As Triss chanted, the gems around her made crackling sounds, shattered into powder, and floated up.
They flickered red, blue, green, or bright lights, quickly merged into a torrent and cast towards the candlelight on the altar.
At the same time, the burnt hair in the cauldron also joined the ranks.
The flames suddenly expanded and intertwined, becoming increasingly darker, like an "illusory door" leading to another world.
Triss then felt the temperature around her drop sharply, as if countless dangers were seeping out from the ball of fire.
A sentence flashed through her mind instantly. It was a reminder from Gehrman Sparrow:
"Be careful Mr. Door."
As expected of someone with a messenger of that level... His understanding of "Mr. Men" and his grasp of my plans may be deeper and more accurate than I thought... Triss took a slow breath and waited patiently for the subsequent changes.
In just the time it took her to blink, she felt the void in the room became a lot thinner, and many places were shadowy, as if there were a large number of indescribable, strange and dangerous creatures hiding behind them.
The dark and expanding flames slowly began to rotate, transforming into a huge, deep, crimson vortex.
As the vortex spun, a faint but soul-piercing voice finally rang out from the bottom:
"... Chick?"
Upon hearing this voice, the blood vessels in Triss's forehead began to throb, and her head felt as if countless steel needles had pierced it, poking and stirring it madly.
Her black hair lifted up on its own without any wind, and each strand became a little thicker, while the skin on her face became transparent, with blood vessels bulging out one after another, densely packed like a spider web.
After spending a lot of effort, Triss finally controlled herself. She laughed softly after hearing the voice that was enough to make most Beyonders gradually lose control:
"It looks like he is Chike's follower...
“The only ones who watched the second Blasphemous Slate together… and were able to surpass Sequence 1… and survive to this day… are probably the Artisan, Chick, and I…”
Triss ignored Mr. Door's sigh and spoke with a twisted expression:
"Dear Mr. Men, I have something to ask you."
“Go ahead… The years of being lost in darkness and trapped in the storm are really too boring… It’s rare to have someone to chat with me…” Still in the slowly rotating deep vortex, the terrible voice responded without much change.
The muscles on Triss's face twitched unconsciously a few times. She still couldn't get used to the voice that could be described as the evil god's muttering.
She paused for a few seconds before saying:
"...I want to know if there is any unconventional way to enter the nine secret mausoleums that Blood Emperor Tudor built to ascend to the Black Emperor."
Mr. Door, whose voice came from across the endless void, laughed vaguely:
“So it was because of this matter…
“This is not difficult… I will give you a symbol… You collect the blood of Beyonders from different paths, mix them together… Use your spiritual power to stain it, and draw that symbol in the void in front of the mausoleum. Then you can open the secret passage leading inside…”
As this being spoke, sparks separated from the dark vortex and formed a rather complex symbol in mid-air.
It's like a series of doors stacked up in order from big to small, with no end.
Triss endured the pain of her spirit being torn apart, memorized the symbol, and then sought confirmation:
"There must be twenty-two extraordinary paths?
"Each path only requires the blood of one Beyonder, no matter what his sequence is?
“How much blood is needed for each pathway?”
Mr. Door replied in the same mumbling voice as before:
"Yes... you don't need too much... a small tube will do... it will be enough to depict the symbol..."
Although Triss's expression was twisted by pain, she couldn't help but curl up the corners of her mouth and reveal a slight smile at this moment because she had obtained key information.
This combined with her overall expression was very weird and made her look like a lunatic.
After completing the main purpose, Triss asked again in order to ensure smooth cooperation with Gehrman Sparrow:
"The Abraham family wants to know how to get rid of the ancient curse on them."
The dark vortex was silent for several seconds, then sighed and said:
"Arrange such a ritual... sacrifice one demigod each from the 'Fortune Teller', 'Apprentice', and 'Thief' paths... when I escape the storm and penetrate the darkness... the curse will no longer exist..."
Triss was not interested in how Abraham's family got rid of the ancient curse. After getting the answer, she could no longer bear it. While thanking Mr. "Door", she began to terminate the ceremony.
Mr. "Men" did not make any attempt to seduce, threaten or pollute.
When the dark vortex of fire collapsed and the ceremony ended, Triss began to meditate, spending nearly an hour to calm down the impact of Mr. Door's mumbling on her.
After doing all this, Triss found a pen and paper, copied the symbol provided by Mr. "Door", and described the answers to the two questions in detail.
She knew that she was being tracked by the "White Saint" Katarina, and there seemed to be even more terrifying hunters waiting behind her. It would be difficult to collect the blood of extraordinary people from different paths as soon as possible, so she planned to leave this matter to Gehrman Sparrow.
