All the stairs leading upstairs were broken, and the side of the first floor near the lake was mostly flooded. The cracks in the load-bearing walls were so dense that they looked like they had been scratched by Mia's claws, and all kinds of snakes, insects, rats and ants had already made their homes here.
Although Megan found out the location of the ring, she didn't expect the manor to be in such a bad state. Standing at the entrance of the manor with Shade and looking at the indoor hallway, she hesitated and said to Shade:
"Hold my hand and I'll take you up."
She naturally hooked her hand around Xia De's:
"Although my strength is still recovering, I can still do a short flight."
"I'll do it."
Xia De closed his eyes and used his newly acquired powerful spatial perception to determine the terrain near the mansion. Then he took out the weathervane blue grass extract and dripped it on the tip of his tongue, and held Megan's hand tightly:
"Stand firm."
They took a step forward, and then they disappeared from their original position and appeared in the corridor on the third floor. The weight of the two and Mia pressed on the warped wooden floor, making a loud "squeak" sound, scaring the nearby mice to flee into the shadow formed by the sunlight from the window at the end of the corridor on the rotten and collapsed door panel.
"Space movement?"
Megan looked around in surprise:
"You're only at the sixth ring, and you can already lead people to move stably through space?"
"Haven't you tried it before?"
"I have tried it. A friend who has passed away was also very good at space power. However, she was much higher level than you, and she usually only relied on space power when teleporting over long distances."
The person she was talking about was most likely Miss Sylvia’s teacher.
"You're really not..."
The beautiful eyes looked at Xia De again, and Xia De answered the question again:
"Ms. Pharmacist, I am really not the chosen one. I am sure of that."
Walking on the creaking floor to the master bedroom, Xia De lifted up the moldy bed, held down Xiaomia who was calling out to the snake, burned the snake's nest under the mattress with fire, and then lifted up the floor, and indeed found the secret compartment under the floor.
“It went better than I thought.”
"What did you expect to encounter?"
The sorceress asked curiously:
"I did so much research in the early stages, it would be strange if it didn't go well, right?"
"Because I have something that I usually need... It's not important."
Count Gaiman, who passed away fifty years ago, was very careful in his work. He placed the items in the secret compartment in a metal box the size of two palms, so they were preserved relatively intact.
The box could no longer be opened due to rust, but in the face of power, it didn't matter. Shade opened the box and saw the ring with black and white gems at a glance. He handed the box with other things to Megan and asked her to check it. Then he looked at the black and white gems on the golden ring in the light outside the window, which flashed a strange light.
"The Poet-level relic, the Ring of Mood. White represents positive emotions, and black represents negative emotions."
Xia De muttered to himself, rubbing the inside of the ring with his fingertips, and found a sentence that Megan once said:
The blend of joy and sorrow is the inner interpretation of wisdom.
After reciting it softly, he put the ring on his finger and couldn't help but smile. Although he had many relics in his hands, he only liked this kind of relics with simple shapes and that could be displayed together. Even if this relic was not very useful, he was very happy at the moment.
He tried to guide his own spirit and store the joy of the moment in the white gem, then realized that a more accurate way of saying it was "recording emotions" and that he did not lose any of his emotions.
"It's a pity that I'm in a good mood now, otherwise I could try to see how I can change my mood."
Xia De was thinking, and then the cat on his shoulder nagged him. He turned his head and looked into the cat's big amber eyes. After staring at each other for a while, Xia De took off the ring and shook it at it. Sure enough, he saw the cat's eyes moving with the ring:
"You'll really like it."
As he spoke, he raised his hand and held Mia's tail. If he did this normally, even Shade would be disliked by the cat until before dinner, but this time it was very well behaved. It was not until Shade put the ring on the cat's tail that the cat took the initiative to pull its tail out of Shade's hand, and then turned its head to look at its tail wagging back and forth.
"Putting a relic ring on a kittypet's tail won't turn it into a catgirl. It will only hurt your pet."
Megan noticed the movement here and warned, and then added:
"The witch emperors of the Fifth Era have conducted experiments and found that cat girls are not created in this way. Moreover, healthy people should not have improper thoughts about their pet cats."
"Who do you take me for?"
Shade, who was in a very good mood, asked with a smile, and touched Mia's head a few times. The cat rubbed his hand obediently.
