Chapter 3162: Finding People and Mermaids

Mr. Mortis said that the "Potion Merchant" had his own herb cabin in the western area outside the city, where he occasionally lived and helped villagers in fishing villages deal with illnesses or injuries.

The address of the herb cabin was very clear; this was a location only his friends knew. After Xia De left the city, he turned into a red butterfly and flew forward. After walking not far along the muddy forest path after the snow, he saw the cabin surrounded by a fence in the forest, with herb fields in the yard and licorice leaves drying on the outer wall of the wooden house.

The doors of the courtyard and the wooden house were locked, and there were no footprints on the thick snow covering the yard, but there were other people outside the yard besides Xia De.

A woman wrapped in a grayish coarse hemp shawl, holding a child wrapped in a small quilt in her arms, stood outside the fence, peeking into the yard when Xia De appeared, as if wanting to confirm whether the herbalist was at home.

The child looked less than a year old, but the woman's face looked as old as forty. Living by the sea all year round caused the sea breeze to blow her cheeks into a dark red like salted fish, and her withered yellow hair was tied into a bun with fishing net thread, revealing the skin on the back of her neck that had been sunburned and peeled.

Xia De did not cover himself, so the woman who looked very anxious and shivering from the cold also noticed Xia De. Even if her knowledge was insufficient, she could tell at a glance that the handsome young man was a city dweller with status.

She did not dare to take the initiative to talk to Xia De, and when Xia De used "Heart of Stone" to confirm that there was no one in the cabin, he heard that the heartbeat of the child she was holding was a bit fast:

"Madam."

He addressed her like this, but the tail of his voice trembled slightly, making this address sound not so formal:

"Is the doctor not at home? I heard that there is a very skilled herbalist here, and I wanted to visit."

The woman glanced at the child in her arms, still a bit afraid of Xia De because of the status gap, so she replied with a guilty conscience:

"The doctor's medical skills are indeed very good, but he is not often at home. My child seems to have caught a cold, so I came to ask the doctor for help."

Xia De then understood that this woman, who most likely came from a nearby fishing village, was worried about being treated as a thief by Xia De, a city dweller.

Xia De walked two steps closer to her, and then, imitating her appearance just now, also peeked at the herbalist's house:

"Is anyone at home?"

He shouted loudly like this, and as expected, he got no response. Then, unexpectedly, Xia De reached out to the child the woman was holding, put his right index finger and middle finger together, and tapped on the child's forehead:

"The temperature is a bit high. Take him to the hospital in the city to see. This kind of thing cannot be delayed. There is a Snake Heart Hospital in the north of the city, and the nuns in the hospital are very good at treating children's diseases. Don't continue to wait here."

He did not choose to treat the child directly, but after giving advice, he grabbed a handful of change from his pocket and stuffed it into the woman's hand holding the child, and then, ignoring the woman's astonishment and surprise, walked away along the forest path.

Of course, he didn't really leave. After walking a distance, he entered the forest with higher terrain north of the road, approached the herbalist's cabin again, and entered the interior using "Lagley's Leap" just like before.

There were no valuable clues in the house on the ground, and this time when Xia De tried to invade the basement, he actually encountered slight spatial obstruction. That was ritual power similar to a "Spatial Stability Halo" used to prohibit spatial movement within a certain range, but unfortunately, this ritual had no effect on Xia De, who had high attainments in space.

"Sure enough, the location provided by Mr. Mortis is very correct."

The basement was no longer in the appearance of a herbalist's warehouse. On the pentagram ritual base drawn on the ground, there were candles that had been extinguished after burning halfway. There were dense alchemy formulas on the blackboard by the wall, various old books and manuscripts filled two bookshelves. A frog that had been dissected and had its heart removed was originally lying on the alchemy table, but at this moment, it suddenly opened its eyes and looked at Xia De.

The dull, swollen eyes turned black, and then it opened its mouth to scream, but was pointed at by Xia De:

"Adele's Time Stop!"

The heartless frog that was about to open its mouth immediately froze on the table. Xia De walked over with great interest to observe:

"Oh? Such a primitive spell?"

The sorcery spells used by modern sorcerers, except for a small part created by people today, were mostly modified from secret magic spells passed down from ancient eras. This modification was to make spellcasting more adapted to the modern sorcerer system, and most of the secret methods that could be passed down were the essence of past spellcasting systems, but a small part was quite backward, and only survived for various strange reasons.

The alchemy item made using animal corpses for warning effects in front of him was clearly a means of combining some kind of primitive witchcraft with modern sorcery. Even without using "high-end" time power to counter it, there were corresponding means to crack it.

Xia De was just very curious about where the other party learned such technology:

"But this matches the identity of a rural herbalist very well."

