Atcherie analyzed this in her mind, and then she shifted her attention to the "disaster of evil spirits" mentioned in the letter.
'If a person dies with extreme resentment, his soul may turn into a resentful spirit. When many resentful spirits gather together, it may cause a resentful spirit disaster. After the Turbidity War, the Holy Church implemented religious terror rule in many places. During the trials in various places, countless unjust cases were wrongly judged, and a large number of innocent people were unjustly killed.
'These wrongfully dead have stronger resentment than ordinary dead, and there are many of them, which can easily gather together to form a large-scale resentful spirit disaster. This kind of resentful spirit disaster was quite common in the religious terror areas just after the Turbidity War. It was because of these increasing resentful spirit disasters that the Holy Land Mountain noticed that the Cardinal Council at that time realized the seriousness of the unjust case, which was one of the main factors for the subsequent loss of power of the Inquisition.
'From this letter, it seems that there was no ghost disaster during the period of religious terror in Frisia. Because there was no obvious signal of ghost disaster, the period of terror in Frisia ended much later than other regions. When the trial was held, the result of the trial was that those "leading judges" covered up the ghost disaster, and there were also mortals and grassroots priests to testify...
'Why did Kramar, who had no problems last year, find such a case so strange? What did he experience after arriving in this city?'
Such doubts could not help but linger in Atcheri's mind. After a slight pause, she put away the half letter in her hand and continued to look for other clues.
Unfortunately, Atcheri did not find any other useful clues. She had no choice but to leave the church and start scouting other parts of the city.
This time, Art Cherry set herself the goal of the city center. At this moment, the dark clouds in the sky of Steenham were in the shape of a strange vortex, and the center of the vortex seemed to be facing the city center of Steenham. Art Cherry wanted to go over and see what was on that side?
After a while, Atcherie came to the city center of Steenham in seclusion. She was on the roof of a high-rise building at the cross street in the city center, looking up at the sky, and then she saw a scene that surprised her.
A huge black cloud covered the entire urban area of Stinham. The city center was swirling in a vortex shape. In the center of the vortex, a faint green light was radiating, and the ones emitting that light were actually thousands of ghosts!
Souls, countless souls! Tens of thousands... hundreds of thousands... I don't even know if there are millions of souls, gathered together in the center of the black cloud vortex, converging into a ball, wailing, screaming, and twisting in pain in the silence.
These countless ghosts all gathered together to form an extremely huge green skull. The skull seemed to be hundreds of meters long and was located in the center of the black cloud spiral. It looked down at the dead land with a horrified and terrifying gaze...
…
㹏To the west of the continent, on the other side of the ocean, is the Starfall Continent.
In the afternoon, above the heart of the Starfall Continent, in the clear blue sky, an object was moving forward at high speed.
Above the endless wilderness, a ten-meter-long, ancient-looking longboat was flying at high speed in the sky. The boat was made entirely of wood and had a roof. On both sides of the boat, there were two rows of oars rowing at high speed. It was obvious that there was no one rowing the boat, but it was rowing automatically. On the bow of the boat, there was a hideous dragon head carved, roaring against the strong wind ahead.
“A-choo!”
Sitting on the high-speed flying long ship, feeling the refreshing biting cool breeze, Nephnis, who was shivering while hugging her body, finally couldn't help but sneeze loudly, and then she said while chattering her teeth.
"Hasn't it arrived yet?"
"We're almost there, right in front... Ha, you finally can't hold on any longer, girl. Before I came up, I asked you to buy some thick clothes to wrap yourself up, but you didn't believe me. Now you're getting the taste of the cake. I told you that my boat's speed is not for the faint of heart! Look at that boy, he's much more obedient."
Standing at the front of the longship, Harald, as a ghost, looked at Neveu, who was finally unable to hold back her sneezing due to the cold wind from high altitude, and could not help but laugh and say "Oh!" While speaking, he looked at Capac who was sitting in another place. Unlike Neveu who was wearing ordinary clothes, Capac was squatting there wrapped in several layers of animal skins.
"Sir Harald's dragon boat is very fast... several times faster than any other means of transportation currently popular in the Eastern Continent. It's normal that Miss Thief has never seen such speed before and is not mentally prepared." After listening to Harald's words, Capak also spoke frankly, and Neveu, who was still suffering from the cold, responded with a little shiver.
"Who... who knew it could be this fast... to this extent? I'm not afraid of normal cold. But the yin energy on your ghost ship is so strong and you're driving so fast... this is no longer normal cold."
Neve said this tremblingly. As a Beyonder who assists the "Cup", she has a strong physique, but the low temperature on the ship has already approached her endurance limit. Harald was not bragging before, his ship is really fast.
