In fact, the presence of wind does not mean anything. After all, in this world where mysticism exists, perhaps the fish people are using magic to create sea breeze to enhance the atmosphere of the ceremony.
Knowing that there must be a lot of murlocs and ring wizards behind the hole in the wall, Shad didn't even dare to stick his head out to look behind. Instead, he cautiously stuck to the wall, trying to listen to the sound behind.
But for a long time, only whispers could be heard. He could barely distinguish the voices praying to the evil god, the Lord of the Scarlet Spiral. The voices mixed together, and at least ten people were praying at different speeds at the same time.
Unfortunately, the Bordeaux candles that could make him invisible were used up in the last operation. Shade didn't dare to look easily, so he thought of using the echo of the past magic to listen.
There is no one in the wine cellar all year round, and the only people who speak here within 48 hours are probably the people of the Scarlet Cult.
The magic was successful, but what Shad heard from the cultists was just cursing the Orthodox Church for being so despicable and inserting a team of ring sorcerers in the banquet in advance, and discussing with each other the wonderful life that the fish people would live in the underwater Coldwater Port City after the Sea Return Ceremony.
The two people who were talking even had an in-depth discussion on how to make seaweed specialty dishes.
Xia De listened patiently and finally heard a different voice:
"Officiant, the two humans are here."
The guy who was talking made a gurgling sound in his throat from time to time, and he was obviously a fishman.
Then the sound of footsteps was heard, and the two sides met at the hole in the wall, which was where Xia De was standing now.
"Good evening, friends of the Scarlet Hermitage."
The voice sounded familiar.
"Human, you don't have to be so polite. Can our transaction still continue?"
This person should be the priest of the Scarlet Cult who presides over the ceremony here.
"Of course, the sudden pursuit of the church left us with nowhere to hide. We could only think of a way to leave Lengshui Port as soon as possible."
This is the companion with the familiar voice:
"I originally wanted to coerce Ms. Aurora to get us a ship to the New World, but I didn't expect that she actually had a ring sorcerer from the Orthodox Church with her. The deal is still valid. The Blood Spirit School will provide you with the technology to nourish the flesh and blood of the murlocs, and you will help us leave Coldwater Harbor and provide the poet-level relic fish training ring that allows intelligent creatures to master human language."
A group of people walked into the cave.
Shade understood that the familiar voice was actually Darkness.
"The chosen ones actually got mixed up with the fishmen..."
Generally speaking, there is a high probability of trouble where the chosen one is. The first chosen one, Iluna, when she met the cultists, directly led to the evil god's arrival in Tobesk.
Although the worst outcome of the Coldwater Port incident was that the city was submerged by a tsunami, Shade still felt uneasy when he thought that the chosen one was here.
"If we retreat now and go find Miss Aurora, it will take at least another twenty minutes. And there is not much time left before sunrise. There is no need to notify the witch, otherwise I will not have enough time to get the information about the fishman. So, let me see what they are going to do."
While I was still thinking about how to safely enter the hole behind the wall, I heard footsteps again. But this time it was not the sound from the past, but the sound from the present. Someone was walking out from the inside of the hole.
Xia De quickly hid beside the shelf where the wine barrels were placed, and then saw a man in a gray robe and a hood walked out.
The reason why we could tell that this was a man was because he looked around and actually stood by the wall and started to relieve himself.
Shad imagined the expression on Lady Aurora's face when she knew a man was peeing in her wine cellar, then he took off the ring on his hand and silently controlled the silver mist to float towards the man.
When the mist completely enveloped him, Shade looked around furtively, then held the sword in both hands, bent over and walked in on tiptoe.
About ten seconds later, Shade, with a little blood on his body, wearing a man's robe, dispersed the silver mist around him.
The corpse at the foot has an incomplete face resembling that of a murloc, which indicates that it does not have a high status in the Scarlet Cult.
Holding back his nausea, Xia De smeared the slippery mucus on its face onto his own face. After that, he smeared the mucus on his clothes out of concern, and then he folded the corpse as best he could, used the canvas on the shelf to turn it into a toy, and stuffed it into his pocket.
After doing all this, he stood on tiptoe slightly to make himself look as tall as the man just now, then put on his hood and walked behind the hole with his head down.
The wine cellar was obviously very dry, but as soon as his body entered the hole, the humid air caused Xia De's breathing rate to change.
