Chapter 3215: The Haze of Faraines (23)

During the Age of Discovery, some unlucky sailor or simply a cultist brought this book, *Cthaya, the Water God*, onto the ship and tested one of the incantations in it during the voyage.

This incantation brought disaster to the fleet, causing them to encounter a terrible storm, and in this disaster, they were wiped out.

Later, a shipwreck salvage company set its sights on this destroyed team. After conducting detection, they salvaged a part of the ship's hull. Among the salvaged items were a diary written by a crew member on the ship and this terrible book of disaster.

They regarded these things as valuable collectibles and sold them, which flowed into the hands of some private collectors, and later were plundered by the British, and the collectibles were loaded onto a ship by the British.

It was probably during World War II that someone in a fleet transporting cultural relics to Britain opened a gambling game to pass the boring time, and the gambler Jeff couldn't withstand the temptation, losing almost all his family wealth, and might even have owed debts.

In order to deal with the creditors, he had to choose to steal the goods on the ship. Because other collectibles were inconvenient to carry and the difficulty of stealing was too high, he set his sights on books and successfully stole *Sailor Pike's Diary*.

But the theft wasn't seamless and was soon discovered by the first mate. In order to investigate what exactly was lost, the first mate ordered a sailor to check all the classics.

When this sailor was flipping through the classics, he found *Cthaya, the Water God* and learned an incantation from it.

Jeff was worried that the theft would be exposed, so he wanted to frame the theft on this sailor, successfully triggering the sailor's resentment, which led him to use the incantation to summon disaster. The fleet Jeff was on was wiped out except for him.

Jeff was regarded as an ominous person, and no one was willing to hire him again, until Old Siltek, who had woven a series of conspiracies, followed various clues and found the survivor of that year.

Old Siltek obtained *Sailor Pike's Diary* from Jeff and learned from this seemingly complete and true sailor's diary the so-called correct way to deal with that kind of disaster, which was not to listen, not to look, and not to feel.

But I'm afraid this method is wrong.

Jeff clearly held something back.

First of all, Pike's team was wiped out. This diary might have been salvaged, rather than passed down from the person himself, which means the way he summarized to get through the disaster is highly likely to be wrong.

There is also a lot of evidence, the most obvious of which is that the ending of the diary might be forged. It was someone who imitated Pike's handwriting and wrote a perfect ending to mislead others into being fooled.

Secondly, Old Siltek only knew that Jeff had the sailor's diary in his hands, but he had no idea that the heavyweight player *Cthaya, the Water God* was also in his hands and had been hidden by him.

Combining these two points, it's not hard to see that Old Siltek should have been pitted by Jeff.

Old Siltek got the sailor's diary and summarized from it the so-called method to safely get through the disaster. This became his confidence. He felt that as long as he mastered this method, he could recklessly summon disasters to add trouble to others.

This also indulged his ambition, making him feel that he could completely use the summoned disaster as a bargaining chip to negotiate with the Church. If the Church wanted to know the correct way to get through the disaster, they would have to come and beg him.

The wrong method made him feel that he could stay out of it and still profit, so he would naturally think of ways to summon disasters to grab more benefits for himself.

But in fact, this method is completely wrong. Those who survived by this method either died, or didn't use this method.

Assuming that the so-called method of not feeling is wrong, how did Jeff survive?

Schiller took out *Cthaya, the Water God*. He and Batman looked at each other, and finally opened his mouth and said, "This book is alive."

"What do you mean?"

"Literal meaning. There might be a cultist's soul in this book," Schiller paused and said, "The cover is also made of his skin. This book can be regarded as a complete person. Can you see anything?"

Schiller looked at Batman's expression. He could see from Batman's expression that Batman felt all this was absurd.

But soon, he should have seen some even more absurd things, and the whole person was completely stunned.

Schiller didn't urge him either, but waited for him to come back to his senses. Batman sighed and said, "Pride told me this thing is very evil."

"What type of evil?"

"It can bewitch people's hearts."

Schiller understood everything almost instantly.

Before, he felt something was wrong, because the encounter of Jeff's family didn't look like it was done by monsters in the Cthulhu mythos. Many of them had obvious traces of being lured. Compared to the ignorant Great Old Ones and Outer Gods, all this was more like man-made.

But in the whole story, it seemed that no one lured them. But assuming this book was a person, then everything could be explained.

It was said before that there are two kinds of cultists. One wishes no one would covet his knowledge, and the other wants to spread filthy knowledge to the whole world. The cultist residing on this book *Cthaya, the Water God* might be the latter.

Taking this as a motive, Jeff might have been bewitched by the cultist. After he came into contact with this book on the fleet he worked on, under the bewitchment of the cultist, he summoned disaster step by step, causing the fleet to be wiped out.

