Compared to Chad, who had been running around all morning, the two ladies in the opera house seemed a little more relaxed. After all, the opera house did not open so early in the morning.
But the opera house was not empty in the early morning. The actors who did not perform last night had already started to practice their voices on stage early, or were reciting their lines alone in the dressing room.
Because the entire Wilde Opera House now belongs to the Golden Dawn Opera Company, you can encounter actors doing morning exercises in all kinds of strange places.
In the stairwell, Shad met two actresses who were holding wooden swords and slashing at each other in slow motion. The girls greeted Shad with a smile. Now Shad was very familiar with the members of Golden Dawn.
"I have already looked at the map provided by Sister Defulin. Although the Temple of Darkness is in the mountains, it won't take a whole day if you find the right way."
The witch in the morning spoke with a unique sense of laziness. Miss Lathers bent over and looked at the map. Shade held a cup of tea and said:
"If we can reach the ruins in half a day, we don't have to fly there."
After all, the Randall Valley is in turmoil right now, so try to keep a low profile.
“I recommend going on horseback.”
Miss Benanis drew the route on the map with a pen:
"If it weren't winter, it would be most convenient to take a steam-powered boat upstream. The ruins are in the mountains near the Ailon River. Fortunately, the ice is still frozen, and the heavy snow has finally stopped. So, taking the river is still the best way in the short term."
“How long do you expect it to arrive?”
Xia De asked, also stretching his head to look at the map:
"Can you arrive before noon?"
"If we leave now, it's about the same."
The witch said that in this case, it would be about the same time as Shade's journey from the abandoned tower in the Xikar Mountains to the Red Water Camp located higher up.
"Well, let's go now and try to get back before dinner."
"No problem. I'll go with you... to prevent you from getting into danger in the mountains."
As if she was afraid that Xia De would misunderstand, she added one more sentence, which made her blush a little.
Miss Lathers smiled, but did not reveal her thoughts:
"Then I will stay at the Wilde Opera House today to rest. I am really tired after running around all day these days. Speaking of which, Xia De, we did gain something."
She looked at Shade again:
"Some evidence shows that the guardians' souls are definitely not in a normal state."
"Of course. A normal soul, even if it was a ring sorcerer in life, would never be so powerful."
The soul strengths of the three guardians Xia De encountered were all quite terrifying. Although they were not comparable to his, they were also the strongest souls he had ever seen. Moreover, the soul strengths of the three were exactly the same.
Thinking of this, I remembered what Stone Oxenfurt had said at the wedding in the countryside, that the mortal souls of the guardians could resist the corruption of the ancient evil forces. Now that I think about it, he should mean that the guardians have fought against the devil more than once. In this way, the truth about the guardians is more complicated than all the current inferences combined.
Of course, they were definitely not contaminated with divinity because of contact with the legendary "Heart of the Earth". Shade's perception of divinity could not be wrong.
With the experience of searching for "St. Perry's Cemetery" in the forest stream last time, Miss Benannis enchanted the hooves of the two horses before setting off this time to prevent them from slipping on the ice.
Then the two of them set out on horseback from the city and followed the same route as last time, first arriving at Green Grass Farm, then going from the small pier to the surface of the Ailon River, and continuing all the way to the mountains in the east.
Oxenfurt Manor is also located on the banks of the River Elrond. The last time Shad and Stone Oxenfurt had a horse riding competition, they crossed the River Elrond by bridge.
When Shade saw the manor from afar, which seemed to be shrouded in dark clouds, he mentioned this to Miss Benanis. The witch looked at the manor from afar, but mentioned another thing to Shade:
"Margaret has been doing very well recently. After she got the original share document of Guardian Fleming from you, she successfully contacted the top leaders of the Stonemason Association. In addition, she won over a small number of people in the association by assassinating Prince William's old Harker. Although I can't say that I have successfully completed my mission, at least everything is moving in a good direction."
This made Xia De feel relieved.
Nothing happened along the way to stop the trip, and the further away from the city we went, the more we could appreciate the scenery of the Randall River Valley. When we arrived near our destination, it was earlier than Miss Benanis expected, just half past twelve.
After a morning of running around, the two were a little tired, so they camped by the river to rest. It happened that Shade's "Fiona's Household Servant" had two kitchen service opportunities, so the two just made a fire to keep warm and summoned lunch directly.
