"One question per person? That's fine, but priest, does it count as a question, even if it's just a casual question like, 'Why is the weather so bad this year?'"
"Yes, these souls are controlled by other things. They have low intelligence and only instincts, so you should ask questions carefully."
Shade and the doctor covered their mouths. After getting ready, the priest poured some ashes from his unlit pipe and sprinkled them on the remains. Then, he raised his right arm and made the move that Shade remembered so clearly (Chapter 440) -
Slap the corpse in the face:
"Come back!"
The corpse began to tremble like a convulsion. After Shad and the doctor pulled the priest out of the grave on the left and right, the corpse sat up, and mud and sand kept rolling down from its body.
An imperceptible green flame ignited in the skeleton's eye sockets, but the corpse remained dull, and looked even less intelligent than Xiaomia.
The priest coughed and asked first:
"Your soul is not free. Do you know what controls you?"
The corpse sat up at a 90-degree angle and answered in a very dull voice:
"A book, held high by souls, can plan our destiny."
"It seems that what the detective said is correct, but I have never heard of such a relic."
The priest said to Shad and the doctor, paying special attention to using declarative sentences, and then motioned for them to ask questions.
The doctor was eager to try, so Shade asked the doctor to go first. As expected, Dr. Schneider asked the topic that both of them were very interested in:
"I heard that you gave birth to eight sons. Do you have any special method?"
"There is no way. There have always been many boys in our family."
The corpse answered again, and the doctor tried to interpret it in a way that ordinary people could understand:
"That is to say, it is hereditary... But if this kind of inheritance spreads more and more widely among the population, it will inevitably lead to a gender imbalance in the population as it accumulates from generation to generation. Therefore, this special family inheritance should not exist, otherwise the gender ratio in this area would have been out of balance over the years."
He also took care not to end the sentence with a question so as not to occupy the last opportunity to ask a question.
Finally, it was Shad's turn. Shad didn't have many questions, but since he could ask questions, he still wanted to know about Edwards:
"What do you think of your lord, Pride Edwards, the third generation of the Edwards family?"
The corpse did not answer immediately, as if recalling:
"When the lord was young, he was strictly educated by the previous generation of lords and was an excellent gentleman. He treated the townspeople well and treated his family well. It was just that three or four years before the incident in the town, people often saw him secretly moving around the island at night. But this may just be a rumor. The islanders have different legends about Lord Edwards and his family."
After saying this, he immediately lay back in the coffin, not giving Shade any chance to satisfy his curiosity.
"Priest, is it true that we can no longer communicate with spirits?"
Shade couldn't help asking, and the priest nodded:
"For safety reasons, we can no longer communicate with this soul."
The doctor, who was also interested in this matter, suggested:
"Aren't his three brothers buried here too? Maybe the three ghoul brothers who come after eleven o'clock will attack his three brothers first, so we might as well dig them out as well. Ahem, I mean protect them as well. Three brothers, you have nine chances to ask questions."
"That's a good suggestion. Since it's still early, we can make more preparations."
Seeing that the priest agreed, the doctor kicked up the shovel with his foot, and he and Shad each took one and walked towards another grave.
The bodies of the other three brothers were all in similar stages of decay, and their deaths were spread over a period of five years. Except for the shop owner who accidentally fell and died when he was old, the other three died of unknown diseases. But this should have nothing to do with the fortune teller. For villagers living in the countryside, even a cold can lead to death.
Of the remaining nine opportunities to ask questions, Shade asked six of them about their impressions of the Edwards family. For the remaining three questions, the doctor curiously asked them whether they missed their homeland after being away from home, and the priest inquired about the different feelings of the corpses about their souls being controlled.
Shad didn't care much about the doctor's and priest's questions. Through seven questions, he roughly knew how ordinary citizens of Green Lake Town viewed the Edwards family a hundred years ago.
"Mysterious", "powerful background" and "rich" are the deepest impressions of the entire family. As for the rumors circulating among the townspeople, people suspect that "Edwards" is the surname passed down by the illegitimate son of a noble in Tobesk City. Otherwise, it is impossible to explain why this family seems to never lack money and always gets preferential treatment from various policies.
