Whispering Verse

It was already 10:30 in the morning when he returned home from the Black Raven Library. After confirming the effect of the new thaumaturgy, Shade did not cook at home, but left with little Mia who was interested in playing cards. After arriving home, we took a carriage to the Church of the Dawn.

When we were looking for a carriage in Saint Teresa Square, we could already feel the festive atmosphere because of the young priests wearing clerical robes distributing promotional materials. As we approached Dawn Square, the pleasant atmosphere created by religious festivals in the city became even more intense.

The City Hall also intended to help the city recover from the trauma of Thursday two weeks earlier, and therefore provided a lot of help for the Feast of Holy Prayer in the summer of 1853.

With Dawn Church as the center, all the nearby blocks were hung with banners and streamers. I don’t know whether it was the city hall that gave out the gold pounds, or the Church of Dawn that took out the banknotes, but the holy emblem of the righteous god [Mr. Dawn] was all hung on the outer walls of the shops in the streets directly connected to Dawn Square.

Pigeons flew under the foggy sky, bustling people gathered into the church and surrounding streets, and the lively festival attracted more vendors to set up stalls on the roadside, but the city hall turned a blind eye.

The carriage could not enter the celebration site at all, so it could only drop Shade at the intersection on the edge of the square.

There were almost everyone around, and the sounds of hawking could be heard from everywhere around the square. The lively atmosphere made the cat held by Shade shrink into his arms in fear. Shade knew that Mia was timid, but he didn't expect that she would be so timid.

Therefore, he didn't bother wandering around the square with tents, but went straight into the church.

Although the preparations for the Feast of Holy Prayer were very busy, once the festival actually started, the Augustan priest became leisurely.

When Shade saw him, the old priest was sitting in the last row of seats in the side hall of the church, listening to the sermon of a middle-aged priest.

Normally, even on Sundays, such a side hall of the church could only be filled with half of the people at most, but today it was not only filled with believers, but some people were even standing in the aisles against the wall.

Because he knew that Mia was very well-behaved and would not bark, Shade held her and stood next to the priest. The priest nodded to Shade, indicating that he would listen patiently.

So Shade stood here for twenty minutes, listening to the sermon that he was not very interested in. After that, he and the priest walked out with the crowd as they left.

It's lunch time now, and Priest August invites Shade to have a meal in the church. On the Feast of Holy Prayer, the church restaurant was open to some invited believers, and the meals were very sumptuous, so Shade took Mia out to try to get her to eat something good.

During the meal, Shade did not forget to reveal that he had recently obtained a magical potion known as the "Elixir of Age" and wanted Priest August to help identify it. The priest was very interested in this and took the potion handed over by Shade at the dinner table, but did not identify it in the church:

"I need a few days, and I will tell you as soon as I have news."

After lunch, everything went as planned. Outside the church there is a lively celebration, while inside the church there are quite serious religious activities.

Shade was arranged to participate in a small prayer meeting. In a room with thick curtains, candles and incense, he prayed to [Mr. Dawn] with the believers. If this weren't a church, the scene would be standard cult ritual.

Later, together with Priest August and other visitors, he watched the baptism of three selected three-year-old children from senior believer families. Shade had already been baptized once in the steam era, and this time it was even more solemn. In addition to high-power gas lamps, steam pipes were also installed to spray steam mist, making the entire venue foggy.

This scene is not ridiculous. The church’s solemn architecture, colored glass, and religious murals above the head are perfectly combined with the hazy feeling of steam mist. This made the reporters taking pictures very excited and made everyone present feel wet.

Except for Mia, who was hidden under Shade's clothes.

Shade only needs to follow Priest August in the church. The old priest is in a very good mood today. During the break, he also took Shade to see a new oil painting hanging in the church corridor.

The oil painting is quite large and mounted in a gilt frame. It is located in the corridor leading from the main auditorium to the east wing. The color of the picture is relatively gloomy, and there is no white space in the whole picture. People wearing various colored dresses form a circle around the picture, and the stone tiles on the ground are outlined with light brush marks in the center of the picture. There is a group of people parked on the left side of the center of the picture. There is a carriage. There is a beautiful and elegant woman's face in the carriage window, and there are two people standing on the right side of the picture.

One man was holding a pistol, and the other was holding his arms out in front of him.

The person with arms outstretched can almost be regarded as standing in the center of the picture, and the artist used the most exquisite brushstrokes to paint. Using ink and color, there seems to be a beam of light above the head of the man in the oil painting, making him seem to be bathed in holy light. People who look at the oil painting can tell at a glance that this is the protagonist in the picture.

"This is"

Priest August laughed, causing wrinkles to accumulate on his face. He was in a really good mood.

Shade couldn't help but smile and bent down to check the nameplate of the oil painting. There are two lines on the nameplate. The upper line records the date the oil painting was hung here, and the lower line reads:

[Blessed World - Commemoration of the Feast of Holy Prayer 1853]

"How about it? This was painted just the day before yesterday. It was hung here just before the Feast of Holy Prayer. When you weren't here in the morning, there were reporters taking pictures here. Maybe this painting will appear in the newspapers tomorrow."

said the priest Augustus.

Xia De had nothing to be dissatisfied with. It was a good thing for others to remember what he had experienced.

He just asked curiously:

"Will this painting always hang here?"

Shade only remembered that the scene was very noisy, and there was no such sacred solemnity in the oil painting, nor did he feel as if he was sacrificing himself for some noble reason.

"It may last for decades. You don't have to worry. I know you don't want more people to know your appearance, so the face in this painting is not very similar to you. In addition, Queen Diana has also seen it. This painting gave me guidance on how she should look on the painting, and she was very satisfied with the painting.”

The priest nodded and said, and then asked with a smile:

"Shadow, how are you feeling?"

Of course, outsiders never imagined that they would leave their mark on the church in Tobesk for decades in this way:

"Does the church always find someone to paint this kind of oil painting?"

People were coming and going behind them, and the festive atmosphere infected everyone. But no one can recognize the protagonist on the wall, standing here looking up at it.

"Of course, you only have this kind of oil painting when it is memorable. You just happened to save the queen, were seen by many people, and the Holy Prayer Festival is approaching. If it is an ordinary day, and you only save ordinary people , I'm afraid you need to be shot eighteen times in the street to "

The old priest shrugged and did not continue. Although it sounded cruel, this was the reality.

Shade's speech was also in the side hall. The church had already prepared a speech script and asked him to speak without a script. Although the foreigner was busy with exams last week and had no time to memorize the manuscript, with "she" here, Xia De read it twice, and she was able to roughly retell it.

Therefore, during the speech that lasted for half an hour, Shaddu just followed the voice in his heart and translated the ancient language she used into the modern Delarian common language.

The content of the speech was not new. The theme was "God loves the world and God bless the world." Although the core doctrines of the Five Gods Churches are different, they are all religious groups that encourage people to do good. They use similar methods when promoting their churches.

The content of the speech is not very new, but the church writers used extremely high writing skills to make the content fresh. It even combined with Shade’s experience on the day he was shot, making the slightly preachy speech very attractive.

People who can write speeches like this can be regarded as rare talents in this world or in the hometown of foreigners. Therefore, after Shade finished his speech, he wanted to ask Priest August to take him to see that person. writers.