Those are all pictures of skeletons. The author really spent a lot of energy on restoring the skeletons. He took pictures of every skeleton found in the ruins, matched the pictures with the hand-drawn pictures, and numbered them. In the process of assembling, he interspersed a lot of biological and medical illustrations, analyzed them one by one from the family, genus and species, and explained why they can be assembled in this way, why they have such a structure... Everything is explained clearly, even for someone like Darent who knows nothing about these subjects, there is no difficulty in reading it.
But that's about it.
He had now turned to the last few pages, his eyes fixed on an illustration that took up two sides of the book.
This picture is kind of scary.
It was a skeleton, a huge skeleton.
The spine is large and long, about 50 to 60 meters long according to the author's scale. The back half of the skeleton is obviously different from the front half, the back half looks like a normal python skeleton, but the front half is more like a human spine.
The bone spurs extending from the spine are thicker and larger. If you only cut off a part of them, they really look like human ribs.
Its head is a giant skull.
This skull was not fully pieced together, nearly 70% of it is incomplete. The author wrote that he collected all the bone fragments in the ruins cave, and only after comparing them one by one with the records did he roughly piece it together into this shape.
This is already a surprising conclusion, but it is not the most surprising one.
Darent was staring at the shoulder of the skeleton. He could see that there was a pair of thorns that had become noticeably thicker and wider, with two thick and slender arm bones extending from them - they corresponded to the forearm bones of the giant in the previous photo.
The front end of this thing is connected to the metacarpal bones and phalanges, and it is very complete.
A little below, there are two much shorter calf bones extending out, which are also complete... This is what makes it look even more terrifying.
Snakes and humans, two completely unrelated species, are combined so harmoniously at the skeletal level.
What on earth is this?
Do such creatures really exist?
"'I spent a huge amount of time studying and investigating its skull fragments. I found that apart from the signs of being eaten, the reason why it was broken into this state was because it was hit by another force - more like fire. The high temperature shock caused obvious explosion scars in some places. It was radial, which means that the explosion originally came from the inside, from inside the brain of this thing... Combined with the characteristics of this skeleton - the more it evolved, the more it looked like a human. I think it might not be a simple impact, but something escaped from its brain...'"
"All right."
He read the passage dryly, then put the manuscript down and went to see Hitzfeld.
"It's a good story...but then what?"
"I still don't see the connection."
"Think about the legend of the cherry blossoms, Maps." Hitzfeld hinted at him, "Do you remember what the characteristics of those flowers are?"
"Immortality, Carlo said." Darent continued to nod, "And then - so you are suspecting that a cub was hatched in this monster's brain? And it can still live to this day and cause trouble?"
"It's not suspicion." Hitzfeld corrected him, "We already have a lot of evidence."
"Remember the remaining pages of the Book of Roaring that we found earlier?"
"The story recorded in that thing, the story of the girl making communion and offering it to the basilisk, don't you think about why such a simple story was engraved? Why is there such a pattern engraved on the back of it? Why is it engraved with cherry blossoms and sunflowers, and why is it specially marked with that word - eternal life with divine blood?"
"God's blood!" She emphasized, "Look carefully, it's God's blood, the blood of God! And who does the old royal party we are investigating now rely on?"
"You have always felt that the existence of the old king's party was contradictory and strange, because they always seemed to lack a backbone. If the old king's bloodline had always been under the control of the royal family, then the royal family would not have made such a mistake. Isn't it very generous of them to allow these people to live? How could they be so stupid as to allow them the opportunity to contact powerful officials and have the opportunity to connect with anyone who might be a member of the old king's party?"
"We're heading in the wrong direction," she affirmed.
"Everyone started their investigation in the wrong direction."
"It's not the descendants of the old king who are controlled by the royal family who are planning all this, but someone else."
"There is another bloodline from the ancient times."
"...She's still alive."
Overslept, so I have to wait till 4am
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Chapter 118: The Restless Fog
"Aisun?"
