The lighthouse has long been abandoned along with the island. There are woods around the lighthouse. The grave of Sloss Edwards' wife is 200 meters south of the lighthouse. The tombstone stands in the white fog, and the forest is quiet. In this kind of fog, it is difficult to find this place directly if you don't know the location in advance.
Although this place is far away from all her relatives, as a cemetery, at least the environment is pretty good.
"I don't want to hear your jokes about the good environment. I know what I'm doing is digging up the graves of my ancestors."
The pharmacist looked at the ancient tombstone and spoke to Shade first:
"You can start now. I don't want to explain why I didn't do the digging. Although it is necessary to desecrate the corpses of our ancestors, but..."
"Alright, alright, I'll do it. If you keep talking, I'll really turn into a cold-blooded animal with no regard for others."
He searched his pockets, took out the shovel and stuck it into the ground. He rubbed his hands together, took off his coat and threw it to the sorceress for safekeeping:
"Help me get it."
The latter didn't expect Xia De to trust her so much. She caught Xia De's clothes off guard, put them on her arm and watched Xia De dig the grave.
The sound of the shovel hitting the soil was heard again and again, and the brown-haired lady suddenly remembered the familiar smell she smelled on Shad at the Green Lake Hotel. So she looked at Shad's back in the fog, making sure he wouldn't turn his head suddenly, and that the fog would indeed interfere with the perception of "the other me", then she took a small step back, raised her arm a little, and sniffed his coat.
"Meghan, my dear sister, I really didn't expect you to do such a thing."
The voice in my ear suddenly said, and the pharmacist responded in her heart:
"Audrey, shut up. Let me remember what that smell is."
Then, a voice that was exactly the same as the other two's softly gave the answer:
Megan, Audrey, this smell is diluted by the moisture and fog, and it is no longer distinguishable. The following are three smells with high similarity: the new Golden Lily III perfume (light fragrance) launched this spring, the "Witch's Smell" configured by Carina Cavendish, and the cold fragrance Miss Jasmine Oriental Floral Perfume launched last winter.
“It has no reference value.”
The pharmacist said in her heart, carefully removing Shade's coat from her nose, while the gentle voice in her ear continued:
In addition to the familiar perfume, the coat also smells like John Watson himself. It's not soap, perfume or body odor, but it smells good.
The sorceress's face immediately turned red, which was not very noticeable in the damp and cold fog:
"What nonsense?"
"Meghan, do I need to remind you? Another me is actually us. There is no point in arguing with her."
Another voice said helplessly.
"Shut up, Audrey. I don't want to argue with myself. And since the other me is us, that means you, as a great witch, also think this man's coat smells good?"
"Whether he is a man or not is hard to say."
The witch hummed, and the pharmacist's intense discussion in her mind certainly did not make any specific sound. At this time, the sound in the fog was still the monotonous sound of Shade shoveling the soil.
Of course, he wasn't really just shoveling the dirt:
She just sniffed your clothes.
"I guessed it, but I have to pretend I didn't know."
Xia De said in his heart.
Don't expose her
"Then do you fight with the angry woman? Or do you look at her embarrassed and not knowing how to explain? Just pretend you don't know. That's best."
"She" smiled gently, "she" never questioned Xia De's decision.
With a bang, the shovel finally hit something other than soil and stone. Xia De dropped the shovel, bent down, and after pushing away the soil, a black metal coffin with golden patterns on the surface was revealed.
"Your ancestors liked to use metal coffins? Is this a local custom?"
Xia De turned around curiously and asked the pharmacist. The lady with short brown hair came a few steps closer and also looked puzzled:
"I don't know either. This is also my first time digging up my ancestors' graves... This is a weird topic. Let's finish it quickly."
So she and Xia De raised their hands and cast a spell. After the soil attached to the surface of the coffin jumped a few times, the entire coffin broke through the soil layer and flew out of the tomb under the spell. Xia De's basic spell "Move Object" was not so powerful, mainly because of the pharmacist lady.
It was indeed a metal coffin, with densely packed root-like patterns on the surface, making the metal coffin quite artistic. Of course, Xia De knew that it was immoral and incorrect to comment on the artistic coffin of other people's ancestors, so he did not say it out loud.
"How do I open this?"
