"Shanshan, do you like your mother or your father more?" Anna asked her daughter.
A hint of hesitation appeared on Shanshan's little face. After thinking for a long time, she looked at Anna again and said, "Can we not kill Dad? If we kill him, we will never see him again."
Anna looked at her tenderly and stroked her light golden hair. "Shanshan, is mommy treating you better than daddy?"
Shanshan thought about it for a while and finally nodded.
"That's right. No matter what happens in the future, you will always be on my side. You must always trust me. There is a reason for everything I do."
After Anna finished speaking, she raised her head and looked at the dark dome. "Did you hear everything?"
"Bang!" A huge stone sculpture fell heavily in front of Anna. It was a stone sculpture of the Pope. He nodded at Anna with satisfaction on his face.
"Don't worry, that ship will never return to the Misty Sea."
Shanshan stared at the thing that suddenly appeared in front of her with wide eyes. She couldn't figure out what was going on. This was a bit too much for a one-year-old girl.
"Very good, Miss Anna. We will always remember your help to the Church of Light. I never thought these half-bloods would think of dealing with us."
Anna sat up from the beach chair and looked up at the old man calmly. "You should pay me. My information is not without a price."
The Pope did not seem very surprised by this situation. "Go ahead, but I can't spare any time for now. You know the situation here is very tense."
"I don't want anything from you, and I don't want you to help me with anything. I just need you to give me a promise."
"What promise?"
Anna didn't answer immediately, but looked at the other person and chuckled. "Can you tell me what you are using Charles for?"
"Is there any need to ask? Of course we are looking for the surface. I thought that with your relationship with Charles, he would have told you everything long ago." The Pope spread his hands.
"You've been using him." Anna's voice was calm but firm.
The Pope paused and then said slowly: "So... you want me to promise not to use him anymore? This may be a bit difficult. Even if I agree, Charles may not agree."
"No, I want you to promise me that no matter what happens in the future, you will never hurt him, and you will never let him die."
"Hmm..." The Pope frowned and thought for a moment, "Okay, then I promise you."
"Just agreeing to me is not enough. As far as I know, you people from the Church of Light are the best at lying." Anna said with a hint of sarcasm in her voice.
"So what do you want?"
"Sign a contract, with the host of the revelers as a witness."
After saying this, Anna added with a hint of threat in her voice: "It is best not to violate this kind of contract recklessly, otherwise even your God of Light will find it difficult to get you out of Him."
The Pope's stone sculpture was not panicked at all. He looked at Anna with a smile and said, "Are you sure you want to do this? The last person who signed a contract with me ended up shooting himself in the foot."
"You don't have to make a promise. The turtle-shell ship of the Haik tribe didn't go very far. I can call them back."
The Pope stroked his rock beard and said, "Okay, I promise. Please hurry up. I'm quite busy here. The matter of the Futan Church has not been resolved yet."
Led by Anna, they came to a depression on the east side of the pier. It looked like the ground had been hit by a large iron ball.
The semicircular hole was filled with wooden pillars, on which were tied some people. They looked extremely miserable, with all kinds of mushrooms growing in their noses and ears.
The wooden pillars in the deep pit are not arranged evenly, but instead follow some indescribable pattern.
"Ah... This ritual is really rare. Where did you find it? I remember it requires a contract to involve all the soul fragments of people? Ours is easy, but what about Charles'?" asked the Pope.
Anna opened her mouth, with a small blue spot floating on the tip of her red tongue. "We're ready. Please stand in. I'm sure you know the ritual spell."
Seeing this, the Pope said nothing more and floated directly into the pit.
Anna's slender body suddenly swelled, and her horribly twisted body instantly appeared in place. Her mouth opened and she let out a high-frequency trembling sound.
As Anna's tentacles swayed slightly, all the people tied to the stakes opened their mouths at the same time and chanted along with her, a sound that is difficult for normal humans to make.
Wisps of dust fell as the Pope looked up, and he saw that the dome above the pit began to twist, the darkness above disappeared, and flickering white dots appeared above.
That was the starry sky, a starry sky that would never appear underground. The cold starlight gave the entire crown of the world a layer of silver.
The Pope felt a gaze falling upon him from the deepest part of the starry sky, a feeling completely different from the gaze of the God of Light.
The Pope began to swear, and his voice was also a high-frequency trembling sound, with a phrase appearing repeatedly in it.
If the human throat were to produce the phrase, the closest equivalent would be "Tawil Yat-Umr."
Anna's voice, the Pope's voice, and the voices of the sacrifices overlapped with each other, making everything around seem to begin to distort.
The sea water began to recede, the darkness began to retreat, and the flesh and blood became transparent.
Shanshan, who was standing next to her, was surprised to find that she could see the bones and internal organs of everyone. She could also see the bone marrow in the bones. She could also clearly see the structure of the eye lens, as if at that moment, the human body had become transparent.
I don't know how much time had passed, but everything around returned to normal, except for the sacrifices.
Their bodies became somewhat ethereal, like pieces of solidified jelly, as if something had left along with the disappearance of the starry sky.
The stone sculpture of the Pope began to crack all over, and he turned and looked at Anna with a smile.
"You are very cautious about me. You must have secretly input all the speculations about me into Charles' mind, right? It's a pity that you didn't succeed."
Anna didn't answer. Her body quickly shrank back to its original shape, and she bent down and hugged Shanshan in her arms.
"I'm curious, why don't you just control Charles and make him hostile to me? Anyway, your tentacles are already in his head. If you want to do it, it's just a matter of thought."
"Charles is willing to leave my tentacles in his head because he trusts me. I won't do anything to control his mind." Anna retorted calmly.
More stone powder fell off the Pope's body, and his stone arm fell into the pit and hit a piece of wood.
"Really? Would a normal man really like a monster with tentacles? You really didn't secretly modify his memory?"
"Absolutely not!" Anna's rebuttal this time was very quick and fierce.
The Pope crumbled into a pile of rubble with a smile on his face.
Thanks to TYeee for the 10,000 reward! ! 39+1=40
(End of this chapter)