In addition, she believed that even if George III and his men believed that the secret mausoleum was safe enough and that there were not too many guards left, there must still be necessary defenses inside. It was not something that she, who was only Sequence 4, could quickly break through and destroy. If she did, she would be intercepted by reinforcements and lose the best opportunity.
As for Gehrman Sparrow, even his messenger was at the angel level, so one could imagine the strength of the organization behind him. They were capable enough to destroy the mausoleum at the critical moment and make the "Black Emperor" ritual fail.
If you can’t complete it yourself, of course you have to find help from someone who can complete it!
After putting the letter into a mailbox in a nearby neighborhood, Triss, wearing a black coat over a black skirt and with her black hair flowing down, walked slowly on the deserted, cold, and dim road. She looked at the light of the gas street lamp and laughed self-deprecatingly:
"Just because of a little unwillingness, I actually went to this extent step by step...
"You are lucky, at least I will avenge you...
"And if I die, no one will remember me except those who hate me..."
…………
After receiving Triss's letter from the messenger, Klein sat in a chair and read it over and over again.
Before going above the gray fog to divine the authenticity of Mr. Door's method, he subconsciously thought about how quickly he could collect the blood of the twenty-two extraordinary paths:
"This symbol is very similar to the one on the back of Miss Magician's chair... The Fortune Teller can use his... Apprentice to find Miss Magician, and by the way, he can also give her some pressure to write a manuscript... The Thief has three options: the Secret Doll turns into a mosquito to bite Hazel; get it from the third officer of Vice Admiral Iceberg, who is called Flower Tie; ask Leonard's grandfather to give...
"From the 'Audience' path, Miss 'Justice'... From the 'Praiser' path, Little 'Sun'... From the 'Storm' path, Mr. 'Hanged Man'... From the 'Reader' path, Vice Admiral 'Iceberg' or the demigod named Luca... From the 'Secret Prayer', the second mate looking for Ms. 'Hermit', Heath Doyle, the 'Bloodless'...
"The 'Corpse Collector' path, Patrick Brian of the Spiritual Cult... The 'Sleeping Man' path, the poet classmate... The 'Warrior' path, most of the people in Silver City or Father Utravsky...
"'The cultivator', Frank... 'The pharmacist', Emlyn...
"'Arbitrator', Miss Hugh... 'Lawyer', Secret Doll Qonas...
"'Hunter', Danitz or Anderson... 'Witch', let Triss provide it herself...
"'Prisoner', Miss Sharon or Maric... 'Criminal', there is no such thing for the time being...
"'The Peeper', Ms. 'The Hermit'... 'The Universalist', Frank's lab assistant...
"'Monster', the secret doll Enuni...
"It seems that most of them can be obtained in a very short time. The corresponding channels trust me enough and believe that I will not curse them with blood... Triss, the witch, must have a way to eliminate the connection between blood and the body, and she will not object... Only the 'demons', although I have encountered a few, but some died and some escaped. There is currently a lack of options...
"Well, ask Little Sun if Silver City has any demon flesh in stock. They encounter it from time to time..."
If you don't think about it, you won't know. When he thought about it carefully, Klein found that it had been less than two years since he traveled through time, but he had established a relatively deep connection with most of the sequencers of the extraordinary path.
He immediately gathered his scattered thoughts and seriously thought about Mr. Door's escape ritual:
"We need to sacrifice one demigod each, the Thief, the Apprentice, and the Fortuneteller... These are three interchangeable pathways... Mr. Gate is going to use a temporary combination of the three pathways to open the path back in a clever way?
"...Demigods from these three paths are not that easy to capture. It was possible when the Abraham family was at its peak. After the High-Sequencers died in the 'Four Emperors War' and its aftermath, there is basically no hope...
"If Mr. Men could be more patient and give his descendants more time to grow, there might be hope. But why did he keep calling for help, killing one promising descendant after another...
"Is He crazy? A madman who looks like a normal person?"
Klein pondered for a while, burned the letter, went above the gray fog, and performed two divinations.
The revelations he received were: the method to enter the secret mausoleum was real, and Mr. "The Door"'s return ceremony was also real.
Looking at the pendulum in his hand, Klein sat in silence on the high-back chair for a long time.
After a few minutes, he pulled and clenched his left hand, tightly grasping the yellow crystal pendant, and whispered to himself:
"We just need to wait for the magic potion of the 'Strange Mage' to be completely digested before we can perform the ceremony with King George III..."