Albert looked around, carefully counting the heads, and found that Lionel was indeed missing.
Only the skull's hollow eye sockets were unfathomably deep, and in the flickering lamplight, countless pairs of eyes seemed to silently gaze at the uninvited guests from the darkness.
Some skulls tilted slightly, their mandibles agape, forming an eternally frozen, silent scream.
The surface of some bones was covered with a slimy, off-white mold, like the sweat of the dead, glinting with a cold, eerie luster in the light.
"He… he couldn't have been taken away by something, could he?" one of the followers' voices trembled.
Albert panicked at this point. No matter how "humble" Lionel's status seemed to him, if a classmate went missing in the catacombs and something happened, he would definitely be in deep trouble.
He might even be accused of "murder"—after all, his conflict with Lionel was well-known, and many had heard him suggest the "old mine shaft" to Lionel.
However, Albert quickly noticed something amiss. From the three tunnels, a regular, faint sound, like footsteps, came from the one on the left; there were also faint, flickering shadows of light on the bone wall.
He breathed a sigh of relief, pointing to the tunnel on the left: "He probably went ahead… Damn it, I haven't even explained the rules yet!"
Michel Verne asked, "Should we follow him?"
Albert hesitated for a moment, then finally nodded: "Let's go! We'll follow him and see what trick he's playing!"
He was the backbone of the group, and as everyone began to adapt to the eerie environment, they grew a bit bolder, all expressing that they would catch up to Lionel and teach him a lesson.
Albert gritted his teeth and led the way, hurrying in the direction Lionel had left.
Under their feet were slippery gravel and mud, making an unsettling "squelch" sound with each step, as if they were treading on something unclean.
Cold water droplets constantly seeped from the arch, "drip… drip… drip…" tapping on skulls, shoulders, and the glass cover of the gas lantern. The sound was infinitely magnified in the dead silent tunnel, like a slow countdown, striking at everyone's nerves.
The tunnel stretched endlessly forward; at the end of the light's reach, there were only more, deeper bone walls, disappearing into the impenetrable darkness. As the light beam swept across, the eye sockets of those skulls seemed to instantly swallow the light, leaving deeper shadows, as if something flashed at the edge of the light.
Of course, the silence here was not absolute. In the gaps where everyone held their breath, a very faint, indistinguishable rustling sound could be heard, like countless bone fragments rubbing together, or something slowly crawling in unseen corners.
"Oh God…" Someone in the group let out a whimpering groan, the sound stirring up an eerie echo in the bone tunnel, as if awakening something dormant, drawing a deeper silence from the distant darkness.
"Shut up!" Albert scolded.
They had been creeping underground for almost 10 minutes, but not only had they not caught up to Lionel, even the faint footsteps and the dim light were gone.
All that remained were the heavy breathing of the few people and the swaying gas lamp light.
"He… he couldn't have really gotten into trouble, could he?" Michel Verne was also no longer calm at this moment. His father had forced him to study in Paris, and through connections, he had met Albert and others, quickly joining their circle.
Today, hearing that Albert and his friends were going to play a prank on a country bumpkin from the Alps, he enthusiastically followed along.
He never expected such a situation; if he had known, he wouldn't have joined in the fun.
They walked for a while longer and came to a "bone hall" with a skull pillar in the center, made entirely of stacked skulls, reaching the ceiling, and several piles of skull "pyramids" arranged around it.
Albert gestured with his hand: "Let's take a break."
The followers breathed a sigh of relief, some even collapsing onto the ground. When people are under stress, they consume energy very quickly; for the same distance on a daytime road, they wouldn't even need to catch their breath.
Only Albert still feigned composure, raising the gas lantern in his hand, its beam trembling as it swept forward; at the end of the light, an arched fork in the road opened like a giant mouth, revealing an even deeper, denser darkness within.
"Damn it, where did Lionel go? Was it just our imagination?"
"How about we call out?"
"Are you an idiot? What if something else answers?"
The few people fell into silence again, the air seemed to solidify, bone-chillingly cold, even stinging when inhaled.
Just then, a light appeared in the tunnel ahead, a green light, as if from the depths of hell, lit by Satan himself, dimly illuminating the terrified faces of the few people.
Immediately, a cold, lifeless voice came from the darkness: "Are you looking for me?"
Following this, an extremely eerie smiling face emerged above the green light. Because the light beam shone from below, the shadows on the facial contours were exceptionally deep, making the face particularly grim and terrifying in the darkness.
"You, who wants to come with me?"
Albert de Rohan, Michel Verne, and several followers, at this moment, had even forgotten to breathe.
… … … …
A dozen seconds later, two kilometers away, in another private tunnel, a group of Parisian occult enthusiasts were conducting a black magic experiment when they suddenly heard faint but exceptionally clear and horrific screams coming from the depths of the distant tunnel, like devils roaring from the depths of hell.
And they were continuous, lingering, echoing repeatedly off the narrow rock walls and bone walls of the tunnel, creating a peculiar resonant effect that made the surrounding white bones tremble slightly.
"It worked! It worked!"
"We successfully summoned the devil!"
"Really? Hurry, hurry, continue the ritual!"
These people in black cloaks quickly knelt before the hexagram on the ground, prostrating themselves again and again, their heads hitting the cold ground with thudding sounds…
— — — — — — — —
It was another cold Monday, but since it was already February, the weather had warmed up slightly, and at the same time, the various strange odors wafting through the streets and alleys of Paris had also become more intense.
Although the nascent sewer system had made Paris no longer a "cesspool" like it was 100 years ago, the pace of urban transformation was far outstripped by the growth of Paris's population.
So, wealthy Parisians would live in suburban holiday villas in the summer. For example, after Zola bought the Médan villa, he would only return to Paris to live in the winter; or they would simply go to the south, as well as Italy and Spain, for vacation.
Lionel, as usual, arrived at school on time by public carriage, but this morning, he didn't see Albert elegantly dismounting from his pony cart.
Just as he reached the classroom door, he saw Mr. Duen, the dean, standing there for the first time. Upon seeing him, he greeted him with a smiling face: "Mr. Sorel, you don't need to attend class this morning. Professor Boissier would like to see you."
Lionel was slightly stunned, and thinking of Professor Boissier's identity, he knew it might be because of the old guard. So he nodded, followed Mr. Duen out of the teaching building, and went to the school's journal editorial office.
Opening the door, he saw that the long conference table in the center of the hall was already full of professors from the Faculty of Arts; it seemed everyone was present, except those who had to teach.
Lionel immediately saw Professor Boissier, who had taught him before, but he was not sitting in the main seat at the end of the conference table, but in the first seat on the right.
Sitting in the main seat was an old man with white hair, a thick and neat white beard, a broad face, a high forehead, thick eyebrows, and calm, firm eyes.
His contours, honed by increasing age, long-term mental stress, and a life of upheaval, were more rugged, appearing majestic and powerful.
Lionel was no stranger to this old man. In his previous life, he had read his complete works, and his photo was on the cover; in this life, his portrait hung in the corridor of the Faculty of Arts, alongside Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine, Molière, La Fontaine, and others.
And he was the only one still alive.
He was "the Conscience of France," "France's greatest poet," "the most outstanding representative of Romanticism"—Victor Marie Hugo!