Chapter 353: Big Event - Cold Water Harbor Shadow

After the servants finished serving the dishes, they left one after another, leaving only that middle-aged head maid and two elderly maids to serve on the side. Lei Lei Qianya signaled to Xia De that it was safe to talk here. The two were eating, and only then did they talk about the matters of the morning.

"The Scarlet Secret Sect seems to have infiltrated Cold Water Harbor long ago, and even the establishment of the city is related to them. Those fish-men and evil cultists have always existed in the shadows of Cold Water Harbor, but no one discovered this point. I think the mermaid statues that appeared earliest were probably spread by them." 【35

This was the conclusion Xia De deduced based on the clues he found in the morning.

"But what exactly do they want to do?"

Princess Lei Lei Qianya asked, puzzled. She had only taken a small amount of food, perhaps not accustomed to eating too much at noon:

"The Sea-Sending Ritual, the steps can basically be confirmed. Then, what is the ritual itself actually for? The last line of the nursery rhyme involves sacrifice, which is very unsettling."

She did not say the word "Evil God" in front of the servants, but Xia De understood what she meant. While clumsily manipulating his knife and fork, he said:

"This time is different from the one in Tobesk. The church failed once in Tobesk half a month ago, so no matter what, there won't be another accident this time. All we can do now is wait for news, and deal with the problem you have."

Xia De spoke very cautiously:

"The captain who played cards with me said that as long as you are prevented from entering the red ocean when it appears, and you wait until the ritual ends, the curse will naturally disappear. That means when the red ocean appears, there is a high probability you will be affected mentally and walk into the sea unconsciously."

The so-called "sacrifice" should not be selecting a single individual, but rather everyone tainted by the curse will eventually appear when the Red Sea emerges, stumbling onto the beach, and then walking into the ocean together. Just thinking about such a scene makes one's scalp tingle.

Leaving Cold Water Harbor was the first option to be ruled out. With this type of curse, once you leave the ritual site, the curse might erupt immediately. As for relics that suppress curses, Lei Lei Qianya already had the Sage-level ruby earrings and the Saint Laurent ring purchased at the coastal lighthouse.

After seeking help from the Zalas Academy of Literature, the academy could also lend some relics aimed at curses. And Xia De believed the safest plan was for him to stay by Lei Lei Qianya's side when the Red Sea appeared.

Although he was only a Second-Ring Ringed Ringed Shushi who couldn't do much, if the curse itself was truly linked to the power of a god, then Xia De's presence would make many things that ordinary people couldn't handle easy to resolve.

"So the difficulty we face now is that we don't know the progress of the ritual after the pirate ship was driven away by you, or when the red ocean will appear."

Lei Lei Qianya summarized simply, and Xia De frowned slightly:

"A week's time will definitely be enough to resolve it. I have a very capable diviner friend who prophesied that among the male sorcerers who encountered the pirates with us, one will set off for Tobesk in a week. By then, the curse problem will surely have been solved."

It rained all day in Cold Water Harbor. Because of the morning's events, Xia De decided to keep a low profile and did not leave the Sophia mansion that afternoon, waiting for news instead.

Xia De's moonlight attracted the attention of the Church of Peace. Although the other party was called the "Peace" church, its full name was actually the "Church of War and Peace," theoretically the one with the strongest combat power among the Five Gods churches. That merman stronghold on the ancient street would likely become history from now on.

Lei Lei Qianya entertained Xia De well in the mansion, and after the meal, she took him to the study to pass the afternoon.

She had many official documents to process; the adult princesses and princes of the Cavendish family were mostly assigned government work by the King. This was also why the outside world generally believed that when the King grew old in a few decades, the struggle for the throne would definitely become a major problem.

The study in the Sophia mansion was about the same size as the study of Larus III that Xia De had seen in the Yodel Palace. The walls of the spacious room were filled with bookshelves, a desk was placed in the center of the room, and there was a set of sofas for guests near the door.

This was the current King's preference; he liked spacious rooms.

Lei Lei Qianya handled her affairs, while Xia De was allowed to pick books from the shelves to read at will. The dazzling array of books was mostly related to politics, economics, and history. Xia De finally chose the semi-official publication, "The Secret History of Cavendish."

This was a narrative literature describing the origin and history of the Cavendish family, through which one could effectively understand the development and prosperity of Dralion.

Of course, Xia De still had many things to do this week. "Wasting" this afternoon reading beside Lei Lei Qianya was mainly to listen for follow-up news related to the Scarlet Secret Sect.

Their actions that morning were not tracked by the church, but the cultists who used the ancient street in the South City District as a stronghold were in for a bad time. Among them, the sorcerer Mr. Jude was killed by Xia De, and of the remaining four sorcerers, only one managed to escape.

As for the humanoid fish-headed creatures that fled from the ancient street, most were captured by the church. According to the information the princess obtained, there were actually at least three hundred targets on that street who had already been transformed. And it was foreseeable that there were more in Cold Water Harbor.

