"Someone found a cave to hide in here."
"This is the fundamental reason why we chose to build a city here," the girl said with a little dignity hidden under her calm face. She looked at the scorch marks on the mountain wall and explained, "Although it will be flooded during the rainy season, it is enough to shelter an entire city during the dry season. The town’s elderly and children, and during the rainy season the floodwaters from the mountains will flood the only way in.”
"From this point of view, Compo Town is a very important base for the resistance." Agnes echoed the girl's words softly, pushing aside half a person's height of weeds and looking forward.
What you see is just a ruined wall.
Blackened blood clots were stained on the ground, grass, and messy soil. Fragments of pottery, broken wood, and broken iron blocks were piled together, blocking the only decent road in the town, making it impossible to see their original appearance. The faint smell of blood lingers in the air, and even if you don't breathe, it seems to be infiltrated into the skin and hair of the people who come here.
The surroundings were completely silent, with no sobs from the survivors, no crows or flies.
There wasn't even a single corpse, whether fresh, rotten, or fossilized.
It seems as if all living things, or all the lives that have ever lived, disappeared here together at a certain moment, heading towards an unknown ending together.
No, there is still sound.
Agnes closed her eyes slightly and listened carefully to the whispers in her ears.
Those sounds that almost formed like a swarm of moths' wings almost filled the entire town, with confusion and vagueness that could not form a complete sentence at all. Agnes could only barely extract words like "hate", "curse", "victory" and "alive" from it.
This information was enough for Agnes to think of something, but not enough for her to spell out the full picture of what happened here.
Agnes took a few quick steps and stopped between the collapsed houses. Frost spread quietly from under the feet, and the clear and crystal snowflakes condensed out of thin air in mid-air floated down in the breeze, adding a sense of whiteness to the ground.
But there was still silence all around, without the screams and whimpering of the resentful residual spirits.
"If there is no resentful spirit, there must be divine power involved," Agnes turned to the girl and said, "But I didn't feel any discomfort at all."
The girl was silent for a moment and nodded.
"The church here... where is the meeting point?" Agnes asked aloud, choosing the name "gathering point" with some hesitation.
"I've only been here once, and I'm not sure if they changed their location." The girl didn't pay attention, and just walked calmly along the original road, and finally stopped in front of a house on the roadside.
This is a house that looks no different from other houses. The door is wide open. A smashed wooden table fell to the ground at the door. It can be vaguely seen that the originally white tablecloth is stained with almost black blood stains and the ground. of dirt.
Agnes walked up the steps slowly, and the smell of blood in her nose seemed to be a little stronger, but it also took on a slightly sweet smell like honey.
She stopped and turned to look at the girl who was standing still.
"Does this...have the same claim as you?" Agnes asked.
The girl was silent for a long time before she spoke: "It was the last time I came here, but I don't know now."
"Sounds like something happened here," Agnes said casually.
The girl stood silently, saying nothing.
Agnes, anticipating the girl's reaction, stepped into the house.
Near the door are several crooked benches, their surfaces glowing with the waxy luster of years. The central walkway was stained with puddles of dirt whose original color could not be seen.
On the platform behind, there are several broken red candles on both sides of the large and deep shrine. The bases of the candles are carved with entwining thorns and blooming roses. The things enshrined in front of the shrine fell to the ground. The cups and plates were stained with scarlet marks and were split by swords and the like. There was also a larger pool of scarlet marks on the ground, which seemed to have almost soaked into the platform. .
Enshrined in the shrine is a male figure bound by thorns. His face is blurred, but he seems to be wailing in pain.
Agnes looked at the shrine carefully without touching anything, then walked around to the back of the shrine.
The roof behind the shrine was covered with hooks. The tips and bends of the hooks shone with an icy cold light, but the straight tops were covered with scarlet rust. It was completely impossible to judge the original color of the ground. The scarlet bloodstains painted strange patterns, looking like thorns intertwined with roses blooming.
These bloodstains are very fresh, almost from a short time ago, and are the source of all the bloody smell in this house, but the sweet smell like honey fruits is weaker than that outside the house.
It seemed that this aura was not born from this room. Agnes carefully looked at the traces in the room and turned around to leave.
"Is there a custom of living sacrifice here?" Agnes walked out of the house and asked the girl who was still standing there.
The girl nodded silently.
"They hate the Intis people and it's hard to stop them," the girl said softly. "After every war, they will choose captives as sacrifices, and the remaining captives will drain all the blood from their bodies."
"It seems that the people here have very different ideas from yours." Agnes said with a little sigh in her tone.
The girl remained silent and did not speak.
"There is something abnormal about this meeting point," Agnes said while looking at all the traces left in the town, "but it is not abnormal enough. This is not the place where the abnormality first occurred."
"If there is not one on the ground, then there is only underground," the girl said with rare certainty, "that cave that is used as a shelter."
"Then you have to go and have a look," Agnes said softly, "I hope you have enough means to ensure your own safety."
------------------
Ellesmere Port.
"I thought you would leave the pile of lawsuits behind for a longer time, Master." The gray-haired butler gracefully took Aurelio's cloak and cane and said with a smile.
"Sorry, Patrazzi," the young prosecutor said with a smile, "I was indeed a little impulsive before."
The butler looked at Aurelio's not-so-good-looking smile and seemed to understand something. After a long time, he asked aloud: "It seems that you haven't seen the lady in the Southern Continent?"
"No, maybe I saw it," Aurelio said softly, looking calmly at the sky with a few clouds.
"It's just that some things are more important."
