"Uh, I still don't get it."
When they walked to the side of the car, Geng Qinghe said.
The one they were going to drive was not the one next to the hotel, but the one he and Gu Heng had come over, and the latter parked the car in a hidden place after discovering the signal.
"Where is the danger of that knife?"
He didn't see any magic power, he just thought it was an exquisite dagger, which might fetch a good price at auction.
this problem-
Lin You paused.
"Its words... I don't know very well," she said, "I just happened to hear a little."
Otherwise, she would be able to recognize the dagger at a glance, and she would not need to rely on translation.
"Let's start from the beginning."
"Like Cthulhu, the mother of the black goats, killing these evil gods is as easy as crushing an ant, but most of them are not interested in this. However, Nyarlathotep is an exception."
Lin You said.
"He is keen to deceive and seduce mankind, and it would be best if he could drive anyone into despair."
In short, four words, like to make trouble.
"Nyarlathotep's sphere of activity spread all over the world, and he became various avatars, 'Blood Tongue' in the North of the United States, 'Swollen Daughter' in Shanghai... He also appeared in Egypt as a pharaoh , "She pointed to Gu Heng's backpack where the box was placed, "so there will be a pattern of the holy Egyptian bird on the knife."
So far, the skull has been nodding its head vigorously to show that it agrees with the accuracy of this statement—it's just that it's bouncing up and down, which is no different from its usual up and down swaying.
"Then, this dagger..."
"I know a little bit." Lin You recalled, "If you hit Nyarlathotep's avatar with it, you can destroy him, drive him away, and he won't be able to reappear until the next time he is summoned."
"So, why do you say it's his token?"
Geng Qinghe blinked and asked blankly.
"According to this, that Naia... shouldn't try to destroy it, right?"
"Yes, it's a pity that it has a very special magical power, and it's a double-edged sword." Lin You replied, "The other use in the past was to perform human sacrifices, like this—"
Pointing to her throat, she made a virtual cut from top to bottom.
"Cut it open from the throat to the bottom, and then dig out the heart. Those who accept this ritual will be sent to Azathoth, and then reborn as its loyal servant."
Lin You shrugged.
"Nyarlathotep's going around is also to attract more followers for himself and Azathoth who gave birth to him-daggers can have a good effect, and among the most fanatical cultists, accepting this ritual is a kind of glory."
When she said the word "glory", Geng Qinghe opened his mouth, imagining the scene of these people lying on the table and being cut open alive.
"...they still expect to be dissected?" He finally asked.
He thought Langton was as crazy as he was back then, but he didn't expect that cultists all over the world were the same.
Lin You nodded.
Or how to say it is fanaticism.
"So, according to my understanding." Gu Heng said, "Those who oppose Nyarlathotep want to expel him with a dagger, and those who support him want to use a dagger to sacrifice themselves to pursue their beliefs, and both sides will scramble to get it ?”
"And Nyarlathotep himself, who fears it and wants it."
Lin You concluded.
"Anyway, as long as the dagger is in hand, there will be countless troubles."
Geng Qinghe: "..."
He suddenly guessed how the client's uncle died.
Behind them, Langdon held his swollen face to Gao, who had been sitting sullenly for a long time.
Ever since they talked about the dagger, he had regarded him as an invisible person. Of course, for someone—he silently glanced at Lin You, hoping that the other party would not notice him.
Otherwise, I don't know how bad it will be.
But seeing that they were about to forget about the matter here, Langton had to clear his throat loudly.
Facing Lin You's gaze, he flinched unconsciously, but still poised his neck and asked, "What about the ceremony tomorrow night?"
Gu Heng: "Tomorrow night?"
Only then did Geng Qinghe notice that there was not even a shadow under Langton's feet, and suddenly remembered
It was only then that Lin You remembered that they were not there when she asked Langton. Now in a few words, he repeated the things he explained, and as expected, he saw the frowns of the two of them tightened.
"What's the matter?"
Geng Qinghe muttered bitterly: "It's the black goat again and that Naia..."
"That's right," Lin You added, "Don't forget that we're not all here yet."
… His expression looked even more stomach ache.
"The summoning of the black goat will be tomorrow night, so there is still some time." Gu Heng pondered, "It is best to find the client now. If we have time, we may still get some more clues from him, such as his uncle. Where did you get this?"
Geng Qinghe: "...if... in time?"
He had a bad feeling.
This premonition was immediately confirmed.
"You didn't know the origin of the dagger at the time, so you came to me directly." Lin You said, "But think about it, if his uncle was really killed because of it, if those people came to his house and found that the dagger was not there there-"
Cool.
"Can you make a call?" She turned to Gu Heng.
"No," he said, "I tried it before going out, but I couldn't get through. Fortunately, I know where his home address is."
It seems that now we can only pray that the client will not be killed before they rush over.
