Whispering Verse

Princess Lesia is fully prepared for Wednesday's joint action. She arranged a special carriage and driver in advance, and gave herself a false identity to facilitate movement.

Now Shade is still an MI6 agent operating secretly in Coldwater Port, while Lecia is an active writer at the pier of Coldwater Port, contributing to the local "Tuna Literary News". She has a complete set of documents there. Unless someone directly recognizes her face, there is no way to identify her.

"Do you often do this? I mean in Tobesk, also under a false identity?"

Shade asked curiously as he boarded the carriage.

"I often did this before I met Dorothy. After all, my father's discipline was very strict, and no one in the family dared to disobey him. Even an adult princess like me, or a prince with children like my brothers, unless Give up the title, otherwise you won't have any freedom. But now that I know Dorothy, it's much better. I occasionally ask her to move with her body, and that's really fun."

It sounds like the current king of Delarion is a very harsh man with his children.

"Does this "Tuna Literary Journal" really exist?"

Shade became interested in her press credentials again.

"certainly."

The princess said, after the carriage started, she asked the maid in the carriage to help pour tea. This carriage looks ordinary from the outside, but all kinds of utensils are available inside. There were fixed small tables, tea sets, incense, and Shade even found a rifle in the hidden compartment under the carriage seat.

“This identity is real.”

"Did you pay off the local newspaper?"

"Of course not. "Tuna Literary News" itself is my industry."

Shade immediately showed an expression of enlightenment. Foreigners pride themselves on being well-informed, but they still lack the imagination of rich people.

The destination of this visit is the dilapidated old city on the border between the southern district of Coldwater Port City and the dock area. It was the former urban site of Coldwater Port City before the New World was discovered. However, as the exploration of the New World became more and more in-depth, the center of Coldwater Port gradually moved to the north of the city, which was more suitable for the construction of deep-water docks, resulting in a large area of ​​the old city in the south of the city being abandoned.

There are still residents there, but most of them are local elderly people who care about the past memories, or poor people who have no money to rent a house in the city.

The carriage carried the two people and took them to the ancient street called Kezem Lane at eleven o'clock in the morning. This street is the dividing line between the coastal dock area and the old town in the south of Coldwater Port. Looking east along the alley, you can vaguely see the Peace Church with its old classical style spire. The old church has a history of nine hundred years and has been rebuilt many times. It means that the Peace Church is the first church among the Five Gods Church to take root in Coldwater Port.

The rain was still falling, moss was covering the corners, and there was almost no one on the street. The desertedness of the ancient alleys in the past was not only due to the rain. Judging from the nearby boarded-up windows, empty shop doors, and gravel roads that were in such disrepair that they were full of potholes, even on a sunny day, the old alleys were deserted. I'm afraid there aren't many pedestrians on the streets in the city.

It's best to be less conspicuous when walking around the neighborhood, especially the old town east of Kesem Lane. It's not that Shade is discriminating against the lower-class citizens who are nostalgic for the old days, but in this seaport city, the residents living in this cold and humid old city are mostly gloomy and sullen and full of hostility to outsiders.

On the way here, Lesia told Shade that the nearby area was one of the areas with the highest concentration of missing immigrants in Coldwater Port.

The ring warlock who claimed to be able to get rid of the mermaid curse lived in the ancient street in front of him. Princess Shade and Princess Lesia got off the car at the intersection and came to the street each holding an umbrella. They applied clever makeup in the carriage. In this era when photography technology was backward and there were no clever recording methods, this kind of concealment was enough.

By coincidence, when the two got out of the car, another taxi stopped at the street corner. Shade and the red-haired girl looked curiously and found that two men wearing glasses and carrying notebooks got out of the car.

The older one was wearing a white shirt, an old-fashioned brown double-breasted vest, and a black pen in his pocket. He was about fifty years old. The young man looked five or six years older than Shade. His hair was meticulously combed. After getting out of the car, he curiously looked at the surrounding street scene.

Both held umbrellas and wore identical badges on their chests, and the older one also held a cane. Shade glanced at the princess, who explained to Shade in a low voice:

"That's the badge of the local university in Coldwater Port. I remember it was...the Third Machinery Manufacturing College of Coldwater Port. These two people should be scholars of the school."

The scholars who got off the bus also noticed the two of them, Xia De, but because they had not interacted with each other, they saw that both of them were dressed decently, so they nodded to say hello through the rain.

