The fish training ring didn't fit the white mouse's paw or head well, so Shade grabbed the mouse with one hand and used the mouse's slender tail as a rope to tie the ring. As the relic took effect, the low-intelligence mouse gradually stopped struggling, because its clever wisdom was occupying the high ground of its mind.
It raised its head and looked at Shad. Shad looked into the eyes of the tiny black mouse and could clearly feel the emergence of intelligence from the trembling of the mouse's hair and the "look" of its eyes.
After a moment, the white mouse spoke:
"Oh, you bastard, damn it, are you going to s**t me? I curse you, you bastard, you are such a *****, *****."
Its voice was not loud. Judging from its voice, it was a male mouse, an adult. It cursed Shade who was holding it in Kasenric with a very heavy accent, using words that Shade could not even fully translate:
"The owl I met last time at Fort Midhill seemed to be very good at cursing in Carsenric."
He thought to himself, and slightly increased the strength of his right hand. The mouse squeaked, but stopped cursing. Compared to the owl that Shade encountered in Midhill Castle, this rat in the lower city was really rude.
"Do you hate me so much?"
He asked with a smile, and the mouse in his hand answered angrily:
"I can smell the cat smell on you through the door. It's even stinkier than old John's athlete's foot!"
"John" is a very common name, so the "Old John" here is definitely not the stingy pawnshop owner in Tobesk.
"Cat smell?"
Shade looked at himself and realized that the mouse was talking about Mia:
"Are you afraid of cats?"
"Aren't you afraid of man-eating beasts?"
The white mouse asked back, its tail twitching with the ring on it, its tone showing that it was very angry:
"But I am a brave mouse. Call the cat out! I will defeat it with my wisdom! Yes, I have wisdom now. Wisdom is my wealth and power!"
Xia De suppressed his laughter. With Mia's wisdom, the cat could easily play tricks on this overconfident white mouse:
"Let's get back to business. I'm going to ask you questions and you can answer them. First, have any strange strangers come here in the past week or two?"
"you... ... "
"Except me."
"There were strange people fifteen sun and moon cycles ago."
"How many people are there in total?"
"two!"
"What did they ask?"
"It's very similar to the question you asked just now. If you are willing to give me some cheese, I would like to..."
"Um?"
"I mean, they asked similar questions to you, and then they knocked the poor fellow out."
The unlucky guy is the owner of this white mouse.
"When the two humans left, they chatted about a place name. Yes, that name is 39 Matilda Street!"
The mouse spoke quickly, as if it was really worried about being crushed to death by Shade's palm. In fact, its worry was completely unnecessary. Shade would carefully consider whether to kill any human or creature with the same intelligence as humans.
This is respect for life.
"39 Matilda Street..."
Xia De knew this street, but he had only seen it on the map. He had not even been to Huntington half a month ago, and Xia De had no way of knowing what the two people who found Rust Alley before he launched the Huntington operation knew.
With his left hand, he took out a grain of Xiaomia's cat food from his pocket and threw it on the table. Then, amid the pitiful cry of the white mouse begging for mercy, he put the mouse down as well.
The white mouse did not run away, but sniffed the expensive cat food. It did not eat it immediately, but said to Shade:
"My hearing is much better than humans. After they walked outside, I heard a few more words. Voodoo coven, relics, sacrifice, delay, once-in-a-century opportunity."
The white mouse described that the pronunciation of several of the words was very inaccurate, and it was obvious that it had not remembered them clearly.
"Voodoo? Another member of the Pantanal Voodoo Society?"
Xia De was very surprised:
"How could they be so careless as to discuss such a subject in the alley?"
Don’t you often discuss sensitive topics with your friends on the street
"She" asked with a smile. Xia De touched his nose and pretended not to hear. He then said to the mouse who was about to eat:
"Mr. Mouse, thank you for your help. I'm leaving now. Would you like to go back to your cage, or would you like me to help you gain your freedom?"
Shad would definitely take off the fish training ring, but he could let the mouse go and leave some money for the boss here.
The white mouse stepped on the wood grain on the counter, raised his head in fear, and said in a voice mixed with slang:
"Please don't let me out there, those wild cats and mice will eat me!"
"So, you're willing to go back into the cage?"
"Need I say more? Oh, you, a human who has never lived in a cage, will never understand how comfortable life is to have a stable cage and food at a fixed time. Just like I can't understand why you always like to wander around outside, for me, life in a cage is..."
Seeing that the mouse had the tendency to become a philosopher, Shade took off the ring. While the white mouse was squeaking, he put it back into the cage and threw the grain of Mia's high-end cat food over.
“These animals are really interesting.”
Xia De thought to himself.