But since he wanted to spread knowledge, he couldn't let the book sink to the bottom of the sea with the fleet. Jeff, with the help of the cultist, successfully survived and brought this book home.

During this period, he might have realized something was wrong, so he buried the book in the corner of the cellar and put a pile of empty boxes on it.

But this kind of evil spirit is very cunning. He most likely lured one of Jeff's family members, letting this person put the feed eaten by the goats in the boxes above his head, and he took the opportunity to pollute the feed.

The goats ate the feed and went crazy and got lost. The whole family went out to look for them, and at this time, the evil spirit took the opportunity to lure Jeff's youngest daughter.

The youngest daughter, under bewitchment, spread rumors of Jeff's family going crazy to the villagers, causing them to be driven out of the village and come to the lighthouse, and finally killing each other under Joker's coercion and abuse until the whole family died.

But this cultist probably didn't expect that Jeff didn't take him away when he left, but left this book in the cellar, and it was finally discovered by Schiller.

And the ending of the diary might also have been changed by the cultist bewitching Jeff or his family, just to make Old Siltek feel fearless, thinking he had a get-out-of-jail-free card, thereby recklessly using incantations to summon disasters.

Schiller took out the *Bible* again.

If there were no accidents, the missing letters in this *Bible* should be the incantation to summon the Deep Ones. Old Siltek used this incantation to summon the Deep Ones and wanted to use the situation in the village to negotiate with the Church.

Schiller and Batman exchanged ideas, and the two's inferences were roughly the same, but they also found things that couldn't be explained for the time being through the elimination method.

For example, how could Old Siltek not have checked that Pike's team was wiped out?

Although there was no modern internet in the Age of Discovery, the news of such a large fleet being wiped out would definitely be recorded in history. When he got the diary, didn't he think about checking it?

And there was the fleet that arrived inexplicably and the figures in the ship's cabin, which might not be Old Siltek's handiwork.

Bruce and the Pale Knight found an empty house in the wealthy district. The water and electricity facilities here were complete, and there was a computer. The owner seemed to have gone on vacation. They used this place as their temporary base for rest.

This house was located in the center of the entire wealthy district. No matter where there was movement, they could hear it at the first time, which was also convenient for them to create movement later to attract the police.

"When are we going to act?" the Pale Knight asked.

Bruce shook his head and said, "Don't rush yet. You can go prepare materials. I need to check something."

Bruce started the computer of the owner of this house, simply adapted to the operation, and then began to search.

"What are you checking?" The Pale Knight asked while seeing Bruce enter the words "Spanish Royal Fleet" in the search box.

The Pale Knight immediately understood that Bruce might want to check where the three ships parked at the pier came from.

After the Pale Knight went to prepare things, Bruce had been investigating news about sailing warships.

Through inquiries, he learned that the three ships should be frigates, similar to security guards in a fleet, specifically used to escort cargo ships carrying precious goods for long-distance voyages.

However, even if they were frigates, they would load some cargo for ballast, but because combat ships had the possibility of sinking, they usually wouldn't load particularly precious items. Most of them were some coarse cloth or minerals, and occasionally some inferior spices.

However, no matter how he checked, he couldn't find identical ships, but that era wasn't particularly long ago, so there shouldn't be no news at all, which made Bruce realize that it might be someone deliberately blocking the news.

It was time to take some special means.

Bruce stared closely at the screen, and after a long while, he finally found a clue. It was a theft case that occurred in the Spanish National History Museum in the last century, where a large number of unique volumes disappeared.

According to the investigation by American agents, the people who did it seemed to be the Church, but because there was no conclusive evidence, and strange events occurred frequently at that time, no one could afford to offend them, and the matter was left unsettled.

The archives recorded that many volumes were lost, which were precisely the design drawings of the ships in the Age of Discovery, as well as relatively precious sea trial data, and some materials from that year.

Because they were all unique copies, the photographed materials were insufficient, and the internet wasn't developed, this theft case caused a period of blank in the history of the Spanish Age of Discovery.

Bruce immediately realized that this was deliberate by the Church. The volumes they stole were likely the historical materials that had these three frigates. The purpose was to cover up what happened at that time.

Even if these three ships appeared safely at the pier now, Bruce wouldn't feel that they had been parked on some small island at sea for so many years and suddenly popped out recently.

These three ships must have sunk long ago. What returned now might be ghost ships, or these three ships were salvaged from the seabed by some mysterious power.

Bruce felt that the Church concealed this history just to pull these three ships back at a certain moment. There must be something they wanted to get on the ships, which might be secrets or treasures.

What would it be? ===== CHAPTER 3216 =====