After the coffin was laid flat in the mist, Xia De tried to push and pull along the side gap, but he couldn't open it anyway. So the pharmacist asked Xia De to step back a few steps, and she walked to the side of the coffin, closed her eyes and placed her hands on the cold metal.
After a moment she opened her eyes:
"The structure inside is similar to a trap box."
"You're not going to tell me that the pattern on the coffin lid is a movable puzzle piece?"
"You think this is the mystery solving process of a horror novel? It's not that complicated."
She asked Shade to stand still and not get close, while she knocked around the coffin. This sorceress seemed to have the ability to obtain the internal structure of an object by touching it. This should be some kind of secret technique to enhance perception.
“Found it.”
Soon, she found two inconspicuous secret compartments at both ends of the coffin. When opened, there were handles that could be used to grab.
Because it was at the front and back ends, Xia De and the pharmacist grabbed one of them respectively. Xia De couldn't open the coffin lid just now, but now the two of them just exerted a little force together and it was lifted up.
The white shroud in the coffin was still pure white, and lying on the shroud was a rotten mummy. Beside the mummy there were many funerary objects, including gold and silver jewelry, as well as strange things like dried petals.
The pharmacist looked at her ancestor with a complicated expression, apologized softly, and then took the tooth herself. She prepared gloves and metal tools, but when she actually touched the corpse, she felt dizzy and the white mist around her became thicker.
"I lost my sense of direction again."
Shade said softly, holding his head. But neither he nor the sorceress were surprised. They had thought of various possibilities when they landed on the island.
"So, this time, was it because you came into contact with the bodies of the Edwards family that you lost your sense of direction? Or was it because you, as a descendant of Edwards, came into contact with the bodies of your family ancestors that you lost your sense of direction?"
Shade asked the brown-haired sorceress who had also recovered from the dizziness, and the latter judged:
"It's probably because of contact with a corpse."
She looked down at the corpse in the coffin, while Shade looked up at the sky above the coffin. The soul of a silver-haired old woman with a kind expression and clothes very similar to the corpse was floating quietly in the air, similar to the blacksmith's soul seen last time, with the upper body normal and the lower body in a cloud-like state.
The pharmacist silently pulled out a burnt yellow tooth from the corpse, put it in a test tube, and then signaled Xia De to contact the soul.
She invited Shade to the island again just to deal with this strange soul.
"Guide to death."
In an instant, the vision in front of his eyes turned completely white, and in the center of this empty soul memory, Xia De saw a man whose appearance could not be seen clearly.
"What does this mean?"
He told the pharmacist what he saw in his soul, and the pharmacist pondered for a moment and asked the old woman's soul:
"Can you talk to us for a moment about your husband, Sloss Edwards?"
After waiting for a while and seeing no response, Xia De also asked:
"Can you talk to us about your husband's father, Clay Edwards?"
The soul with a kind expression smiled and nodded, as if it had been talking to Shade all along:
"Of course, but I can only talk about that great gentleman with the descendants of my family, and that descendant must be powerful enough."
This is the condition for getting an answer.
"What kind of power?"
Shade asked again.
"At least it's Gao Huan."
So he looked at the pharmacist who was one meter away on his left. The latter repeated Xia De's question just now. The old woman looked at her kindly again:
"My great-granddaughters, welcome back to the family territory."
Shade narrowed his eyes, and the soul used the plural form to describe the pharmacist lady. The "great-granddaughter" of the second-generation Sloss Edwards' wife corresponds to the fifth generation of the root family tree.
If he remembered correctly, among the fifth generation descendants, only the two descendants of Alphonse Edwards, the third son who was suspected to be an adopted son, did not have offspring. Therefore, Shade finally determined the position of the great witch Audrey Edwards in the family tree until now.
The pharmacist knew that Xia De must have heard some clues, but she had promised to tell Xia De something he didn't know during this visit to the island, so she just sighed at this moment:
"Hello, Great-grandmother, I didn't expect to see you like this... What can you tell me?"
"About our family origins, Mr. Clyne Edwards. You can ask me a question about him, but you only have one chance, and there are some questions I don't know."
The floating old woman looked at her descendants kindly.
The pharmacist instinctively looked at Xia De, wanting to hear his opinion, and then realized that she had actually asked a man for help, which was something she had never done before. Perhaps it was because Xia De's profound knowledge left a deep impression on her when she last landed on the island.