The Villain Saint is my secondary account

Previously, when the Seven Stars Society members in the underground of the Misty Forest were suddenly scattered and teleported away, Ye Xiao initially wondered if it was the power of that fake saintess.

After all, he had asked Greta what the "Armour of Arrogance" was after fighting the Gray Wolf Mercenary Group last night. The maid's explanation was that it could affect space, but she didn't understand any further details.

Greta was able to recognize them purely because of their familiarity with each other as original sin demons—of course, the little maid's original words were definitely not like that, Ye Xiao just simplified it.

However, it now seems that this place itself has a spatial magic array, and the fake saintess and the moon goddess may have had other reasons for deliberately ambushing them in the misty forest.

The village chief once mentioned that their livestock would often disappear inexplicably. I wonder if there is any connection between this and the problem.

Ye Xiao wasn't interested in solving the mystery, but he needed to find his companions in the misty forest. Being anxious wouldn't help; he had to find a way to resolve his current predicament.

His lineage as a miracle worker gave him some intuition about elements related to time and space. He dismounted, walked to a wooden house with the lights still on, and knocked on the door.

"Is anyone here?"

"Someone's here. But I'm sorry, sir, I can't open the door for you." A crisp yet polite voice came from inside the house; judging from the tone alone, it was probably a little girl.

Moreover, the little girl's voice gave Ye Xiao a slightly familiar feeling.

"I don't need to open the door, I just need someone to tell me how to get to the Misty Forest."

"...I'm sorry, sir."

"If you don't know the way, there's no need to apologize."

"No, sir, I'm sorry, it's just that you can never go there again."

"..." Ye Xiao was stunned.

He had expected that something amazing would happen after he said those words, but nothing did.

The light rain continued to fall silently through the mist, and the surroundings remained utterly quiet.

"Why do you say that?"

“Because… I’ve been here for a long time.” The voice was somewhat weak, but not fearful. “If we could leave, we would have left long ago.”

"you?"

“My father went out with the neighbors to find the way to the village a long time ago, but he never came back… My mother tried to find him, but she never came back either.”

"……I'm very sorry."

"Don't apologize to me. I just hope you can talk to me more." The voice paused for a moment. "I know it's impolite to make such a request without opening the door for you... but it's been a long time since anyone has spoken to me."

"I'm sorry about that too." Ye Xiao patted the raindrops off her cloak. "I have other things to do."

“Okay.” The girl behind the door seemed a little disappointed. “Then, if you can see my father or mother, could you give this to them for me?”

Ye Xiao was about to ask what it was when she saw a blue ribbon being slipped out from the crack in the door below.

“No problem.” Ye Xiao picked up the ribbon. “But it would be even better if you could give me a direction.”

“My father said he would go to the biggest windmill in the village because it was the highest and perhaps he could see beyond the mist.”

"Thank you."

Ye Xiao thanked him politely and then took the opportunity to examine the ribbon carefully under the lamplight.

The words "Marilyn Brenda" were embroidered on it in delicate handwriting.

Wait... Marilyn?

Ye Xiao's eyebrows twitched. Was this name a coincidence?

"Hello? Hey, are you still there?!" Ye Xiao called out towards the door, only to see that the lights that had been on suddenly went out.

There was no response, and the surroundings fell into a deathly silence once more.

He touched the door panel, hesitated for a moment, and finally kicked it open.

The interior was an ordinary farmhouse, empty and desolate, as if no one had ever existed there.

Looking at the dim interior, he vaguely recalled the words Marilyn had said when he first met her in the tavern in Liangqiu Village.

“A similar epidemic once occurred in my hometown, which caused fish-scale-like things to grow on people’s skin. At that time, it was the epidemic hunters who found the culprit who caused it and executed him, which finally stopped the spread of the epidemic.”

Fish scales are growing on my skin?

Suddenly, Ye Xiao felt goosebumps all over his body.

Because he clearly remembered that the Gray Wolf Mercenary Group members also showed the same signs before they went mad.

