Turning around, Torres-Shishilo's iconic white afro and dead kid expression immediately came into view.
"You guys went out to play last night without calling me! Do you know how dangerous it is out there now?"
The protection provided to our group last night was based on the standard of a prince.
Hitzfeld was too tired to complain.
This stupid priest, he wouldn't think that adding the three of them would make the force change qualitatively.
"We're not going out to play." Xia Yibing frowned and glared at him. "Hitzfeld said that you guys are too obvious to be taken out and it's easy to alert the enemy. I think that's right, so I let you sleep a little longer."
"Torres!" At this time, Cybert hurriedly ran down the stairs holding her nun's dress. Seeing the tense atmosphere here, she rushed over and grabbed Torres, shaking his arm hard.
"Don't be like this... As long as the result is good, it's fine~"
"Hmph!" Torres crossed his arms across his chest. Although he still looked very angry, people who knew him knew that he was already on his way down the stairs.
But usually this tolerance is only reserved for the pink-haired nun. If it comes to other people, no amount of persuasion will be of any use.
These two are so funny.
The more Hitzfeld read, the more interesting it became.
I don't know whether the church prohibits marriage between machines and the sun goddess, or whether priests and nuns can have relationships that transcend their duties.
But that’s not the point right now.
She turned around and found Carlo still staring at the notebook in a daze.
"What's going on with Carlo?" Torres also noticed something was wrong.
This man holds a magic mirror, but never looks at himself. He always thinks he is the messenger of justice among normal people, and Carlo is a "fool who is hard to describe in words."
Others think he is both, he just doesn't know it.
But now, Carlo, who was a fool in Torres' eyes, was staring at the notebook with a serious face - this was totally unlike something he could do, and he was extremely shocked by this.
"Ka Luo, you just said this is 'Sakura Kui'?"
Xia Yibing lowered her head slightly, trying to look into the young man's eyes.
Those eyes should have been very lively, and were always full of cynicism, but now they were filled with darkness, and only two reflections of candlelight could be seen.
I don’t know if it was his breathing that startled the candlelight, but the flame jumped on Carlo’s face, making his expression look changeable.
“I have certainly seen this kind of flower.”
After a long while, he finally spoke, and at the same time he let out a sigh of relief: "It was in a ruin... The Knight Academy marked the exploration mission as one of our assessments. We were almost wiped out there, and it was thanks to this thing that we were able to come back."
"But I didn't know it was called Sakura at that time. The name was told to me by the group leader. He said it was the most beautiful sunflower, and as long as there was a ray of sunlight, it could cycle through life and death, and never die."
There are many varieties of sunflowers.
Flowers that resemble the sun, flowers that chase the sun... these flowers were once called sunflowers. But they are indeed not as beautiful as this flower, which is a kind of fragility and beauty that can be felt just by looking at the sculptures.
"Immortality?" Torres frowned, obviously not believing this statement. "How is it possible? Even if it is a plant, how can it be immortal?"
"I don't know either." Carlo shook his head. "Anyway, that's what the captain told me. His original words were something like this... 'Put the cherry tree seeds into the darkest and wettest abyss. It won't be long before it will spontaneously sprout from the rotten mud and raise its buds toward the sun.'"
"Its lifespan is eleven years."
"When the eleven years are up, it will wither."
"All the petals, stems and leaves fall into the soil and break into pieces, and then in the new year, new buds will miraculously sprout in their original positions, and the process will repeat over and over again."
The leader he was referring to should be Frick, the golden knight who had also experienced the journey to the Crystal Sea with them.
"Did Frick say where he got the information?" Hitzfeld asked him.
"Well, you know, I never care about these issues..." Carlo scratched the back of his head, "If this flower hadn't left such a deep impression on me, I might not have remembered it..."
This means that he didn't ask at that time.
Hitzfeld rubbed his temple with his hand, and then asked, "Tell me about that ruins exploration. How did you end up in such a dangerous situation... Did you encounter a monster?"
"No! There are no monsters!" Carlo quickly shook his head.
"It was an earthquake! The underground cave collapsed and we were almost buried alive... In order to survive, we had to go deeper underground. I remember very clearly that we first followed the underground river and kept going forward, but we encountered many forks in the road. I don't know when we got lost. The magnetic needle didn't work, and we didn't have enough food... Then the person leading the way found it next to the pool... a cherry blossom, it almost came out from the cracks in the rocks!"
"It can guide the direction?" Xia Yibing frowned, "How did you find out?"
"I pulled it down and turned it like a windmill, and then I found that it always stayed in a fixed direction..."
Xia Yibing and Hitzfeld looked at each other.
This certainly seems like something Carlo would do.
"We tried to follow the guidance of this thing and finally found that the road led to a patio extending upwards."
Carlo was still chattering in reminiscence mode.
"The patio is very narrow... but we are not ordinary people, so it is enough for us to climb up."
"It's hard to describe to you how shocked I was at that time... It was so deep, you know? From the bottom, I could only see a faint white dot, but that thing could feel such a small amount of light. This is really... incredible!"
"Where is the flower?" asked Thores.
