old dream

Chapter 112
Colin wondered if Mr. No. [-] had doubted himself during this period of time.

All he could do was to keep his gaze open as much as possible, and to face the other person's empty eyes without dodging.

The other party is a full-body lampkeeper who still keeps watch on the lights and follows the creed.

Mr. No. [-] still had a roll of newspaper in his arm and a small bag of meals wrapped in kraft paper in his left hand. He looked like an ordinary person walking by the river in the afternoon.

He silently looked at the empty cloth bag in Colin's hand, not knowing what he was thinking about.

"It's about the entrustment." After a while, Mr. No. [-] said.

The commission to help him kill someone is the reason why he chose Colin as Fang.

After granting the basic information, he let Colin grow up for two weeks, and now it was finally approaching the time to reap the fruits.

"I'm going to do it in ten days," said Mr. One.

"The target is the lampkeeper of Caruso's house. She has met you twice."

"You mean, Hilpert?" said Colin, frowning.

The lampkeeper next to Marizio?The target is her?
And how did No. [-] know that he met her yesterday?

"Did the man ask you to call her Hilpert?"

There seemed to be a faint sneer on the corner of No. [-]'s mouth.

I always feel that the expressions on his face have become more and more colorful in the last few times we met.

"Aren't you colleagues?"

In Colin's view, Hilpert and Mr. No. [-] are also lampkeepers who respect the creed and obey their hometown.

Then why did Mr. No. [-] think of killing her again?

"Including Arecio, there are currently six lightkeepers in Stade."

Mr. One opened the newspaper he had brought, spread it out on the dusty ground, and then sat down on the embankment.

"However, they were abandoned by the lights to varying degrees..."

Mr. One seemed to hesitate for a while before saying:
"Including me, after coming to Stade, the confusion about self is like a flock of birds returning from afar. They circle around and sing endlessly, and people can no longer ignore it."

Colin noticed that this was the first time Mr. One spoke to describe his affairs.His odd way of speaking still hasn't changed, but he's starting to describe himself, which seems to imply that he's looking back at himself more and more.

"There was only a blank space there, and it took me nearly 30 years to clean it up, but now the confusion surged up overnight, and I can't linger."

The more you are deluded by yourself, the less you can see clearly the existence of spirituality.

The Lantern Keeper becomes debilitated by this.

Mr. One began to no longer notice the changes in Colin, and perhaps this was the reason.

"Do you know why?" Mr. No. [-] seemed to be asking a question, but also seemed to really want to ask someone for an answer.

Why?Because the complex world of the alliance is too confusing for the human eye?Because it is too far away from Sincily, the effectiveness of the coastal lights has also declined, and there are not many left?
"It was 'Hilpert' who hesitated first."

No. [-] resentfully said a somewhat sloppy answer that seemed to be justifying himself.

"She is the 'Lamp Maiden' of this principality. There are only three Lantern Maidens in the entire territory of the Alliance. They began to imitate the life of the first Lantern Keeper 'Valeria' when they were alive, mirroring their ancestors. God's power, each keeping the lamps of a land."

"But if the lamp girls themselves hesitate, the lights will also fluctuate. Where the light fades, the night fog will return. The guards guarding her will also be overwhelmed by confusion again."

"Why do the lightkeepers in this country always lose their morals? Before we saw it with our own eyes, we only realized that we should eliminate those who betrayed the creed. Because even the learned managers of the Lighthouse Library dare not imagine that it would be There is something wrong with the Lantern Girl who is the pillar..."

"'Hilpede'? 'Helene'? She has given herself hundreds of names, but she has never mentioned the one she should use the most."

Mr. No. [-] held his breath, and said with infinite respect:
"—Valeria!"

"As Lampmaid, she had to be Valeria."

"But she didn't make it...so, that's why Stade became like this."

The Virgin of the Lamp, Valeria, is the world's first lamp-keeper?

And the lamp girls who are alive now have to mirror Valeria's power by imitating Valeria's appearance before she was alive?

He did not expect that "Hilpert" would play such a key role in the lighting system of the entire Sindhi coast.

Long before this conversation, Colin and Ji Lian had guessed: as the ancestral god of the Sincilians, the virgin with the lamp probably also has some relationship with the lampkeeper... Or it can be seen from the name Something out there, after all both have to do with "lights".

But after listening to Mr. One's words, Colin instead grasped a strange point.

If Valeria, the ancestor god, was the first lamp keeper, then why is her name passed down to the world?

After all, doesn't the lampkeeper need to avoid himself by abandoning his name?
Could it be that at some point in the past, at least in the time of the Patriarch God Valeria, they were not what they are today?
"But if you really kill her..."

Following the logic implied in Mr. One's words, Colin murmured:
"And what will become of the lampkeepers who remain in Stade?"

If her hesitation causes the lampkeeper's ego to begin to return, where does killing her take these people?

"If lighthouses can lead people in the wrong direction, it is better to disappear than to exist."

Mr. No. [-] said blankly:

"Arecio has persuaded her many times, and now her hometown has learned of her fault. But as a dereliction of duty, she has been unwilling to give up her current position."

"Then there is nothing to do but kill her."

Colin thought again about what happened in that small fruit forest yesterday.

