The air seemed to freeze.
All of this is so familiar, the water drops rolling on the dry ground, gradually seeping into the soil, blurring the patterns already blurred by the spray, and even dizzy to see the original appearance.
Langston's face turned a strange liver color.
"Yes, it's you—" This familiar style finally awakened his dusty memory, he raised his index finger, and pointed at Lin You's face tremblingly, this trembling was a kind of extreme anger mixed with fear, "How dare you return?"
"Why don't I dare to come back?"
Lin You said innocently, the skull shook its head and sighed, it could almost guess what was going to happen next.
"It wasn't me who burned the base camp."
Langton: "..."
Her words stunned him, and what she said was like stabbing a knife into his bloody heart again. His eyes were bulging out, his chest was heaving and heaving, and he looked like he might faint at any moment—however, he didn't know if a person like him who was not "alive" in the usual sense would faint.
The last time Lin You saw him, Langton claimed that when he tried to sacrifice himself to the black goat, he was favored by the mother god and was able to return to the human world. Of course, in the form of living or dying, he has no shadow and lives like a ghost with a body.
Langton didn't really faint after all, he ground his teeth "creaking" and let the suppressed growl break through his throat.
"I kill you!"
"Trust me." Lin You said, "You still have time to run."
A swollen body stood in front of Lin You like a wall.
Langton, who was originally murderous, changed his expression almost as soon as he saw this guy clearly.
For the first time in history, Lin You heard the water ghost—now it seems more appropriate to call her "Mrs. Langton"—speak.
Her voice was weird, low and hoarse, and it sounded like it came from some extremely deep place, with a faint echo. Obviously on land, with the sound of ticking water, when she opened her mouth, she could hear something spitting out bubbles.
"We still have a bill to settle," she called him by his Christian name, "Jaff."
"No."
Langton stepped back as he spoke.
"It's been so long, you won't..."
"I will."
said Mrs Langton contemptuously.
"You know why I haven't touched you for so long," she gave a short, shrill laugh, "and now you're nothing without it! Time to settle for drowning me in that lake—"
Frightened and terrified, Langton actually cast his eyes on Lin You for help, and the latter just shrugged.
Knowing that there was no way to ask for help, he turned around and wanted to run but failed - the bucket of water Lin You poured down formed shallow puddles at his feet, and Mrs. Langton obviously felt that this was enough. A palm made of water protruded from the puddle, and it tightly grasped Langton's ankle. The strength he used seemed to break his ankle bone, leaving only the bones of a skull. A burst of sore teeth.
"Well… "
They stood so close, punches and kicks could be heard clearly, and the skull asked uncertainly, "Are we just watching here?"
"You heard what she said, and the last time we were here, he also told the black goat cub to hunt us down."
Lin You said, "Fortunately, I should remember less grudges."
"Shut up for him," she urged.
Mrs. Langton didn't even stop moving.
She beat her so hard that Lin You still listened to her words. At least when she got up to leave, Langton, who was lying on his stomach, could still yell "Ouch, Ouch" while covering the bruises on his body from the beating.
He got up with a bruised nose and a swollen face, his face was completely enlarged. Langton looked at Lin You and his ex-wife with fear and resentment. In the end, he didn't dare to say anything. He found a thick enough tree root and sat down, remembering what Lin You had asked him before.
Not to mention how shrewd this person is, he still knows what to do to benefit him at this time.
"Very well," he said deflatedly, evidently not wanting another spanking, "what would you like to know?"
"etc."
This time, it was Lin You who interrupted him, "I'll talk about that later."
She had her own thoughts, and the water ghost hugged her arms behind her, almost forcing Langton to follow along. She disappeared after the five-minute time limit expired, but Langston obviously didn't understand what was going on, and he would look back every now and then.
He didn't dare run—in fact, he didn't have the chance to do so. The skull kept staring at him, even though it was a little difficult to keep his eyes in the same direction while hanging from his bag strap.
"Just do it."
They returned to the ruins of the burned hotel and the car, and Lin You picked up a sharp stone in the nearby grass.
Skull: "... huh?"
"Leave a mark, so that they both know where to find me." Lin You said, weighing where to draw on the bark, "I can't wait here all the time, in case those guys come back again on a whim. Come back."
Going around the lake, every few trees, Linyou would draw a shallow mark on one of them. When she reached the depths of the woods, she stopped after confirming that she would not be easily seen.
"Now we can talk."
"Where did those people come from?" Lin You asked.
"What?" Langton, who followed obediently, retorted, "Shouldn't I ask you about this?"
Catching Lin You's gaze, he forgot for a moment who was beaten just now, and laughed mockingly.
"You call the police for assistance—"
He said.
"Aroused—caused the attention of some people, they gathered here and discovered its existence. It preached the gospel of the Mother God to them," Lin You noticed that he no longer called the black goat cub as "that an adult", "and then accept the offerings of these believers."
