When Shade took out the last signed document, Luvia reached out and took another document that was placed on the side:
"Look at this."
When Shade looked over, the first thing he saw was the red seal on the lower left corner. It was the king's personal seal. It was not the "Lion" of the current king Margaret's father, but the previous king. This document was the letter from His Majesty the King recruiting local stonemasons to go to Willendel to build the colossus. Unexpectedly, it was put together with the documents when the Stonemasons Association was first established. This was enough to show the importance of this matter in the Stonemasons Association.
Luvia looked at the letter with great interest, while Shade carefully distinguished the distorted Carsonric characters from the founding contract of the Stonemasons Association. Although the stonemasons at that time could write their own names, their handwriting was worse than that of the foreigners who had just arrived in this world last summer and were familiar with the local characters.
Fortunately, he finally identified the surname "Fleming", which means that there really was a person named Fleming among the founders of the Stonemasons Association. Looking at this simple contract again, the founders divided the equity of the association equally and agreed not to give this power to the people in power. Mr. Fleming also had a share of the equity, and probably after his disappearance, the equity was inherited by others, so few people in the association mention his name now.
"I found it."
Xia De said softly to Luvia, pointing to the name on the document. Luvia stretched her head to look, and was about to say something, when suddenly, a sound of "bang bang bang" came from the side. They both looked at the door in surprise. Someone was knocking on the door at this time:
"Who?"
The knocks on the door only sounded three times before they disappeared. Both Shade and Luvia were sure that they had not heard wrongly.
Shade handed the documents to Luvia and asked her to restore the safe, while he approached the door carefully. He put his hand on the door, but felt nothing. After opening the door, there was no one in the dark corridor.
"Is this... stone chips?"
My eyes caught some marks on the ground, and when I bent down, I found that they were stone chips produced when carving stone statues. Listening carefully, I heard a slight ding-dong sound in the distance, as if a hammer was hitting a chisel rhythmically.
At this time, Luvia, who had locked the safe, also walked to the door. She naturally heard the noise coming from the empty corridor:
"Really appeared?"
Looking at Xia De suspiciously, Xia De shook his head slightly to indicate that he didn't know what was going on:
"First there was a knock on the door, and then there was this noise. It's a standard horror story plot."
Luvia casually threw a coin:
"The danger... is not great. It is not as dangerous as it was in the past."
Traveling with a fortune teller, everything becomes easy.
"Well, let's go over and take a look. Be prepared to fight, and hopefully we won't make too much noise."
Following the subtle sound, Shade and Luvia returned from the third floor to the second floor, and from the second floor to the first floor. However, when they arrived at the first floor, the tinkling sound disappeared immediately.
Fortunately, Luvia was right beside them, and her divination led the two to the courtyard behind the Stonemasons Guild building, and then they entered the stone statue warehouse in the north, which was also the warehouse that Shad and the playwright went to this afternoon.
The door of the warehouse was tightly closed. After Shade unlocked it, he saw that it was pitch black inside. It was indeed a bit scary, just as the middle-aged stonemason had said. For a normal person, it would be best not to go in, otherwise it would be a standard horror story. But for Shade and Luvia, there was no need to worry about ghosts.
The two walked in together, but after walking around they saw nothing. So they could only leave from the door in disappointment, and even remembered to lock the warehouse from the outside.
"Oh, I was so scared. I was almost discovered."
An old man's sigh was heard in the dark warehouse, and a faint orange-yellow light appeared. The fire coming from the middle of the warehouse illuminated a small area inside the warehouse.
The light did not come from gas lamps or candles, but from a coal stove that someone had set up in the warehouse.
At this moment, a huge shadow was projected onto the wall of the warehouse by the light from the stove, and the owner of the shadow was an old man with a bandage on his forehead, wearing dark blue overalls and half-white hair, who was carving a stone statue next to the lit coal stove.
He seemed to be working on a standing statue. The body of the statue had been almost carved, except for the face, which had no facial features.
The old man put down his hammer and chisel:
"You can still encounter such a thing after you die. The young man just now actually looks more terrifying than the exorcist priest of the church last year."
He muttered softly, and then suddenly noticed the sound of stones rubbing against the ground. He was startled and subconsciously showed a look of fear, and then realized that he had died last autumn:
"I am also a ghost, who is afraid of who?"
