After serving the dishes, the servants left one after another, leaving only the middle-aged head maid and two older maids standing by. Leicia signaled that it was safe to talk here, and the two of them ate and talked about what happened in the morning.
"It seems that the Scarlet Cult has infiltrated Coldwater Harbor a long time ago. Even the establishment of the city is related to them. Those murlocs and cultists have always existed in the shadows of Coldwater Harbor, but no one has discovered this. I think the earliest mermaid statues were probably spread by them."
This was the conclusion Xia De drew based on the clues he found in the morning.
“But what exactly do they want to do?”
Princess Leisia asked in confusion. She only took a small amount of food, probably because she was not used to eating too much at noon.
"The steps of the sea return ceremony have been basically confirmed. So what is the purpose of the ceremony itself? The last sentence of the nursery rhyme involves sacrifice, which is very disturbing."
She didn't say the word "evil god" in front of the servants, but Shade understood what she meant. He said while manipulating the knife and fork inexperiencedly:
"This time is different from the one in Tobesk. The church failed once in Tobesk half a month ago. There will be no accident this time. All we can do now is wait for news and your problem."
Shade was very cautious:
"The captain who played cards with me said that as long as you are prevented from entering the red ocean when it appears, the curse will naturally disappear after the ritual is over. This means that when the red ocean appears, you will most likely be affected mentally and walk into the sea unconsciously."
The so-called "sacrifice" should not be to select a single individual, but all those who are stained with the curse will eventually appear in the Red Sea, staggering on the beach, and then step into the ocean together. This kind of scene, just thinking about it makes people's scalp tingle.
Leaving Coldwater Harbor was the first option that was ruled out. This type of curse might break out immediately once leaving the ritual site. As for the relics that could suppress the curse, Leicia already had the sage-level ruby earrings and the Saint Laurent ring she bought at the coastal lighthouse.
After asking for help from the Zaras Academy of Literature, the academy was able to lend some relics against the curse. And Shad thought the safest option was for him to stay with Leicia when the Red Sea appeared.
Although he is only a second-ring warlock who can do nothing, if the curse itself is really related to the power of God, then Shad's presence will make it easy to solve many things that ordinary people cannot do.
"So the difficulty we are facing now is that we don't know how the ceremony is progressing after you drove away the pirate ship, and when the red ocean will appear."
Leicia briefly summarized the situation, while Shade frowned slightly:
"It will definitely be solved in a week. I have a very good fortune teller friend. She predicted that one of the male ring sorcerers who encountered the pirates with us will set off for Tobesk in a week. By then, the curse problem will definitely have been solved."
It rained all day in Lengshui Port. Because of what happened in the morning, Xia De did not leave Sophia's mansion that afternoon in order to avoid the limelight. Instead, he waited for news here.
The moonlight of Shade attracted the attention of the Peace Church. Although it was called the "Peace" Church, its full name was actually the "War and Peace Church", which was theoretically the most powerful of the Five Gods Churches. The fishman stronghold on that ancient street was probably history.
Leicia entertained Shade well in the mansion. After dinner, she took him to the study to spend the afternoon.
She had a lot of official documents to deal with, and most of the adult princesses and princes of the Cavendish family would be assigned some government work by the king. This is also the reason why the outside world generally believes that when the king is old in a few decades, there will be big problems in the fight for the throne.
The study in Sofia's mansion was about the same size as the study of King Larus III that Shad had seen in the Yodel Palace. The walls of the empty room were filled with bookshelves, and there was a desk in the middle of the room. There was a sofa set at the door for entertaining guests.
This is the preference of the current king, he likes empty rooms.
While Leicia was handling the matters at hand, Shad was allowed to choose any book from the bookshelf. Most of the books were related to politics, economics and history. Shad finally chose the semi-official "The Secret History of Cavendish".
This is a narrative literature describing the origin and history of the Cavendish family, through which we can effectively understand the development and prosperity of Delarion.
Of course, Shad still had a lot of things to do this week, and he "wasted" this afternoon reading a book next to Lecia, mainly to find out the follow-up news related to the Scarlet Cult.
Their actions that morning were not tracked down by the church, but the cultists who used the ancient street in the southern city as their base were in trouble. Among them, the ring wizard Mr. Jude was killed by Shade, and only one of the remaining four ring wizards managed to escape.
Most of the humanoid fish-headed creatures that fled from the ancient street were captured by the church. According to the intelligence obtained by the princess, there were at least 300 targets that had been converted on that street. And it is conceivable that there are even more in Coldwater Harbor.
Some of these monsters, which have strong self-healing abilities in water, can switch between human and fish-like appearances, but most of them are extremely ugly. After the morning operation, the Five Gods Church directly joined forces with the Coldwater Port officials to launch a large-scale search of the entire city.