But as the four people walked forward along the street, Shade unexpectedly discovered that the other party's route of action seemed to overlap with his own.

"Sorry, are you also here to visit Mr. Jude, the antique collector?"

The young scholar came a little closer and asked softly on the street. Seeing the strange man approaching, Lesia dodged to avoid it, while Shade slowed down and started chatting with him:

"Yes, this lady is a reporter from "Tuna Literary News", and I am her assistant and bodyguard. Are you..."

Although the social atmosphere of this era is relatively open and it is normal for women to work outside the home, female reporters who work alone usually work with a male assistant when going out. This is also for safety.

Lesia nodded coldly to the young scholar. The latter was attracted by the beautiful girl's face and explained in a low voice:

"This is my teacher, Professor Katja, and I am Lim Scott. We are here to visit Mr. Jude for the topic at hand."

Professor Katya nodded kindly to the outstanding red-haired girl and Shade.

"Are you scholars?"

Shade asked again.

"Yes, folklorist."

Lesia didn't react at all, but Shade blinked. Based on the passages from the classic horror novels he had read, when visiting such a remote ancient city and most of the information about the people being visited was unknown, a group of four people actually had three professions: reporter, detective and folklorist. This was very strange. An ominous sign.

"The teacher and I are working on a project in the old city south of Coldwater Port. Mr. Jude, who lives here, has some information that we are very interested in. We came here after being introduced."

The young scholar continued, and Shade also explained that he and the lady beside him came to collect information for the project of renovating the old city in the south.

Since both parties wanted to visit the same person, the four came together. With the cover of the two folklorists, the visit of Shade and Princess Lesia can appear more natural.

However, when the group of people arrived at the downstairs of the stone building that had experienced hundreds of years, Shade looked at the rainwater sliding down the wall and felt that this trip would not be that simple.

Most of the buildings in the old town south of Coldwater Port are old houses from a hundred years ago. Probably because of local customs, most of the houses are gray stone buildings and have not been painted.

After knocking on the rusty iron door, it took a long time for someone to open the door for them. Behind the door was a middle-aged man with a gloomy look, heavy eye bags, and dark skin. He was wearing a long leather apron with dots of white marks on it, which looked like flour:

"Good morning sir, we reporters from Tuna Literary News. These two are folklorists from the Third Machinery Manufacturing College of Coldwater Port. We are all here to visit Mr. Jude."

Shade and young Mr. Scott handed over the business cards of the reporter and professor respectively, representing the identities of the two teams.

The middle-aged man took the business card, glanced at it with slightly bulging eyes, and then looked at the four people standing at the door holding umbrellas. He looked very unhappy, spoke with a very strange accent, and his throat made a grunting sound from time to time:

"Good morning, gentlemen and ladies. Please come in first and wait in the foyer. The gentleman is reading in the study on the second floor. I will go to report, please don't wander around."

The men let the reporter in first, then wiped their feet clean on the insoles at the door, and placed the dripping umbrellas on the wooden umbrella stand at the door.

Without the owner's permission, the four of them stood temporarily in the foyer. Fortunately, this old building is larger than Chard's No. 6 St. Teresa Square. It is not an exaggeration to call it a mansion, so it does not seem crowded.

Probably because of today's heavy rain, the moisture inside the stone building is not as high as outside.

For some reason the lights were not turned on indoors, and the whole house was very gloomy on a rainy morning. Of course there are no windows in the foyer, and the rainy sunlight streaming in from the living room creates large swaths of shadows inside.

On the wall of the foyer hangs a cool-toned oil painting depicting the ocean on a stormy day, and even a capsized fishing boat during the storm.

The four guests in the foyer stood in the darkness, looking at the somewhat terrifying oil painting and listening to the increasingly violent rain outside the door. The strange atmosphere in the room made them all involuntarily imagine what Mr. Jude would be like.

The walls are covered with old and yellowed wallpaper, and behind the peeling wallpaper are walls with mold spots. This house has stood from ancient times to the present, and has witnessed the changes of Coldwater Harbor during countless days and nights. If you want to study local folk customs, the house itself is the greatest value.

If Dorothy is interested in collecting materials, she will surely find more ideas if she comes to take a look in the house. The weird atmosphere inside the house is also consistent with the identities of the ring wizards.

Shade was just curious whether Mr. Jude, who had not shown up yet, would suffer from rheumatism from living in this place all year round.