"There is a problem."
Skull chimed in, having heard of the connection between Langton and the black goat cub.
"Didn't you summon it?"
The subtext is why it is so unpopular nowadays, and it was kicked out by those hooded guards.
A muscle in Langdon's face twitched.
"You have to know that not all of them—every one of them acts resolutely as a messenger of the mother god," he said dryly, pulling his not-so-luxury hair, "and some of them just like to enjoy what humans give them. offerings... since it found out that they had offered it far more than I had...”
Lin You: "..."
Are black goat cubs so realistic these days
"So," Skull told Langton's hesitating truth, "it kicked you?"
If Mrs. Langton was still here, she would have sneered, "It deserves it".
Lin You suspected that she heard the sound of Langton's veins bursting.
"Yes." He finally endured and endured, and said.
"Now I'm going to summon the Mother Goddess. I found them and wanted to join, but I was kicked out... It seems to hate me for letting it squeeze in the attic, but what can I do back then?!"
"However," Lin You said, "after all, don't you have experience? Why do they—"
"I'm not important."
Langdon gritted his teeth.
"As long as it is there, the chances of successfully summoning the Mother Goddess are greatly increased. Anyway, I have never summoned the Mother Goddess, I just know how to do it, and it can tell the method to another person-I don't matter, understand?"
"I don't care if you will destroy the ceremony," he glared at Lin You, "If I can't participate in this ceremony, I won't be able to let the mother god see my loyalty. It doesn't matter if it succeeds or not!"
He took a deep breath, and continued angrily.
"They must have prepared the altar in the open air, and the summoning ceremony must be held on a new moon night—"
In a sense, the former enemy has become an assisting role, which is a bit strange, but Lin You, who is used to driving ghosts, has long been used to it. She looked at the still bright sky, "New moon? When?"
"Tomorrow night," Langston said.
Time is limited.
Their conversation ended with a rustling sound. Lin You wasn't too worried. She knew who the person was more likely to be. Even if the group of believers really chased after them, there was a way to solve it.
The blades of grass swayed, and the person walking in front saw her at a glance.
"Sister You!" He exclaimed in surprise.
Geng Qinghe looked at Langton next to him again, probably because his face was so swollen that he couldn't see who he was for a while.
Langton did recognize him—the boy in the hotel. But his enmity with him was not as great as Lin You's. In addition, he had been beaten and exposed the truth about losing face, so he didn't want to talk now, so he just sneered.
Geng Qinghe: "...???"
He didn't do anything and was scorned for nothing, his face was blank, he thought about turning his eyes back to Lin You first.
"I saw the scratches on the tree," he scratched his head, "then Gu Heng guessed that it was Sister You who left the mark—"
Behind him, a strange-looking person came out.
"I heard what he said about the situation."
Gu Heng said, he looked at the skull on Lin You's waist, "... who is this?"
Satisfied with his address, the skull hummed and said, "Thank you for not asking 'what is this'."
Geng Qinghe: "..."
so close! He almost asked!
"I met it in Silent Hill." Lin You said, she didn't intend to go into too much detail, "Did you see anything on the way here?"
"No," Geng Qinghe replied without hesitation, "I didn't see anything except the burned hotel."
He immediately remembered something, "But..."
Um
Lin You raised her eyebrows.
"Let me tell you." Gu Heng took out something from his bag, "I didn't see it on the road, but before we left, we found something interesting."
What he held in his hand was a long and narrow box.
"Checked the records, it is the latest commission from 'me'. The client inherited this from his uncle, and then he was attacked that night, and the attacker almost snatched it. So he deposited it in the office, hoping to help Look up its history."
Gu Heng opened the lid of the box.
On the cushion lay a dagger.
The dagger was about thirty centimeters long, the blade was made of sterling silver, and the handle was made of bronze. The overall style is ancient and exquisite, carved in the shape of a water bird, with a beak as a gauntlet and a long neck as a handle.
Engraved on the body of the knife is a line of... hieroglyphs
"This is the ibis."
The skull said suddenly.
Lin You: "Toki?"
"The holy bird of the Egyptian god," said the skull in a tone of "you have never even heard of this", "I have studied them very well."
-etc.
Lin You suddenly had an idea.
"Can you read ancient Egyptian?" she asked.
"—It's better to say," if the body is intact, the skull puffed out his chest proudly, "you can ask what other languages I don't know."
Geng Qinghe: "...can you translate the meaning of this sentence?"
"No, no, the meaning is not important."
The skull kept saying.
"The real translation of this line is transliteration, the first word is pronounced 'ny', and the second word is pronounced 'har'—"
Listening to it read these two sounds, Lin You had a vague premonition of something.
She lowered her head, "You won't say..."
"Yeah." Skull said calmly, "It can be read as 'Nyarlathotep' together, and the inscription is his real name."
This dagger is a token of Nyarlathotep, one of the three original gods.
Now the fun is big.