To be honest, Miss Aurora, I thought you would be the kind of person who would want to kill me.
Xia De extended his hand, and the witch hesitated for a moment before taking it, sighing softly:
"Why would I kill you? What good would that do me? However, this is the first time I've shaken hands with a man since I came of age."
The witch's hand was very soft, so Xia De asked:
"How does my hand feel?"
"Your hand is very rough. Although it's recovering, I can tell you probably did heavy labor before."
She withdrew her hand, then waved to Xia De's head. A small black spider jumped from Xia De's hair into her palm, then crawled onto her face, transforming into a subtle beauty mark below her eye.
"So that spider is yours? Did you really smell the ocean on me just now?"
"Of course, but it's not just because you've been to the seaside; it's also because you have the stench of mermen on you. I originally thought you had fought mermen before coming to Princess Leia's place."
The witch said.
"The smell of mermaids? I haven't encountered mermen, oh, I understand."
Xia De thought for a moment before realizing it was because he still carried the Drowning Merman's Scale. This meant that the scale's original owner was indeed a 眷族 of the lord of the scarlet spiral, an evil god from the sixth epoch.
The witch nodded:
"It's good that you understand. Remember to return the ring to me after this is over. Also, the strongest Cultists underground is Hexacle. I think as long as you don't provoke it, you'll definitely be able to escape alive."
Thus, Xia De concluded his first meeting with the second witch he had met in the sixth epoch.
Knowing that Darkness was likely heading to Tobesk, Xia De had no interest in helping the witch find him. After parting with the witch at the room's door, Xia De found Leia again. The princess was very worried about Xia De, but she didn't ask about Hivi Aurora's identity.
"I need to go to the underground wine cellar. Leia, remember to keep the fishing rod with you. If you really encounter problems, even if it means revealing your Ring術士 identity, you must seek help from Miss Aurora."
"But more than a witch, I hope you'll be by my side when morning comes."
The princess said softly.
"Of course, I came to Coldwater Port precisely to help you. How could I forget such a purpose?"
He replied. Leia thought for a moment and gave Xia De a hug:
"Although I don't know what you're going to do, be careful with everything."
She then handed Xia De a steam bomb. Xia De was surprised for a moment, then carefully put it away.
At this point, there was still an hour until sunrise.
The Ring術士 team of the Natural Church was waiting on the second floor to launch another attack before dawn. Although Xia De couldn't learn about the situation in the wine cellar from them, Miss Aurora directly told Xia De that there were three Ring術士 and a dozen mermen underground.
Xia De's original plan was to use illusion to enter the wine cellar and, if possible, steal the textual materials. However, the wine cellar of Aurora Manor actually had a secret passage connected to the gardener's shed in the garden.
That secret passage was built when the Aurora Family owned the place, and even the mermen didn't know about it.
So Xia De jumped from a third-floor window into the rainy garden, braving the rain to find the locked gardener's shed. After opening the door, he found that it was simply a utility room, with shelves full of metal tools on all four walls, and even a steam engine in the corner.
Pushing aside the boxes in the corner, he tapped on the floor a few times to find the location of the trapdoor. After laboriously pulling open the trapdoor, the pitch-black opening seemed to lead directly to the abyss below.
But a quick flash of light from his fingertip showed that it was only three meters deep.
Unlike the underground ruins of Tobesk, this secret passage seemed to be only for emergency escape, and thus was very narrow. Xia De even had to duck his head to pass through, as the passage was only about 1.7 meters high.
During the descent, he only encountered one fork: one path led straight ahead, and the other led to a storage room containing food and water.
So Xia De followed the straight path forward and soon reached the end of this secret passage.
As he illuminated the way in the Darkness, Xia De thought that if he also had a manor, he would definitely build complex secret passages. After all, with so much space, it would be a shame not to build secret passages.
According to Ms. Aurora, this secret passage led to an internal interlayer within the wine cellar's wall, where new wine was stored for aging.
Therefore, when Xia De carefully pushed open the secret door and climbed out, he could only see rows of wine barrels and no trace of mermen.
Carefully using illusion, a silvery mist silently flowed along the ground. After emerging from the internal interlayer of the wine cellar, he finally saw three burly men dressed as sailors, guarding the entrance of the wine cellar with guns. The common characteristic of the three was that they looked very ugly.
Besides them, Xia De also saw a tall, slender man standing in the shadows nearby. This one was a Ring術士; he was almost one with the shadow, and if not for the voice in his ear reminding Xia De, Xia De might not even have noticed him.
To prevent being discovered by that Ring術士, Xia De carefully controlled the illusory mist to exist only in the area around him. But illusion was not invisibility, and even if it could achieve similar effects, it would easily be discovered by a Ring術士 with keen senses.
He could only bend at the waist, hugging the wall, letting rows of wine cabinets block his view. It took him a full ten minutes to make a large detour around the edge of the shelves, moving away from the wine cellar entrance.
The entire wine cellar was pitch black, and it seemed that apart from the four people at the entrance, there was no one else. So Xia De used the spell Blood Echo. As expected, during the previous confrontation with the Orthodox Church team, the mermen's injured companions had left bloodstains on the ground during their transfer.
Although the naked eye couldn't detect them, in the state of Blood Echo, Xia De, whose right eye was bloodshot, could follow the red halos that looked like road signs in the Darkness, all the way to the end of the wine cellar, and discovered a hole in the wall.
There should have been space behind that wall originally, but it was temporarily sealed with a brick wall before being sold to the Aurora Family. When it was opened again tonight, the mermen seemed to have smashed open the wall with a large hammer, and the bricks and stones on the ground hadn't even been cleared away.
A cold, damp, and fishy wind came from behind the hole in the wall, and at the same time, faint candlelight and strange blue phosphorescence could be seen in the Darkness, and indistinguishable whispers could be heard.
"There's wind... is there another exit behind the wall?"
This was what surprised Xia De the most.
