Part 6 THE LIGHT SHOWER CHAPTER 64 THE VOICE
After listening to High Priest Nim’s reply, Klein carried his horse’s lamp and walked twenty to thirty paces to the right along the grayish mist.
Then, he half-closed his eyes as if he was sensing something, which made the Moon City Extraordinaires following at the side and back not dare to make any noise at all for fear of disturbing the divine messenger.
After four or five seconds, Klein stretched out his right hand and slowly grabbed the air in front of him.
A stone-built altar then fell from nothingness into reality, with three candles made of grease and seven or eight spiritual materials on it.
Nim, who was a Sequence 4 Demigod, looked stunned for a moment, as if he couldn’t believe his eyes for a bit.
When he saw Germaine Sparrow take out his cane and heal his companions, he only thought that the other party possessed spatial abilities or had been favored by that “Fool”, but now, his judgment was completely overturned, because that altar, those candles, and those spiritual materials all looked familiar to him.
He had used them before!
He was actually able to get things out that I have used? Is this power that stems from history, from time? Nim thought back to some of the Moon City’s remaining tomes, and combined it with his own knowledge of demigods, he had a preliminary guess.
At that moment, Klein turned back and looked at the high priest:
”You may begin.”
Nim took a quiet breath, and under the watchful eyes of Adar, Sin, and Ruth, he took a step in front of the altar and created the wall of spirituality.
After glancing at the symbols, logos, and patterns inscribed on the altar and confirming that there were no problems, he performed the ritual with exceptional skill, following the process that had been engraved into his memory.
At the end, he buried his head and chanted in a low voice:
”Eternal and unchanging mist;
”The barrier that solidifies space and time;
”The all-encompassing presence ……”
Before the prayer was finished, Klein had already turned his attention to the grayish mist, hoping to hear a voice coming from the depths.
To that end, he had the large number of monster secret puppets that he secretly controlled and that walked in the surrounding darkness spread out, placing them at intervals, making sure not to miss any suspicious traces.
However, until the ceremony was completed, he did not notice anything out of the ordinary.
After waiting for another moment, Klein turned his gaze to Nim, the High Priest of Moon City, and said flatly:
”Once more.”
……
Bakerland, Queens, inside the Hall family’s study.
After receiving permission, Audrey pushed open the door to her room and stepped inside, where her father, Earl Hall, and her brother, Hebert, were discussing something.
”Oh, baby, you don’t seem to look well?” Earl Hall cast his eyes toward the door.
Audrey didn’t use the role and genuinely forced a smile and said:
”There is a big gap in the food for the relief fund, I want to collect some more, I visited many nobles today, but they all told me that there is no more surplus food, even if I buy it with gold pounds.”
While saying these words, those nobles were either in a small parlor or in a place dedicated to afternoon tea, with high-quality black tea and many kinds of exquisite desserts in front of them, occasionally asking Audrey to comment on the culinary skills of the family’s dessert maker.
Their servants were rosy-cheeked and their pace was light, hardly making a sound so as not to disturb their honored guests.
”Now this situation ah ……” Earl Hall sniffed and sighed.
Audrey thought for a moment, and said earnestly:
”Papa, I remember that there should still be a lot of food at home, can I spend money to buy part of it?”
”Audrey, you’ve already done too much, there’s no need for that.” Hebert Hall frowned slightly and opened his mouth, while Audrey just looked at her father without responding to her brother’s words.
Earl Hall’s expression, which had lightened considerably with the arrival of his daughter, slowly became serious again:
”Audrey, the premise of charity is not to affect your own and your family’s lives, this is a guideline I want you to keep in mind.”
Dressed in a long gold and white dress, Audrey’s eyebrows slightly frowned and stretched out again as she said sincerely:
”Papa, the grain hoarded at home is enough to feed everyone in this house for a whole year, if not more, and, on the East Chester County side, there is still plenty of grain as well.”
Because Winter County hadn’t completely fallen, the Forsak army that had invaded through the Intersea County hadn’t attacked East Chester County, and the Forsak, Intis, and Feneport fleets at sea, which had been suppressed by several of Ruen’s ironclad fleets, could only barely maneuver around to protect the sea supply lines.
Earl Hall looked at his daughter’s turquoise gem-like eyes for several seconds, and suddenly sighed and laughed:
”Audrey, you’ve really grown up and have your own ideas and nice persistence.
”But none of us knows how long this war will last, how it will turn out in the end, and a lot of food must be set aside to cope with it all.
”I can accept two less delicious dishes at every meal as a way of helping those in need, but don’t want to make my table as middle-class as those the newspapers say it is, which would completely rob us of our decency as nobles, something we’ve held on to in every generation.
