The old man stared at Lin Ze's golden vertical pupils and stayed in place.
The iron rod slipped from his hand and hit the ground with a dull sound.
His lips moved twice, and a few broken syllables came out of his throat, as if something was stuck in his throat preventing him from speaking out.
Lin Ze took a step forward.
The intimidating pressure intensified a bit more. The old man's knees softened and he held onto the oak trunk next to him with one hand to keep himself from kneeling down.
A thin layer of sweat appeared on his forehead, and his gray hair stuck to his temples.
"You... what the hell are you?"
"A passing..."
"Tui!"
"Please call me the greatest in history Legendary Mage--Merlin."
Lin Ze took back the dragon scales, and the vertical pupils faded back to normal.
"You are the one who rescued the Witch King..."
"Shh--"Lin Ze put his finger in front of his mouth and made a silent gesture.
The old man held on to the tree trunk and panted for a long time, then bent down to pick up the iron stick, his fingers clenched until they turned white.
"Follow me..."
He did not go through the main entrance of the temple, but went around to the end of the vegetable field in the backyard. There was a low house made of gravel, with a few stone slabs on the roof and only half of the door panel left.
There were farm tools and several broken jars piled in the room. A narrow bed was set up in the corner, and an old wooden box was placed at the head of the bed.
The old man dragged the wooden box out and opened it. Inside were several rolls of old sheepskins tied tightly with hemp rope.
"This is what my master left behind." The old man took out a roll from it, patted it, and spread it on the bed.
"My master was the previous guardian of the temple."
There is a statue of a god painted on the sheepskin. The lines are rough, but the outline is exactly the same as the small statue outside.
There are dense annotations written next to the statue, and the handwriting ranges from neat to sloppy. It is obvious that people from different generations have added to it one after another.
Lin Ze couldn't recognize the words, but the old man's finger crossed a line of words below the picture.
"This is my master's note."
"What did you write?"
"It says that the name of this little statue was originally 'Remnant Shedding'."
"Remnant Shedding?"
"The shedding of a cicada."
The old man turned over the roll of sheepskin and drew a larger diagram on the back, which was a cross-section of a mountain. There was a winding passage in the belly of the mountain, and a circle was drawn at the end of the passage, with the outline of the small god statue drawn in the circle.
"This thing was not in the temple at first, but in a mountain in the North. When the temple was first built, the first caregiver was ordered to transport it back to the North."
After the old man finished speaking, he rolled up the sheepskin and put it back in the box, slowly and slowly.
He squatted next to the box, resting his hands on his knees, and his eyes fell on the broken vats in the corner of the room.
"My master said that this thing should be the shell left by some very powerful creature."
The North, temple, old temple.
These things collided together in his mind, and Lin Ze vaguely felt that he had touched something.
"Has that statue always looked like that?"
The old man raised his head and looked at him, with something inexplicable in his cloudy eyes.
"Yes." The old man nodded.
"When Constantine came to worship, did you see any movement?"
The old man was silent for a while, as if he was debating whether to say something or not.
"Actually, one time I peeked in through the crack in the door out of curiosity."
"What did you see?"
"I saw... he was kneeling in front of the small statue, muttering something in his mouth, raising his hands above his head, palms facing up. There was a bowl on the stone platform in front of him, and the content in the bowl looked like blood..."
"After he finished reciting, the blood in the bowl disappeared without a trace as if it was sucked out of thin air..."
The old man slammed the iron stick on the ground. "Okay, I have said everything that needs to be said. You can go and don't come to me again."
Lin Ze stood at the door of the small house, swallowed what he said, turned around and went out through the side door of the temple's backyard.
He walked toward the east of the city along the way he came, keeping what the old man said in his mind.
Remnant Shedding.
The North The temple under the old battlefield.
Constantine closes its doors every year for worship.
And that bowl.
Constantine What is eaten from the bowl, or in other words, what is fed to the small statue in the bowl.
He put these fragments together and basically knew that there was a transaction-like relationship between Constantine and the little statue.
When Lin Ze returned to the small courtyard, Saira was chopping firewood in the yard.
Seeing Lin Ze's expression, she thrust the ax into the wooden pillar. "What's wrong?"
"That little statue is more troublesome than I thought."
Sirius walked out of the house, holding a bowl of hot water in his hand and leaning against the door frame. "What do you say?"
Lin Ze briefly stated what the old man from the temple said.
Sirius After hearing this, he drank the water in the bowl in one gulp and wiped his mouth. "It seems that that thing is really not an ordinary utensil."
"At least in this era, we should be wary of every legend." Lin Ze said lightly.
The two were silent for a few seconds.
Sirius put the bowl on the windowsill and put his hands on his hips. "How about... let's go to the North and see the old temple?"
"That's exactly what I meant."
"Are you going to the North?" Sela asked from the side.
Lin Ze waved his hand. "Don't worry, we will be back soon the North this time."
Before, he and Sela almost walked all the way to the Royal Capital, but this time in order to save time, he planned to use "Boundary Break" to go directly.
Sirius tilted his head. "What about Sword in the Stone?"
"Put it back first." Lin Ze leaned against the wall of the courtyard and went through the information obtained in the temple again in his mind.
"Sword in the Stone is for people to see. The little statue of the god is what really matters. I always feel that the transaction between Constantine and it is directly related to whether Arthur can secure the throne."
"Okay, let's go and have a look."
The cracks in "Boundary Break" were opened in front of several people, and cold wind poured out from inside, carrying a smell of moss and frozen earth.
Sirius shrank his neck. "The North?"
"The North."
Lin Ze stepped in first, followed closely by Sirius.
When the crack closed, the two of them were already standing on a gray-brown wasteland.
The sky was very low, lead-grey clouds rolled against the mountain ridges, and there was an indescribable coldness in the air, which was more than ten degrees lower than the capital.
The ground beneath my feet was hard, and withered grass clung to the soles, making a crunching sound when stepped on.
"The question is, how do we determine where the so-called old temple is?"
Lin Ze took out the "space" phalange bone from Undetectable Extension Box and held it in the palm of his hand. The phalange bone was slightly hot in the hand, a blue-white halo floated from the bone surface, and tiny arcs of electricity traveled between the knuckles.
He spread the magic power along his finger bones.
The moment his perception spread, the wasteland became three-dimensional in his mind. The texture of each stone, the depth of the withered grass root system, and the direction of the underground undercurrent were all as clear as palm prints.
"Found it." Lin Ze opened his eyes.