After a few seconds of silence, Darent frowned fiercely, tilted his head slightly and stared at the girl: "Are you trying to say that there is another descendant of the old king... an heir to the dynasty who is not part of Sarah's plan?"
"Yes." Hitzfeld nodded affirmatively.
"You think this person, who lived at least before 1804, somehow managed to get that snake—"
At this point, Darent pointed to the page in his hand and pointed at the exaggerated illustration: "As a container for incubation, the body and soul have been stored in it, just like hatching eggs and breaking out of the shell, and have lived until now?"
"Yes." Hitzfeld nodded again.
"Don't you think this idea is too bizarre?"
"But all the evidence we have collected so far points to this." Hitzfeld looked at him helplessly, "This is not the first time you have dealt with evil spirits, Maps. You shouldn't act like an amateur."
"Of course I know—" Darent immediately continued, "Any case that has anything to do with these things will have any direction or outcome that is not surprising."
"But they are evil, Ashun. They are monsters... they are not human. No case I have ever encountered or seen... could have the effect that allowed her to live two hundred years longer."
His speech speed was sometimes fast and sometimes slow, and was not smooth, which showed how much shock the girl's inference brought to him.
He was Mapes-Dyrant, after all.
Relying on his wooden body, he hardly takes any danger seriously, and things that can shock him are rare.
"Then why don't we change the angle." Hitzfeld just stared into his eyes quietly, "Let's shift our focus away from here for a moment and return to our previous adventure in the Crystal Sea... Do you still remember the broken sword?"
"of course."
"Do you admit that the formation of Braceworm is closely related to the hilt of the Broken Sword?"
"I don't need to admit it, it's the truth."
"Because the fragments of that sword can gather sunlight with high efficiency and cause a qualitative change in the quality of the light beam, we once speculated that it was a 'divine weapon', an instrument controlled by gods in ancient times. We even speculated that it might have been the sword of the Sun King. Do you agree?"
"...I agree with that." Darent let out a long sigh, "But we don't have any evidence... There is no historical record mentioning that the Sun King had such a sword."
"Then through the Crystal Sea case, we can actually build a simple logical model." Hitzfeld interrupted him, "That is, a containment object suspected of being related to the Sun King has the power to grant life and change its original form."
"Aisun... that might be a special case!" Darent couldn't help it any longer. He half bent over and spread his arms towards the girl. "Who can guarantee that that thing will appear again?"
But Hitzfeld ignored him and continued to infer: "Based on this simple model, we can more boldly speculate that the blood of the Sun King has similar effects."
"You can't deny that, right?" She grinned at Darent, "After all, you should have read the files of the second Golem Curse case about that pen."
"..." Darent was speechless now.
Of course he had seen it. The reason he was assigned to work with the girl was because she successfully turned the situation around in that case with that pen.
"So the nature of the Sun King's power is actually..." Hitzfeld grabbed a roll of parchment, picked up a pen and wrote quickly on it.
"'Life', 'vitality', 'flame', 'time'."
She has already explained life and vitality.
Flame... After all, he was the emperor with the title of the Sun, and all the objects related to this person, the broken sword, the divine blood ink, and even her eyes, had burst into high-temperature flames.
And time is a bold guess, because the activated divine blood ink can actually tamper with reality and make the time of life flow backwards - Xia Yibing was able to grow his arm back thanks to this effect.
Spreading the parchment for everyone to see what was on it, Hitzfeld continued, "So now we know what the power of the Sun King is like."
"Her descendants have her blood... They are definitely not as powerful as she was, and these powers may have been diluted countless times, but they still exist in that bloodline... This gave rise to the legend of 'God's blood eternal life'."
"I don't think so..." Darent opened his mouth wide, "If they really can live forever, then what does it mean? Like Ying Kui, who has been immortal since birth? This is impossible!"
"This is different from the cherry blossom." Hitzfeld shook his head. "You have been misled. The immortality of the cherry blossom should be an illusion. It should have a unique reproduction mechanism. The regenerated cherry blossom is not necessarily the same as the dead one."
"Then how do you explain 'people'?"
"It's simple. There is a chance."