Various leather products used to make scrolls hung all over the walls, and the green light emitted by the lighting fixtures made of plant branches made the basement not dim. There was also no whereabouts of the "Potion Merchant" in here, but Xia De checked it while trying not to touch other people's things, and found traces of the other party's treatment again.

This time it was not just cotton cloth for wiping dirty blood. He found traces of potion in several unlabeled glass conical flasks, and the notebook placed aside recorded the preparation method of these self-configured potions:

"This is... he is trying to treat his own wounds with herbal therapy, but the more he drinks the potion he configured himself, the more serious his injuries become..."

The notebook was not a diary, just a simple record of this treatment. However, there was indeed a date on it, and the date of the last treatment record announcing that this treatment had completely failed was on the day of the Year-End Festival, which was last Wednesday.

"Echoes of the Past."

He closed his eyes to listen to those echoes from the past, but tried several times without hearing anyone's voice. It seemed that he should not have returned in the past half week.

But Xia De's discovery here was not without value. The treatment notes recorded in detail the injury situation of the "Potion Merchant" hit by the "Magic Sword."

The initial manifestation was just that the injured part could not heal normally and kept bleeding; three days later, it developed into necrosis of the surrounding flesh and blood, and with the injury as the center, black blood vessel traces spread to the whole body.

This mid-ring sorcerer was very cautious and dug out the large piece of flesh and blood on his left arm at this stage.

But it was too late at this time. The blood affected by the "Magic Sword" had flowed through the whole body. On the second to last day before the Year-End Festival, large black patterns appeared on normal skin, black blood vessels showed signs of hardening, and this mid-ring sorcerer felt that his personality had undergone serious changes.

He then came here, using holy water and herbal formulas traded from tribesmen at the foot of the snow-capped mountains in the past, combined with snow mountain water to configure potions for himself, but obviously this was also useless, or its effect was just to keep him from completely losing consciousness.

"Is the snow mountain water of Fatumunster Snow Mountain so magical? It can be used for tea, wine, and potions."

Xia De muttered in his heart. When the self-treatment completely failed, the symptoms of the "Potion Merchant" had turned into intermittent loss of consciousness, and he constantly heard strange voices in his heart giving orders to himself. But after waking up, he couldn't remember what those voices said.

He had become quite weak in a conscious state. Although he could control himself for the time being, he certainly could not approach densely populated places like cities in this state.

At the end of the medical record, he wrote "Maybe I should find someone for help," but he didn't write who to ask for help, let alone write down the other party's identity information, home address, hobbies, or background:

"Can't you leave me a clearer clue?"

But the "Potion Merchant"'s description of his own situation was indeed like the symptoms of being gradually controlled by a demon after being hurt by a demon, so Xia De's journey to find someone had to continue:

"But is it really a demon? Is the other party so high-profile?"

The time had reached four o'clock in the afternoon. After leaving the herbalist's cabin outside the fishing village, Xia De planned to finish the last two stops before leaving here. The task of finding someone was not very urgent. He could go back to summarize the clues first, or find Luweiya to help with divination.

After the shop, warehouse, and herb cabin, the fourth stop continued along the edge of the island toward the northwest. Mr. Mortis said that the "Herb Merchant" had a secret warehouse in a grotto by the coast, used to accumulate and store illegal materials—it was impossible for a black market merchant not to be involved in such materials.

Mr. Mortis only knew the location of the warehouse, but not the method of entry. Relying on "Strong Spatial Perception," Xia De finally found the well-hidden grotto in the snow on the reef coast, but after spending a lot of effort to enter, no clues appeared.

It was just that before he planned to continue his journey, while standing on the reef beach, facing the towering snow-capped mountains, listening to the sound of the waves and enjoying the beautiful scenery in front of him, he saw something on the distant sea surface. It was not a ship. After squinting and watching for a while, he realized that it was actually three mermaid girls playing in the sea.

When Xia De discovered them, the mermaid girls also discovered him. After screaming, the girls immediately dived into the sea and disappeared.

Of course, mermaids would not appear in busy large ports like Moon Bay. In addition to the deep sea, mermaid communities were also distributed in relatively remote coastal areas like Star Fall Bay. Island cities had never lacked legends and stories about mermaids, water monsters, and bird monsters.

【Since you thought of legends and stories, then as a nine-ring sorcerer, what kind of fairy tale do you intend to touch?】

"She" whispered in the ear of Xia De, who was looking at the sea while blowing the sea breeze. Xia De sighed long:

"Let Dorothy and Lei Qianya decide... Maybe it can be related to snow, Snow White..."

He turned around and planned to visit the last stop of finding someone today, but did not see that the three mermaid girls soon emerged from the water again, chattered and discussed for a while, before leaving together.

(End of this chapter) ===== CHAPTER 3163 =====