Chapter 939

Father Nobel's information showed that the seven-ring sorcerer of the Pantanal Voodoo Society who used 【Aikenola's Arrow of Knowledge】 more than a decade ago was named Haer De Wundiba. He was a villager born in the "Lower Wood Village" in the Pantanal Great Swamp area, and at about 16 years old, his talent for awakening was discovered by a pharmacist from the Pantanal Voodoo Society who settled near the village, and from then on he joined the Voodoo Society.

This seven-ring sorcerer was finally surrounded and suppressed by the Sect in Rust Lane in the west of Huntington City, and was killed after a fierce battle. After his death, Rust Lane and the village where he was born were searched by the Sect, but they still couldn't find 【Aikenola's Arrow of Knowledge】.

The last time that arrow was used was three days before Wundiba was surrounded and suppressed by the Sect, and in the final battle where Wundiba was surrounded and captured by the Sect, that arrow was not taken out for use.

Although Xia De knew very well that the Sect would not miss details, considering that the Sect also thought that St. Theresa Square No. 6 was now very safe, he still went to Rust Lane that afternoon, trying to find clues left behind many years ago.

Rust Lane was a street in the slums in the west of Huntington, showing an overall trend of tilting toward the northwest. Both ends of the alley were inside the slums, and the surrounding alleys extended in all directions. The old buildings of the old era looked more like old people than the poor living here under the low sky shrouded in heavy fog. This place was like a black, imperceptible rotten spot on the crystal-clear purple grape of Huntington.

When Xia De came to Rust Lane that afternoon and stepped into the narrow and long alley, he vaguely felt that he heard the city groaning. This was of course his psychological effect, but it also meant that wanting to find clues from more than a decade ago in this kind of place was far more difficult than imagined.

Both sides of Rust Lane were old-era houses with rolling and uneven heights. The reason Xia De crowned them with the description of "rolling" was because most of the houses were built on the original foundation, using a seemingly very magical architectural method to make the buildings one or two stories higher.

These illegal buildings with inconsistent styles but all very dangerous huddled together, providing a place for the city's huge number of poor people to rest at night. It was Monday afternoon, but there were still quite a few people in the alley.

Winter was coming, but the clothing of the residents of Rust Lane was still like that in autumn. Women took advantage of the sunny weather, rolled up their sleeves to dry clothes in the alley, and carefully sized up their neighbors, worried that their clothes would be stolen if they turned around. Barefoot children gathered in twos and threes, either playing with each other or chasing wild cats and dogs running around.

Relatively speaking, Xia De's appearance in this alley was very abrupt, but fortunately, the life wisdom of these people living in the slums told them that it was best not to provoke strangers.

Of course, this was also related to the gun holster Xia De revealed inadvertently.

That action by the Sect more than a decade ago caused large-scale house damage with two or three houses in the middle section of Rust Lane collapsing, and now there was no trace of that battle back then at all.

The collapsed Rust Lane No. 13, No. 14, and No. 15 had long been repaired, and now those three houses were respectively crowded old-style rental apartments and slum shops selling inferior tobacco, spices, and daily necessities.

No. 13 and No. 14 were rental apartments facing each other, each four stories high. The walls of the houses were yellow and dirty, sewage flowed along the drainage pipes to the walls, and then fell to the ditch in the alley, and some uncivilized patterns were drawn on the walls with chalk. These rental apartments were towering and narrow, with an area less than half of St. Theresa Square No. 6, but they housed three-digit residents.

The landlord partitioned the internal space with thin wooden boards and rented small cubicles to poor people who had no place to stay. Hundreds of people shared a washroom and kitchen, making the sanitary conditions here extremely bad. This situation could be seen in every city in the material world, but people who were tired of earning meal money for tomorrow had no mind to care whether the plague would spread because of this.

The chaotic apartments like No. 13 and No. 14 didn't know how many tenants had changed in more than a decade, so Xia De gave up looking for clues there and walked directly into the "Pig Shop" at Rust Lane No. 15.

"Pig" was a quite lowly word in Huntington language, and using this name as the shop's name could also show the irregularity and randomness of this shop.

The first floor of No. 15 was the shop, and the inside of the shop was almost dirtier and more crowded than Old John's pawnshop. The shop owner's counter was right at the entrance, which was convenient for him to monitor whether guests stole goods. And although it was called a shop, it actually bought and sold everything here.

That middle-aged man who looked to be forty or fifty years old, with his left ear looking like it had been bitten off by someone, met Xia De who pushed the door and walked in during his daze that afternoon.

Hearing the sound of the door pushing, he touched his glasses with broken lenses stuck with glue from the counter in a trance, swept the illegally printed colored books on the table under the table, and then asked with a yawn:

"New face? No, you definitely didn't move here to live. Are you... a policeman? A detective? Or a new gangster from the city? Oh, I have paid protection money to Old Midilak."

"I'm not here to cause trouble."

Xia De sized up this shop, with a large pile of yellowed sheets and cotton piled in the southeast corner, and bottles and jars placed in baskets hanging from the ceiling. On the counter, besides the shop owner's arms, there were piles of matchboxes, metal thimble rings used for needlework, inferior grass paper used for handmade cigarettes, and an iron cage pressed on the grass paper, with a white mouse in the iron cage looking at Xia De with red eyes.

