recall the blueprint of an underground tunnel he had drawn after obtaining the blueprint and combining it with the description in the scriptures.

700 years ago, to resist the Assyrian invasion, Hezekiah, the king of the Isaiah, filled in the water source outside the city. How would the residents of Alaska get their water? Before doing so, he secretly ordered his craftsmen to construct a deep underground tunnel. This -foot-long tunnel ran from the Gihon Spring outside the city to the foot of the Temple Mount, where it flowed into the Pool of Siloam.

In ancient times, when the Isaiah people worshipped at the First Temple, they would wash their hands and faces in the Pool of Siloam. After the Savior came to this world, He smeared saliva and mud on the eyes of a blind man and told him to wash in the Pool of Siloam. After the blind man washed, his eyes were restored, and this place became a holy place.

But in the Gospel written by St. Luke, he also clearly wrote that the tower of Siloam collapsed and crushed and killed eighteen people.

This means that the Pool of Siloam had collapsed and disappeared before 62 AD. However, the Aqueduct of Hezekiah and the connected shaft still existed, and the people of Alaska still drew water from it. The same was true for the Temple Mount. When the Saracens built the temple there, they dug a winding tunnel to provide a constant supply of clean water to the water room.

"The teacher said," Baldwin also "borrowed" the saw from Saint-Simon, and breathlessly helped Cesar open the wooden wall. The wooden wall had been there for decades, and even with maintenance, the inside was already rotten. Even for two weak children, it didn't take much effort to destroy it.

He could already smell the cold air escaping from the rift. "In the tunnel, the Saracens added a Greek screw pump to bring water up."

"But the spiral water pump used black iron and copper fittings, so the Templars dismantled it." Cesar went to "borrow" a long sword. He inserted the sword into the crack and bent down to press on the hilt. In a dizzy state, the crack made a series of "clicking" sounds, followed by a loud "crackling!".

The board broke, and Cesar lost his balance and fell on Baldwin. Baldwin screamed and hit his head on a pillar nearby.

But the crack had turned into a vertical door. "We can go in!" Baldwin shouted, and Cesar grabbed his arm with his backhand: "Wait!"

The tunnel might be connected to the outside world, and air would come in, but the room had been sealed for decades. To be on the safe side, Cesar took down a few candles and put one of them into the room. After waiting for a while, the flame did not go out but grew larger. Then they went in one by one.

The room was larger than they had imagined, with smooth stone paving the floor and walls. By the light of the candle, Cesar saw the small black hole left after the metal spout had been removed - it seemed that the Templars at that time were really short of money.

Baldwin held up a Seljuk-style covered oil lamp and walked to a raised foundation. He wondered what it was used for. "The impeller of a water pump..." Cesar said. Needless to say, it was a large metal accessory that had probably become the Templars' spears and shields...

They quickly found the tunnel entrance along the foundation of the wheel, but it was filled with rocks.

"Let's go check out the other room," Baldwin said quickly.

Removing the wooden walls of the second room exhausted them so much that they even leaned against them and took a nap before they had the strength to continue exploring.

The tunnel entrance was also filled with something, but not stones, but wood! Baldwin moved the oil lamp over and saw intricate patterns, lines, and Saracen writing. Cesar, standing farther away, had a more comprehensive view: "It's a Saracen mission platform."

The missionary stand was so unique and eye-catching that even if the words on it were scraped off, it could not be placed in a Christian's room. The Knights Templar used it for recycling, which gave them an opportunity.

Cesar couldn't help but pray for God's blessing. It was true that he had made preparations, but the events of the past few days told him that preparations were far less complete than accidents or conspiracies. In this way, he could abandon those more dangerous contingency plans.

Next, they pried and chopped, and finally exposed the tunnel entrance. Baldwin initially blamed the Templars of that time for being too careless, but when he saw the tunnel entrance, he realized the reason - the diameter of the tunnel entrance was only 1.5 feet, or maybe even smaller.

A nine-year-old child can squeeze in by curling up his body, but it would be strange if a grown man, especially a knight who trains every day and eats meat except on fasting days, didn't get stuck in there!
Don't believe those legends. It is impossible for a child to open the door and bring in the enemy by crawling in or out of the cave. In a real battle, it must be a team of real warriors who sneak in to pose a threat to a city or castle.