Then, Xia De went to see the box that Megan had placed on the windowsill.
The only relic inside was the ring, and other common items included three rolled-up banknotes - a mixture of Carsenrick crowns and Delarian gold pounds, three pebbled gems - in very good condition, some forged identification documents, an old single-shot pistol, and a palm-sized notebook.
Megan is flipping through the notebook:
"It seems that the things here are all the escape routes that Count Gaiman prepared for himself. Unfortunately, he died before he could use them."
She flipped back a few pages of the notebook whose handwriting was blurred due to moisture, and then raised her eyebrows in surprise:
"It's written here about his 'adventures'. Let me take a look... Oh, it's a cliché story. He goes fishing alone on a boat on a rainy day, then catches something strange in the lake and gets the chance to make a wish. What will he encounter? A relic? A demon? Or something more troublesome - like my ancestor?"
The sorceress made a small joke, and Shade thought about it:
"Many stories have this kind of plot, but he obviously paid a price. I think it's not that simple to fall off a horse and die. It's hard to say where his soul ended up. It seems that although he has the relic in his hand, Count Gaiman is definitely not a ring wizard, otherwise he should know common sense - don't make a wish easily."
"Who knows?"
Megan didn't care about it, after all, it happened fifty years ago:
"Let me see if there's any mention of what happened to him later... No, what a pity."
Although she said this, she did not feel regretful at all. Instead, she was glad that she would not be involved in other incidents. Looking at the smile on Xia De's face, she felt that this morning's trip was really worthwhile.
"Let's go. Now that we have the key, didn't you say you would invite me to lunch? Oh, sir, I don't often accept invitations from others. Please cherish this opportunity... I see that you are not very familiar with the Green Lake area. Where are you going to take me?"
She put the notebook back into the box, and then watched as Shade turned the box into a toy and put it away. She smiled at Shade, expecting what he would do.
Shade already had an idea:
"You better go to your boat. I'll provide food."
"You want to cook for yourself?"
Megan was a little surprised. Shade shook his head and was about to explain his expensive and impractical lazy magic, but he saw two figures from the window out of the corner of his eye.
When he noticed each other, the two brothers, each blind in one eye, also noticed the two people standing in the window from afar on the path.
Xia De sighed and asked Megan suspiciously:
"Are these two the only people in the Mirror Society? Why do we keep running into them everywhere?"
It was just a joke, but Megan took a look at the black ring on her finger, and the black gemstone ring was shining. This was a relic, and it was the first time that Xia De saw Megan wearing it, but he didn't ask much on the way here.
"It's not an accident, it's fate. The ring on my hand was lent to me by my friend with thirteen rings. Although it's only clerical grade, it can detect some traces of fate. The family prophecy says that everyone will be reunited, and this is the evidence."
Megan said, sighing softly, and looked at her nephews standing on the path:
"Are you turning into a cat or am I turning into a cat? I hope to keep their misunderstanding of your identity."
Xia De glanced at Mia, who was in his arms. This cat didn't know what was going to happen:
"I'll turn my cat into a toy, and then I'll turn into a cat again. You can't control when you use potions to turn into a cat. If you want to turn back and the potion hasn't taken effect, it will be troublesome."
"Okay."
Megan nodded, not saying that as a potion master, she actually had a way to end the potion's effect early:
"Actually, it doesn't matter if your cats are turned into toys. I don't find it troublesome to hold two cats."
“But I’d be in trouble.”
Xia De will never turn into a cat in front of Mia again.
So the two turned and left the window. When they came down from upstairs, Mia was turned into a toy, Shad turned into a silver cat again, and his belongings were temporarily kept by Megan.
When they arrived at the deformed door frame of the mansion, the two brothers, each blind in one eye, had also arrived at the gate of the manor. Although they had met in the territory of the rotten-eyed Bali in the city during the heavy rain not long ago, and the two sides were quite unfriendly, they did not immediately fight this time.
Megan held the silver cat and asked the same question Shade had asked earlier:
"Apart from you guys, is the Mirror Association the only one who has hidden the mirror? Why do I keep running into you two everywhere?"
The two brothers also gave similar answers to Megan:
"We need to ask our ancestor Laplace Klein Howard about this. Aunt and uncle, what do you want to do here?"
It seems that they are still misunderstanding the relationship between Xia De and Megan.