”Do you see what I mean? I just made a metaphor, the essence of the matter is that I value the survival and future of my family more than anything else, our identity and status, and I only show my love and kindness when it doesn’t affect them.
”Audrey, what I am saying may be cruel, but you are old enough to hear it; everyone is selfish, only to a different degree, and in my heart the whole of the Hall family is more important than your mother and I, more important than you, more important than Hibbert and Alfred, and beyond all these, first, the faith and the good friends, next, the acquaintances, and lastly, the all over Birkeland, who are in need of relief.
”I wouldn’t mind helping them if it didn’t interfere with the ones before them, but unfortunately I must think of more things now.”
Speaking of this, Earl Hall shook his head mockingly:
”I’m sorry to let you know that your father is such a selfish man.”
Audrey listened intently to her father’s speech, her expression first changing slightly, then settling out of sight, without any additional emotions presenting themselves until the end.
At that moment, she was silent for a while and asked again:
”…… But we have already gotten too much too much more than what we need for ourselves, can’t we even divide a part of it out?”
Hibbert Hall interjected with some annoyance:
”Why should we share what we have worked so hard to obtain?
”It’s what comes out of our land, our pastures, our woodlands, it’s what we’ve paid golden pounds for, and the money and assets have been handed down in the family, earned by our father with precision and great drive, and accumulated from one generation to the next.
”We do charity to help others as an extra show of love, not something we have to do, understand?”
Earl Hall nodded:
”What Hebert said is generally fine, and that’s what I think.”
Audrey pursed her lips and nodded slowly:
”I understand ……”
Earl Hall withdrew his eyes and said to Hebert:
”The hoarded food must be guarded, and if the outcome of the war is truly irreversible, you try to contact those guys in Intis and give our sincerity.
”The battlefield has lasted for so long, they have also died a lot of people, many fields are deserted, the prices of the city are soaring, there must be a strong demand for food, for pastureland, for woodland, together with my shares in the Bank of Sushit in Intis, as well as some of the shares in the Bank of Bavat and the Bank of Bakeland, I should be able to bribe them, huh, at times like this, only after first satisfying this aspect of the requirements before we can talk about kinship.”
Intis and Rune often had alliances, and many of the nobles were related to each other, especially the followers of Steam.
”Dad, you’re considering surrendering?” Hebert asked with some surprise.
Earl Hall nodded gently and sighed once again:
”In this situation now, how can I not consider it?
”When the time comes, you will be the new Earl Hall.”
Hebert listened with a thumping heart, and was rather puzzled:
”What about you, Dad?”
Earl Hall replied with a bitter smile:
”Your mother and I are both devout believers and have a certain position in the church, so when Ruin falls and the church is destroyed, if we are still unwilling to leave the foreground, the end will not be pretty.”
Speaking here, he relieved his eldest son:
”As long as the Hall family is still around, the knighthood is still there, and the loss of core assets is not too much, we won’t have a too miserable old age, after you convert to steam, remember to prepare a secret prayer room for us at home.”
Between the two conversations, Audrey, who wore a gold and white gown at the door, looked and listened quietly like that, her turquoise eyes like jewels.
……
After attempt after attempt, as the altar projection faded, Nim, the High Priest of the Moon City, spoke with deliberation to Germaine Sparrow, who carried a strange lantern:
”It doesn’t seem to work today, we can wait until tomorrow and try again, not more than two months at the longest.”
At this moment, Klein’s mind was filled with another question:
Could it be that the perfunctory use of historical pore images was what prevented the ceremony from succeeding?
He profoundly reviewed himself and decided to listen to the words of the Moon City High Priest and come back tomorrow to try again, and when he did, he would make sure that the other party would bring the real materials with them.
He was just about to nod his head when a voice suddenly sounded in his ears if nothing else.
That voice came out from the depths of the grayish mist, layered and faint, unusually vague.
There is an effect? This ritual really has an effect, it s just that the delay is too high …… Klein was delighted in his heart, and immediately raised his right hand and slightly pressed down, signaling the extraordinary people of Moon City to keep quiet.
He then held his breath, collected his thoughts, and focused on starting to listen.
The voice that echoed within the grayish mist seemed to come from multiple different objects that were intertwined, sometimes interfering with each other and canceling each other out, sometimes overlapping and resonating.
Gradually, the voice became a little clearer to Klein’s ears, especially the moments of resonance.
It seemed to be a language he was familiar with, it seemed to be an uncountable number of people chanting a name together.
That name was:
”Blessed Life Xuanhuang Tianzun.”