Chapter 1092: 79. Believers of the Night
“Light? Attract? The evil Goddess of Night?”
Muen’s thoughts spun at high speed. Or rather, the instant Grandma Meg asked that question, he had already keenly sensed that something was wrong, and almost instinctively operated the alchemical cores.
Time slowed. Because of that, Muen could see with great clarity as doubt and vigilance gradually surfaced on that aged face. She was clearly such a good person that she could extend a helping hand even to a yellow-haired pervert who had been bare-chested in public, yet in this aspect, she displayed a sensitivity different from ordinary people.
Something was wrong...
Very wrong.
If the previous Rabuya City was only the result of Grandma Meg hating that city her granddaughter was about to go to and maliciously smearing it, then the “evil” Goddess of Night she spoke of now was not something she had said casually.
She was a devout believer. She would not speak recklessly about matters of the gods.
In other words...
This was some kind of taboo that absolutely could not be exposed!
“Of course I know this kind of common sense.”
Time slow ended. Muen revealed his usual handsome smile.
“Grandma, you misunderstood what I meant. I meant that it is about to get dark soon, so while it has not gone completely dark yet, we can use the candles for illumination, and our movements can be a little faster that way. Otherwise, once the room is already completely dark, if you accidentally bump into something, I would feel bad.”
As he spoke, Muen pointed outside the window.
The sun had already completely sunk into the ground, and the sky was gradually darkening, but there was still afterglow lingering over the earth. There should still be about half an hour before they completely entered night.
“Ah... so that was it.”
Under Muen’s outstanding reaction and acting skills, tempered by the ruined battlefield of love, Grandma Meg’s expression relaxed again.
“You scared me to death. I thought you were one of those dangerous believers of the night.”
“Grandma, you really know how to joke. To tell you the truth, greatness, brightness, and righteousness are the most obvious labels on my body. Since I was little, I have been a good child who helped old ladies cross the road every day. Evil forces, believers of the night—those have absolutely nothing to do with me.”
Muen flicked back his blond hair. Every movement revealed elegance and righteousness...
At least from his appearance, he indeed did not look like he had any connection to evil things.
As for the reality...
What they were talking about now were believers of the night. What did that have to do with his past history of having topped Brother Withered?
“That is true. It is said that believers of the night only move about in the night. Since you can jump around under the bright sun, you should not be one of them.”
Grandma Meg shook her head and sighed.
“Sigh, sorry. My nerves are too sensitive. The area where we live now is one of the few remaining forest farms. There are rumors that those believers of the night will come cause trouble, making everyone anxious and uneasy. I was also a little too vigilant.”
“Forest farm? Cause trouble?”
Muen raised an eyebrow and felt somewhat surprised. Putting aside, for now, whether those so-called believers of the night would cause trouble or not...
This place could also be called a forest farm?
Muen glanced toward the silhouettes of the woods outside the window. Those sparse branches and leaves swayed in the wind, like the top of a programmer’s head. They could not even make an obvious rustling sound.
Mm. He remembered correctly.
Those trees all looked malnourished. Most of them were not even as thick as his wrist. This kind of density and quality could still be called a forest farm? What could this kind of wood be used for? And it was one of the only ones left? Most importantly, it was precious enough that some fellows who might be evil believers would come cause trouble over it?
Muen narrowed his eyes and once again examined the house he was in. He discovered that whether it was the house as a whole, or the various items inside it, there were indeed very few wooden products.
Was what was scarce only timber...
Or was it...
“It seems Grandma does not have it easy either.”
Muen continued following the previous topic.
“Sigh. Who told our village to exist for the sake of guarding this forest farm? If anything happens, we will become sinners. That is why we have to be careful and cautious.”
“The forest farm really is very important. I do not even know how serious the consequences would be if it were destroyed.”
“Consequences? Haha... young man, have you also been deceived by the words those people outside spread around? It is only a few patches of forest that are already completely useless. Even if they were all destroyed, what could it affect?”
Grandma Meg first smiled with a complicated expression, then sighed and said,
“At most, if even this kind of thing to cling to were gone, it would affect the stability of people’s hearts.”
“People’s hearts... stability?”
Muen chewed over these words, but he truly could not connect them with a few broken forests.
Could those sparse, thin trees still have some extraordinary symbolic meaning?
“Oh my, let us not speak of this. If this kind of talk gets out, this old woman may be pointed at behind her back. Silence, silence.”