Huntington, the wine capital, is densely covered with waterways, and Matilda Street leads directly to the second largest river in the city, the Thompson River. The east side of the street starts at a five-way intersection, and the west side leads directly to the river bank. Overall, it is not very long.
Shad believed that the white mouse was not lying, but when he arrived at Matilda Street at three o'clock in the afternoon, he unexpectedly discovered that there was no Number 39 on this street.
The house numbers on Matilda Street are odd numbers on the north side and even numbers on the south side. Numbers 1 and 2 are the flower shop and law firm next to the five-way intersection. The last two house numbers at the end of the river are 37 and 38, which is the end of Matilda Street.
In order to prevent any mistakes, Shad even went to the pub on this street to inquire and confirmed that there has never been a No. 39 on Matilda Street. Although the street has been rebuilt many times in the past decade or so, the number of house numbers has remained unchanged.
There haven't even been any rumors like "invisible shops" or "Number 39 appearing at night" here, which means that, whether from the perspective of normal people or from the perspective of urban legends, Number 39 Matilda Street mentioned by the white mouse does not exist at all.
Shad did not rush back to Rust Alley to find the white mouse that refused to leave the cage to continue discussing philosophical topics. Instead, he took advantage of the fog that reappeared in the afternoon and left Matilda Street and came to the Thomson River Bank Street where it intersected.
In the afternoon, there were only a few women wearing headscarves washing clothes below the river bank. The heavy fog on the river made it possible to only see the outlines of the buildings on the other side of the river.
“This will also make it easier to move.”
Xia De walked down the dirt slope carefully from the riverside to the river. The city hall certainly would not waste manpower to repair the riverside. The riverside was overgrown with weeds, and huge pipes continuously discharged sewage from nowhere into the river. The riverside was full of mud and garbage, and occasionally there were tin cans and broken kerosene lamps, which might scratch the soles of shoes.
There are probably scavengers who pick up garbage here regularly, so the footprints on the river bank are very messy.
Xia De searched back and forth for several times in the area opposite Matilda Street, and under "her" guidance, he indeed found the traces.
It was an uneven stone wall on one side of the river, located just on the odd-numbered side of Matilda Street. There were slight traces of elements on the stone wall, and Shade judged that there should be an entrance covered by rituals and magic.
Someone must have been here recently, and was so sure that he wouldn't be discovered that he didn't even clean up the footprints.
Xia De touched the stone wall with his hand and roughly confirmed the hidden entrance. Then he carefully observed the stone wall and found a small trace among the normal cracks and stains on the stone wall. If he interpreted it as text, the meaning was roughly:
The great Pantanal will eventually reclaim its lost territory.
"It really is a voodoo society."
Shade thought to himself, and then used the magic of the past echoes to try to find the voices of people who came here to determine how to open the hidden entrance. But unfortunately, after trying many times, all he could hear was the city noise coming from above the river, and the only voice was the children chasing each other and discussing fishing.
"That is to say, this may be a local base of Halder Ondiba, the owner of the Arrow decades ago. The ring sorcerer who came to look for him visited Rust Alley fifteen days ago, but came here again after finding no clues. But that was 48 hours ago, so I didn't hear any sound."
There are no signs of damage here, which means that the first comers probably knew how to open the entrance a long time ago. There is reason to believe that the two people are also members of the voodoo society.
So how do you open the entrance
"She" whispered softly in Shad's ear.
Xia De turned around and looked at the sun in the sky at 5 pm, then looked around to make sure there was no one nearby:
"This is easy. They just covered up the entrance, not the space itself. I don't believe they have this ability. Since there must be space behind the stone wall, then..."
He pressed his right hand on the stone wall:
"Feliana's Witch Light!"
A golden light radiated from the palm of his hand. As Xia De's hand pressed steadily against the stone wall, the golden light melted the ice like a flame, allowing Xia De's arm to penetrate into the stone wall.
Obviously, the ring warlock who used this place as his base also thought that someone would destroy the stone wall violently. Therefore, when Shad's wrist completely entered the stone wall, he felt that he touched something extremely cold.
The cold air and curse followed the palm towards Xia De's heart. Xia De froze in place, and then shuddered violently:
"Oh, it's cold."
After complaining in his heart, he confirmed that the remaining curse had been completely suppressed by the divinity, and continued to reach out to the stone wall. After encountering the curse three times in a row, one-third of his upper arm had sunk into the stone wall. Only then did he finally feel that his palm had completely penetrated the stone and entered the space behind the stone.
He retracted his arms and squatted slightly, looking into the dark space inside the cave:
"It's so thick. Do you think this is the safe of the Carsenrick Kingdom Bank?"