Chapter 257 Black Snake
"Are they sure?"
Standing outside a wooden house, Athir walked down the steps and asked casually while looking at Thor standing in front of him.
"Yes, I have confirmed it again and again."
Looking at Athir, Thor smiled bitterly: "They said that since we can't escape the curse sooner or later, it's better to rest in peace at our ancestral altar than to die in a foreign land."
Hearing this, Atier's expression did not change, he just nodded slightly.
It is easy to understand why these survivors made this decision.
In the past, with the barrier outside the village, these people might have still harbored some hope, thinking they could rely on the barrier's protection to continue surviving.
But what happened last night easily shattered their luck, forcing them to face the harsh reality.
Without the protection of the barrier, these people would be cursed within a few months at most and would die outside sooner or later.
Rather than dying in a foreign land, it is better to give it your all, maybe there will still be some hope.
After all, with a powerful wizard like Athir around, maybe the leaked seal can really be solved.
On the other hand, Athir was not actually opposed to these people's decisions.
They immediately headed to Thor's hometown. After all, these people were descendants of ancient wizards and pure Crassus people. They knew something about that place and could at least act as guides, so they were not completely worthless.
At the original place, Athir looked at Thor, and after chatting with him for a few words, he walked away and prepared to return to his house to rest.
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One morning a dozen days later, in the vast wilderness, a group of people appeared and were moving towards the distance.
In the team, Thor was riding a black horse, his eyes fixed on the distance, patrolling the surroundings.
Because no vegetation can grow on the black soil, the surrounding land looks desolate and no life can be seen.
In such a flat environment with nothing to cover it, it is very difficult to hide.
Walking at the front of the team, Thor was riding on his horse when he suddenly felt a dark shadow passing by in front of him.
He subconsciously looked in the direction of his sight and saw a short figure with a bare upper body and dark skin running quickly from a distance.
"Are they local natives?"
Looking at the figure running quickly in the distance, this thought flashed through Thor's mind.
After a while, he turned around and walked towards the carriage behind.
"Lord Athir, we are almost there!"
He shouted to the carriage window as he rode along the side of the carriage.
"Have we arrived yet?"
Hearing the shouts outside the carriage, Athir opened his eyes and threw away the deduction data in his mind.
He reached out to open the window and looked at the scenery outside.
Compared to when they had just moved forward, there were already some signs of human habitation here. Although it still seemed very desolate to Athir, there were at least some signs of life.
Even without chip detection, through the moon elf's keen sensing ability, Athir could clearly feel the breath of life that was beginning to appear around him, which should belong to the indigenous people living nearby.
"Eh…"
It seemed that he had discovered some abnormality in the life, and Atier was suddenly surprised.
In his keen perception, there seemed to be a spiritual imprint in the distance, which faintly resonated with his spiritual power and brought a sense of familiarity.
In just a moment, Athir remembered the source of this feeling. It belonged to the indigenous old man who had been mentally marked by him, but he was sensing it again at this moment.
"Is it a coincidence, or?"
Athir raised his head and whispered to himself, with some inexplicable meaning in his eyes.
Before, although he had been mentally marked on the other party, he did not pay too much attention to it.
The fact that he could sense it without him paying special attention to it showed that the distance between them was very close at that moment.
As time went by, Athir sensed that the distance between the two sides was getting shorter and shorter.
"Sir, we're here." Thor's voice suddenly came from outside the carriage.
Hearing the sound, Athir stood up and walked out of the carriage.
Outside the carriage, several people were already ready. They all stood behind Thor, quietly waiting for Athir's orders.
Standing in place, Athir raised his head and looked into the distance.
In the distance, there stands a huge palace. It looks huge but a little old, and a sense of historical sedimentation comes to the face.
Looking at this somewhat dilapidated palace, Athir felt many auras, some of which were curses and the blood power in Thor's body.
However, compared with what Athir had seen before, the two forces in the palace before him were unprecedentedly powerful, and each one of them alone would make Athir treat it with caution.
"Let's go in."
Looking at the palace in the distance, Athir was silent for a while before speaking.
Listening to his words, everyone present nodded silently.
Being able to come here with Athir, those present were undoubtedly mentally prepared for the worst. Even Yana, who was a mother at the moment, held her child in her arms and took out a purple scimitar.
As a descendant of an ancient wizard, she is not a weak girl who can't even lift a chicken. Her physical fitness is comparable to that of an ordinary person, and she can definitely knock down a strong man easily.
Especially after Athir carved the blood mark for her, the blood power in her body was strengthened again. Although she is still not as good as Thor in combat, she is probably not much worse.
"Before I leave, I want to ask you one more time."
Standing in the center, looking at Yana who was wearing leather armor and fully armed, Athir spoke again: "Forget about you and Thor, but is it really okay to just bring Suolana in as well?"
"This ruin is very dangerous. Even I cannot guarantee her safety."
He looked at Thor and said calmly.
"It doesn't matter."
After listening to Athir's words, Thor and Yana looked at each other and shook their heads: "Even if we will die in our hometown this time, we hope to go through this journey with our children."
"Besides, there are some things in this palace that this child needs to inherit."
Thor paused and spoke again: "We don't want the heritage left by our ancestors to disappear completely, and we also hope that the child's future will be smoother."
After hearing this, Athir did not continue speaking. He just turned around and looked forward, then rode a horse directly.
"Let's go."
After getting on his horse, he looked at the people around him and started shouting.
The people around nodded silently, mounted their horses, and drove in front to lead the way for Athir.
After walking for a long distance, some figures began to appear in front.
Those were some indigenous villages, stationed outside the palace and building several camps.