Judging from what No. [-] said, after the five-hands meeting, Arecio may have met with Mr. No. [-].

It should be that he told Mr. No. [-] that he had met Hilpert.

However, Colin faintly felt that something was wrong.

Because he clearly remembered that Hilpert seemed to say:
"My hometown will not agree."

But Colin felt that he didn't need to worry too much about this matter.It is enough to fulfill this agreement and repay Mr. No. [-]'s kindness for guiding him into the extraordinary world.

"Is the secret medicine that Arecio gave you enough?" Mr. No. [-] asked.

"At least enough until the end of the mission." Colin said.

"That's good." Number One thought for a while:
"The action on our side may start at any time. Let's prepare for it in the past few days."

……

……

Because of Number One, Colin has been a little worried in the past few days.

He always felt that the lamp keeper would come to find him mysteriously again, but recently Colin urgently needs to practice witchcraft again.

In addition to the problems on Aresio's side, the improvement he just obtained by building the hearth, although he has reached sub-months in a controllable force scale, must also be consolidated into ready-to-use combat capabilities through practice as soon as possible.

The training to track the bottom water flow of the Seber River has also continued in the past few days.The backbone of the object-finding ritual has been transferred from Ji Lian's home to the cheapest room in a corner hotel, and it has been running 24 hours a day regardless of the cost.

On the premise that each tracking marker is painted with red graphite water, the main body of the ceremony still burns a full two ounces of redstone every day. This consumption intensity has far exceeded the situation when tracking wine boxes.

Of course, in addition to this, as the first practice, Ke Lin also obviously overestimated the strength of his intentions.

Although he put a total of more than [-] tracking markers into the water.But when the ceremony was started, more than [-] of the targets seemed to have never existed, without leaving any shadow in his consciousness, they were lost and disappeared.

But even so, the heavy load caused by tracking more than a thousand targets at the same time still made him almost lose control of his body, and he could barely stand by leaning on the wall.

After discarding some of the targets bit by bit in a ambiguous way, the tracked targets were reduced to 870 before the intention could be refocused and the stability of the ceremony barely maintained.

Then, it just passed the night. 870 six light spots sink and float in a three-dimensional space, being pulled by the water flow, leaving more than [-] lines.

So they depicted an extremely complicated appearance in Colin's consciousness:

There are countless eddies, undercurrents and endless waves.

A complex world hidden beneath the calm waters of the Seber.

Through these lines, Colin unexpectedly learned that in addition to the main river, there are several waterways leading from the ground to the ocean.

There are also a few inconspicuous countercurrents that blow several lines up the Seber.But that's rare, and it wasn't long before the tracking markers were heading back out to sea along the current.

There has never been any mark, and it has been gathered to a specific place by the current, which means that the glass bottle containing the spray is likely to have been sent into the sea now.

With common sense, those fingerprints are nothing to worry about.

But witchcraft is not something that is based on common sense, so Colin's worry has not been alleviated.

That night, when Colin was struggling to fall asleep, those lines about the water flow seemed to be still running in his dream.

Even though he was a little tired, he used intentions to guide these rituals, which had gradually become an instinctive and unconscious action.

Although most of the work of "intent" is done unconsciously.

So when he woke up the next day, although he felt a splitting headache, Colin's control over the more than [-] small rituals was much smoother.

The line is still stretching, and by this time most of the tracking marks have flowed into the sea.Floating in the extremely complicated offshore currents, it draws more gorgeous flowing lines.

After sensing the current load capacity of the intention, it seems that there has been a slight improvement.Colin plans to drop 1000 or [-] targets into the water next time, gradually increasing the intensity of his intentions.

It's like practicing recording texts through more than [-] "stars" in consciousness since childhood.At this time, he didn't know what it meant to control hundreds of miniature rituals at once.

Everything seemed to be progressing steadily and orderly. Occasionally, Colin would release the Shuttle Demon from the hearth. Its consciousness seemed to have been suffering for a long time and was on the verge of disappearing.

After several attempts, Ke Lin's skill in controlling two bodies at the same time has become more and more proficient.

But the tingling sensation brought about by the rejection of the spirit element is also deepening little by little.

Except when he was working in the seminary, Colin had always activated the object finding technique.

Or it can no longer be called object finding, and it has become a kind of perpetual motion training machine with the running water, allowing Colin's "intent" to run at full capacity unconsciously.

These few days of peace were quickly passed by Colin's non-stop practice.

But he also deeply knows that this is just the calm before the storm, and what will happen next is brewing in the clouds.

So he didn't miss any chance to improve his strength.

What is Aresio most likely to do at this time?
While practicing witchcraft, Colin thought about this question the most.

Alessio obviously doesn't care whether Capello can be revived, his goal is always Julio.

Then, before the members of the five major families complete their investigation on Capello, that is, before Julio officially steps onto the stage as patriarch, the few days left are his important window of opportunity.

Otherwise, everything becomes more complicated and unmanageable.

Just when he became more and more determined on this point, he received another contact from Giovanni.

"Alessio is going to kidnap Julio, probably tonight."

In the alley, Giovanni covered his face and the scar on his left cheek with a wide-brimmed hat, and said so.

　The state is not good and the consciousness is blurred. Readers, please forgive me.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)