"Come into my body, let me heal you..."
Hitzfeld squirmed closer, his tone concerned, lifting up his black robe as he spoke.
The woman's heart almost stopped.
Under the robe was an open tumor similar to the structure of the "Iron Maiden". The tumor was full of wriggling tentacles, each of which was crisscrossing and constantly pulling out transparent sticky threads, approaching this side little by little.
"Do not--!!!"
With a loud shout, Xia Yibing woke up with her eyes wide open.
Then she found that she was not in the church. She was lying on a wooden bed with a coarse blanket on top. An oil lamp was swaying and providing light.
She looked around and saw Madeleine on the floor to her left and Hitzfeld, who was unconscious, on the inside of the bed.
so far so good……
He rushed over and stroked the girl's face, held her in his hands and sniffed her, and even kissed her forehead. Xia Yibing finally confirmed that this was the reality - the scent of Aisuen could not be wrong!
"Why did you have to throw it in my room..."
There were voices at the door.
Xia Yibing quickly touched her waist - but found nothing.
The next moment, a girl with black hair like her came in bending over with a plate in her hand. She was stunned when she saw her sitting there.
"You're awake?"
The girl seemed very happy.
"My name is Billie! What's your name?"
"By the way... I gave you amulets to prevent you from having nightmares. How is it? Did you sleep well?"
amulet……
Following the other person's gaze, Xia Yibing reached out to her chest and felt a bone pendant.
"Not good." She frowned.
"You better explain to me what's going on."
Chapter 5 The Fourth Possibility 3k
About a few minutes later, after Billie's stuttering and intermittent explanation, Xia Yibing finally understood the situation the three people were in.
To put it simply, this should not be the world they were familiar with - this is the world they descended into after passing through the gray fog and the surging mist. It is full of decay, pus, blood, stench and death. What surprised her was that there were still people of her race living in such a place.
The same race... yes... This little girl looked a little malnourished. Her face and speech looked like she was about 15 or 6 years old, but her body looked about two years younger. She had clear facial features, hair, hands and feet like herself, which showed that she was a human being and not one of those monsters.
Pus and blood...sea of blood...there are people in this ghost place? Is it the fleet we saw before?
Xia Yibing couldn't help but recall the series of scientific knowledge that she had learned in the nightmare: the humans living here were actually separated and expelled from their original homeland, and the reason why they were able to adapt and survive in such a harsh and fantastic environment was because they had received a drop of savior's blood.
It sounds like the blood of salvation contains some kind of energy or blessing. This is a kind of "power" that protects people from being assimilated and swallowed by this place. No matter what choices they make later on and how their life forms change, it at least gives them the right to choose.
"This is the Blood Sea." Billie continued, "As you can see, this is the environment of the Blood Sea... We are the corpse retrievers in the Blood Sea. This job does not require any skills, but it does require you to have outstanding courage."
The corner of Xia Yibing's mouth twitched. She subconsciously recalled the detailed memory about the sea of blood: this damn place cannot be simply described as a sea. How to describe it... It is so disgusting that it is more like the stomach of a giant beast.
The sea surface was not just blood, but countless pieces of meat, rotten meat, fat, pus, blood and bone fragments were floating on the surface of the blood. At first glance, you would think these things were garbage on the sea. They piled up together and produced an extremely shocking stench. As the waves surged, they would collide with each other from time to time. Sailing on the blood sea required enduring this strange rhythm. The locals called it "the knock of the dead." She didn't know if this was a way to have fun in misery.
As for the corpse retrievers... As Billie said, there is really no technical content. The blood sea looks scary, but in fact it follows rules. There are indeed monsters here that are far more terrifying than those on land, but as long as you understand the personalities of these monsters, know what drives them and what they are afraid of, then by building a large ship with blood and bones, you have a good chance of completing a long sea voyage, using special fishing nets to pass through the broken bones and flesh on the sea surface, and salvage those mysterious things in the depths of the blood sea.
There are all kinds of things in the sea, including the bones of giant monsters, hatching monster eggs, and heritage left by prehistoric civilizations... The corpse catchers rely on courage and luck to survive on the sea. The timid corpse catchers only dare to operate near the coast, while the brave ones dare to install crossbows on the boat. They usually sail far away for 90 days, and have to return after 90 days regardless of the harvest. Then they will sell what they caught at the border dock and exchange it for local money to sustain their lives.
