Chapter 809: Forgotten
They came out from the temple and saw several tribal warriors waiting with their horses outside. It was more than 10 kilometers from the tribal village to the temple, so they had to have traveled on horses.
It seemed that Gezer had told these tribal warriors about the goddess looking for a foreigner. Hence they came so hurriedly.
Hessiana stepped out. “Take us to meet the guy,” she said.
They returned to Fire tribe and came to a yurt on the fringe of the village. Several soldiers and warriors seemed to be guarding a man in the yurt. The man was wearing a linen robe that did not look like his, and he was restless. He was pacing back and forth under the watch of the soldiers. The man was Baptiste who had disappeared earlier.
His state of mind was very different from the last time they met him. He seemed to be quite unsettled this time.
Baptiste was shocked when they entered the yurt. He quickly scanned them, and he was cautious as well as confused. A holy blade warrior of Fire tribe came behind Vivian explaining to her the situation where they captured this foreigner. “Our night patrol squadron found this person on the nearby wasteland. He was naked, wandering around aimlessly as if he wasn’t in a clear state of mind. He injured two of our men with his magic, but the great warrior arrived in time and subdued him.”
“Did you hit your head when you fell?” Hessiana frowned as she looked at Baptiste. Never did she expect to capture the wizard this way. She could not believe the cunning fellow had fallen into the hands of the indigenous warrior! “Baptiste, you look like shit now!”
Baptiste stared at Hessiana cautiously. “Who are you? How do you know my name?”
“Huh?” Lily was wide-eyed. “Don’t pretend that you don’t know us! Did you not use us like a battery before? Now you tell us you have forgotten?”
Still, on his guard, Baptiste replied with a calm and adulterated voice, “I don’t know who you are, but I do have a lot of enemies. If you want to kill me, do it! But don’t expect I will divulge anything!”
Hao Ren was stunned. He looked at Vivian and forced a smile. “He has got amnesia? I can’t believe it comes out this way.”
Vivian looked at Baptiste carefully, but could not tell if he was faking it or indeed had lost his memory. She pointed at the MDT sprawling on Hao Ren’s shoulder. “Isn’t this guy having a polygraph function? Test it out.”
“I just happened to have installed such an app, okay? Please don’t confuse me with a lie detector!” The MDT scoffed and then hovered over Baptiste’s head. “Hello, nerd. What is your name?”
“Baptiste.”
“Do you know these people in front of you?”
“No impression.”
“Well, that is true. This guy has lost his memory.”
They were stunned that Baptiste had lost his memory!
“A powerful wizard lost his memory simply because he fell from above?” Nangong Sanba looked at the others with a big question mark on his face. “This is unbelievable!”
At this time, Gezer suddenly cut in. “He doesn’t have any external injury.”
No external injury. That meant Baptiste did not lose his memory by falling.
Vivian circled Baptiste two times and suddenly asked, “Do you still remember why you are coming here?”
“Why should I tell you that?” Baptiste looked back and sneered at Vivian. “I might have lost my memory, but I am not stupid.”
“If you are not stupid, then cooperate.” Kassandra stepped out and pointed to all the people in the yurt. “There is only one of you; we are many…”
Baptiste stood upright, unperturbed. “So that’s what you got? Please try again!”
Kassandra was silent for a moment. She then pointed to the burly male soldiers. “Customarily, they are gays.”
Baptiste said nothing, as if not amused.
“And there are five hundred of them outside; people and horses.”
Baptiste’s face instantly turned green.
Hao Ren pulled Hessiana to a side and said, “What’s wrong with your people? Has she been talking like this all this while?”
“Well, at least when I rescued her from the street, she was half dead,” said Hessiana, shaking Hao Ren’s hand off hers. “And, don’t touch me! We aren’t that friendly.”
Baptiste’s expression changed a couple of times. He caught his breath. “I am here looking for someone.”
Kassandra nodded with satisfaction. “Well, looks like you haven’t lost your entire memory. So tell us, are you looking for a witch named Beatrice?”
Baptiste was stunned and confused but did not seem to fake it. “Beatrice? Who is that? It sounds familiar.”
Nangong Sanba raised his eyebrows. “You forgot about the most crucial part?”
Vivian shook her head. “No really. Maybe it’s something else.”
She had been observing Baptiste quietly from the start. She sensed the energy in him and was unsure whether he was human or a phantom. Now, she finally figured it out. “Did you guy not notice that he has grown back his arm?”
“Arm?” Hao Ren was stunned. It suddenly crossed his mind. Now he remembered that earlier, Lily had severed Baptiste’s arm, but the wizard standing here had all his limbs perfectly intact.
“When he jumped into the abyssal portal, I saw the space storm smashing him into pieces. The soldiers who found him said that he was wandering in the wilderness, naked. So I suspect that…”
While saying, Vivian put her hand on Baptiste’s shoulder. The next moment, a bright light filled everyone’s vision.
Powerful magic rushed into Baptiste’s body that was extremely weak now. An electric light shrouded him, and in an instance of thunder and lightning, the wizard turned into a charred corpse.
But, this charred corpse, which appeared dead, did not fall but stood wobbly. The ashes slowly disappeared as if the body was absorbing it. Just as when they met Baptiste for the first time where he re-agglutinated from ashes and char back into a human, he rose from the dead.
The moment the resurrected wizard opened his eyes he almost fell to the ground, as he was still frail. He looked at the stranger in front of him with horror and quickly braced himself for battle. His voice was full of confusion. “Who are you people?” he asked.
Vivian gestured at Hao Ren so that he would not say anything. She turned to look at the wizard. “You jumped into Inferno. Let me ask you: what are you doing here?”
Baptiste shook his head and replied in a way as if he was sleep talking, “Is this Inferno? I remember I come looking for someone…”
“Do you know who Beatrice is?”
“Beatrice?” Baptiste’s eyebrows knit together. “I have no impression of the name.”
“He has a magic core in his body. This magic core gives him the ability to resurrect indefinitely. He must have made this modification to himself to cross the gate to Inferno.” Vivian finally answered all the mysteries.” But there’s a problem to this resurrection process; he has lost his memory.”
Lily widened her eyes. “So?”
“So he has forgotten everything about himself from the beginning. All he knows is that he comes to Inferno looking for someone.” Again, Vivian let out a sigh. “He doesn’t even remember the name of the person he is looking for.”
Hao Ren could not believe it. “Since when this happened?”
“Since we first saw him when he came out from the ashes, he was already a wraith. He had forgotten everything,” Vivian said, shaking her head in disappointment. “In the beginning, we only knew that this wizard was hell-bent on going to the second level of Inferno, but he never mentioned why in the manuscripts. Perhaps he has been like this since a few hundred years ago. We should forget about him; we wouldn’t be able to get any more information from him.”
Baptiste listened indifferently to their conversation about himself as if the discussion did not concern him. He did not even remember that he was a captive. Sitting down calmly and wondering why his robe had burn marks, he then sank into his empty memories.
Lily poked the wizard with her claws cautiously. “Do you remember who you are?”
“My name is Baptiste. I am an apprentice wizard.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m looking for someone.”
“Who are you looking for?”
“I don’t know…”