"It died very quickly." Carlo shook his head. "The stem was torn off and the petals fell off quickly. I dug a hole on the riverbank and buried it."
"Are you sure it looks like this?" Hitzfeld asked him, pointing at the pattern on the notebook.
"I guarantee it with my life!" Carlo glared.
"It's beautiful...really! The petals are a gradient from pink to orange-yellow, a very dazzling and bright color! If you see it once, you can't mistake it!"
"Great, now we know what it's called..."
Xia Yibing tapped the table with her pen.
"But why this thing appears so frequently in these books is still unexplained."
"Where are the Fricks?" Hitzfeld wanted to trace the origin.
"Not in the royal capital." Carlo's words made her give up the idea.
"It seems that he offended Lord Senar and was sent to the Worm Plains to guard the city."
"Can you write to him?"
"can."
"Then I'll trouble you to do this."
"I'd be honored to help—I'd go now!"
Hitzfeld thanked him a few words, and Carlo went to write the letter happily.
"It should be correct." Hitzfeld glanced at the other people who stayed here.
“This kind of flower.”
"Sakura Aoi."
"It is one of the symbols of the old king's bloodline."
It can involve sunlight and the sun.
It will also make Gunter's face change drastically when he sees it.
It can also be carved by the maker of the Book of Howl himself. All these factors come together, and there is no other explanation.
Of course, she actually thought more deeply.
That was why the author of "The Shadow of the Ancient God", the human-faced demon snake, would repeatedly mention the flower of longing... She already had a vague guess about this question.
But this speculation is a bit too scary.
She doesn't plan to tell anyone else yet.
--------
Go out for dinner and come back to continue writing in the evening.
Chapter 95: Meeting and Substitute
As deputy director, Xia Yibing has a lot to do.
She was very willful and stayed up all night with Hitzfeld. At almost 10 o'clock in the morning, she had to go back to deal with official business, leaving Hitzfeld and the three members of the cult to continue looking up the information.
"Why do we have to pursue this information?"
When she left, Tres, whose head was almost buried in the book, couldn't help but complain: "The descendants of the old king, the old king's party, etc.... Is this something we should worry about?"
He didn't understand, what's the point of finding these things? Anyway, the bigwigs above must know these secrets. If the sky falls, there are tall people to hold it up. There is no conclusive evidence to prove that the descendants of the old king planned everything in Ernak Town. What's the point of being so serious?
"For Ethan." Hitzfeld frowned slightly, and saw Xia Yibing squinting and looking back.
"And Villefort... We must settle this matter so that Ethan can return to a normal life. At the same time, we must vindicate Villefort. His sacrifice cannot be in vain."
The woman's face looked a little better and she turned around and went upstairs.
"We have to make it through the day. I'll go get some water."
Hitzfeld thought about it and felt a little worried, so he left his seat and followed.
……
On the ground, in a small alley on Huaining Street, a dirty man mixed in with a group of homeless people passed the checkpoint, looked back, continued to stagger forward a few steps, and turned into an open small door.
Someone immediately welcomed him in, took him to take a bath, fumigated him, changed him into clean and decent clothes, and finally took him to an empty room.
He looked around the room, at the dark red carpet under his feet, the chandelier hung with crystal pendants, the mahogany-covered walls... and the two oil paintings that looked very valuable. He wondered what kind of organization Batty-Villefort had sent him to.
I never knew there was such a luxurious room hidden in the alleys of Huaining Street...
He frowned, wondering if it was some supernatural organization controlled by Villefort.
After all, that guy is the director of Shadow Lion.
If he really wanted to support some people, as long as he did not hide it from the only one and got that person's tacit consent, no one could interfere.
"Isendale."
Suddenly, a clear child's voice came from behind.
The man turned around and saw a pretty girl standing in front of the door.
She was wearing a complicated pure white skirt with a big bow tied at the back of her waist. The hem of her skirt dragged on the carpet and covered her ankles. She had a delicate figure and long, shiny black hair that was loose.
It is these characteristics that make Ethan think she is "girly".
Although most of her face was covered by a white veil, only a pair of bright eyes were exposed.
"Who are you?" Ethan asked warily.
He trusted Batti-Villefort, but he didn't want to trust this strange girl.
The girl didn't say anything. She just walked forward a few steps until she was in front of Ethan. She raised her right hand wrapped in a white silk glove and showed him a ring on her right index finger.
"Bati once told me that he would not let you know me until it was absolutely necessary."
"Now that you and I have finally met, it means that we must unite wholeheartedly to fight against those hidden enemies."
Ethan barely heard much of what the girl said.
He stared at the ring with his eyes wide open, his lips moving more and more violently, and finally he half-knelt down in front of her as if waking from a dream.
"Please forgive my rudeness."
"…Her Highness Xilu."
……
Xia Yibing walked very fast.
Hitzfeld hurried to catch up but couldn't see her shadow, so he had to start jogging halfway.
You never...trust...
Not...crazy...
Ok?
She paused, as she seemed to hear faint sounds of quarreling.
That was the direction of the elevator. Hitzfeld approached carefully, stuck his head against the wall, and saw two figures standing under the light arguing fiercely, accompanied by rich body movements.
