The poet Elaite subconsciously took a step back and said:
"No, I don't need to."
He immediately came back to his senses, looked at the gray-robed man painting the doll in the dark, and asked curiously:
"Are you the wax master serving Count Puyver?"
The count had a hobby of making wax figures of his friends.
The man with a face full of bright red beard withdrew his gaze and continued to color the unfinished doll in front of him.
Lumian, who had returned to the corridor, glanced at Albus Medici and asked the strange man in the messy room before he could speak:
"What should I call you?"
Lumian was absolutely certain that there was something wrong with the "wax artist" in front of him, but he was not sure whether the problem was big or small - they had just observed that there was no light overflowing from this room, which meant that the other party was painting the doll in pure darkness!
The man with dark eyes and bright red beard raised his head again and said in a disembodied voice:
"My father went crazy and went deep into the underground palace and never came back..."
"So, are you crazy too?" Albus Medici interrupted the man's mumbling.
The man was stunned for two seconds and said:
I heard the call from deep underground...
Having said that, his eyes swept across the faces of Lumian, Albus and Eros, and the corners of his mouth surrounded by a beard slightly curled up, as if revealing a not-so-obvious smile.
His iron-black eyes became more hollow, and his voice became more anxious:
"You guys, go deep into the underground palace quickly, go deep into the underground palace quickly..."
"Why not me?" the poet Elaite muttered softly.
Lumian's mind raced as he tried to find the commonalities between himself, Albus, and Eros.
As the poet Elaite said, the "you" in the words of the strange man in front of him did not include him. Considering the current environment, this must be a problem.
I am a "hunter", Albus is a "hunter", is Eros also a "hunter"? While Lumian was thinking about the reason, Albus Medici did not mind the horrific meaning hidden in the words of the "wax artist" at all, and asked the question with a smile:
"Do you need us to go deep into the underground palace to bring back your grandfather, father, and brother, or help you send a blessing over
He's quite aggressive... Logically speaking, he's at least an "arsonist", and he's almost used up all his magic potions, so there's no need to keep provoking him. Every word is a provocation... Is he trying to mislead others that he's just a "provocateur"? Lumian looked at Albus's chiseled profile and muttered a few words in his heart.
The man painting the doll ignored Albus and continued with his work.
"Excuse me." Lumian didn't give Albus a chance to elaborate. He stretched out his right hand, grasped the handle, and gently closed the vermilion wooden door.
Then, he gave up searching the room with the Iron Soldier, fearing that it might trigger unnecessary changes.
In the dark environment, Lumian held a calcium carbide lamp and walked down the mottled stone steps one step at a time.
As the sound of footsteps echoed, Eros Einhorn suddenly said:
"That person just now looked like a lion..."
Lumian recalled the appearance of the "wax artist" and found that he really looked like a human lion because of his bright red hair and long, thick beard.
Albus Medici gently shook the calcium carbide lamp in his hand, glanced at Eros and said:
"This is your grandfather's castle. You've lived here for almost six years. Don't act like visitors like us who know nothing and are unclear about everything."
"I really don't know who that person was." Elos shook her head, "I seldom go into the underground palace, and the farthest I've ever been is to the room full of wax figures.
That is to say, in the few times you explored, you chose the same route as me, and chose the "Madness Gate" among the three gates of "Hope", "Madness" and "Death"... Why didn't you go deeper at that time? What were you worried about? Lumian guessed some information from Eros Einhorn's brief answer.
Albus sneered:
“Then have you ever heard of the legend that a member of the Soran family went mad, entered the depths of the underground palace, and never came back
"For example, my grandfather went crazy and went deep into the underground palace..."
This member of the "Iron Cross" began to imitate the man's mumbling. Both his voice and tone were very realistic and vivid.
Very good, you asked the question I wanted to ask... Lumian felt that although Albus Medici was annoying, he also had value in existence.
He seems to have no scruples, yet is sharp enough to always ask questions that others are reluctant to ask for various reasons.
With such a teammate, Lumian can better hide in the "darkness" and not reveal his true thoughts and attitudes.
The mottled stone steps seemed endless. Eros walked down carefully and sighed:
"I have always known similar legends."
"The owner of Red Swan Castle and the members of the Soran family who live here, both men and women, have all become increasingly violent and manic, and eventually go insane. They may mutilate themselves and walk deep into the underground palace, never to return. This happens sometimes once every few years, and sometimes two or three times a year."