That mouse should not be a product for sale, but the shop owner's pet.

"Then what do you want to buy?"

The man who woke up said with interest, and then added a sentence:

"Judging by your accent, you are a Delarian? What are you northerners doing coming to a place like Rust Lane?"

After more than half a month of effort, Xia De's Karsenrik language had made some progress. But for real Karsenrik people, it was still very easy to discover Xia De's identity.

"Not buying anything, want to get some news from you."

Xia De said, so the man behind the counter twisted his fingers. Xia De threw a 1-fenny coin onto the counter, and while the coin was spinning with a clatter, he asked:

"I heard that more than a decade ago, this place was rebuilt? I was entrusted by someone to look for information about the owner here. Before the reconstruction more than a decade ago, was the owner here also you?"

"Of course not, I only moved here eight years ago. This house originally belonged to a fat man who sold pork and offal at the vegetable market, and later he went bankrupt and ran away."

"Can selling meat also go bankrupt?"

"Lost too much playing Luo De Pai."

The shop owner shrugged:

"I don't know where that guy is now, but he had lived here for 20 years, so I think the person you are looking for should be him."

"Ran away? Then did he take everything away?"

"Yes, only leaving some old furniture, which was moved away by creditors to pay off debts. When I moved in, there wasn't even a complete gas lamp. If his creditors are looking for him, sorry, everything here was purchased by myself."

"Then have you seen him, heard him talk about the accident here more than a decade ago?"

"I haven't seen him, but I've heard neighbors talk about that gas explosion accident."

Asking up to this point, Xia De could confirm that there were indeed no clues left for him here. Before entering the door, he even tried to use 【Echo of Blood】 to observe the bloodstains in the alley, but those old bloodstains were mixed with various traces from the past ten years, completely insufficient for Xia De to find clues.

Fortunately, he didn't hold hope in the first place. Knowing that there was no value here, he wanted to go find Professor Deleike to talk about this matter again. But before he turned and left, the shop owner behind the counter said again:

"Speaking of which, someone also asked me about him a few days ago. What trouble did he get into? Could it be that he lost all his property playing Luo De Pai in another city, so he ran away again?"

"Almost."

Xia De answered vaguely, his arm resting on the counter:

"You just mentioned that someone also asked similar questions a while ago? Who? What time did they come? What did they ask?"

Saying this, he threw out another coin.

The man behind the counter slowly collected the coin, his tone quite hesitant, and his gray eyes looked a bit dazed:

"Probably last week, what day... I don't remember."

"Did the other party come alone?"

The shop owner recalled, and shook his head hesitantly:

"I hadn't woken up that afternoon, and my memory is very blurry... probably two people."

"What did they look like?"

"I really don't remember clearly; I only remember they bought a box of matchstick matches after asking questions."

Seeing the other party's dazed look, Xia De asked again:

"Don't remember what they asked either?"

"Vaguely remember it was very similar to your question, but I can't say the specific content."

"If you want me to add money, you can say a number."

"No, no, if I can earn your money, I'm definitely very happy to tell you what you want to know. But this time it's not wanting to add money; I really don't remember."

The bald man wearing glasses muttered:

"It's really strange, Rust Lane doesn't have a few strangers coming in a week, how could I forget the appearance of the guests?"

"Is there a problem?"

Xia De asked in his heart.

【The time interval is too long, even if he had his memory washed by someone, it cannot be investigated. Maybe you can try entering a dream; maybe there are remnants of deep memory.】

"I'm not Doctor Shi Nai De, where would I enter a dream?"

Xia De thought while silently reaching his hand into his pocket, touching a metal charm:

"May I ask if you recognize this?"

The shop owner behind the counter subconsciously stretched his head to look, and the next moment his eyes closed because of strong sleepiness, and then he lay on the counter and fell asleep again.

Xia De collected the charm in his hand; he just guided with his own mental power, cooperating with the hypnotic charm in his hand to hypnotize the shop owner. Actually, normally this charm couldn't take effect so quickly; Xia De learned the spellcasting trick from 【Book of Pink】, and the content about hypnosis in that book was listed in a whole chapter.

"Abnormal forgetting means it was likely modified by memory. And being modified by memory means the strangers who came a few days ago were also Ringed Shushi. The Zhengshen Sect's squad only modifies memories according to regulations when ordinary people witness mystery, so this wasn't done by the Sect. Although I won't enter a dream to dig for deep memory, but..."

Xia De lowered his eyes, looking at the iron cage on the counter. He neatly opened the lock of the iron cage, and then grabbed the white mouse. His palm grasped most of the mouse's body, only exposing the two pink paws and tail of the white mouse's lower limbs to move freely.

Grabbing the mouse with his right hand, he placed 【Night Watcher】 wrapped in cloth on the table with his left hand, and then rummaged for the 【Fish Training Ring】 he carried with him.

"Cats cannot be used, fortunately, mice can be used."

Among the "Mia Three Rings," Xia De would not use the 【Transformation Ring】 so he generally didn't carry it, and the 【Vampire Ring】 definitely couldn't be taken out casually in a city like Huntington where large-scale vampires lived. When Xia De sent that cat to the Witch Manor in the morning, he only took the 【Fish Training Ring】.