He had never been to such a humid place. The moisture in the air seemed to condense into water droplets and fall to the ground in the next second. Only a real body of water could be more humid than this. Xia De couldn't figure out how such humidity appeared in nature.
Hiding his head under his hood, Shade walked forward quickly with his head down. His destination was clear because many people wearing the same clothes as him were sitting in front.
In front of me was a space with disgusting moss on the walls, built with light grey damp bricks and stones. The area was not large, about two-thirds of the entire floor of the Xia De family's house.
There was a layer of black water under my feet, and the room was illuminated by the glowing moss on the wall, candles, and densely packed glowing beads on the dome. Under the water was a bumpy ground, and on the ground were rows of stone chairs. Every so often, there was a small square hole in the wall, and no one knew what it was used for.
There were some blurred patterns on the light grey stone walls and the dome above his head, and looking around carefully, Shad was very sure that this should be a small church.
Combined with the conversation of the professors overheard a few hours ago, behind the hole in the wall should be a secret religious gathering place established by the fish people before the Aurora family bought the manor.
After realizing this, Shade stopped looking around and quickened his pace to join the dozen people in gray robes who were sitting on the seats in front of the damp chapel. He chose to sit behind everyone and did not move forward to see more.
These gray robes are also very interesting. There are no patterns on the surface, but the hems of the robes look like they have been torn. Everyone here wears robes like this, which is a peculiar clothing decoration style.
After Shad sat down, he finally had a chance to see the front of the damp little church. There was no statue there, only a holy emblem that seemed to be made of bone, in the shape of a spiral, with a fish head and a human body in the center of the spiral.
In front of the holy emblem, three equally fat old men with severely distorted faces, holding books, were quietly whispering prayers to the evil god, the Lord of the Scarlet Spiral.
Xia De thought there were dozens of people whispering outside, but he didn't expect there were only three.
The book they were holding was the "Mysteries of the Ocean" that Shade had seen in Mr. Jude's safe. However, the three books that appeared this time were all made of leather, and it was obvious that they contained the evil knowledge of the cult.
Looking to the side...
"Um?"
Shade immediately lowered his head because the person in front of him suddenly turned around and looked at his companion behind him in confusion. Under the hood was the face of the half-fish man. After its eyes stayed on Shade for a few seconds, it sniffed and turned around without saying anything.
In addition to the disgusting mucus, the smell of the drowned murloc's scales on Shad also made the cultists regard him as a companion. In this way, although this scale exposed Shad in front of the witch, it helped him in the damp chapel, so borrowing it from Dorothy was not useless.
Xia De continued to observe carefully. The three fat fishmen holding the book were standing at a higher position, so there was no water under their feet. He could see the traces of concentric semicircles spreading outward from the fishman in the middle. The black ink left blasphemous runes in the shape of a seahorse on the ground. Xia De tried to interpret it and found that it was not only a praise to the evil god, but also a praise to the ocean and death.
What he could see was only part of the ceremony. There must be more traces of the ceremony in this small church.
"However, if there is a book that records the secrets of the merman, it's 'Mysteries of the Ocean'... Mr. Jude's book may not be the complete version, but the one here is definitely the complete version."
It wasn't Shad's mistake that he didn't take Mr. Jude's book last time, because Mr. Jude's book must not contain complete information on the return of the sea, otherwise the church should have been able to find a way to crack the ritual immediately after exterminating the fishmen in Old Street.
He continued to look around. There were only three murlocs praying in low voices standing in the damp little church. And sitting on the long row of seats, in addition to a dozen gray-robed murlocs, there were two guys wearing black robes whose faces could not be seen clearly. They should be the church's ring warlocks, wearing clothes of different colors for easy identification.
The only two people who were not wearing robes sat on the far left side of the first row of seats in the church. Shade recognized Darkness's back at a glance, and the person next to him was probably also a member of the Blood Spirit School.
"Besides me, there are four other ring wizards here. If we really have to fight, I can't win even with the witch's ring..."
His right hand carefully retracted into his robe and touched the steam bomb hanging on his waist. Although Leicia didn't say what model it was, it was hard for the ring warlocks to say if it exploded in such an underground space. Those fishmen with strong recovery ability would definitely be finished.
"It would be great if I could use a spell like Corpse Explosion."
Thinking of the two bodies in his pocket, Xia De suddenly had an idea.