"I'll go down first." Cesar said. As a leper, Baldwin had been insisting hard, and he could see that Baldwin did not refuse. They borrowed some cloth from the saint, cut it and braided it into a rope, and tied it around Cesar's waist.

"If we ever get out, we'll probably have to buy indulgences for a thousand years," Baldwin murmured.

Cesar laughed and slowly fell into the tunnel. This feeling was even worse than when he rescued Count Etienne before. This was basically a hard esophagus. Fortunately, there was a swollen stomach below the esophagus. Here too, although it was small, it was enough for him to turn around.

Cesar lit the candle and saw a square pool with some visible marks left by long-term friction. That was right, the spiral water pump was not long enough to connect directly from Hezekiah's shaft to the gray-roofed temple. The Saracens must have made some improvements - he shook the candle upwards, and Baldwin followed him down.

"We have about three hundred feet to go," Cesar said.

"Yeah," Baldwin said.

Cesar and Baldwin would probably never forget the journey that followed. Darkness was a commonplace for people in this era, cramped conditions were not so uncommon, and oppression was even more commonplace, but all of them made it unbearable, not to mention that they were not "walking", but slowly climbing down, not knowing where each step would lead.

Baldwin's reaction was particularly strong. There were times when he thought he was dead, buried in a grave, bound in a lead coffin, or perhaps a stone coffin outside, with everything in the world far away from him, no longer having any connection with him...

As a result, when he woke up, he saw Cesar slapping him weakly in the dim candlelight, muttering something in a low voice while slapping him.

He tried hard to listen, but found that he could not understand anything. It was not Greek, Latin, Saracen or any other language he had ever come into contact with. He could only barely make out a few familiar syllables.

"...You're awake." Cesar remained calm and asked gently, "Are you feeling better? Hang on a little longer, we're almost there."

Baldwin wanted Cesar to abandon him here, but even if Cesar was not a good man, he would not do that - unless he wanted to face the wrath of the lion, Amalric I would definitely regard him as the murderer of the prince.

The slope of the last section of the tunnel slowed down significantly. "There's wind," Cesar said hoarsely, but Baldwin could no longer move. He had a high fever, so Cesar tied the rope under his elbow and the other end around his waist and dragged him out.

Cesar climbed for perhaps a hundred years - he thought so, and he didn't know when, he suddenly fell down again - he almost thought he was encountering an illusion again, but no, he sank directly into the water!
Water, cold, but clean and sweet!
Cesar drank several big gulps without hesitation, floated to the surface again, found the entrance to the tunnel, pulled Baldwin over, splashed water on him to wake him up. This time Baldwin didn't need his instructions, he immediately bent down and drank water desperately from the water surface.

"We... cough." The cold water lowered the temperature inside and out of his body, and Baldwin regained some consciousness. He began to slowly focus his scattered vision: "... Is this... the shaft?"

"Yes." Cesar let Baldwin sit back in the tunnel. The water was so cold that Baldwin wanted to pull him up, but found that he couldn't even lift his hands. He could only try his best to look up at the sky above the shaft, and then he saw the brightest crescent moon.

Baldwin smiled, but the next moment, the smile froze.

The crescent moon was obscured, and he saw a human face that was also smiling.

--------

ps:
Let me tell you a little joke.

after a long time.

BALDWIN: Do you remember when we were nine years old and we were trapped in the Temple and had to escape through the Saracen tunnels?

Cesar: I remember.

Baldwin: Do you remember, then, those few words you once said—Amalric I, Heraclius, Baldwin (with his remarkable memory, Baldwin repeated them), which I have always remembered, but I have never found anyone to translate. What does this mean? A blessing?
Cesar (again without changing his expression): Yes, it’s just that the scope of the blessing is a bit wider, similar to the meaning of blessing many generations and many relatives.

Baldwin (sincerely): Then I wish you the best too, &*%￥￥, &*%……&%*%*&%.

Cesar: ...Thank you.

(End of this chapter)