After confirming the thickness of the stone wall, Shade did not continue to expend his own spirit to use Felianna's Witch Light to melt the stone wall. Instead, he removed the cloth wrapped around the scabbard and inserted the Night Watchman into the hole melted in his arm.
Take a deep breath, draw the elements and spirits to the sword of the Night Watchman:
"Witch's Light!"
Instantly, golden light radiated from the sword, and the diffused light instantly melted a large hole in the stone wall. Shade pulled the Night Watcher back with satisfaction, then bent down and drilled into the space behind the stone wall through the unusually smooth hole.
The space behind the stone wall seemed to have been dug out by some external force, and the interior was not a regular shape. It seemed that the original users here only used it as a temporary base.
The total area was about the size of the interior space of three or four wardrobes. Xia De squatted down immediately after entering, and checked the ground in the light of sunset coming in from behind. Sure enough, he found messy footprints in the thick dust on the ground.
He reached out and touched the dust on the ground:
"The dust means that no one has been here for many years. It is basically confirmed that this is the base, or safe house, of Halder Ondiba, the previous owner of the Arrow more than ten years ago. The footprints should be left by the two people who visited Rust Alley fifteen days ago..."
He straightened up and squinted his eyes to look at the space behind the stone wall illuminated by the light of dusk. The footprints on the ground were extremely messy. Although Xia De called himself a detective, he did not have the reasoning ability to restore the other party's entire movement trajectory from such messy footprints.
He only knew that the footprints belonged to two people, and that these two people had stepped on almost all the ground here.
In this small space, besides dust, there is a spliced iron bed and a storage rack made of welded iron pipes. But there is nothing on either the bed or the storage rack. But judging from the traces of dust, there should have been a mattress on the bed, and there should have been seven or eight kinds of sundries on the storage rack.
I think it was the two people who arrived here earlier than Xia De and took all those things away.
They did more than that. When Xia De turned on the light of his fingertips, he saw that there were very fine holes everywhere on the side walls of this narrow space, about the size of a knitting needle. After checking, he found that these were also traces left recently. Xia De immediately understood that the two were looking for other hidden spaces here.
Although he did not see the scene, Shade could almost imagine one of them standing in the middle of the ground, waving his hand, letting the spikes shoot out to the surroundings, and then confirming one by one whether the spikes had penetrated into other holes.
"Why would these people be so ruthless? Couldn't they leave me some clues?"
Xia De complained in his heart with dissatisfaction, and then checked the only remaining iron bed and heavy storage rack with a fluke mentality.
Both of them were made of metal, and although there were some scratches on the surface, those scratches were not codes. He spent ten minutes conducting a more detailed inspection, and then had to admit that there were no clues about these two items. The two people who arrived before him did not take these two items away simply because they were too heavy.
"The clues are interrupted again."
The only thing Shade knew was that the iron bed and the storage rack were made from the same batch of steel. This left Shade with the possibility of taking them away and then commissioning Father Nobel to find a blacksmith or an expert in the steel smelting industry in the city to identify the origin of the steel, and then investigate the specific location where the steel was sold more than ten years ago, hoping to find the next clue by restoring Halder Ondiba's movements many years ago.
Just thinking about it, Xia De knew that this was definitely not something that could be resolved in a few days. He had so many things on his hands right now that he didn't have the energy to drag out the second trial of the Lady of the Lake for so long:
"Although I'm not a very good detective, I do have other avenues of investigation."
What else do you think of
she asked gently.
"I'm not sure whether Halder Ondiba used this place as a warehouse or a temporary base. But the furnishings here are too sparse. He created such a hidden and safe space, but he didn't think of making more use of it. For example, if I were him, I would definitely hide more daily necessities here."
Xia De turned his back to the setting sun at the cave entrance and looked at this place:
"Even a ring sorcerer who walked out of the Pantanal Swamp would not care about the quality of his life. I can't imagine any reason not to store clothes, food, or even luxurious sugar and tobacco here. The things originally placed on the shelf were all bottles and jars, and this bed has not caused metal deformation due to uneven stress for more than ten years, so there must be nothing here that I expected. Considering that the last battle between the church and Halder Ondiba happened unexpectedly, the other party could not have moved the supplies here in advance, so there is something wrong with this place."