But this is not Tobysk, which is under the control of a large number of troops and police. Searching in this free port is indeed useful, but it is hard to say how much use it will have.
The church linked the murloc monsters, the Crimson Cult, the Sea Return Ceremony, and the Mermaid Curse together, and officially named this event "The Shadow Over Cold Water Harbor in 1853." This means that the cult infiltrated the shadows of the city and has been hiding since the establishment of the port.
After a gunfight with the fish-men in the rain, the Peace Church successfully occupied Kazem Lane and Jude Mansion.
Through the captured prisoners and the documents left in Mr. Jude's safe, the church got more information about the "Sea Return" ceremony. With a strong intelligence network and strong information search capabilities, they fully understood what the cultists hiding in the city were going to do.
Therefore, before dinner that evening, Shad and Lecia received a total of three important pieces of information through intelligence from the "informed sources" planted by the royal family in the church.
First, the exact number of ring wizards who encountered the "Fishbone Pirate Ship" with them on the sea on Monday night has been confirmed, a total of thirteen people. In addition to "John Watson" and "Miss Princess", two of the other eleven people have been found by the church. Through the descriptions of these rational people, the church has further understood what happened on the ship and learned the clothes of the ring wizards who participated in the auction that day.
But those two male warlocks should not be the second chosen ones, because the church is still actively looking for the remaining unidentified people with unreasonable "enthusiasm", and is proactively investigating the foreign ring warlocks who suddenly appeared in Coldwater Harbor since Monday. They do this to eliminate competitors.
Secondly, the ancient text of the "Sea Return" ceremony was found in the Vatican Library of the Creation Church. This ceremony was not the invocation ceremony that Shad was worried about.
"I knew it. How could it be possible that wherever I go, the evil god is summoned there?"
This was what Shad said while sitting at the desk and listening to Leicia reading the letter. He had a relaxed smile on his face. Her Royal Highness the Princess looked at him with her emerald green eyes and said decisively:
“Even if it’s not the worst case scenario, if this ritual succeeds, the consequences will be no less than the appearance of the evil god.”
In the early days of the Sixth Era, when Coldwater Harbor was still not Coldwater Harbor, the influence of the Orthodox Church had not reached here. At that time, there were three different cults in the area, namely, the God of the Drowned Deep Sea, the Lord of the Scarlet Spiral, and the Raging Storm.
The three gods are all closely related to the ocean. While their followers fight each other, their common culture also penetrates each other, allowing the cultists along the coast to develop extremely similar customs and even extremely similar supernatural powers. Strictly speaking, the "Sea Return Ceremony" is a ceremony that all the followers of the three evil gods can use, but the specific corresponding steps are subtly different.
The purpose of this ritual is to awaken the power left by the gods in the deep sea by sacrificing mortals who have been contaminated by the power of the gods after the red ocean arrives, thereby summoning the tide to submerge the city and turning Coldwater Port from a seaport into an underwater city.
The Scarlet Cult did not come up with this idea on the spur of the moment. They had been planning for this purpose for many years. The evidence is that although the four main steps of the ritual correspond to the nursery rhyme, there are other detailed and extensive work involved in the ritual, which required decades of preparation.
The fish people hiding in the shadows of Coldwater Harbor have been carrying out their plans, but it just so happens that they will take the final steps this summer.
This is a truly large-scale ceremony, which is rarely seen in the material world. The reason why the Scarlet Cult wants to hold the ceremony is that since the establishment of Coldwater Port, they have transformed and developed too many fish-like humanoid creatures on land.
They need a new habitat, but as they gain power, the fishmen are bound by the ancient contract their ancestors made with the gods and cannot leave the cold water port where their ancestors lived. Therefore, they decide to call on the power left by the gods in the deep sea, let the sea flood the city, and let the terrible fishmen occupy and live here forever.
"The good news is that this incident is only related to the local ancient evil cult, the Scarlet Esoteric Cult, and has nothing to do with the other two ancient beliefs. So this time the church has to deal with only the fishmen that have been developing and hiding in Coldwater Harbor for nearly a thousand years."
Leicia said, seeing that Shade was a little confused and wanted to ask questions, she explained to the outsider who had only been a moon ring sorcerer:
"Only the Cult of the Lord of the Scarlet Spiral, the guardian of the terrible murloc race, has the tradition of transforming their followers through rituals and divine magic.
Most of the followers of the evil god Deep Sea Drowned God are human ring sorcerers who manipulate the undead 'drown floating corpses'. The followers of the evil god Raging Storm have nothing to do with the marine life population. They manipulate storms and thunder. Therefore, only the fish people would want to let Coldwater Port be submerged by the sea. We don't have to worry about this incident being related to other sects."