Reflexively, Xia Yibing asked, "Your fleet is quite large. Are there any ships equipped with demon-killing crossbows?"
"Of course!" Billie also responded with a conditioned reflex. She was very pleased with herself: "We have this ship. My father is the leader of the fleet!"
After saying this, the girl froze for a moment, then covered her mouth and stared at Xia Yibing with wide eyes: "Hey! Do you know who we are?"
Her maturity beyond her age made her a little narrow-minded, and she did not tell Xia Yibing the whole truth - for example, she did not tell her that "outsiders" like them were not uncommon in this place.
Exile is constant.
Yes... yes... the people of the Corrupted Blood Kingdom are all exiles, but they are just a little early, a step early. As long as the fog continues to cover the entire world, there will definitely be more exiles. The reflection is that there will always be people - outsiders, who will keep breaking in in an ignorant state.
Because she had lived on the sea with her father since she was very young, Billie had never seen such people. They usually... how should I put it, behaved very badly. They had no courage and no manners, and after seeing the bloody situation in the sea, they cried and begged to go home.
But how could they go back? Impossible... Everyone wanted to escape, but the gray fog was a way to get in and out. Perhaps only some legendary dangerous factors could ignore such laws and rules, but that definitely didn't include them, not these outsiders.
She originally thought that these three people were similar, and she was thinking about watching the joke! But she didn't expect that this black-haired foreigner would say "Demon Slayer Crossbow" all the time...
What's going on? When did the damn outsiders become so expert?
Billie was surprised, but so was Xia Yibing... She soon realized that this was not the knowledge she "should" master. It was a subconscious memory, as if she had once been a local and had experienced everything here.
After thinking about it, she realized that the problem could only be with the bone pendant on her chest. She tore it off, held it in her palm and looked at it carefully, but she couldn't recognize what kind of bone it was.
"Human bones." Billy saw what she was thinking and explained carefully, "These are... uh... the bones left behind by powerful heroes who have sacrificed their lives..."
"Why are you making me wear this thing?" Xia Yibing questioned her.
"Because... because you outsiders always have nightmares..." Billie almost cried, "All outsiders are like this... crying and making a fuss... The bones of a hero can calm your mind to a certain extent. I just want you to sleep more comfortably..."
She didn't seem to be talking nonsense.
Xia Yibing's expression looked a little strange - she could probably guess what was going on.
This bone pendant came from the "hero" mentioned by this little girl. Well, she would just treat the other person as a "hero". In simple terms, everything she experienced in her nightmare was what this hero experienced.
It was not a nightmare, but the spirit contained in the pendant was entangled with her own spirit. Some fragments of memories were accepted and absorbed by her, and because of the anxiety deep in her heart, such a dream spontaneously occurred.
For ordinary people, it can suppress nightmares - after all, that is the perspective of a hero, a fierce hunter who kills monsters as if they were rabbits. If you put yourself in this perspective, everything will naturally not be so scary.
It's just a pity that I'm more afraid of her getting hurt than that kind of horror, so that's a nightmare for me.
After figuring this out, Xia Yibing silently clenched the pendant.
"You gave this thing to me?"
It should be a good thing, and she wants to get it for free.
Billie's attitude made her feel less anxious: "Of course, this thing is not worth much here."
Worthless? Xia Yibing stared at her for a long while, then stammered, "But... isn't this your... your hero's bone..."
"Oh, that's true, but we have many heroes, and we also have many heroes' bones~"
is that so……
Billie then muttered quietly, "Most outsiders don't live long anyway. You won't be able to keep this thing for long if I give it to you. I guess you'll have to return it to me in ten days or half a month."
That was really underestimated.
Xia Yibing's gums felt a little itchy.
After communicating for so long, she realized that Billie was not a bad person. Although she was a little precocious, she still retained the innocence that was normal for her age.
She took the opportunity to offer to help - she herself had woken up, but the people she cared about had not yet woken up.
After waking up, the fever seemed to have subsided, and the hunger was also relieved. Xia Yibing speculated that he was fed with food and water during his coma, but her Aisuen was more seriously injured and even had an arm broken.
As for where their confiscated weapons went...she was quite conscious of this and had been avoiding such sensitive topics.
"I fed you some sugar water." Billie nodded, her spirits brightened again, "I found that you all look very good! Especially the one with gray hair... By the way, we also treated her arm. If you woke up first, you should have seen it, right? We bandaged her.
Xia Yibing nodded. She did see it, but Hitzfeld still didn't wake up.