Any questions
"This place doesn't look like a real base, it's more like a disguise, a disguise that makes others think this is a safe house."
Xia De twisted his neck to look at the dazzling sunlight outside the cave. The sunset had already fallen below the horizon, and half of the dim sun was slowly falling on the river bank. The fog made the sunset appear strangely colored, and the sun would set completely in about half an hour:
"The two people who arrived earlier than me didn't know about this place after getting clues from Rust Alley. According to what the white mouse said, they already knew about this place. In other words, Halder Ondiba didn't strictly keep this place a secret, and a secret base that is not strictly kept secret has no value at all."
You mean this isn't Halder Ondiba's secret base at all
"Yes, this is just a 'secret base' that he tricked his enemies and even his companions into thinking was his own."
Is it of any use to you to know this
"I just have an inference. If this place serves as a cover, then there must be something to be covered up, which is the real secret base or safe house."
Xia De bent down and walked out of the cave, took a deep breath, and used the breath of time to restore the cave that was melted by the witch's light.
"I have heard of a peculiar tomb. In order to prevent the tomb from being robbed, the tomb owner would set up a fake tomb on top of his own tomb and place some burial objects. When the tomb robbers dug into the fake tomb and saw the burial objects, they would think they had found the real tomb and would stop digging."
Shade thought to himself, stepping on the muddy riverbank and looking at both sides of the riverbank. The blood-sucking worms poked out their wriggling bodies from the mud, and then burrowed into the mud again. The thick black boots were not afraid of the mud. Shade changed his outfit in time for the winter.
"It has been confirmed that there is no other space behind the top, bottom, left, right, front, and back walls of this fake base. So let me make a hypothesis. Could it be that Halder Ondiba hid the real base not far from the fake base, using the principle of 'darkness under the lamp' to protect his secrets?"
He placed his hand on the restored stone wall and walked to the left, keeping his palm on the stone wall on the river bank until he walked 200 steps and confirmed that he had found nothing before returning to the starting point.
Then he put his hand on the restored stone wall again, and this time he chose to walk to the right. When he reached the 129th step, "her" voice finally appeared:
The traces of the elements are very thin.
Shade smiled:
“It seems like I’ve really found it.”
He drew his sword and stabbed it into the stone wall. The triggered defense immediately released a curse that was powerful enough to freeze the soul, but under the power of the angel-level relic sword, the curse could not even be transmitted to Shad's hands.
The long sword continued to move forward, and several green vines emerged from the holes melted by the golden light, shooting towards Shade's throat like daggers. They appeared silently and very quickly, and when Shade's eyes caught the traces of green, the vines had almost touched his skin.
The Night Watcher took the initiative to turn his wrist and crushed the vines hidden in the stone wall. Although the broken vines still hit Shade, they only left a faint red mark on his neck. However, the poison penetrated into Shade's skin. As the Night Watcher in his hand shook violently, large purple marks spread from the neck to the whole body.
At the same time, the light of the setting sun dimmed in Shad's vision. In his surprised expression, a huge and terrifying colossus appeared in the darkness. The colossus, made up of countless plant residues, slowly stretched out its "hand" to him. In the dark scene, the evil creature of Pantanal was about to...
The flames shot up into the sky, and the giant in the darkness was ignited, and then disappeared with a piercing wail. The light reappeared in his field of vision, and Shade, who was in a trance, realized that he was still standing in front of the stone wall under the river bank. The light of the setting sun behind him warmed his back, and the stone wall in front of him had been melted into a hole large enough for him to pass through.
"Psychotoxic?"
He touched his neck with some worry. His neck had returned to normal and the poison had completely subsided. The Primordial Fire did not make Shade completely immune to the poison, but unfortunately, the Primordial Fire regarded the evil creatures in Pantanal as firewood, and the poison just now was most likely the toxin related to the evil creature that Halder Ondiba had obtained, so it was burned directly.
"This person is really cautious."
Shade sighed softly in his heart, bent down and touched the vines that were crushed by the night watchman with his fingers. After his fingers touched the vines, the resinous amber-colored viscous gelatinous liquid that flowed out of the vines immediately ignited and burned to ashes in front of Shade's eyes.
He only left a small piece of the vine containing the poison, put it in a bottle, and prepared to give it to Sister Devlin. This was considered a small gain.