The Plague Hunters are a subordinate organization of the Full Moon Order; the disease "Fish Scales" also belongs to the "evil god" that they should have "exorcised".

But now Ye Xiao knows that the Moon Goddess is clearly not a naive and innocent person who does charity work.

And the disease that once appeared in the remote fishing village of the Kingdom of Valen has now been brought to Storm Harbor by Him.

What exactly are the fake saintess and the moon goddess plotting?

Or perhaps, there is something deeper hidden beyond them?

Ye Xiao somewhat regretted that when he was the giant tentacle monster Lydia, he directly strangled the Moon Goddess's true form outside the real world.

If I had known, I should have grabbed the other person and tortured them severely; maybe I could have gotten them to reveal something.

It can only be said that he was indeed a bit anxious when he saw his enemy.

Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Abandoners

Ye Xiao put the ribbon into his spatial ring. He checked it with his magic and found nothing special about it; it was indeed just an ordinary ribbon.

Afterward, he briefly looked around the farmhouse to make sure no one was inside, and then took two copper coins hidden in a broken wardrobe before riding away.

As for why there are two copper coins in this place out of the blue, that's not important; players don't need a reason to take things.

In the rainy night, as the fog thickened, the horses' hooves made a soft sound on the gravel path.

The farmhouses were shrouded in darkness, with only occasional dim lights melting into the hazy surroundings.

Following Ella's memory, there was indeed a huge windmill in the village. Although the fog obscured his view, Ye Xiao still remembered the general direction.

The dirt road was winding and muddy, and his figure rose and fell on the horse's back. Before long, he saw the huge black shadow standing on a hill.

Four blades of wind, hidden in the mist, slowly rotated. The towering tower was majestic and serene, with lights seemingly flickering in the windows on its top floor.

He hadn't noticed it from a distance, but now that he was standing beneath this enormous building, Ye Xiao felt as small as a grain of sand compared to this colossal structure.

He tied the horse's reins to the roadside fence, walked over on foot, and pushed open the old gate under the windmill tower.

The old door latch creaked loudly, and a faint fishy smell wafted into the dark room.

Ye Xiao took off the staff behind him. The gemstone at the tip of the staff glowed and illuminated a row of huge wooden gears that interlocked with each other, as well as a sloping wooden staircase leading to the upper level.

On the wall next to the stair railing, there was a familiar symbol to Ye Xiao—a fish with two tails drawn with simple lines. The abstract style made Ye Xiao realize that it wasn't that Jenny's drawing skills in the magic shop were too bad, but rather that the symbol was simply drawn in that abstract way.

Unexpectedly, the sect known as the "Pisces Society" has already extended into this small village.

No… Ye Xiao rubbed his chin. If what he had just heard was a phantom of Marilyn from some point in the past, then could the sect have been established earlier than he had imagined?

Could this sect have already emerged when the disease broke out in the fishing village of the Kingdom of Valen?

But that smog-filled land filled with steam is too far away from here, and Ye Xiao has no way to verify it. He also doesn't know what the little girl was or what she was. So, these can only be his guesses.

Ye Xiao climbed the stairs step by step. Under the illumination of the fluorescent spell, he could see many wet footprints on the wooden steps, as if many people who had been caught in the rain had passed by here.

The sloping staircases went up and down, one floor after another, and in the dim light, only the huge gears were turning slowly.

Ye Xiao carefully observed each floor, but unfortunately, he didn't see any treasure chests or anything like that. Come to think of it, who would normally put their money in a chest in such a place?

Suddenly, flickering flames entered Ye Xiao's field of vision at the top of the tower.

On this floor, the floor was filled with white candles, and the dim, yellowish light came from the flickering flames on these rows of candles.

The candles formed a semicircle away from the stairs, and a huge, bulky figure leaned quietly against the wall, motionless.

Ye Xiao raised his staff high, and the fluorescence on it was like a torch that dispelled the darkness, illuminating the figure in the shadows.

At first glance, it resembles a giant that has been soaked until it is bloated and rotten, but below its waist is a thick fish tail. Its skin is a lifeless grayish-white, and it looks like it has been dead for some time, with some long-festering wounds on it.