When they saw Athir and his group coming, the natives were startled at first, and then quickly began to assemble.
"Who?" A voice sounded in the distance, with a hint of coldness and some fluctuations of mental power.
In Athir's sight, in the distant village, surrounded by many natives, a dark-skinned, thin old man was slowly walking out, followed by two other middle-aged natives.
Standing in the same place, when he saw the old man, the mental power in Athir's body trembled slightly, resonating with the mental mark he had set before.
The old man in front of him was exactly the native that Athir met at the beginning, but he didn't expect to meet him in this way.
"Lord Athir..." a voice sounded from the side.
Beside Thor, a Crasu frowned as he watched the natives appear in the distance. He whispered to Athir, "This is a snake witch. It has been hunting us down for the past few years. It is very powerful."
"You are..."
In the distance, the skinny old native man led his men to the front. When he saw Thor next to Athir, his face suddenly changed. He looked a little excited, but also a little confused: "It's you!!"
"Get out of the way and let us in!"
In front of Athir, looking at the old man in the distance, Thor had a cold expression and no emotion in his words.
"Let you in?"
After hearing what Thor said, the native elder smiled and said, "I was just about to go find you guys, but I didn't expect you to come find me."
"If you want to go in, of course it's no problem."
His expression gradually became indifferent, but there was some excitement in his eyes: "Lie down on the altar obediently and sacrifice to the Snake God!"
As soon as he finished speaking, a faint light suddenly lit up around him, making the minds of many natives present fuzzy and their movements became slower.
The next moment, a silver force field suddenly erupted, knocking away all the natives running around.
At some point, Athir's figure instantly appeared behind the native old man, with a hand stretched out.
"you!!"
Noticing the figure suddenly appearing behind him, the old native man was shocked and was about to speak.
A strong hand directly grasped his neck, blocking all the words he was about to say. The powerful force made him feel suffocated, and his original strength seemed to disappear. He had no strength in his whole body and was tightly bound.
"Where does all this nonsense come from..."
He picked up the other person with one hand and looked at the person in front of him with some impatience. He stretched out his other hand and placed it on the other person's forehead.
"I originally wanted to experiment slowly, but now it seems that I can only be rough for now."
This thought flashed through his mind, and under the touch of Athir's mental power, the consciousness of the person in front of him was forcibly pried open by him to search for the memories within.
As a formal wizard, after reaching the transformation period, there are special spells and techniques that can be used to observe the memories of others, but the side effects are too great. Not only is the operation complicated, it is easy to make the other person a fool if you are not careful, and it is also easy to cause various side effects.
However, in the current situation, as they were about to enter the ruins, Athir was too lazy to waste any more effort and simply decided to be direct and rough, preparing to obtain something from the other party's memory.
Suddenly, under the connection of mental power, a large number of memory fragments rushed towards Athir, and together they formed a picture.
It was a huge black snake statue. In front of the statue, corpses were neatly placed, and the flesh and blood inside were slowly evaporating and merging into the statue below.
With every bit of integration, the black snake statue looked more and more realistic, as if it were a living creature.
"Great Snake God! Please grant me your blessing." An old voice kept ringing around, muttering a lot of prayers.
The owner of that voice is the owner of this memory, and is the object of the memory that Athir is checking at this moment.
As the sound continued to ring, in the fragments of memory, a layer of black scales gradually appeared on the old man's body, and his strength and aura seemed to increase a lot.
"Sacrifice..."
Silently observing this scene in his memory, Athir frowned subconsciously, as if he had thought of something.
Before I had time to think about it, an extreme sense of danger suddenly surged in my heart.
A dark space covered the place, and in the space, a faint moonlight lit up.
It was the light emanating from Athir, which dispelled the darkness and fully revealed the scene at that location.
A gigantic black snake appeared in front of him. Just like what he had seen in his previous memory, most of its body was made of stone, and only its pair of scarlet snake eyes were lively, revealing endless evil and a terrifying power.
Watching this scene quietly, Athir kept a calm expression and somewhat understood the current situation.
"In the native's memory, there is the curse itself, that is, the power of this black snake. He was already affected when I checked his memory just now!"
Looking at the black snake in front of him, a sense of enlightenment arose in his heart.
Then the next moment, wisps of black gas continued to spread, and a kind of power spread here, gradually spreading towards Athir, but was resisted by the faint moonlight covering Athir's body.
boom!!
A violent explosion suddenly sounded, bringing with it a terrible blow to the spirit.
The surrounding scene began to change and became what it was at the beginning.
Standing there, Athir gasped and felt an intense mental fatigue.
After recovering for a while, he lowered his head and looked forward.
At his feet, the native old man had turned into a corpse. He had collapsed directly from the previous mental stimulation, with the same horrified expression on his face.
"I was careless. If I had the protection of the Emerald Seal this time, I'm afraid the price I would have to pay would be much more than this."
Shaking his head and standing there, Athir thought about the scene just now and couldn't help feeling a little frightened.
The mind of the native in front of him was sealed. No matter who it was, if they wanted to peek into his memory, they would be attacked by the seal.
There is no doubt that the seal was left by the curse itself, which made Athir fail to notice it for a moment and almost fell into it.
If nothing unexpected had happened, Athir would have paid a heavy price for that blow. But at the last moment, the power of the emerald mark on Athir's forehead reappeared, blocking the final backlash of the seal and preventing Athir from getting hurt.
"Although the process was a little thrilling, I can roughly guess your identity now..."
Standing there, putting down the corpse in his hand, Athir turned around, looked at the ruins in front of him and muttered to himself.
(End of this chapter)