Breaking through the fog, the group arrived at Cassandra's auction house at 2:30 in the morning. For safety reasons, the dreaming ceremony was performed in a room in the basement of the auction house. There were many rooms hidden by illusions in the basement of the auction house, and no one knew what Cassandra wanted to do.
The room chosen for the ceremony was much smaller than the one Grace and Helen were in. A full-sized four-poster bed was placed in the center of the room, and a burning fireplace provided light—no gas lamps, because the access to the gas pipes would make the privacy of the room meaningless.
The old witch's maids were still making arrangements, and the scent of the "Death Sleep Flower" in the room almost made Shade sneeze. While waiting, the witches told Shade what to pay attention to after entering the dream, and told him that in order to prevent Joey Barton from using the three channels to enter death and call back the dead, the church entrusted the Witch Council to guard the seal on the mountainside while the sealing ceremony "The Trace of the Sacred Tree" was held.
Granny Cassandra and Miss Aurora planned to invite Sister Devlin to re-enter the narrow room with them after Shad came back from his dream, and wait at the seal on the mountainside until the church ceremony was over.
As for the seals of the natural churches at the top and bottom of the mountain, they are guarded by the church.
It was almost three o'clock in the morning. Shade took off his coat and shoes, and lay down on the bed in a white shirt. The witches had already spread the white "Sleeping Dragon Grass" all over the bed.
Under the pillow was a half-section of the Joker's umbilical cord specimen. I don't know how Granny Cassandra got it before the Orthodox Church did. In addition to the "Devil Amulet" given by the doctor, Shad also had three relic rings given by the witches.
The rings were placed in three velvet ring boxes of different colors but exactly the same style, two of which were clerical grade and one was keeper grade.
"One of the common senses of a ring sorcerer is not to carry too many relics on your body, and not to use more than three relics that have an effect on you at the same time."
Miss Aurora said, sitting on the bedside and opening the ring boxes:
"You ventured into the narrow chamber and shouldn't have used the relics. But to ensure safety, you had to use so many rings in the ritual. And Karina mentioned that your resistance to the whispering element far exceeds that of ordinary ring sorcerers. Otherwise, Granny would only allow you to wear one at most."
She motioned for Shade to put all the rings on his left hand:
"This one is Dream Feast, a clerical-level relic. Wearing this ring into a dream, the ring sorcerer can slowly increase the upper limit of his spirit in his sleep. As for the dream into the narrow space, it means that it can slightly resist the negative effect of the sharp reduction in the recovery speed of the spirit in the narrow space. The negative effect of the ring is that there will be a slight feeling of hunger in the dream, and as time goes by, the hunger will become stronger and stronger until the user is lost in the dream. However, the owners of spirit runes such as Gluttony have a strong resistance to its negative effects."
Xia De took the ring and found that it was a golden ring with a small emerald ring. The outer ring of the ring was a spiral pattern connected to each other, and the inner ring was engraved with ancient runes -
After falling asleep, the dream is a feast.
"This is a soul ring, Secret Keeper grade. When held by a spirit, it can add an invisible energy shield to itself. The negative effect is that the holder can hear whispers and easily turn into an evil spirit, but it is not a big problem to wear it for a short period of time."
The Soul Ring is a very beautiful silver ring, and it even looks a bit like a wedding ring. The outer surface has the letters of the Fifth Epoch—
I would like to be with you forever and become your strongest shield.
"The last one is an apprentice's ice ring, a clerical-level relic. It is a relic of a certain transcendent apprentice in the Fourth Epoch, and its effect is very insignificant. It allows the ring sorcerer to stay awake in dreams and have the power to manipulate ice in dreams. But this power is only available in dreams, so it is basically useless except for special situations like today. The negative effect is that it will freeze the soul and release the apprentice's unwilling resentment. My mother-in-law and I are watching over you, so don't worry about this."
The apprentice's ice ring was really made of ice. The outer ring of the ice ring was inlaid with extremely tiny purple gems. The ring was extremely cold. When worn on the finger, one could even feel the coldness running along the arm to the heart. There were no letters or engravings on the inside or outside of the ring, but when the ring was held up to the light, one could see a sentence made up of tiny gemstone particles frozen inside the ice surface -
Please bless me with the power of ice, even if it's just in my dreams.
Shade put all three rings on his fingers. As for the black crystal amulet he was holding, the witches only asked about its general purpose and did not pay any more attention to it.
"Anyway, be careful in your dreams. Don't worry about Joey Barton seeing your face; the ritual will blur your image."
After drinking the orange-flavored sleeping potion and the soul-stabilizing soothing potion with milk brought by Grandma Cassandra, Shad lay down on the pillow under the gaze of the people around him. As the maids lowered the black gauze curtains around him, the fire in the fireplace was extinguished bit by bit, and the vision above his head became blurred.
Outside the curtains, someone was chanting a spell and singing softly. Shade heard the sound of bells and whispers that seemed to come from a dream.
The bed was so comfortable that it seemed like a quagmire that was about to swallow up Shade's body. He felt sleepiness welling up in his heart, so he closed his eyes.
