Chapter 1617: Believer of the Drowned

It was still early, it was spring, and there was still more than an hour until sunset this Friday, so Xia De took a carriage to the public cemetery in Green Lake City. The public cemetery of this ancient city also had a long history, and Xia De came this time just to find a new grave from half a year ago.

The grave of the former grave robber "Hard Ferrero" was located in a corner of the cemetery, squeezed together with other poor people. It could be seen that no one had come to see him for a long time. The grave was entangled with wild grass that had just grown this spring, and the tombstone was also covered with dust.

Although strictly speaking, night was the best time for grave robbing, Xia De didn't have time to wait until night. Confirming that there was no one nearby, and that the choking thick fog could cover the line of sight, he covered the surroundings with illusion, and then skillfully took out a shovel to dig.

When he and Megan were on the island, he had already practiced this technique.

The digging work went very smoothly because the coffin was not buried deep. Just seeing that shabby wooden coffin, Xia De knew he had found the place. He felt the spirit and elements unique to the power of the Angel of Death.

Where the power of the Angel of Death exists, there is no need to worry about ghosts, so Xia De confidently pried open the coffin lid of the former grave robber and found the bone fragments placed in a box from the shabby burial objects such as metal cups around the rotten corpse.

The white bone fragments were about a quarter of the size of Xia De's palm. But the power contained in them was far less than the other "remains of the Angel of Death" Xia De had come into contact with. This harvest was probably better than nothing for Priest Ao Gu Si, but it at least proved that the Edwards family really existed other than the two powerful finger bones of the Angel of Death.

"Continue to investigate, go deep into the secrets of Edwards, maybe you can find more."

Xia De was optimistic about this, but also very confused. What exactly did the ancestor of Edwards, the powerful 13th-ring diviner, want to do when he first found these precious materials.

After refilling the grave and cleaning up the traces of his visit, it was time for dinner.

Xia De didn't stay in Green Lake, but threw the crystal shoe to return home first, had dinner with Mia, and then came to Green Lake City again.

Borrowing the deep night, he went all the way to the casino he visited in the afternoon. It could be seen that the casino's business was even hotter at night. Even without entering that four-story building, Xia De could hear the sounds inside.

At the same time, the casino guards at night were much more than during the day. Besides the doorman, in the alleys extending in all directions with the casino as the center, there were people guarding important places such as alley corners. It was of course not easy for ordinary means to want to get close, but fortunately, Xia De could turn into a cat. And these casino guards were not responsible for stopping cats from wandering in the nearby alleys.

The room at the deepest part of the fourth floor had no windows, so he couldn't fly in directly. But other rooms on the fourth floor had windows, so Xia De cat transformed from the cat form into a red butterfly on the roof near the casino, and then flew toward another window on the fourth floor.

【I thought you would pretend to be a Rhode card gambler to mix into the casino, gamble a few rounds first, preferably get some special cards, and then take the opportunity to go upstairs.】

"She" whispered in the ears of the butterflies. Xia De butterfly felt he was misunderstood:

"I said before, I have always hated gambling. As for gambling special cards with others, that's another matter."

"She" smiled gently, and the moonlit red butterflies that had become transparent with illusion also successfully flew outside the window of the top floor of the casino.

Although the window was locked from the inside, 【Lagley's Jump】 could move as long as it could be seen, so Xia De used space transfer ability to enter the temporarily unoccupied room.

However, this was not the room where he met Rotten Eye Barry in the afternoon, but the warehouse where the casino stored account books. Xia De recalled the structure of the fourth floor he observed in the afternoon:

"The front and left sides of the stairs are doors, the door on the left leads to Barry's office, and there are doors on both sides of the office. The door on the left is that private room, and the door on the right seems to be the one leading here."

He looked at the familiar door on the side wall of this room, walked over in the dark, listened to it, and then opened the door with the "Key of the Door".

Behind the door was also a room without lights. Dark vision allowed every detail of the office scene to be seen clearly. Xia De smiled and walked toward another door on the side wall, but this time after putting his hand on the door handle, he didn't open it immediately, because he sensed traces of elements:

"Investigation? Counterattack? Or an alarm?"

Because he didn't know what the elements on the door represented for the time being, Xia De didn't open the door, but put his hand on the wall next to the door:

"Fossil to Mud!"

His arm went directly through the wall and entered the next room. Then Xia De transformed into a group of butterflies and flew into the secret room without windows from the hole his arm had penetrated.

