Sitting on the ground beside the winding river outside Cordu Village in the bright sunshine, Aurore was wearing a light blue dress and listened to Lumian's feedback and speculations on the song with her eyes closed.
She was silent for a while, as if lost in thought.
After nearly a minute, Aurore spoke carefully: "If something went wrong during the Twelfth Night ritual, causing the power of the hidden being to dissipate, bringing about a time loop in the entire Cordu village and the surrounding areas, then I believe that the people and even the spirits in this area at the time would not be spared."
"What do you mean?" Lumian, who was also sitting on the ground, didn't quite understand his sister's logic.
Aurore explained in detail: "What I mean is that it is both power and pollution. Once it spreads, all the people in this area will bear this pollution relatively equally. Yes."
“Only those who have the black thorn symbol or the blessing of other high-level beings can barely remain unaffected. Think about it, the situation at that time was like a dam collapse, quickly flooding the entire place, including the roof. Unless you have a boat ready in advance, your body will definitely get wet.”
Lumian imagined that scene and said hesitantly, "So, the cycle, everyone in the village is contaminated by the scattered power, which is equivalent to being part of the cycle? The part he mentioned does not mean joining the cycle or being affected by the cycle. A more accurate expression is that the components of the cycle are closed."
Aurore, with her blond hair tied up in a bun, nodded gently. "I suspect that killing not only the parish priest will cause a restart, but killing other villagers in Koldu will also cause a similar situation. This is equivalent to trying to destroy a part of the cycle, and there will inevitably be changes in the mammary system's reproductive stress."
"But we just killed the midwife yesterday afternoon..." Lumian stopped talking without finishing his sentence.
Midwife... ..
He thought of many things at once, and said hesitantly, "Is this because the people in the castle are blessed by other high-ranking beings? Is this also the reason why Madam Pualis said she could escape at a certain moment?"
She is not contaminated by that power, cannot be part of the cycle, is one of the people who are affected, can she use loopholes or opportunities to leave? Please
Aurore sighed softly, "That's why she said she couldn't save us, couldn't take us out, because we have been contaminated and are one with the cycle."
At this point, she gave a wry smile: "Or rather, we are already dead, at the moment. We are alive in the form of circulating components."
No wonder the mysterious lady said that if she forcibly ended the cycle, everyone here would die, because we are the cycle that was forcibly ended.
Lumian was silent. He wanted to refute his sister and say that she was not so pessimistic, but this was a good confirmation of the mysterious lady's words.
What he could not understand was that, with the lady's free entry and exit of the cycle, and her courage to mention the secret existence of a person, even if she could not break the cycle intact, she could protect two or three people.
It should be an easy thing for this person to leave.
Now there is a more plausible and more desperate explanation.
After a few seconds, Lumian looked for a counterexample: "Ava, Raymond, and Naroka are all dead, and they didn't cause the cycle to restart."
Aurore smiled complicatedly and said, "Maybe they were already dead when the cycle started. They didn't participate in the Twelfth Night ritual and were not contaminated."
Her meaning was very clear. In the world before the cycle, Naroka died before Lent, and Ava and Raymond were sacrificed at the celebration. They did not wait until the Twelfth Night and were not part of the cycle.
She thought for a moment and said, "Jean Mori, who disappeared today, might have been in the same situation. According to normal development, he should have discovered something unusual after Lent and before the Twelfth Night and wanted to escape, but was killed. Our investigation just brought this matter forward. The only thing I can't figure out is, wasn't Raymond's body sacrificed? He shouldn't have been there at the beginning of the cycle..."
Hearing his sister's words, Lumian immediately thought of what happened under the church.
The invisible man in the black robe is made up of the spirits of Raymond and others!
Lumian combined the mystical knowledge he had already mastered and tried to offer sacrifices to the hidden existence. However, the sacrifice was not a direct sacrifice. He speculated: Maybe the altar at the Lenten celebration was part of the Twelfth Night ceremony, so Raymond's spirit appeared in the basement of the church.
His body was of no use, but in the previous part of the cycle, Poncebene and the others could have left Cordu. In order to prevent the beauties downstream from discovering his body and reporting it to their superiors, which would lead to an investigation, they might have fished the body back after completing the downstream drifting part of the ritual.
After the cycle began, the power had its own limits and was unable to cover the place where Poncebene and his team were fishing out the bodies. They were affected by the pollution in their bodies and were unable to think of leaving the area.
Aurore thought for a moment and nodded in agreement. "After so many days of repetition, except for you who have retained your memory, the three strangers, Mrs. Pualis and her men, the other villagers have not left Cordu Village and have no intention of going into the mountains to hunt and collect wild fruits."