Hitzfeld glanced at Prisma and found that she was motionless, as if listening very seriously.
This gave her a lot of encouragement, and her tone became more determined: "God's blood can bring eternal life - there is a chance, and the chance is very small. The hidden descendant of the previous dynasty did not plan to do this in advance, because she was not sure that she would still retain her spirit after being eaten."
She had been dragged into a fantasy world by the remaining pages of the Book of Howling, and had glimpsed some of the thoughts of that "His Highness". She was certain that the other party had not intended to do this in advance.
"It was an accident," she said softly.
"She did everything she could to avoid being eaten, but the snake still broke its promise. She became its delicious meal like everyone else. The beast thought it was a trivial matter, but since it was already evolving in the direction of humans - otherwise there is no explanation why it always asks for cooked food - perhaps this evolutionary process requires the absorption of some...human 'characteristics', and the most obvious characteristic I can think of is the spirit. It absorbed hers just like it devoured and absorbed the spirits of other people, but it didn't expect that it was not an ordinary spirit. It was stained with divine blood and possessed a trace of immortality. So by chance, her spirit revived again in the beast's body. During that time, her consciousness was still confused, so she relied on writing to exercise her memory..."
“So there was the book “Shadow of the Ancient God”.”
Pusiangsi continued her words in a hurried tone: "The many messy stories in that book... different perspectives can also explain it... because they belonged to different people, and they were all eaten by the monster!"
Darent opened his mouth.
He still felt it was too absurd, but Hitzfeld's reasoning was so well-connected that he couldn't find any fault with it.
"And there was the theft of the Book of Howling and the Broken Sword." Hitzfell said in a heavy tone.
"They...are all related to the Sun King. She wants to retrieve these things and try to stimulate the power within them."
"Goddess!"
Cybertron covered most of his face with his hands, leaving only his eyes exposed.
She didn't know much about this matter, but what she heard was enough for her to outline the situation.
If this is true, doesn't it mean that the person devoured by the basilisk has usurped the monster's body?
It was an evil species that was constantly evolving towards humans. Could it be that it really evolved into a human body in the end, and the descendant of the previous dynasty regained his body in this way?
Is she still alive?
Has she been controlling the Death Tree all along?
"I don't even dare to infer that..."
After a while, Pusiangsi chuckled.
"When did you realize it?" Hitzfeld asked her.
"Not long after... after you returned from Ernak." The cloaked man shook his head. "I didn't tell anyone because, as you said, I didn't know who the enemy was... I wasn't even sure what the royal family's attitude was on this."
"It's confirmed that there's this guy hiding in the dark." The girl tapped the table with the tip of her pen. "The next step is to find her."
Having said this, she frowned slightly.
Because she thought... since that princess has continued to live to this day in this way, her body must not be completely human.
In the worst case scenario, she is both the prince and the serpent.
It was impossible to determine the time when she was eaten and resurrected, so there was no way to find clues through old newspapers.
Is she really in Wayne Harbor?
The Holy Slate can detect evil spirits, but the Holy Slate may also be the legacy of the Sun King. If the blood of the Sun King flows in her body, it is possible that the slate ignores her.
"Aisun."
Darent looked up from his meditation.
"I may have found a flaw in your reasoning."
The other three people in the room turned to stare at him, expecting him to say something.
"That piece of wood - a fragment of the Book of Howling," said Darent.
"The reason why you can reason to this extent, and even surpass this... lady, is because you have that experience. You have seen that thing, so that thing is very crucial."
"I don't deny it." Hitzfeld nodded.
"That's the problem!" Darent slammed the book hard, "Why did such a crucial thing appear right in front of you?"
"It's like a reminder delivered to your door... Don't you think it's weird?"
"In my opinion, this may be the enemy's deliberate attempt to mislead—"
"puff--"
There was a thin, dry movement.
"..."
"..."
Hitzfeld and Sebot were both stunned for a moment, then turned their eyes to the wooden man's butt.
“…It’s not me!”
Darent blushed for once.
Who could that be?