His body fell in the darkness, and his consciousness was pulled in a strange way. Shade was thinking about the clown he had fought with on the frozen lake under the moon. The witches' secret technique pulled this imagination and twisted it into a strong longing, thus bridging the gap between life and death.
"Shad, now is the time."
The vague voice of Cassandra's mother-in-law came to my ears, and a black door suddenly appeared in the deepest part of my consciousness. There was no door panel, and black gauze was swaying in the door frame.
Xia De reached out his hand and pushed aside the black veil, revealing a cold white mist behind it.
The momentary feeling of his soul being torn away gave him the illusion that his shackles had been broken. When he realized that his surroundings had turned into a decaying narrow landscape, the first question he asked in his mind was:
"What do I look like now?"
Still Shad Hamilton.
"But... ... "
Stranger, this is your dream, not your soul leaving your body. You still haven't fully mastered the basic knowledge of the first grade.
As "she" beside my ear chuckled, Miss Aurora's voice seemed to come from a very far away place, as if through several layers of glass:
"Shadow, can you hear me?"
“I can hear it, but it’s not very clear.”
Xia De answered in his heart. He knew there would be contact before he fell asleep.
"What's the situation now?"
Xia De looked around and found that the scenery in the thick fog was very familiar:
"I'm on the streets of downtown Midhillburg, and the narrows are even scarier than when we entered last week. The fog is very thick here, and I haven't seen the Joker or Joey Barton, and I haven't been attacked yet."
"There was no problem with the mother-in-law's ritual. The target should be nearby. Please be careful and look around. We will come back later..."
The sound stopped abruptly. This contact could not continue.
The red butterfly given by Grace and Helen can detect the location of the "nail" at close range. When fighting the Joker and the Count, Shade used a butterfly respectively. Now that the last nail has been caught by the church, the last red butterfly is used by Shade again to search for the Joker.
He should be very close to the clown now. The red butterfly on his shoulder was restless and wanted to fly out, but it didn't reach the point of flying out. The most abundant thing in the narrow space was the wandering undead, so Shade didn't walk boldly on the street. After appearing at the corner of Oak Street in the city center, he stepped on the mud on the ground, carefully stuck to the wall in the fog, and entered the store on the street.
In the real world, this was a tobacco shop, and Father Augustus had even bought tobacco here, but in the narrow room it was just a shabby three-story building that looked like it was about to collapse.
The darkness in the room was unimaginable, with large patches of black and gray mold on the peeling walls, just like the spots on a dead body. Corpse weeds grew in the gaps between the walls, and the lingering white mist made it impossible for Xia De to see the position of the walls clearly at a glance.
There was no danger on the first floor, but the fat undead woman carrying a heavy axe wandering on the second floor was the first opponent Shad encountered on this trip.
Her waist was about three or four times thicker than Shade's. When she dragged the bloodstained rusty axe back and forth, it was hard to tell whether the sound of the axe was louder or her footsteps were louder. Of course, the sound would be attenuated in the narrow room, so Shade heard the sound only after he came to the second floor.
She walked back and forth in the spacious living room on the second floor. The remains of furniture with a terrifying black appearance and a corpse that had long since turned into a mummy were scattered along the wall.
As soon as Shad, who had jumped up from the broken stairs with great effort, appeared, the fat woman stopped. The evil spirit's rotten face roared at him, revealing its black teeth and rotten mouth, and then the woman strode towards him.
Xia De subconsciously wanted to chop the moonlight forward, but stopped after thinking about it:
"Ice and demons..."
With a slight step back, he disappeared in front of the stairs, and then the huge axe hit the already fragile floor directly. The huge force seemed to be able to collapse the entire building.
Xia De had already appeared behind the woman, and unexpectedly found that a rotten pig head was completely embedded on the back of the spirit. The pig head looked at him with wide eyes, and at the same time, the woman seemed to have eyes on her back, and she swung the huge blood axe towards the back with great effort.
Xia De did not dodge, but clenched his right hand. In the dream, there was no doctor's devil amulet in his hand, but there was a devil symbol on his palm. At this moment, squirming black pus spread from the palm to the whole arm, and the pus instantly wrapped around Xia De's right hand, making his arm swell up.
At the same time, the icy power from the relic ring also penetrated into the giant hand, and the coldness even made Shade, the user, feel terrible.
"Oh!"
He raised his big right hand and grasped the huge axe. With sufficient strength, Xia De pulled hard and snatched the axe from the fat woman.
The evil spirit was also obviously stunned, and then rushed over like a chariot with a shrill howl. The black pus swelled again, and Xia De stretched out his right hand and clenched it violently, completely holding the fat woman in his palm.
The cold air spread everywhere, and when Shade loosened his hand, only a lifelike ice sculpture was left. He smashed the ice sculpture with his fist, and the ice and the soul shattered together. Because the attack used the magic mind blast, the evil spirit's shell peeled off, and the dying soul appeared. It was a middle-aged woman with a normal figure:
"If I had known in my lifetime that my appearance was enough..."
She left her last words and then passed away.
"So strong?"
The black pus gradually faded away, and the thick black thread slowly flowed into the demonic symbol on the palm. Xia De's right hand returned to normal. He looked at the palm of his hand and sincerely thanked Dr. Schneider for his help.
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