Then she quickly grasped the point...good-looking? Especially good-looking?
Is that why Aisuen and I are on the bed and Madeline is on the floor...?
This was not a difficult question, so she asked Billie directly. The answer Billie gave surprised her.
"Because you all smell good."
When talking about this topic, Billie's face showed a hint of intoxication.
"The blood sea... the smell here is terrible. Of course, I have adapted to it, but if I can smell the fragrance more often, who would want to smell the stinky smell all day long..."
Xia Yibing opened her mouth and wanted to say that the fragrance you thought was actually very light - you know, they hadn't taken a shower for several days.
"This is also the reason why you can lie in the room~" Billie boasted as she brought the plate to her. Xia Yibing saw some fish on it, which should have been simply grilled.
The appearance is really not good, and most importantly, it gives off an indescribable weird smell.
Ah...if you eat this kind of thing every day, it will indeed...be pickled...
In the end, she didn't touch the grilled fish, but instead picked up some fern roots like potatoes and sweet potatoes and started munching on them.
Billie had an expression that said, "I knew you didn't eat fish." She sat next to her with her chin in her hand, watching her chew her food.
Xia Yibing was too busy filling her stomach to pay attention to her, so she suddenly asked, "Have you ever considered becoming a nun?"
nun……
Reflexively, Xia Yibing thought of the nightmare.
The flawless angelic smile is matched with a fat, swollen, tumorous body.
That thing can be opened like the Iron Maiden, with endless slime tentacles inside... Could it be that the Sister of Savior heals injuries by wrapping people up in it?
"Poof!" Feeling nauseous, Xia Yibing covered her mouth with her hand, trying her best not to lose her composure.
"You're really weird." Billie shook her head. "You're obviously a foreigner, but you know a lot about this place."
She saw it—Xia Yibing obviously knew what a nun was.
"You're crazy..." The woman stared at her with horror in her eyes. "You didn't want to... turn into that kind of monster, did you?"
She is very good at judging people. There was light in Billie's eyes when she spoke, which showed that she was not just asking questions, but actually wanted to find some colleagues.
"It's a typical symptom of outsiders to value appearance." Billie looked up. "It's actually not a bad thing. Sometimes those things that look disgusting and scary can save you. The real danger is the pretty faces in purgatory."
"What's wrong with being a nun?" Without waiting for Xia Yibing to understand what she said, she counted on her fingers, "Look... so many people want to be blood butchers, want to be free, but even the most powerful blood butchers have to respect nuns."
"And nuns know a lot of secrets... When they're not working, their bodies are no different from those of ordinary people, and they can move back and forth between church locations. I really want to go to those places and take a look..."
After talking a lot, she changed the subject and said half threateningly, half intimidatingly: "In fact, this is really the only way for you."
"…You mean becoming a nun?"
"Well? After all, you are good-looking and healthy, so those minor injuries are not worth mentioning... and the church needs publicity... Pretty girls are always in high demand, and becoming a nun is the best choice."
"What if we don't."
"Oh, I told you, pretty girls are always very popular."
This is not a threat, it is a reality, the cruel reality before them.
"My father is not as easy to talk to as me."
Seeing that she had almost finished eating, Billie came over and took the plate, "He hates outsiders...Whenever he met people like you before, he sold them as slaves."
"Who told you that you don't have the blood of salvation in your bodies? Pure flesh may react to anything... You are excellent materials for those blood mages, and each one can be sold at a very high price..."
"In other words," Xia Yibing interrupted her, "we have to prove our worth in order to get the most basic freedom here?"
“…That’s about it.”
Billie was surprised, but didn't take it seriously.
In her opinion, these people had no other choice - either be bewitched by her and take the exam to become a nun, or die in the port because of their foreign identity and natural beauty. There would be no third possibility.
Beautiful...
That's not a compliment in Port Inian.
Xia Yibing watched her carry the plate out without saying anything else, nor did she feel uneasy because of the cruel reality.
"Damn it... that stinky kid finally got away..."
Familiar complaints, coming from somewhere unknown corner.
After eating, Xia Yibing regained her strength. She got off the bed, swayed to the table, and took out a glass test tube from a half-open drawer.
It was sealed tightly, but Billie probably didn't dare to remove the cork because she was afraid that there was poison inside.
"What are you looking at!"
The liquid in the bottle squeezed out a small human face.
"Let me go! Let me out!"