"If you hadn't reminded me, I would have been like this too." At this point, Aurore revealed a sad, self-deprecating smile: "We are already a group of monsters. We can only survive as humans by relying on cycles."
"No, there must be a way to save it. The lady said there was." Lumian interrupted his sister's self-pity.
Aurore exhaled slowly and said, "Can't you let your sister be vulnerable for a few minutes?"
She then said: "According to this idea, we can only rely on ourselves. External force breaking the cycle is equivalent to killing us."
Lumian sighed: "Unfortunately, this speculation cannot be verified at present. We can only wait until the Twelfth Night to confirm it. The latest and fastest updates are released first."
"It can be verified, but it will waste a lot of our time, and I can't do it," Auror replied.
"That's right..." Lumian roughly understood his sister's meaning or plan: kill a villager who is not currently in the parish priest's team to see if it will lead to a restart. If so, find a way to kill one of the three outsiders to see if it will trigger the cycle. If not, then it verifies Aurore and Lumian's guess.
Most of the people who were in Koldu village before were polluted and were part of the cycle, while those who came later were simply affected by the cycle and had the opportunity to break out of it by exploiting loopholes or with the help of external forces.
But that would make the previous days of waiting go to waste, and Aurore is not the kind of person who would kill innocent people, especially those who have had good cooperation with them.
Lumian doesn't have any moral obstacles in this regard. In his opinion, dying in a loop is not really dying. It is most likely just some residual problems. This is much better than being trapped in a loop.
Of course, if he really wanted to do this, he would definitely not try to murder or kill Leah and the others, but would directly reason with the three outsiders.
Given the fanaticism and piety displayed by Valentine, he was quite confident that he could convince this guy to commit suicide.
The brother and sister looked at each other, fell silent for a moment, and said nothing more.
After a while, Lumian changed the subject: "Sister, what do you think is the key to breaking the cycle from the inside?"
Aurore was thinking about this question just now. As she pondered, she said, "We can't just eliminate the cycle from the inside. We must use this to remove the pollution in every person's body. Otherwise, it will be the same as suicide."
"What's the difference? Well, according to previous speculation, something went wrong with the ritual, causing the entire village to enter a loop. The reason why the ritual went wrong was because you had the "mark" of the great existence of the oxygen fish on your body. It was activated and sealed the heavy pollution in your body in your heart..."
As she spoke, Auror looked her younger brother Qu Ling up and down.
Lumian understood instantly: "You mean, the key to ending the cycle is me??"
Aurore nodded: "The source of the change is with you, so the key to ending the cycle may also be with you. Of course, this is just a guess. Perhaps the key to the cycle is the carrier of the power of the mysterious being during the Twelfth Night ceremony, such as the parish priest or someone else..."
Aurore fell silent, looked at her brother for a few seconds and said, "Is there a possibility that these two speculations are equivalent, and you are the carrier? Otherwise, as a leftover sacrifice or contaminant, even if something unexpected happens, it will not cause the ritual to fail completely and the power will dissipate uncontrollably."
"Uh..." The more Lumian thought about it, the more he felt that his guess made sense.
He whispered to himself: "So, the black thorn symbol on my chest is darker than the priest's... So, when the priest was fighting me, he suddenly showed signs of losing control and was killed by me. So, the mysterious lady never told me where the key to breaking it was, but just asked me to explore the ruins of the dream cycle and solve the secrets there..."
Aurore was somewhat excited. "Yes, that might be a hint! The Dream Ruins might be directly caused by the pollution in your body, or be closely related to it. So, when you are there, you can rely on the black thorn symbol to suppress every monster you encounter."
"Once you master the secret there, you can control or safely stimulate the power in your body to a certain extent, and recycle the pollution from every three people in Cordu Village, and the cycle will naturally be resolved."
"Well, maybe this can only be done at certain times, for example, during the ceremony on Twelfth Night."
Lumian stood up quickly: "Go back to your dreams now!"
"Don't worry." Aurora supported herself on the ground and slowly stood up. "Aren't you injured? Don't you want to rest for a while?"
Lumian patted his chest and said, "The water that Madam Pualis sprinkled healed all the milkfish's injuries and fully restored their spirituality."
"Uh, mango sagora... Guanyin, the goddess of fertility..." Aurora whispered.
"What?" Lumian didn't understand at all. His sister was speaking a very strange language.
Aurore closed her eyes and smiled slightly, "My warning is, go home, fill your stomach, take a nap, and explore in your dreams!"