Shade pushed the door open and entered the stable. The horses, which were originally neighing because of the noise, immediately quieted down because of the smell on Shade.
The horses became quiet as soon as Xia De walked in, causing the two people facing each other to look towards the door in surprise.
The thin moonlight could only illuminate a small area at the entrance of the stable, and the kerosene lamp hanging on the wall could not illuminate the shadow on Shade's face. His boots stepped on the hay on the ground, and Shade casually placed the wine glass on the stone fence of the stable beside him:
"Isn't it too rude to kill someone here?"
"You again?"
Stone Oxenfurt looked at him in surprise:
"Why do I feel like I can run into you everywhere? Didn't I send a servant to tell you that we agreed to meet tomorrow?"
"Yeah, see you tomorrow, so what are you doing?"
Shade looked at the fat man on the ground who was trying to call for help. Ossenfort kicked the fat man with his boot in disgust, and the latter covered his arm and screamed on the ground:
"I was wrong, I know I was wrong!"
"John Watson, since you always claim to be righteous, don't bother with this matter."
Xia De did not have a sense of justice and was determined to stop the other party's behavior. Instead, he asked:
"I'm very interested in your feud with him. Let me guess... He owes you tens of thousands of crowns and doesn't pay you back, and then you find him playing Rhodes in the casino? Or, did he steal something from you?"
“Neither.”
Oxenfurt kicked the man on the ground again, and the latter sobbed and dared not move towards Shade:
"You know, I have a pretty good group of friends."
"My men."
Shade corrected.
"If you want to hear a story, shut up."
Oxenfurt spoke in a low voice, his whole body and face in shadow because his back was to the only kerosene lamp in the stable, and he never put down the pitchfork in his hand:
"He hurt the sister of one of my friends and used the Rhodes debt trap to force others to sell their bodies to pay off debts. In other words, this is legal loan sharking. My friend did not ask me for help at first, and I only found out about it recently."
"When did you become so righteous?"
Shade asked suspiciously.
"Sense of justice? According to you, if I don't care if the family of my men is hurt, how can I do business in Randall Valley? This bastard has been avoiding me in recent weeks, but I knew he would come to this banquet. He wanted to curry favor with those nobles. Look, I caught him now, didn't I?"
After saying that, he turned to look at Xia De:
"Why, you want to stop me?"
"I usually don't get involved in this kind of thing. It has nothing to do with me and neither side is a good person. Once I get involved, no matter who I help, I will become the same as you."
"But if you don't save me, wouldn't that be the same as helping Orson... Oh!"
The fat man on the ground was kicked again, this time in the stomach. He was hunched over and trembling on the ground, seemingly unable to speak.
"I'd like to know, based on your morality and sense of justice, how would you judge what I'm about to do?"
Oxenfurt raised the pitchfork, a weapon that was difficult to see but quite dangerous in close combat.
"Judge?"
Xia De thought about it:
"If what you just said is true, then he must have done something bad. And since he has done legal usury once, it is definitely not the first time. So theoretically speaking, he does deserve to die. But..."
Shade looked at the scene in front of him.
"You want to let the law punish him?"
Oxenfurt scoffed.
“I wouldn’t say that, after all, I have done a lot of illegal things myself.
I mean, even if you want to kill someone, don't do it on someone else's estate. Even if you kill him and turn him into stone and bury him in your garden, there's no way you can leave no trace. And if someone finds out that someone died here tonight, Prince William and Princess Margaret will probably have a headache."
“Buried in the garden… Hela, did I even tell you this?”
Osenfurt squinted at Shade, as if trying to tell something from his appearance, but Shade raised his eyebrows:
“That’s not the point.”
"The point is, you don't want me to kill him here?"
Xia De thought about it:
“You can understand it that way.”
"I thought you would fight me to save him."
Ossenfurt said, and then dropped the pitchfork in his hand. Because the ground was covered with hay, the pitchfork didn't make a loud sound when it fell to the ground.
The fat man on the ground thought he had escaped this life-threatening situation, but the next second, as Oxenfurt's boot stepped on his palm, the fat man's palm was petrified first with a scream like a pig being slaughtered, and then the petrified part quickly spread along his palm until his entire body turned into stone.
"I remember that your hobby is sculpture? When I went to your house to pick up the agreed sculpture, I saw the sculpture you made in your studio."
