Whispering Verse

The Green Lake City Public Cemetery is located on the lakeside outside the city, built along the water, and adjacent to the village of Lower Griol, known as the "Village of the Gravekeepers." There is no fog on the lakeside outside the city, so when we come here on a spring morning, the scenery is indeed quite good. According to the chat with the coachman on the carriage just now, there is a special dock behind the cemetery to hold a "water burial ceremony." After the coachman heard that Shade was an outsider, he even recommended Shade to visit it.

But in this way, Shade almost understood where the body materials of so many water ghosts in Green Lake came from.

The carriage stopped at the entrance of the cemetery. Black iron gates and fences extending to both sides separated the boundaries of the cemetery. After passing through the fence gate, you entered the cemetery. It was very quiet here, with only a few citizens paying homage to the deceased or dealing with weeds beside the graves.

Shade followed the path in the cemetery and quickly found the grave of Mr. Nicholas Green, the father of the Green siblings. Because of the breakdown of his marriage, the gentleman was not buried with his wife. He was buried under a big banyan tree. Because the Green sisters and brothers would come to visit from time to time, the tombstone was clean and the grave was not submerged in weeds.

【Nicholas Kelvin Green】

[1761-1843, died at home]

[May you sleep peacefully, father]

"Died at 82? What a long life."

Shade sighed softly, bent down and touched the tombstone. Then he came behind the tombstone and looked at the covering soil on the tomb with his naked eyes. After he was sure that he couldn't find any clues with his eyes, he lightly stamped his foot and the chain came out of his trousers and pierced into the ground.

[Chains of Sin] are not offensive. Even if two chains can appear at the same time, they are still not offensive. But through the manipulation of [Living Rope Trick], it is not a problem to break through the wet soil after rain, not to mention that Shade can also attack by attaching moonlight to it.

So the end of the chain soon touched the coffin. The coffin, which had been buried for more than ten years, was of course rotten, so the chain got in easily. And as Xade expected, there was no trace of any bones in the coffin.

"interesting."

The chains could not serve as Shade's eyes. He could only rely on Mohu's induction to detect the underground situation. After a more careful search, a hole large enough for an adult to crawl through was found on the side wall of the corpse's head in the grave pit.

Although Shade's [Criminal Chain] can continue to be extended, the longer the chain, the weaker his control over the chain. Therefore, Shade did not continue to investigate, but temporarily retracted the chain:

"I originally thought it was the Edwards ancestors on the island who sent people to recover the bones, but now it seems that it may not be that simple."

He patted the tombstone and turned towards the small steeple church that stood in the cemetery. At this time, a stranger's funeral was being held there, and Shade didn't want to disturb it, so he waited outside the church for half an hour. After people walked out surrounded by coffins, he entered the empty church.

This is a church dedicated to the "God of Nature and Evil Thoughts". Although the decoration of the church is simple, the holy emblem of the Lord of All Things with two overlapping leaves also hangs in the main hall.

The priest had already gone out with the funeral procession, leaving only the young priest and the slightly older tombkeeper talking while cleaning up the church after the funeral.

Seeing Sha De coming, the tombkeeper looked at his clothes and reminded:

"Sir, the funeral is over. You are late."

"I'm not here for a funeral."

Shade pointed to the door of the church:

"Can we go outside and talk? I have something to do, but I won't waste your time."

The old tombkeeper with half-white hair nodded hesitantly. After following Shade outside the church, he heard Shade say:

"I am a writer from out of town. When I passed by the village over there occasionally, I heard that there are legends about ghouls in the local area, so I want to ask you about it. Of course, I will pay you."

In fact, no matter where the cemetery is, there will be rumors of ghouls, and those are mostly the remains of careless tomb robbers.

"Outsiders? Oh, yes, there are quite a lot of outsiders in the recent negotiations between the two countries."

The tombkeeper nodded understandingly and looked Shade up and down again:

"You are not the first writer to come to me for material. People always think that tombkeepers are a very strange profession, and there are always many stories. It seems that my profession should encounter all kinds of horrific stories and bizarre events... ...But that’s right, ghouls, ghosts, screams in the mud in the middle of the night, I have many such stories, but I usually don’t ask for money.”

"Then what do you want?"

People who say this will have more demanding requirements.

The old tombkeeper asked cheerfully:

"You look very young. A man of your age should have played Rhodes before, right?"

Shade raised his eyebrows:

"Of course, so..."

"Want to play a round of Rhodes? If you win, I'll tell you the story you want to know. But if you lose... how about we play another round?"