These monsters, which had strong self-healing abilities in water, could partially switch between human form and fish-like form, though their human forms were mostly abnormally ugly. After the morning's operation, the Five Gods churches directly joined forces with the Cold Water Harbor authorities to launch a city-wide search.

But this was not Tobesk, which was controlled by a large number of troops and police. Searching in this free port was indeed useful, but how much use it would be was hard to say.

The church linked those merman monsters, the Scarlet Secret Sect, the Sea-Sending Ritual, and the mermaid curse together, officially naming this incident the "1853 Shadow Over Cold Water Harbor" incident. This meant that the cult had infiltrated the shadows of the city and had been hiding there since the port was founded.

After the Church of Peace engaged in a gunfight with the mermen in the rain, they successfully occupied Keizer Lane and the Jude mansion.

Through the captured prisoners and the documents left in Mr. Jude's safe, the church mastered more information about the "Sea-Sending" ritual. With a powerful intelligence network and extremely strong information-gathering capabilities, they fully understood what the cultists hiding in the city were trying to do.

Therefore, before dinner that evening, through intelligence sent by "well-informed sources" planted by the royal family in the church, Xia De and Lei Lei Qianya obtained three important pieces of information.

First, the specific number of sorcerers who encountered the "Fish Bone Pirate Ship" at sea with them on Monday night could now be confirmed: thirteen in total. Besides "John Watson" and "Miss Miss Pulin," among the other eleven, two had already been found by the church. Through the descriptions of these rational people, the church further understood what happened on the ship and learned the attire of the sorcerers who attended the auction that day.

But those two male sorcerers should not be the second Chosen One, because the church was still actively searching for the remaining unidentified people with unreasonable "enthusiasm," and was actively investigating foreign sorcerers who suddenly appeared in Cold Water Harbor starting Monday. They did this to eliminate competitors.

Secondly, the ancient text of the "Sea-Sending" ritual was found in the Vatican library of the Church of Creation. This ritual was not the god-summoning ritual Xia De was worried about.

"I knew it, how could it be that wherever I go, an Evil God is being summoned."

This was Xia De's opinion as he sat by the desk, listening to Lei Lei Qianya read the letter. A relaxed smile was on his face, and the princess's emerald eyes glanced at him, her voice very decisive:

"Even if it's not the worst-case scenario, if this ritual succeeds, the consequences will be no less than an Evil God appearing."

In the early Sixth Era, when Cold Water Harbor was not yet Cold Water Harbor, the influence of the Orthodox churches had not reached here. At that time, there were three different cult faiths locally, namely the 【God of Drowned in the Deep Sea】, the 【Lord of the Scarlet Spiral】, and the 【Fury Storm】.

All three gods had inextricable ties to the ocean. While the believers fought each other, their common culture also permeated each other, allowing the coastal cultists to develop extremely similar customs and even extremely similar supernatural abilities. Strictly speaking, the "Sea-Sending Ritual" was a ritual that believers of all three evil gods could use, only the specific corresponding steps had subtle differences.

The function of this ritual was, after the red ocean arrived, to awaken the power left by the gods in the deep sea by sacrificing mortals tainted with divine power, thereby summoning tides to submerge the city and turn Cold Water Harbor from a seaport into an underwater city.

The Scarlet Secret Sect did not act on a whim; they had planned for this goal for many years. The evidence was that although the four main steps of the ritual corresponded to the nursery rhyme, the ritual also required a large amount of other trivial work, requiring decades of preparation.

The mermen hiding in the shadows of Cold Water Harbor had been carrying out the plan all along, it just happened that the final steps were being taken this summer.

This was a large-scale ritual in the true sense, which was already hard to see in the material world. The reason the Scarlet Secret Sect wanted to hold the ritual was that since the founding of Cold Water Harbor, they had transformed and developed too many fish-like creatures on land.

They needed a new habitat, but while gaining power, the mermen were also bound by the ancient contract signed by their ancestors and the gods, unable to leave the Cold Water Harbor where their ancestors lived. Therefore, they decided to summon the power left by the gods in the deep sea, let the ocean submerge the city, and let the terrifying mermen occupy and live here forever.

"The good news is that this incident is only related to the local ancient cult faith, the Scarlet Secret Sect, and has nothing to do with the other two ancient faiths. So this time, the church only has to deal with those merman populations that have developed and hidden in Cold Water Harbor for nearly a thousand years."

Lei Lei Qianya said, and seeing Xia De wanting to ask a question in confusion, she explained to the outsider who had only had a one-month sorcerer career:

"Only the secret sect of the 【Lord of the Scarlet Spiral】, the guardian of the terrifying merman population, has the tradition of transforming kin through rituals and divine arts.

Believers of the evil god 【God of Drowned in the Deep Sea】 are mostly human sorcerers who manipulate the undead 'drowned corpses,' and believers of the evil god 【Fury Storm】 have nothing to do with marine biological populations; they manipulate storms and thunder. So, only the mermen would want Cold Water Harbor to be submerged by the ocean; we don't have to worry about this incident being related to other sects."