In the eyes of the villagers who had little knowledge, the Edwards family was almost a synonym for omnipotence in the local area. However, the three generations of the family's lords were very approachable, and did not say any dirty words like "first night rights". Even the local taxes were reduced to the lowest level imaginable.
This is also the reason why the town has been able to develop rapidly in the hundred years since the fortune teller came to Green Lake Town until the town fell into decline. In fact, these townspeople are quite grateful to the first three generations of the Edwards family and think they are true nobles.
Although this information was not very meaningful for the upcoming decisive battle, it also made up for Shade's lack of knowledge about the century-old history of Green Lake Town. After asking the questions, the three of them set up traps and rituals under the leadership of Priest Augustus.
The goal this time was to capture the three brothers alive so that the priest could use them to sense the location of the third of the skull. Laplace Klein Howard could not leave the island now. Even though the skeleton was very rare, he would not give up what he had in hand. Therefore, as long as Priest Augustus could get the third of the skull unexpectedly, he would not have to worry about being chased by the fortune teller himself.
In fact, tomorrow is the time when the divination ceremony of the Prophet Association will begin, and the fortune tellers on the island have to deal with this matter, so the possibility of Priest Augustus's action failing becomes even lower.
The three of them worked together, setting up the rituals and traps quickly. After dealing with the graves, they painstakingly restored the graves, and then found a suitable location nearby to hide themselves.
There were no clouds under the starry sky tonight, and the yellow moon, which was close to full, illuminated the entire rural cemetery. It was 11:13 on Friday night, and when the wind blew over the tips of the spring weeds, the weeds were stepped on by a tattered, muddy shoe before they could sway.
Three hunched "men" emerged from the darkness, skillfully climbed over the fence and hedge and entered the cemetery. Compared with when Shad saw them in the burning farm a few weeks ago, the three brothers at this time had become very different.
The most important point is that originally they only had a few pieces of rags hanging on their bodies to cover their key parts, and they would touch the ground from time to time when walking, as if they were walking on all fours. But now they have put on suitable shorts and short-sleeved tops, and although they still hunch their backs when walking, they are indeed walking only with their feet.
The three brothers appeared under the moonlight, and then, as Father Augustus had expected, they walked to the tomb of the former owner of the small town grocery store. They dug faster than Dr. Shade and Dr. Schneider, and within a few minutes, the old wooden coffin that had been buried appeared again.
Two wight liches were guarding the ground. One of them opened the coffin lid and jumped down. It bent over and used nails longer than its palms to grab the rotten corpse lying there.
Suddenly, a faint green light appeared in the eyes of the corpse, and then the lying corpse opened its arms and hugged the corpse ghost, then pulled it down to lie down together.
The ghoul lich transformed by the three Edwards brothers had low IQ but was definitely powerful. However, when the corpse in the coffin touched its arm, some indescribable power related to death immediately made it lose almost all its strength.
The coffin lid closed with a bang, locking the corpse and the ghoul inside. The two brothers outside the grave pit wanted to reach out and break the rotten wooden coffin lid, but the moonlight illuminated the coffin lid, and the ancient holy emblem surrounded by elderflowers glowed faintly, startling the two brothers so much that they jumped up.
Their intelligence was not yet able to understand what was floating on the coffin lid, but that did not prevent them from knowing that it was extremely dangerous.
The two men instinctively retreated away from the dug grave. Before they were ready for the next move, the taller corpse ghost on the east side stepped into the pit on the ground again.
Countless hands burning with dark ghost fire stretched out from the pit and dragged it into the mud, leaving only its head exposed. Just like before, when those ghostly hands touched its body, the powerful strength and spellcasting ability of the ghoul lich almost completely disappeared.
Just like that, only the last one was left out of the three brothers. It hunched over and dared not move around. It opened its mouth and bared its teeth, revealing its blood-red gums. It kept turning around in circles, trying to figure out who had attacked them.
When it looked below the moon, it finally saw three men standing under the moon.
The one on the left held a glowing silver sword in his hand, the one on the right carried a shovel on his shoulder, and the one in the middle held a pipe in his mouth, his robe fluttering in the night wind.
The moon was surprisingly bright tonight, and its cloudy eyes could only see the silhouettes of the three people but not their specific appearances. But it knew that they must be enemies.