Chapter 408: The Wine Cellar

"To be honest, Miss Aurora, I thought you'd be the type who'd want to kill me."

Xia De extended his hand. The witch hesitated for a moment before taking it, and sighed softly:

"Why would I want to kill you? What good would that do me? Still, this is the first time I've shaken a man's hand since I came of age."

The witch's hand was quite soft, so Xia De asked:

"How does my hand feel?"

"Your hand is very rough. It's recovering now, but I can tell you've probably done heavy labor before."

She withdrew her hand, then beckoned toward the top of Xia De's head. The little black spider leapt from his hair into her palm, then crawled up to her face, becoming a beauty mark beneath her eye that was hard to notice.

"So that spider is yours? Did you really just now smell the ocean on me?"

"Of course. But not only because you've been to the seaside—also because you carry the stench of fish-men on you. I had originally assumed that before you came to Princess Lei Lei Lei Qianya, you had also fought fish-men."

The witch said.

"The smell of mermaids? I didn't run into any fish-men. Oh, I understand now."

Xia De thought for a moment, then realized it was because he still carried the 【Scales of the Drowned Mermaid】 on him. In that case, the scales' original owner really was a vassal of the previous epoch's evil god 【Lord of the Crimson Spiral】.

The witch nodded:

"Glad you understand. Remember to return the ring to me when this is over. Also, the strongest one among the cultists below is a six-ring. I think as long as you don't provoke it, getting out alive should be no problem."

Thus, Xia De concluded his first meeting with the second witch he had met in the Sixth Epoch.

Knowing that Darkness was most likely heading to Tobesk, Xia De had little interest in helping the witch find her. After parting with the witch at the room door, Xia De found Princess Lei Lei Lei Qianya again. The Princess was very worried about Xia De, but did not ask about Miss Sylvie Aurora's identity.

"I'm going to take a trip down to the cellar. Lei Lei Lei Qianya, remember to keep the fishing rod on you. If you really run into trouble, even if it means exposing your identity as a ring sorcerer, go to Miss Aurora for help."

"But compared to the witch, I'd much rather have you by my side when dawn comes."

The Princess said softly.

"Of course. I came to Cold Water Port in the first place to help you—how could I possibly forget that purpose?"

He answered. Lei Lei Lei Qianya thought for a moment, then gave Xia De a hug:

"I don't know exactly what you're planning to do, but be careful."

She then slipped Xia De a steam bomb. Xia De was briefly surprised, then carefully tucked it away.

At this point, there was still one hour until sunrise.

The Nature Church's ring sorcerer squad waited on the second floor to sortie again before dawn. Although Xia De couldn't learn the situation inside the cellar from them, Miss Aurora had directly told him that there were three ring sorcerers and a dozen or so fish-men underground.

Xia De's original plan was to use illusion magic to enter the cellar and, if the chance arose, steal those textual materials. But Aurora Manor 's cellar actually had a secret passage connecting it to the gardener's cottage in the garden.

That passage had been built when the Aurora family owned the place, and even the fish-men didn't know about it.

So Xia De jumped from a third-floor window into the rainy garden, braving the rain to find the locked gardener's cottage. After opening the door, he found it was essentially a storage room—shelves lined all four walls holding metal tools, and there was even a steam engine in the corner.

He pushed aside the boxes in the corner and tapped the floor a few times to locate the trapdoor. After hauling the trapdoor open with effort, the pitch-black opening seemed to lead straight down into the abyss.

But when he illuminated it with a glow from his fingertip, he could see it was only three meters deep.

Unlike the underground ruins at Tobesk, this passage appeared to have been built only for emergency refuge, so it was very narrow. Xia De even had to keep his head bowed to pass through—the passage was only about 1.7 meters tall.

On the way down he encountered only one fork: one path led forward, the other to a storage room holding food and water.

So Xia De followed the straight path forward, and before long reached the end of the passage.

Illuminating what lay ahead in the darkness, Xia De was thinking that if he himself owned a manor, he would definitely build complicated secret passages too. After all, with so much space, it would be a waste not to build secret passages.

According to Miss Aurora, this passage led to the interior wall cavity of the cellar, where new wine for aging was stored.

Therefore, when Xia De pushed open the hidden door as carefully as he could and crawled out, all he could see before him were rows of wine barrels—no sign of any fish-men.

Carefully employing illusion magic, a silver mist flowed silently forward, hugging the ground. Only after emerging from the cellar's interior wall cavity did he finally see three burly men dressed as sailors, armed with guns, guarding the cellar entrance. The three men's common trait was that they looked very ugly.

Besides them, Xia De also saw a tall, thin man standing in the shadows to one side. This one was a ring sorcerer, nearly merged with that shadow. Had the voice in his ear not alerted Xia De, he wouldn't even have noticed the man.

To avoid being detected by that ring sorcerer, Xia De very carefully controlled the illusion mist to exist only in the area around himself. But illusion magic was not invisibility—even if it could achieve a similar effect, it was easily noticed by ring sorcerers with keen senses.

He could only crouch, stick close to the wall, and let the rows of wine racks shield him. It took a full ten minutes to circle around the edge of the shelves, moving far away from the cellar entrance.

The entire cellar was pitch-black, and aside from the four men at the entrance, there seemed to be no one else present. So Xia De used the spell 【Blood Echo】. Sure enough, in the earlier clash with the Zhengshen Sect 's squad, the fish-men's wounded companions had left blood trails on the ground during the transfer.

Though the naked eye couldn't catch them, in the state of 【Blood Echo】, Xia De—with bloodshot veins in his right eye—could follow those red halos that served like road signs in the darkness, all the way to the end of the cellar, where he discovered a hole in the wall.

Behind that layer of wall there must have originally been a space, but before the manor was sold to the Aurora family, it had been sealed off with a brick wall. When it was opened again tonight, the fish-men had smashed through the wall as if with a sledgehammer—even the rubble on the ground hadn't been cleared away.

A cold, damp wind carrying a fishy smell blew through the hole in the wall. In the darkness, faint candlelight and a strange blue ghostly glow could be seen, and indistinguishable whispers could be heard.

"There's wind... is there another exit behind the wall?"

This was what surprised Xia De the most.