"Okay," Lin You said, "we have to go back."
Langton: "Wait—"
So what should he do here? !
"Don't 'wait'," she interrupted unceremoniously, "We will be back, tomorrow morning at the latest. From now on, go find where the altar they set up, and remember to mark it along the way."
He was assigned a task out of nowhere, and Langton's lips moved unwillingly for a long time, but he didn't dare to say a word of protest.
Langton hung his head listlessly, Lin Youquan took it as his acquiescence. She was the first to walk to the side of the road and opened the rear door.
Geng Qinghe got into the front of the co-pilot, looked back for the last time, and saw Langton wandering around dejectedly. After getting into the car, he couldn't help asking: "Can he find it?"
"Who knows," Lin You raised her eyebrows, "it's luck."
He must have been staying in this forest all the time, but he didn't even know where the altar was for such a long time, so looking for it now could only be said to be a stroke of luck.
Lin You was very suspicious of his ability to do things, especially after finding out that he was splashed on the summoning array for the first time, and he didn't remember how to waterproof it the second time he drew the array.
Look at the rip girl, after a pair of scissors were run over, she immediately learned from the pain and prepared a full windbreaker-it's really a ghost.
Anyway, she didn't really point to him to look for it. At worst, she would ask others for help when she came back.
She slipped a card into the card holder.
The car drove smoothly, but the speed was not slow at all. Gu Heng was steering the steering wheel, and the trees on both sides of the road swished behind him. None of them spoke, and they only thought about when they would arrive.
Lin You didn't look at her watch, and she couldn't tell how long it had been. On both sides of the road, the trees gradually thinned out. They had already driven into the edge of the city, and Lin You subconsciously glanced back.
It was at this moment that her movements stopped.
"later."
She said slowly, "Did you see that?"
Through the rear window, a black spot appeared in the distance in the sky.
This was just the beginning, and soon after that came the second, and the third. The three small black dots seemed to be approaching constantly, and they began to stretch and elongate.
The moment they saw their shapes clearly, a physiological and indescribable discomfort immediately enveloped the whole body.
Those were three black worm-like creatures, and it was hard to describe what they looked like—the heads were constantly changing and distorting, and there were appendages with huge claws underneath. On both sides of the body, the rubber-like wings continued to flap, helping them to dive straight down.
The goal is obvious.
That's them.
Lin You heard Geng Qinghe gasp, and Gu Heng stepped on the gas pedal.
"I can't go there anymore," he said, "change to another place."
They had already driven into the city, and it was too late to change lanes in a hurry. Seeing those guys getting closer and closer, Lin You, who was facing the rear window, directly met those vertical pupil-like eyes—
In the next second, the roof of the car shook heavily, and they only felt that they were shaking with the car.
People outside were screaming. Gu Heng slammed on the accelerator and narrowly avoided the oncoming vehicle when passing the intersection. He turned the steering wheel, and the powerful inertia directly threw the creature that hit the roof of their car out.
However, the good times didn't last long, and within half a minute, without even giving him a chance to breathe a sigh of relief, the other one bumped into it with greater force than before.
Its claws were tightly buckled into the roof of the car, and Lin You saw with his own eyes a small lump bulge on the top of his head. One second before the iron sheet was about to be scratched, Gu Heng repeated the old trick and wanted to use that method to get rid of it.
This time it wasn't so easy, they walked through three or four streets before forcing the poisonous snake with wings and claws to crash into a tree with a flick of its tail.
Even though she was in the car, Lin You was sure that she heard the sound of wood breaking. When he raised his head again, he saw the dense bumps on it, which was enough to show that the opponent had just barely broken through the car's defense line.
This is clearly untenable.
She realized what Gu Heng meant by "change a place".
Sure enough, when passing the next intersection, the car slowed down and drove towards the side of the road.
"I'll count one, two, three," he said, "rush in, and lock the door."
He was referring to a small building sandwiched between shops facing the street, with a garage and a small door next to the garage on the first floor, and a staircase behind the door leading to the second floor with the sign of such-and-such firm—no doubt theirs. The one I mentioned earlier, run by "Gu Heng".
"Give me the key." Lin You said.
Gu Heng looked at her, and within two seconds, a silver light flashed across the air. Lin You reached out to grab the keys he threw over, and with the other hand grabbed the handle of the car door.
It would be best if she could get rid of him, Lin You looked at the sky and thought, but she couldn't face Gang in the air.
If you have to say it, Aretha can be counted as one. But I don't know if this is just the vanguard, if there are still...
So, if you can dodge it, dodge it, if you really can't—
She listened carefully to Gu Heng's voice, and as soon as the word "three" came out, she immediately pushed open the door and rushed straight towards the office.
Behind him was the sound of opening and closing the car door, and Lin You couldn't care less. Those poisonous snake-like creatures chasing the car had no doubt noticed their movements, their fangs and sharp claws bit and grabbed at several people at the same time.