"We've wasted some time yesterday, so we have to drive faster now. But we're almost there now. Look, we can see the destination ahead." Harald turned his head and looked ahead as he spoke. Listening to Harald's words, Neveu couldn't help but stand up while holding onto the side of the boat to steady herself.
"What...is it finally here?"
Neveu looked into the distance with some excitement. Then she was at the edge of the earth in the east. At the end of the endless wilderness, there appeared a large area of ruins. At the end of the ruins, Neveu saw a large area of bulges. It was a group of towering mountains!
After approaching the destination, Harald began to slow down and lower the altitude of the dragon boat, moving towards the mountains. During this process, Naif discovered that there were many more large flying spirits in the distance, most of which were in the form of birds. In the wilderness below, Neif also saw many large spirits moving forward, heading in the same direction as them.
Among these large spirits, many are relying on various entities and carrying different human figures. Neveu can feel the power of these spirits, they are all spirits of the wilderness!
"Are these... all spirits of the wilderness? They appear in such a large number at once, it's really spectacular... This is the first time I see so many spirits of the wilderness at once!" Looking at the scene outside the dragon boat, Capac said excitedly, while Harald, who was driving the boat, responded casually.
"This is the most important holy place of your Shamanism. There are too many spirits here, you are a boy who has never seen the world."
As Harald spoke, he steered the boat closer to the mountains ahead. After a while, they flew over the ruins in front of the mountains. Neveu and Capac looked down at the dragon boat, and what they saw was a large area of broken walls, countless broken thick stone pillars and broad foundations, which seemed to show the former prosperity of this place.
"Down here... it looks like the ruins of a city. Were there cities of this scale in ancient times on this continent?" Nephthys said curiously as she looked at the scene below, while Harald answered directly.
"Of course, don't forget that their Soul King... or the Evil King later on, once founded a country, and this was his former capital... After it was destroyed in the war, the natives were unwilling to rebuild here, so it became deserted..." Harald said this, and Neveu nodded thoughtfully after listening.
In this way, Harald drove the dragon boat all the way into the mountains. After flying for a while, Neveu saw a deep rift appearing in the towering mountains below. Harald's dragon boat was continuing to fly forward along the direction of the rift. The further forward the rift went, the deeper and larger it became, and it slowly became extremely spectacular.
“Is this the Ancestral Valley below?”
Looking at the lush river vegetation and the spirits of the wilderness in the rift valley below, Neveu couldn't help but ask, and it was Capac who answered her this time.
"Yes... it's just a small part of the Ancestral Valley. According to the teacher, the main part of the Ancestral Valley is the intersection of the four sacred valleys. The part below us is just a rift in it."
"Is this the place where the four sacred valleys meet?"
Listening to Capac's words, Neveu looked thoughtful. As time passed, after the dragon boat flew nearly a hundred kilometers forward, Neveu finally saw the appearance of the Ancestral Valley as Capac had described.
In the vast and desolate land with mountains, there are four huge rift valleys, extending from the horizon in the four directions of southeast, northwest, northeast and southwest, and converging towards the same center point. The closer this spectacular and huge rift valley is to the center point, the wider it becomes. The width of the four rift valleys gradually widens as they get closer to the entrance, from tens of meters wide to hundreds of meters and nearly a thousand meters wide, and finally converge into a huge basin.
In the center of the huge basin with a radius of thousands of meters, there is an extremely spectacular ground painting. On the ground, strange divergent geometric circular patterns are drawn in circles. In the center of the pattern, there is an ancient totem pole hundreds of meters high, huge and withered, which seems to have experienced countless years. On the totem pole, various strange and somewhat unclear runes are drawn. At the top, the largest rune can barely be distinguished as a huge closed eye.
The totem pole is the center of the basin, and there are other things at the four corners of the basin, where the four rifts extend and intersect.
Among them, there is also a huge ground painting at the mouth of the eastern rift valley. Flying in the air, Neveu can clearly see that the ground painting drawn with simple lines shows a giant bird spreading its wings and flying high.
Except for the opening of the rift in the east, there were no ground drawings in the south and west. There was nothing in the south, and a bunch of random lines in the west, like the scars left after a wrong word on a homework book was roughly erased with a pen. In the opening of the rift in the north, there were no ground drawings, but a hill made of rocks. On top of the hill, there were countless wooden poles with colorful strips full of runes tied to them, swaying in the wind.
At this moment, next to the huge basin, there are many simple tents scattered around. Except for the locations near the ground paintings and hills, these tents are everywhere and extend to the cliffs. There are many pedestrians walking between the tents, with light smoke rising, combined with the wandering spirits of the wilderness, making people feel peaceful.
