Before releasing the statues, they still had one problem to solve: if the statues could communicate, how would they understand their language?
“Can Elder Sister understand?” Prusius asked.
“Probably not,” Lu Li replied.
Elder Sister’s ability was to sense emotions, not to translate languages.
“We could go to the shelter again. They know the people of the previous generation, so maybe they know their language too,” Katerina suggested.
“But the shelter is already sealed,” Prusius said, crouching down to scratch an ear with his hind paw.
“We’ll just dig it up again,” Katerina said, glancing at Lu Li.
“To Winnelag first.”
Two stoves ward the captain’s cabin. Lu Li took off his black cloak and hung it on the ship’s wheel, giving the rchant the task of going to Winnelag to “find soone who knows the language of the previous generation.”
The new rchant, who had crawled out of the coals, accepted this assignnt, along with the task of finding seeds for the shelter. Upon arriving in Winnelag, he would remain there to rebuild the rchant network.
The old rchant continued to follow Lu Li, searching for more of his kind.
While the new rchant was investigating in Winnelag, Prusius asked the old rchant:
“What’s your na?”
“A rchant has no na.”
“We still need sothing convenient to call you. There are going to be more and more rchants, after all!”
Prusius looked at Lu Li expectantly.
“Master Lu Li, are there any other nas that start with ‘An’?”
“Andy?”
Katerina recalled the na of a dead hunter.
“That... na... isn’t suitable.”
Ofelia said hoarsely:
“We could... call him... Anthony.”
The rchant’s objections were useless, and everyone scrambled to give him a new na to distinguish him from the other rchants.
It seed pointless, but everyone was pleased with the rchant’s new na.
The rchant—or rather, Anthony—relayed information about the progress of the rchant in Winnelag:
Mayor Matteus promised to find a batch of seeds for Lu Li; Mayor Matteus was investigating any leads related to “ruins, the Abyss, cultists, a tree, a brown wagon”; Mayor Matteus had sent people to search.
The first results to co in were on an unrelated matter.
“They found Moni Alaya in Winnelag. She is now the wife of the captain of the Inquisition’s Steam Knight Order,” the rchant, Anthony, reported.
Lu Li carried many records and letters with him, including those left in the shelter, which he had also collected. The diary of Naslam Alaya, a resident of the shelter who died in the collapsed ruins; the diary of the night watchman Matthew from the investigators’ base; the letters from Remi and his sister—
Lu Li opened his suitcase and handed Naslam Alaya’s diary to the rchant, Anthony, so he could deliver it to Moni Alaya.
“I am dying. Whoever reads this, I am Naslam Alaya. Please deliver this diary to my daughter, Moni Alaya, and tell her that all my property is under the floorboards by the fireplace in our old ho. Also tell her that I love her. Rember, it is I who loves her, not you.”
Lu Li still rembered the last words from the diary. But now the words themselves had not vanished, and he no longer needed to convey them on that father’s behalf.
anwhile, information arrived about the cultists of the “Church of Shadows,” who worshipped Anna. They had recently gathered in Imodburg, in the west of the Main Continent, and sacrificed all the survivors there.
The place was a long way from the Allen Peninsula. But if no information ca from the statues, and if there were no traces of Anna in Himpfast, Lu Li might very well have gone to Imodburg.
Andrea caught several fish and threw them onto the deck. Ofelia ca out of the captain’s cabin and brought the fish back in.
They no longer cooked the fish into a stew; the lack of sufficient spices ant that everyone except Prusius found the fish chowder inedible, with a fishy sll so strong it was like chewing on a raw fish.
Fried fish was simple enough and hard to ss up, but it made them very thirsty afterward. However, having two rchants ant there were no problems with supplies—whatever they needed, if it was in Winnelag, it could be delivered in minutes.
Gurgle.
The smallest fish was tossed to the black crow, which snatched it, landed on the control panel, pecked it apart, and swallowed it.
The Sanity Counter made a sound, but no one paid it any mind. Katerina, refusing Andrea’s idea to fry the fish “personally,” scaled the fish, gutted it, placed several on the stove, and sprinkled them with salt and simple spices, waiting for the skin to turn golden brown.
“Caw!”
The black crow suddenly spread its wings and shrieked piercingly, unable to dispel the cadaverous, overpowering fishy sll emanating from the fish carcass at its feet.
“What a stench... what happened?”
The sll, like an invisible malevolence, brazenly assaulted the senses of everyone in the captain’s cabin.
Lu Li kept an eye on the Sanity Counter as he used his dagger to lift the belly of the fish that the black crow had pecked open.
A pile of black waste, resembling deep-sea sludge, lay in the fish's belly, exuding a monstrous, tangible stench.
“Bleh...”
Prusius, who had been scratching at the door, was gagging until Katerina opened the cabin door and saved him.
“What... is this? It’s not... in any books.”
Ofelia examined the foul-slling fish carcass; she couldn’t sll a thing.
“I don’t know.”
Lu Li wrapped up the dead fish and threw it overboard. With the source gone, the stench in the captain’s cabin gradually dissipated.
The unknown in the world was as plentiful as the grains of sand on a beach.
Once the sll had faded, Katerina closed the cabin door.
However, for Lu Li and Prusius, a foul odor still lingered in the cold air.
Other than the sll, the contents of the fish’s belly seed to have no other effects; nothing had happened to the black crow.
Near midnight, the rchant, Anthony, brought more news.
“They found soone in Winnelag with the Cursed Title ‘Linguist.’ He can translate the language of the previous generation.”
As the rchant, Anthony, spoke, the inscription “Linguist” surfaced in the depths of their minds.
“Linguist”
“Vibrations in the air, the movents of breath, the emanations of consciousness—you understand the languages they speak. You know whether they are discussing the new neighbor or how to roast or boil you.”
“But be careful. They don’t like being eavesdropped on, and they don’t like their language being defiled by the weak.”
“—Language itself possesses power.”
“Is it a person? How will he get here? Can your rchants bring him?” Katerina frowned.
“They can, but he will be contaminated by the In-Between.”
“Use another way,” Lu Li said calmly.
This holder of the Cursed Title was able to translate the language of the previous generation. Now only one problem remained.
How to communicate with the people of the previous generation.
Lu Li assigned this to the rchant. He wrote down questions on a piece of paper and asked the rchant to take them to the holder of the Cursed Title for translation. Then, the rchant was to deliver the questions to the people of the previous generation, retrieve their answers, have them translated, and bring them back.
If that didn’t work, they would have to choose another, less safe thod: bring the statues out of the In-Between and ask them in person.
Had there been any outsiders in the underground ruins recently; did they rember anything related to “the Abyss”; what could be connected to “ruins, the Abyss, cultists, a tree, a brown wagon”—
Lu Li folded the parchnt covered in questions and handed it to the rchant, Anthony.
Then he began to wait for a reply.
Reviews
All reviews (0)