Although Professor Sanchez was very vague, Xia De still understood that Darkness had actually participated in this banquet. He had handed the anonymous tip to the Natural Church, and the Church, searching the entire city, naturally had an easier time than Xia De in locating Darkness.
However, from what the professors implied, the Natural Church had not even shared the information provided by the Summoner with the other Churches.
Professor Sanchez snorted:
"Most likely, but that would mean the second Chosen One is not a Ring術士 from the Church faction."
"It definitely won't be someone from the Church, especially since the information shared by Zaras School of Spellcraft indicates that the whispering chapters record that the second Chosen One has a demon on him."
Professor Mafal said.
When demons were mentioned, Xia De first thought of Doctor Schneider. But the doctor had always been in Tobesk, so the mouth under the red glove that Xia De saw last time might also be a type of demon.
"Yes, a symbiotic form, an extremely rare demon. The Three Great Academies have studied that kind of thing. This is a terrifying remnant from the third epoch."
Professor Mafal clicked his tongue. Xia De could almost imagine his expression, frowning and looking troubled, as he said that.
The current sixth epoch is the epoch of steam civilization and Ring術士. The fifth epoch belonged to the Witches, and the fourth era was the epoch of dark turmoil.
The third epoch was in the more distant past. Saint Byron's even completely restricted access to information from that period to low-level Ring術士. And in the notebook Miss Felianna gave Xia De, whenever matters from the fourth era and further back were mentioned, the subsequent content would all turn blank. These blanks accounted for three-quarters of all the blanks in the notebook.
Xia De had only heard about the third epoch from Miss Jialinna. At that time, the Great Witch described it as: "In the third epoch, Outliers species coexisted with humans, but at that time, terrifying and strange humanoid creatures occupied most of the material world. They were Evil Spirits born from whispers. Humans and other normal life forms huddled together in a corner, protecting each other."
Thinking this way, the "demon" mentioned by the Demon Scholar he encountered not long ago, and the demon on Doctor Schneider, might very well be terrifying Evil Spirits that have survived from the third epoch until now, rather than simply demon species.
"The Academy and the Church have always been very cautious about matters concerning the third epoch. Let's just wait outside. Once the Manor's lockdown is lifted, I want to see what kind of person this so-called Chosen One is. I hope the Church doesn't make a mistake again this time, like they did in Tobesk. If they can't stop the Sea Return Ritual, the entire Coldwater Port will become history."
Then came the sound of the two professors getting up and leaving. Xia De remained seated, frowning at the drink in front of him:
"Aurora Manor is now occupied by people from the Church, people from the Scarlet Cult, Darkness, the Great Witch, and Leia is also there..."
Xia De thought for a moment, left a 1-penny tip under the cup, and then rushed into the night rain.
Aurora Manor is located at the end of Binhai Street. Although the Manor has fences and walls, there are no walls blocking the beach behind the Manor.
Among the Five Gods Church, the Natural Church is responsible for this area. The Church's Ring術士, like the two professors, were waiting for news outside the Manor. The local police in Tobesk were responsible for preventing people from approaching the Manor.
Xia De did not attempt a frontal breakthrough, taking advantage of the blurred visibility caused by the stormy night rain. Instead, he first jumped into the sea and then swam from the seabed to the coast behind Aurora Manor.
When a wave crashed against the shore and then receded, what remained on the beach was not only seashells and seaweed, but also the Outsider lying prone on the sand.
It was still dark, and visibility was not high. He lay there motionless, quietly listening to the sound of the rain and the rumbling of the tide. After confirming that there was no one nearby, he crawled forward. But after crawling for a while and finding no one around, he stood up again and started to jog, bent at the waist.
Later, he realized that the rain was so heavy that even if he jogged, no one would see him, so he started to run forward with long strides.
While running, he observed cautiously. Although there was heavy rain washing over it, the beach was not clean. Xia De's eyes could catch large patches of black marks. After examining them with Blood Echo, the black marks glowed red, indicating fresh bloodstains.
He had no idea what had happened here in the first half of the night.
After passing through the beach and approaching the paved back garden of the Manor, he finally saw teams of police officers in black waterproof capes, carrying kerosene lamps, patrolling.
Their blockade was very tight, but in front of Xia De, who possessed spatial teleportation abilities, this tightness was clearly insufficient. He moved through the garden's bushes, and finally, when he approached the Manor house, as Xia De stepped over an invisible boundary, a strange feeling surged through him.