He pointed to the pews at the back of the church where they could play cards.

Shade naturally would not refuse, but when he took out his ordinary deck of cards, he asked curiously:

"Do you often play cards with people who come to the cemetery?"

Shade noticed that the old gravekeeper's deck of cards was also carefully preserved, and he could tell that he cared about his cards.

"No, invitations are only issued in rare circumstances."

The two sat down on the chairs and examined their respective decks. The deck used by Shade had no special cards, but the old gravekeeper's deck surprisingly contained two special cards. Judging from the average salary in the tombkeeper industry, he definitely did not buy these two cards.

The two special cards are [Human Organ·Kidney] from Sun 9 and [Urban Legend·Non-Existent Street] from Moon 4. Among them, in the "Human Organ" series, Shade saw [Human Organ·Heart] in the hands of Miss Pavo of the Truth Society. As for the "Urban Legend" series, it is one of the series of decks with the largest number of releases so far, and New special rules cards will be added with each release to contain different urban legends.

The rule of [Human Organ·Kidney] is that if the player who draws this card has four cards in his hand when the card is suspended, he will roll a 20-sided die. If the point is greater than 10, he can choose to add one to the point. The rules of [Urban Legend·Non-Existent Street] are relatively simple. When you draw a dice, throw a dice. If the number of the dice is a multiple of three, then the suit of the card is regarded as the sun; multiples of four are regarded as stars; multiples of five are regarded as stars. flowers.

Seeing the interested expression on Sha De's face, the old man smiled and said:

"As much as I love playing cards with strangers, there's no way I could tell people at a funeral and say, Oh, man, don't cry, do you want to play a game of Rhodes with me? And then they really forget about their grief. , willing to play cards with me...at my age, I don’t want to be beaten for nothing.”

He and Shade put their respective decks on the chairs together, and Shade asked again:

"Did you win these two special cards? The rules of that urban legend series are really interesting, but it's a pity that they need to be paired with special cards with rules related to the suit to be useful."

The old man nodded:

"I won it all. It's a pity that you don't have a special card, otherwise I would be willing to make a bet with you."

The poker game adopts a simple best-of-three game rule. If there is a draw where the cards are busted at the same time or the points are the same, there will be an extra game.

Although the old tombkeeper asked Shade to win in order to get the story, when the two of them were happily drawing cards together, he had already spoken:

"Ghouls are probably rumors in cemeteries everywhere, but you should know that most of them are false legends spread by ignorant citizens after stupid and unlucky thieves made trouble at night. Of course, there are also young people who are too stupid. People, gathering together to play a game of courage, would have resulted in a whipping when I was young.”

The two of them drew the second card together. Shade glanced at the number, signaled himself to continue drawing cards, and asked at the same time:

"So the rumors about ghouls in the local cemetery are also false?"

"Of course not, at least I don't think so."

The old tombkeeper shook his head, and like Shade, he also drew the third card:

"On a rainy night more than ten years ago, when I was patrolling the cemetery at night, I could occasionally hear wailing, sobbing and rustling footsteps coming from the underground, as if coming from the hell deep underground. It wasn't my hallucination, and even if people checked and found nothing, I still don't think it was my hallucination."

Shade knocked on the chair to signal that he should stop playing. The old gravekeeper hesitated and actually drew the fourth card:

"Bodies have indeed been lost in the cemetery, but they have been proven to have nothing to do with urban legends such as ghouls. I am not the only one who thinks there is a weird thing hidden in the ground here. The nearby villagers also have similar rumors."

The two of them showed their cards respectively, and Shade smiled and said:

"Stars 7, flowers 10, sun 3, I am 20 o'clock."

"Young people have good luck, but I am not bad either. You see, flower 4, flower 6, sun 9 [human organ·kidney], moon 1. I also have 20 points. Fortunately, I have four cards in my hand, special The rules work and I can take another gamble.”

He carried the dice with him, and the dice clattered onto the chair and kept spinning. Both of them were looking at the dice intently. The old gravekeeper probably turned the dice too hard when he threw it, so it took a full minute to stop.

"11 o'clock! I'm lucky today!"

The old man clapped his hands violently, and Shade also smiled and clapped:

"The rules can be activated in this way, so you are at 21 points, and I lost the first game. You must write down this game and tell the villagers in the village tavern. They will definitely not believe it."

"We started the second game. With such good weather, I can play Rhodes in the church. My later life will be better than those young people who are running for a living."