"Is this... the main part of the Ancestral Valley? It's really spectacular..."
"Yes, this is my first time here too... I've always heard about this place in stories before... It's a sacred place shared by all the tribes."
Looking at the scene below, Neveu and Capac couldn't help but sigh and say so. At this moment, Harald, who was at the bow of the ship, was staring at the hill in the distance with countless colorful strips flying on it. He was silent for a while until Capac noticed it and asked.
"Sir Harald, what's wrong with you?"
"Ah... no, now we are at the place, I will take you to the old man right away."
As he spoke, Harald came to his senses and drove the dragon boat in one direction, slowly lowering the altitude as he drove, and finally landed on a small slope in the basin, where there was a tent with a door in front of it. In front of the tent, a familiar figure wearing a feather crown and a long robe was standing there waiting for them. It was Uta.
"Hey, old man, I brought the person here for you!"
"Teacher, we are here."
"Hmm... Is this our first meeting in the true sense? Nice to meet you, Mr. Uta."
After getting off the dragon boat, Capac and Neveu greeted Uta, and Uta, thinking about Capac's nod, responded politely to Neveu.
"Thank you for coming from afar...my friend from across the sea...
"You've come at the right time... The Great Wilderness Festival is about to begin, and the official start time is expected to be no later than tomorrow..." Uta said so. Listening to Uta's words, Neveu couldn't help but be shocked.
"No later than tomorrow... Wait, didn't Capac say before that the Great Wilderness Festival would be held within a week? How come the time is not set to tomorrow?"
Neveu said this with a surprised look on her face, while Uta looked at the huge totem in the distance and spoke quietly.
"This is a temporary decision made by the True Spirit Shaman this morning when the gods ignored him... I guess the situation of the 'Spiritual Change' has changed again..."
"Spiritual change?" After listening to Uta's words, a trace of confusion appeared in Neve's eyes, and Uta slowly explained.
"The so-called spiritual change is a super-large-scale abnormal phenomenon of the soul, which is sometimes called a 'soul disaster'.
“In this world, when a huge number of souls cannot return to the Great Soul smoothly due to various reasons, whether caused by humans or themselves, it has a serious impact on the normal flow of souls at the world level. This is a terrible disaster.”
"Bad soul phenomenon...but what does this have to do with the Great Wilderness Festival?" Listening to Uta's words, Neveu continued to ask in confusion, and Uta continued to respond slowly.
"Generally speaking, it won't matter... The pulse of the world soul has a powerful self-healing ability. Generally, even large-scale spiritual changes will not be a problem, as long as the spiritual power users in the area where the spiritual change occurs can handle it. But this time is different... According to the True Spirit Shaman, the scale of the spiritual change he predicted this time... is simply unheard of! It may not have happened in thousands of years!"
"The scale of spiritual transformation that I've heard of... Has this happened? Where did it happen?" Listening to Uta's words, Nephnis said in surprise, and Uta continued to speak.
"It has already begun... According to the True Spirit Shaman, a huge spiritual change is brewing in the eastern land beyond the sea. This spiritual change is supported by a huge ritual. The fluctuations in its ritual structure have deeply affected the Netherworld, allowing him to even sense...
"This spiritual transformation has already begun... It will explode completely soon. Both the Netherworld and the Realm will be severely affected. The order of the movement of souls in this world will be severely damaged!" Uta said in a stern tone, and after hearing this, Neve swallowed her saliva and spoke again.
"So... the Great Wilderness Festival can deal with that powerful spiritual change?"
"The Great Wilderness Festival can't do that. Only the things created by the Great Wilderness Festival can." At this time, Harald on the side spoke. Under the gazes of Capac and Nefchuki, he looked towards the rift in the east and then spoke.
"What do you call it... that big bird? It seems to hate spirit transformation, so you bring it out at this festival."
"Yes, Soul Burial Suen, the maintainer of the soul order in this world, when the soul order is seriously unbalanced and difficult to adjust by itself, following the ancient teachings, the True Spirit Shaman and I should gather here to hold the Great Wilderness Festival to awaken the Soul Burial from his slumber. He will carry out the will of the great soul, fly to where the problem is, and correct the soul order..." Following Harald's words, Uta continued, and Neveu widened her eyes in disbelief.
"What... this Great Wilderness Festival is a ceremony to awaken the gods. You want to summon that... Soul Burial Suen, and let Him resolve the spiritual change?"
Neveu said in disbelief, while Uta continued to nod in response.
"Yes, this is exactly our duty. When the order of souls is seriously threatened, we call upon the Soul Eagle with the agreed ceremony to correct the order. At this time, the imbalance on the Eastern Continent cannot be repaired by human power. We must rely on the power of the gods..."