There was a light source in the secret room. Several white long candles were placed on the ground. These were eternal candles that could burn for a long time, belonging to basic alchemical items. And borrowing the candlelight, Xia De turned back to look at the door, and sure enough, he saw traces of the ritual on the back of the door:

"If it's not opened with the corresponding key, but opened by other methods, the person who set up the ritual will know immediately."

He interpreted the effect of the ritual, and this ritual only took effect on the door, not on the wall.

Xia De didn't sigh at the negligence of the other party's defensive measures, but looked at the room.

This place was indeed arranged like a special prayer room. Those white candles that could burn for a long time on the ground were placed in turn on the nodes of the huge ritual array drawn with blood. However, the meaning of that ritual array was only to make people concentrate, without directional symbols and icons.

There were faint blasphemous elements in the secret room, which meant that a supernatural being had been praying to an Evil God here for years. However, there were no statues or holy emblems in the room, and there were no words on the notebooks and papers placed here.

The only thing that could be called a clue was the wall at the innermost part of the room, which was covered with blood-red ropes. A low table was placed under the wall. There should obviously be a statue or holy emblem here. As for nothing here at this time, it should be that Rotten Eye Barry, for the sake of stability, temporarily put away those sensitive items while he was away.

"The soundproofing here is really good."

Entering this room, he couldn't hear the noisy sounds of the gamblers downstairs. Plus, this room must only be visited by Rotten Eye Barry himself, and the sound he made after entering here could only be prayer, so—

"Echoes of the Past."

Closing his eyes to listen to the past, the first thing he heard was the sound of opening and closing the door, followed by low complaints about the weather. After a while, footsteps walked toward the innermost side, and then the solemn and serious prayer of the one-eyed man entered Xia De's ears.

This was the most critical paragraph:

"Praise the first dead of the deep sea, you are the master of the ocean and rotten corpses, you are the guardian of the mystery of death. Praise my Lord! Praise—God of the Drowned in the Deep Sea!"

Xia De opened his eyes suddenly, and in a trance, on the night of midsummer last year, in Tobesk City, the phantom of the Evil God he confronted while unfolding the maze 【Match Girl】 was about to appear before his eyes again:

"Now, the three Evil Gods of Cold Water Port are complete."

Among the three traditional Evil Gods in the Cold Water Port area, the fishmen believers of the 【Lord of the Scarlet Spiral】 attempted to flood Cold Water Port, but were stopped by the church and Xia De together. Xia De even obtained a drop of divinity from a golden pearl, and that pearl became a gift for Queen Diana;

The believers of 【Fury Storm】 appeared at the grand lake manor wedding banquet during Margaret's visit to Tobesk. After Xia De was struck by lightning containing the power of the Evil God, he absorbed the divinity in the relic and also obtained the 【Thunder】 spirit rune. The 【Thunder Spear】 he often uses also came from that experience;

As for this 【God of the Drowned in the Deep Sea】, Xia De's contact with Him was limited to when he was a first-ring, in order to save the soul of the flower girl's family, he unfolded the maze 【Match Girl】, and under the witness of Dorothy or Lei Qianya, confronted His gaze in the "Divine Radiance" state...

"The believers of this god are mostly active in coastal big cities, or islands, or the ocean, right? How did they run to the Green Lake area? This is the inland of the Old Continent, very far from the east and west coasts."

The cult composed of believers of 【Drowned in the Deep Sea】 is usually called the "Drowned Cult". Of course, the cult members are all living people, but they are good at manipulating drowned corpses, so they are hostile to the "Scarlet Cult" to which the "Fishmen" who are born to swim belong.

And raising and manipulating water ghosts is obviously the specialty of the 【Drowned Cult】:

"That's right, so there will be the smell of water ghosts on Rotten Eye Barry."

He closed his eyes again to listen. Although this was not a church, it was a genuine prayer to a god, so the subsequent listening was not very smooth. Confirming that this was not Rotten Eye Barry's most important stronghold and there were no other clues, Xia De left here along the path just now. Of course, he didn't forget to fill the hole in the wall.

Confirming that this gang leader was a cultist, Xia De could actually report him directly. But this person had clues related to the grave robbers, and even directly related to that island. So, Xia De was not in a hurry to let the church deal with him.

He returned all the way to the Green Lake Hotel. In the night, the interior of the hotel was warm and bright. Xia De asked Mr. Solon Green who was on duty behind the counter:

"Can you contact that pharmacist lady? That is Megan."

Mr. Green was startled:

"She told you her real name?"

PS: Begging for votes, it's a new month, and it's still double now!