Xia De picked up his wine glass and said, looking at the stone statue on the ground.
"You mean that one? I broke it. I'm never satisfied with my work, so I always break it and make it again."
As Ossenfurt spoke, he bent down and pressed the forehead of the stone statue. Then ripples appeared on the ground until the stone statue was completely swallowed up by the earth.
"That's a pretty good trick. When you get home, you should be able to take it out of the soil directly, right?"
Xia De suddenly asked again:
"If I remember correctly, the word 'stone' is pronounced very similar to 'stone' in the local spoken language of the Randall River Valley. I'm curious why you chose this name."
"You should ask the ghost about this, not me... It also praised my name."
He stood up and prepared to leave. Shade stood still. When Osenfort was about to leave the stable, he suddenly asked:
"You've done so many things and have so many enemies. Don't you believe that sooner or later, you will be retaliated against?"
Ossenfurt twisted his upper body to look at him:
"You probably forgot that I am immortal. Although I am not a ring sorcerer, I am not an ordinary person either."
“But you can still feel the pain.”
Shad noted:
"The last time I attended the Enriquez couple's wedding with you, when we dueled under the dead tree on the top of the hill, I saw clearly that you were not insensitive to pain. You can enjoy all kinds of pleasures and appreciate the feeling of your hot heart beating in your chest, but you live every day as if it were your last. I am very curious about how you developed this attitude towards life."
Osenfurt looked at Shade with a gloomy face:
"Don't forget to come to my manor tomorrow night and take the Genesis Land."
After saying that, he left. Xia De took another sip of the wine in his hand, and then he felt that even the wine tasted like horse manure:
"Sure enough, when it comes to heart, he doesn't want to talk to me more. He really has a problem with his heart."
Heart of Stone
"It won't be that simple."
Xia De poured the remaining red wine in the glass into the feed trough in the stable, and then planned to leave. However, he took a step forward and turned around in surprise to look at the darkest corner of the stable that he had not noticed before.
"You haven't been standing here since just now, have you?"
"No, I know your senses are very sharp, and trying to eavesdrop on your conversation is impossible."
Mr. Lathers walked out from the shadows, and there was a sound when he walked, because his body was solid and not a shadow of the soul.
However, this is not resurrection from the dead. The sound of this body when walking is too "heavy", which means that the density of the body is much higher than that of a normal person.
"Since you have taken the initiative to show up, has the restlessness of the earth been calmed down?"
Shade asked hesitantly, but Mr. Lathers shook his head slightly:
"No, the situation is more serious. It is expected that in the early hours of Saturday morning, with the northern part of Randall Valley City as the epicenter, there will be an earthquake no less severe than the one that occurred three hundred years ago. By then, the distortion of the earth will enter the fourth stage."
The Guardian once said that there are only five stages of earth distortion, and the last stage is an irreversible disaster:
"The fourth stage marks: All situations that occurred in the Randall River Valley will occur with equal probability in any corner of the material world. At the same time, severe natural disasters will occur in the Randall River Valley, such as storms, heavy snow, mudslides... and some ancient monsters will be revived. You can think of it as fossils being given life."
Xia De sighed slightly:
"It's early Saturday morning. What a coincidence. I plan to deal with the demon on Friday night. After dealing with the demon, can you come to see me on Saturday morning to hold the ceremony?"
The Guardian neither agreed nor disagreed:
"The one you are meeting now is not me, but an incarnation of clay. I can no longer leave the Heart of the Earth. I must rely on the Heart of the Earth to maintain its own stability, and the Heart of the Earth also needs me to maintain it in the end. No one knows that the complete Heart of the Earth was broken when the ancient gods left, and what is left now is the most complete part... ... The ruin of the earth is something that has long been destined.
But don’t worry, we are well prepared.”
"Don't tell me this. In other words, after I defeat the demon, I will go to the heart of the earth to find you and wake you up in person?"
Luvia said that the ritual of the chosen one of the earth is best performed in a place that can directly connect to the heart of the earth. So if it is performed directly next to the heart of the earth, it seems to be the best choice.
The guardian seemed to understand what Shade meant:
"The ceremony for the chosen one must be held on earth. This is the information I received."
The selected candidates, especially the first candidate, always get some information that others don't know:
"Besides, the situation in the Heart of the Earth is very complicated right now. The distortion there is more serious than anywhere else. Even you may not be able to reach there."