He was startled, realizing that he should have appeared in front of his vision, but in reality, his body remained still.
The rain was falling normally both in front and behind him, and the strange feeling from before didn't seem like spatial movement, but rather that Xia De had simply taken a step forward and then ended up behind himself.
"Is it a spatial dislocation phenomenon?"
Xia De, who had more Knowledge of space, thought with a frown. His current experience should be the power of the relic, the 【No Entry Sign】, mentioned by Professor Sanchez, at work.
Considering that this could also be considered a kind of "lock," Xia De softly chanted an incantation in the rain, then extended his slightly glowing finger forward.
This time, the direction of his finger's movement did not change. Instead, Xia De felt his fingertip touch something cold and chilling. He instinctively narrowed his eyes, then saw a phantom of a wooden board appear in front of his finger. The board was rectangular, and on it, in handwritten ancient script, was written:
【No Entry Here.】
The place where there should have been a signature looked like it had been scratched off with a sharp knife.
He tried to press against the phantom of the wooden board and rotate his finger. With the consumption of his spirit, his finger rotated slowly, the wooden board became increasingly transparent, and the feeling of "unlocking" accumulated little by little.
However, he could estimate that at the current rate, even if he exhausted all the spirit in his body, he would not be able to fully open it.
"In that case... Space Stabilization Aura!"
Spatial dislocation was also an abnormal spatial phenomenon, and as the invisible ripples beneath Xia De's feet spread outwards, his finger began to rotate again.
After reaching a certain limit, the unlocking state was infinitely close to "open," but it had not completely opened this conceptual lock.
Xia De was not panicked. He narrowed his eyes and focused on the unreachable area in front of him. Then his body disappeared in the distance and reappeared twenty steps ahead.
He successfully entered the area that should have been inaccessible.
"It really works!"
A smile appeared in the falling rain of the night. To use an inappropriate analogy, Xia De's action just now was like Mia at home. Although she couldn't fully push the door open, she could find a way to create a crack, and if the crack was big enough, she could forcefully "squeeze" in.
However, Mia relied on her flexible body, while Xia De relied on the power of space.
He could enter this way, and he could also leave. But in that case, taking Leia with him would be impossible.
"Find her first."
Thinking this, Xia De made his way to the wall of the Manor house in the night rain. He walked halfway around the wall, estimated that he had reached the servants' quarters, then pushed open a window and carefully climbed in.
There was no one in the room. Xia De restored the suitcase doll from his pocket to its normal size, wiped the water off himself, changed into clean clothes, and then carefully pushed open the door and walked out.
The corridor was quiet. Although dimly lit by gas lamps, it seemed to give people an inexplicable chill. Using Blood Echo to observe, there were also traces of fresh blood on the floor that had been wiped clean. Although the amount was not large, it still made Xia De very worried.
He hoped to encounter the Manor's servants, pretend to be a lost guest, and inquire about the situation here. But he walked out of the corridor and into the grand hall on the first floor of the Manor. The floor was covered with a red carpet, and the crystal chandelier overhead made the place look magnificent. The metal stair railings and the picture frames on the walls seemed to shimmer, but he still didn't see anyone.
However, in the middle of the staircase directly facing the two grand golden doors of the Manor, hung a gigantic oil painting. The oil painting was not of an ancestor of the Aurora Family, but of a lady with naturally curly brown hair.
In delarion, "brown" and "tan" are not the same color. The former is darker, while the latter is closer to yellow, such as the hair color of Luvia and Iluna.
The lady in the oil painting sat behind a desk, looking sternly out of the frame, with a blurred bookshelf depicted in dark tones in the background. Her hair was adorned with a sapphire hairpin in the shape of an anchor, her features were exceptionally Stereo, and her eyebrows were very slender, making her eyes appear unusually bright.
She was not wearing a full-length evening gown, but a white ladies' shirt and a black long skirt.
This was Hivi Aurora, the Great Witch of the Witch Council. Although Miss Jialinna said she was almost thirty, she looked only twenty-five or twenty-six, similar to Miss Jialinna.
Looking at the oil painting, one couldn't discern the unique temperament of a Great Witch, but Xia De could already feel that peculiar beauty that surpassed ordinary people. If Miss Jialinna was a mature and steady noblewoman of high society, then Hivi Aurora was heroic and even somewhat daunting to look at.
Xia De stopped and reached for the badge inside his shirt pocket. He felt the badge hanging there subtly warming up. The Great Witch was clearly upstairs.