"Except for those family members who are most eager to restore the glory of their ancestors, the rest of the Sorans have stayed away from this ancient castle, not wanting to go crazy."
“This has a certain effect, ensuring the reproduction and inheritance of the Sauron family, but that madness seems to be a curse, a curse rooted in the blood. From time to time, people from Sauron who live in other places suddenly return here and repeat the experiences of their ancestors.
Is this the superficial truth behind the decline of the Soran family? If the core members of the family go crazy one after another, go deep into the underground palace, and never return, then the family will indeed decline little by little... Why did Eros tell us in detail about these things that were circulated within the Soran family... She thought we couldn't get out alive, so she satisfied her desire to share? Lumian recalled the nightmares he had because of the King Cake game.
The Red Swan Castle in the nightmare is full of lunatics, lunatics who dig out their own eyes and mutilate themselves in different ways.
Now it seems that those might be different Saurons who went crazy over the past two hundred years.
Of course, these are definitely not all members of the Soran family. In Lumian's nightmare, the participants of the King Cake Game, such as the novelist Anoli, have all gone crazy and hurt themselves or others, and they obviously do not have the blood of the Soran family.
Albus Medici smiled and asked Eros in a tone that was not harsh:
"Did your grandfather also go crazy and go deep into the underground palace?"
"No." Eloise was calm and unprovoked. "He died from a long-lasting headache. Not every owner of Red Swan Castle will eventually go crazy."
"What do the ones that haven't gone crazy have in common?" Albus demanded.
Heros's face was reflected in the light of the calcium carbide lamp from the side, and she answered in her usual voice:
"This is our family secret."
What she meant was, "I won't tell you."
Lumian, who was walking in front, sounded a little angry.
If Eros had said at the beginning, "Don't ask about the affairs of the Sauron family," he would not have had any emotional reaction. However, after Eros told everyone a lot of useful information and aroused everyone's curiosity, she unexpectedly cut off at the most crucial part and did not tell everyone the answer. Anyone would feel angry and other emotions, as if they were provoked.
Albus was silent for a few seconds, then smiled and said:
"What about your mother?"
"She died of natural causes." Eloise did not hide it.
Albus laughed and continued:
What about you? You also have the blood of the Sauron family. Will you suddenly go crazy?"
Elos glanced at the impolite guy and smiled in an ambiguous way:
"In the long run, we're all going to go crazy."
Who do you mean by "we"? Lumian's forehead jumped, thinking that the "we" Eros was talking about was not just the members of the Soran family.
After a brief silence, the poet Elaite said with deep emotion:
"The fear of a family, the curse that has lasted for generations, and the ancestors who keep walking into the darkness underground, it's really a perfect writing subject and very inspiring. If Anoli knew about it, it would definitely be a classic novel. Even I have the urge to write a long poem.
As they were talking, the four of them finally finished walking up the long stone steps.
What appeared before their eyes was a spacious hall with gray-white stone pillars standing in the hall, which together supported the dark roof above.
As the light from four calcium carbide lamps shone in, Lumian and others saw several piles of bones. They were located behind some stone pillars, with parts of them half-hidden.
"A lot of people died." Albus Medici sighed with a smile and walked towards a pile of bones.
Just then, Lumian heard a rustling sound.
He raised his head suddenly and pointed the front end of the calcium carbide lamp upwards.
In the yellowish light, a huge black shadow quickly crawled across the dim and mottled ceiling and disappeared into the shadow on the other side.
The black shadow was a spider-like creature.
Compared with other creatures of the same kind, it only has a pair of eyes, but each eye is filled with densely packed tiny single eyes, which rotate in different directions and flash cold light.
This giant spider has countless thick and long bristles on its body, surrounding a shriveled, blackened, fist-sized withered heart on its back.
Lumian shuddered suddenly, and a term popped up in his mind: Hunting Black Spiders!
This is one of the main ingredients of the "Conspirator" potion.
During this month, although Lumian did not collect any materials related to hunting black spiders and human-bodied lions, he had roughly figured out the situation of these two extraordinary creatures, what they looked like and what abilities they had. Recently, he has been considering whether to "teleport" to other places to look for traces of hunting black spiders and human-bodied lions.
But compared to the hunting black spider in the data, the black giant spider that just crawled over was even more peculiar. Many details were different. It even had an embedded, dried-up heart that looked like a human!