Although this comforted himself, the old soul was still a little scared. He nervously observed his surroundings and finally found something unusual. At the edge of the fire of the charcoal stove that appeared with his own soul, there was a stone statue that he had never seen in this warehouse.
It was an angel statue, but the statue looked very strange. Normal angel statues would stretch their bodies to show divinity and kindness, but this angel statue had its wings curled up and its body hunched, and even covered its eyes with its hands.
The old stonemason was quite sure that this was definitely not something from the Stonemason Association. Then, the horror legend he had heard from other old people in his childhood appeared in his memory:
"The Weeping Angel? The protagonist of a horror story that can petrify any living thing!"
Although he didn't know whether the rumored monster was also effective against souls, he still followed the experience of the elders, covered his face with his hands, and squatted with his back to the fire. He didn't hear any sound for a long time, and just when he wanted to take a peek behind him, he heard footsteps.
"Footsteps? Not the statue?"
The old stonemason's soul turned around and saw Shade looking at him inquiringly. He was frightened and took two steps back, then he thought again that he was the dead soul:
"Young man, hurry up! There's a scary monster here!"
The old stonemason kindly reminded him, and Xia De thought about it:
"Is this what you are talking about?"
He covered his face again. The old stonemason looked at him in astonishment, realizing that he had fallen into a trap:
"That girl obviously went out with you!"
"Of course it's an illusion."
Xia De said lightly:
"Don't leave here, I'll call my companions in and we can talk. Don't leave, I know you are here, you can't escape."
When Shade and Luvia walked along the path between the statues and returned to the center of the warehouse, the old stonemason's soul was carving the statues again. Although the old man looked like a physical body, Shade and Luvia saw that he was actually a ghost. However, this was just the soul of an ordinary person. Although he had some special means and was good at hiding, he was not even an evil spirit. Using sound to attract the two people and control the statues here was the best he could do.
When the two of them stood around the fire, the old man stopped his work and put the hammer and chisel on the cart beside him. He stared at his work, his cloudy eyes shining in the firelight:
"You caught me, but I still have to say this - young men, stealing is wrong."
The soul turned its head to look at the two people. The "turn" here really turned its head. Only the head moved, and the body and neck did not move:
"If you just took other valuables, I wouldn't knock on the door to warn you, but you shouldn't touch the things in the safe. That's the foundation of the association - so I'm not an evil spirit, please don't destroy me."
"We are not here to destroy you. Just as you said, you are not an evil spirit. I also want to make it clear that we are not thieves. You see, we didn't take anything."
Xia De spread his hands to indicate that he was empty-handed:
"In fact, we came here just to take a look at the documents, not to see their value."
"Yes, sir, if we are bad people, there are ways to directly torture the soul to get the answer."
Luvia also said, and the old stonemason nodded and turned to look at the stone statue he had carved. Interestingly, the stone statue and the fire were also part of his soul, and were the special abilities of this spirit:
"It's good that you didn't steal anything. If you didn't steal anything, you have nothing to do with me."
The door of the warehouse in the distance creaked, and he wanted Shade and Luvia to leave. But neither of them moved, so Shade asked curiously:
"You are the founder of the Society, Mr. Fleming?"
"Oh, no, young man, you got the wrong person. How could I be such a great person?"
The old man shook his head hurriedly:
"My name is John Humphrey, a common stonemason. Last fall..."
"Last fall, during the earthquake, I was..."
Shade suddenly realized why the soul was still here after the church's exorcism ceremony. Obviously, this was not an evil spirit. Even among all the souls Shade had seen, this was the most sober soul. The church probably found traces of this soul, but if it was not an evil spirit, the church would not intervene too much. After all, souls that reside in the material world will leave sooner or later.
He reached out to touch the mithril cube in his pocket, and when he found no response, he remembered that Thomas Granger left the cube nearly seventy years ago, and the soul in front of him died just last year.
"Yes, I was the unlucky person who was crushed to death by my most perfect sculpture during the earthquake last year. Young man, do you know me?"
The old man was a little surprised:
"Did you hear what the people in the association said? It's really great that people still remember it."
He smiled with satisfaction.