Lin You turned sideways in time, allowing the fangs dripping with venom to brush past her shoulders. She gripped the doorknob, quickly calmed down her emotions, and stabbed it into the keyhole accurately, hoping to hurry up while twisting the key in her hand vigorously.
Finally, as soon as she heard the "click", she dodged directly into the porch, and threw the pulled key back with her backhand.
Geng Qinghe, who was the last to enter the door, barely grabbed the keychain that had slipped onto his fingertips. He was panting heavily, his fingers were shaking, and he had to press his shoulders against the door panel. The key slid a few times on the edge of the lock, and finally inserted it in, locking the door behind it.
That is, in the next instant, the entire door frame trembled with the violent impact. The screams of the monsters outside were loud and piercing, but they couldn't break through the anti-theft door for a while.
Lin You took a step back, turned her head and stepped on the steps of the stairs - there was really not much space left on the first floor, and it was not good for them to squeeze in such a narrow place.
Gu Heng and Geng Qinghe rushed up to the second floor behind her.
But once they saw the scene upstairs, the three of them froze for a moment.
Lin You hadn't been here before, so naturally she didn't know what it was supposed to be like—but at least she could tell from the reactions of the two of them that it wouldn't be such a scene where all the drawers were on the side and the documents were turned over in a mess.
However, there was no time left for them to think about what was going on.
Seeing that the three winged "worms" seemed to have noticed it, they gave up besieging the iron gate downstairs and went up.
Then, he faced them squarely through the balcony window.
Geng Qinghe muttered something, but Lin You didn't catch it.
She pressed her hand on the sleeve, ready to move at any time. Because almost at the same time as they "aligned" their eyes, their excited and shrill neighing sound seemed to shake the air through the glass.
Seeing that the monsters were about to flap their wings and crash into the floor-to-ceiling windows—
"Light!"
Seeing the real faces of these monsters, the skull suddenly remembered something, and shouted loudly: "Illuminate them with light!"
Its words had too much effect, Lin You caught sight of the emergency lighting that had been kicked to the wall in the messy office, "Your side!"
Geng Qinghe was the closest, he scrambled and grabbed the heavy lamp. The strong white light made people dizzy, but even so, he still tried his best to shine the light on several monsters from left to right.
The moment the light flickered past, the monsters seemed to be choked to death—they screamed and fled in all directions. But after hovering in the sky for a few more minutes, seeing that the light showed no signs of weakening, it finally disappeared into the sky unwillingly.
It took Geng Qinghe another half a day before he dared to turn off the light, his heart beating steadily like a drum.
"That… "
He sensed recognition from the skull when it shouted, "You know what that is?"
Skull: "...cough."
It also just remembered.
"'Hunter of Terror'."
it briefly.
"Afraid of light, these ones are smaller than ordinary ones, so I guess they are not very strong..."
So it will be driven away by the level of light of the emergency light.
"If I had known this weakness, I wouldn't have to rush away... It's a pity." Lin You sighed, and she looked around the office, "It would be great if there was a net bag."
Maybe one or two can be caught with the light.
Geng Qinghe: "..."
? ? ?
Big brother, what kind of dangerous idea are you thinking, big brother? !
What Gu Heng paid attention to was something else.
"Do you know who they might serve?" he asked.
"It's hard to say." The skull thought about it, "The hunters themselves will attack humans for blood, but sometimes they are driven by others—for example, it is said that Nyarlathotep likes to use them as falcons use."
"If you use him to explain..."
Lin You looked at the messy offices of the firm, "That makes sense."
Originally, they wanted to find out where the dagger was hidden while they were away, but they found nothing after looking up and down. So he sent his "Falcon" to track it down, and tracked it all the way back.
"drop-"
Looking at each other in silence, a long doorbell downstairs pierced the air, and everyone was startled.
There were not many pedestrians on the road, most of them were a few streets away, and they didn't care whether the witnesses would talk about the car that the monster was talking about just now, but they didn't expect that there would be people soon after the monster ran—
Lin You turned around.
"It's okay," she said, "I'll go."
Who would be knocking at the door at this time
All the way down the stairs, Lin You thought about it, then lay on the cat's eye and looked out.
She saw clearly the person standing outside the door.
He is not very old, closer to youth. His complexion is dark, and he has a bright smile on his face. In terms of appearance, he is not unremarkable, and he is still the type that makes people instinctively feel good about him and relax his vigilance.
"Is anyone there?" he said in a friendly breezy tone. "I have something to interrupt."
Lin You was a little thankful that he didn't use that card when he was attacked by the hunters.
Nyarlathotep has more than one incarnation, and his most common human incarnation is a dark-skinned, tall, thin man with a hearty smile.
—The Lord is at the door.