As he spoke, Uta turned his head and looked into the distance. After scanning countless tents, he focused his gaze on the center of the valley, under the huge ancient totem. At this moment, four figures dressed in brighter and more luxurious clothes were sitting cross-legged there.
They wore feather crowns that were larger and more complex than Uta's, and were wearing long robes with colorful ribbons covered with spells. They sat cross-legged on the four sides of the ancient totem, meditating silently with their eyes closed. From the front, there were three wrinkled old men and a young man who looked quite young. They were the only ones who could get close to the ancient totem. There were many tribesmen on the periphery who worshiped them respectfully. Neveu followed Uta's gaze and couldn't help but feel a sense of wonder.
"That is..."
"Those are the four great shamans, the four most respected people in the whole land, the wisest people, and they will be the main force to assist the shamans." Uta explained to Neveu. Listening to Uta's words, Kapak on the side could not help but cast an envious look in their direction. At this time, Harald, who was floating on the side, spoke again.
"Great Shaman... Humph, it's nothing special. It's not like I haven't fought with those guys before. Old man, you just boasted about their knowledge. To be honest, in terms of knowledge level, I feel that you are actually about the same as them... or even better than one or two of them."
"Hehe... Your Excellency Harald, you are too kind. I am just an ordinary tribal shaman. How can I compare with the great shaman..." After hearing Harald's words, Uta immediately said modestly, and Harald spoke bluntly again.
"An ordinary tribal shaman? Humph, I don't believe it. I don't believe that an ordinary shaman knows how to send me into spiritual power. Just admit it to me, who are you?" Harald continued to talk relentlessly, and after hearing this, Uta replied helplessly.
"This... I am really an ordinary shaman, nothing special about me. It's just that I have been wandering more than other shamans, and I know more things. Please don't think too much about it.
"You still want to perfunctorily treat me, I don't believe it..."
In this way, Harald and Uta started arguing with each other. Harald insisted that Uta was special, but Uta firmly denied it. Seeing this, Neveu could not help but feel confused.
'This Wuta Shaman... feels like he has some magical powers, and sometimes he doesn't seem like a Cretaceous... So when the barbarian spirit said that Wuta was unusual, I believed it... But now Wuta is denying it strongly, and his expression doesn't seem like he's pretending... What's going on?'
Looking at the dispute between the two parties in front of him, Neveu was puzzled and thought in his heart. At this moment, in the center of the valley, next to the ancient totem pole, among the four great shamans who were meditating, suddenly a very young great shaman opened his eyes, turned his head and looked around. The direction he was looking was exactly the direction where Neveu and the others were.
The young shaman, with his eyes slightly narrowed and his face painted with oil, wondered what he was thinking at this moment.
…
㹏Northern part of the continent, Friesland.
The sun sets, the moon rises, and the day ends. When dusk fades away, the dark night once again covers the entire Arnstell.
Tints of lights lit up one after another on the streets of Arnstell. Above the brightly lit city, in the dark sky, a huge steel battleship that was hundreds of meters long and looked like an iron coffin was flying rapidly from afar. Under the cover of the night that was invisible to the mortals below, it sailed towards an unknown target.
"The Holy Steel Ship... The Sister of Extinction?"
In the city center of Arnstell, on the roof of the Soul-Calming Cathedral, Sinclair, wearing a solemn religious robe, was looking at the huge steel ship sailing into the distance in the dark sky, and could not help but murmur softly.
"Finally you're here... Save Eternal Hub, Saint Amanda..."
"Yes... Her Excellency Amanda is here, this should be what you wish for..."
Just as Sinclair finished her whisper, a familiar voice sounded behind her. Hearing this voice, Sinclair slowly turned around and saw a face that did not surprise her.
"Ah...Sister Vanya, good evening." Looking at the nun in white in front of her, Sinclair said with a smile, and then she bowed slightly.
"Thank you for finding the rescuer in time... Finally, the innocent people in Frisia have a chance to be redeemed..."
The evening breeze gently blew the white nun's robe. Vanya looked at Sinclair who saluted her in front of her. There was no joy on her face. She said in a steady tone.
"Sir Amanda, I have found you... So, Professor Sinclair, have you found a way to cancel the ritual? You know... it is not enough for us to just stop the Judgment Center. Only by canceling the ritual can we truly complete the salvation..."
"Ah... As for this, we have already put all our efforts into investigating it. We have made some progress. I think we will find a solution soon..."
Sinclair said this to Vanya, and they looked into each other's eyes. When she saw that Vanya did not see the same gentle and kind look in the morning, her expression froze.
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