Judging from his bloated face, he appeared to be a man. He had no hair, his brows were smooth, his swollen eyelids were tightly closed, and the flesh on his face was loose and drooping.

However, the corpse was wearing a blue and white top hat, somewhat like the hat worn by a cathedral bishop.

"What is this? A merman priest?"

Ye Xiao stepped forward and gently waved his staff to drive away the flies swarming around the corpse.

The corpse's hands had become webbed, holding a dark blue law book, which was sunken into its fat belly.

Ye Xiao initially intended to pick it up with his hand to see what it was, but after thinking about it, he pointed his staff at the candle on the ground and then at the book in the corpse's hand, saying, "Phase Shift."

With a soft "plop," the book fell to the ground, while the candle, still burning, fell into the corpse's hand and extinguished itself on the pale belly.

Ye Xiao picked up the book and opened the classic text.

"With hope we praise the great mother fish, who bestows abundance, a gift from the ocean."

"A fish with two tails is a symbol of grace."

Ye Xiao silently prayed to himself that he would never recite strange scriptures in such a strange place.

However, the teachings on this rough paper were handwritten, and there were even many typos and crossed-out sentences, so Ye Xiao had some doubts about whether this kind of classic text was really useful.

As he was thinking this, he suddenly felt the floor beneath his feet tremble.

[Quest triggered: The Enchanted Dream of a Small Fishing Village]

[Mission Briefing: The fallen, now penniless, cling to the illusions of the past, awaiting the bursting of the bubble.]

[Task Difficulty: Normal]

[Task Rewards: 20 Gold Coins, 400 Universal Points]

The system's task prompt came at just the right time. Ye Xiao slightly raised his gaze from the scripture, and sure enough, the giant merman corpse lying half-reclined on the ground showed a health bar... no, it started moving.

His swollen eyes suddenly widened, revealing dark pupils that looked like stickers stuck to his yellow sclera, lifeless and gleaming with an eerie light.

The next second, two webbed hands slammed down towards Ye Xiao's face.

But of course, this couldn't hit Ye Xiao, who was prepared in advance; the spreading smoke and dust blew down the few rings of white candles.

The not-so-spacious floor was instantly plunged into darkness, with only the staff in Ye Xiao's hand still glowing faintly.

"Fireball."

Ye Xiao dodged backward and, as always, unleashed his tried-and-true attack spell, a dazzling explosion slamming into the swollen head.

It was just a probing attack, but unexpectedly it easily burned a hideous scar into the decaying flesh.

Dark black sewage flowed from the huge wound, soaking the ground.

The fat merman clasped his hands together, with only half of his lips moving slightly, as if he were chanting something.

Ye Xiao cautiously gripped the hilt of the knife at his waist with his right hand and held the cane in his left, waiting for any possible changes.

But nothing happened.

The merman bishop with half his face mutilated seemed to be praying silently, but he couldn't cast any threatening spells. He was like a singer in a silent film, performing a comical act in the dark.

"...What the hell? It's so weak!"

Chapter Forty: Longing

Ye Xiao quietly stepped forward, and the giant fish-man launched another attack, swinging its clumsy limbs.

But once he was far away, the fishman, due to his bulky body making movement difficult, gave up swinging his sword and began to pray silently again.

"What's this?" Ye Xiao scratched his head.

The other party is like a machine that only knows how to execute instructions but has no self-awareness; its actions are entirely based on instinct.

This slow-moving monster naturally posed no threat to Ye Xiao.

Seeing this, Ye Xiao was not in a hurry to kill the other party, but began to try to communicate with it.

When you encounter a monster that doesn't seem so crazy in a place where you can find crazy monsters everywhere, you're bound to want to try methods other than killing it.

Ye Xiao tried to say a few words and wave, but received no response. The merman was just focused on reciting a silent prayer.

After some thought, Ye Xiao took out the ribbon the little girl had given him from the ring. It was the only thing he had obtained in this village, so it wouldn't hurt to try it out.

Surprisingly, this thing actually attracted the fishman's attention.