While eating, Shad still held the note with the stick-drawn smiley face on it and complained to Miss Benanis:
"It's obviously corresponding to the rune of laziness, but in fact this magic doesn't make me lazy at all. If I want to use magic, I have to spend a lot of gems. So, in order to be lazy, I have to work hard to make money. Why is this magic related to laziness?"
The witch just smiled as she listened to his complaints, thinking it was a nice feeling to camp in the snow like this.
And Shade also realized that in fact, all the magics of his sin spirit runes conflicted with the spirit runes themselves. The never-satisfied desire for gluttony corresponds to the feeling of fullness; the sin of greed, which desires everything, requires only loving one item; the desire for laziness, which is unwilling to move a finger, requires working hard to make money in order to afford domestic servants; the most outrageous is the original sin of anger, which hates others and is always burned by fire in the heart. The magic name is actually the "calm" posture.
Xia De was very curious about what kind of magic he would choose to learn if he could obtain the "Spirit Rune of Great Sin" next time.
After lunch, Miss Benanis used a compass to calibrate the direction, and the two of them left the river and walked towards the dense forest.
This area was already a mountainous area, and it was difficult for horses to walk, not to mention riding horses. Therefore, they left the two horses in the forest, tied them to trees, and set up talismans to drive away wild animals to prevent them from being eaten by hungry wolves in the mountains.
This was not an unnecessary worry, because the two soon encountered a brown bear in the woods that for some reason had not hibernated.
The brown bear was at least two heads taller than Shade. After seeing the two men from afar in the woods, it immediately rushed over in a hunting posture.
"Moonlight Wheel!"
Xia De raised his palm, and a silver halo formed in his palm, and then he threw it out. Inheriting the high attack power of the Moonlight Slash and the tracking ability of the Imprisonment Aura, the rotating halo cut across the neck of the brown bear. While the bear's body continued to rush forward, its head had already landed on the snow.
"oh!"
Blood spurted out from the brown bear's neck like a fountain, dyeing the entire snow surface red.
“It’s really a bit cruel.”
But it didn't feel wrong, Shade said. The bear wanted to eat him, and he killed it, which was part of the cycle of nature.
"I also encountered a bear in the Sikar Mountains in the fall, and I brought the carcass back to Tobysk... That was the first time I tasted bear meat."
Shad said, but this time they didn't take the bear's body away because there was too much blood.
The two ring mages were very fast. Although they had never been here before, Sister Daveline's map was still accurate enough, and they soon found the cave marked on the map.
The Randall River Valley area itself has many caves and underground tunnels, so the huge cave that appears in the mountains is not abrupt at all. However, this cave does not lead underground, but goes through the mountain upwards.
The interior of the cave is extremely spacious, even wider than St. Teresa's Square. The uneven cave is surrounded by rugged rocks, stalactites, and cracked boulders everywhere, but it is enough to prove that this is indeed a naturally formed mountain cave.
The terrain in the cave is generally upward. When Shad and Miss Benannis walked in side by side and lit up the light of their fingertips at the entrance of the cave, they could not see where the top of the cave was for a moment.
The snow surface extended to the entrance of the cave and then disappeared. There was a damp smell of decay in the cave. Almost no one remembered the extremely remote "Night Temple" ruins that they were about to arrive at, so many wild animals made their homes in the huge cave. The moonlight of Shade first disturbed a group of bats, and then a few snakes passed by their feet:
“Don’t these animals hibernate?”
Shade muttered again, wanting to move forward with Miss Benannis, but suddenly grabbed the witch's wrist:
"Wait a minute? This is not the right place."
He pulled the witch behind him, and the blonde looked around:
"What's wrong... Crazy Earth?"
As soon as he finished speaking, the animals living in this huge dark cave appeared at the edge of the light. The rabbits had rotten rat heads on their bodies, the bats had sticky wings of birds and moths in addition to their own wings, the tigers had scorpion hooks on their buttocks, and the two-headed snakes were colorful like a rainbow.
"Yes, Crazy Land. It's really hard to find problems in a place like this where few people go. The area is this cave. As for the characteristics of this place, it looks like a combination of biological species... or a breaking of the reproductive isolation of some creatures."
Miss Benanis also understood the term "reproductive isolation". She raised her eyebrows:
"To enable couples who were originally unable to have children to have children, right?"