Grandma Meg took the red candle from Muen’s hand, examined it for a while, and her eyes lit up.
“Oh, this candle. So pure. It must be quite expensive!”
“This... cough. Average.”
Muen dryly coughed. He still could only speak ambiguously.
“So modest. It seems, young man, your identity is even less simple than I imagined. To be able to use this kind of candle, perhaps you are some city lord’s young master.”
Grandma Meg smiled.
“Perhaps I have even picked up a treasure?”
“Grandma thinks too highly of me. I am only an ordinary wanderer.”
Muen did not want to drag the topic onto himself, who was now full of holes, and hurriedly shifted her attention.
“It is getting late. Let us tidy up the room first. Otherwise, there really will be no time.”
“Ah... right. Look at me. Once I start chatting, I nearly forget the proper business. Come, I will take you to the inner room. Although this house is simple, it can still let you settle down and rest for one night.”
Grandma Meg carefully held the candle, as if she were protecting some supreme treasure, and slowly walked toward the room farther inside...
Muen hurriedly stepped after her.
...
...
It was night.
The sky was pitch-black, with neither stars nor moon.
And yet Muen remembered that before nightfall, the weather had still been very clear. There had been no clouds blocking the sky. Logically speaking, the night should not be so purely black.
“The evil Goddess of Night... So there really is something wrong with this place?”
Muen gently lowered the piece of torn cloth that had originally been tightly pasted over the window. With both hands pillowed behind the back of his head, he began organizing the series of intelligence he had obtained during the day.
First of all, this place should be somewhere very far from the regions and countries Muen was familiar with, and at the same time, an extremely remote place. He did not know which corner of the continent it was in. In any case, some of its customs were vastly different from what Muen understood.
Second, the people here, such as Grandma Meg, believed in a goddess...
As for whether that Goddess who brought light was the Life Goddess, that remained doubtful. For now, it was also not good for Muen to ask. Asking about something that was clearly common sense would very easily make him seem like a suspicious person too.
Then, as Grandma Meg had said just now, the night here had an absolutely untouchable taboo.
That was, one could not create light.
Otherwise, it would attract “the gaze of the evil Goddess of Night.”
Forbidden light.
Attracting a gaze.
It sounded very much like a special rule caused by some bizarre existence entrenched here. As for whether it was truly an Evil God...
He thought Evil Gods should not be so bored that they would cast their gaze over because of a little bit of light.
Of course...
It could not be ruled out that a certain one of Them really was that bored.
“As for the greatest possibility... that so-called evil Goddess of Night may be related to those people Miss Dragon is currently tracking?”
Muen thought.
Many things in this world could not always be coincidences.
Since he had been sent here, then he was definitely not far from those bizarre fellows who could die and come back to life. And those fellows had been able to flee for several hundred years under Miss Dragon’s pursuit, and were even able to distort timelines. There was a very high probability that they truly had some method to disguise themselves as some kind of taboo existence in the night.
“How about... trying it?”
The idea of taking advantage of the thick night right now to create a bit of light and test things suddenly appeared in Muen’s mind. After all, for him, the simplest thing was to create a bit of light...
But very quickly, Muen rejected it himself.
In horror stories, those who looked down on some rule placed openly before them, clearly knew there was danger, yet still insisted on trying it...
Those kinds of idiots were basically the first to die.
Right now, Miss Dragon was not by his side. He was not confident enough to deal with all bizarre existences. If his luck was a little worse and it really was some Evil God casting its gaze over...
It would be fine if he did not encounter an acquaintance. There would still be a thread of survival.
If he encountered an “acquaintance”...
In a state of fighting alone, he could start thinking in advance about where he should be buried.
“It is better to be a little steadier. I still need to collect more intelligence about this place.”
Muen once again confirmed his general strategy.
“At the very least, I need to figure out what that so-called ‘Goddess of Night’ is. Otherwise, I cannot act recklessly.”
Then tonight, he would sleep first. Tomorrow, he would think about those problems again.
Thinking carefully, from the moment he rode the griffin and set foot on the return journey to Belrand until now, he had experienced all sorts of screwed-up things, and still had not properly rested.
No matter what, good rest was...
“Hm?”
Muen suddenly turned his head to the side. Although the wall and torn cloth blocked his vision, in his perception, there was something in the night...
Restlessly stirring.
“No way...”
After thinking it over again and again, Muen still let out a bitter, miserable long sigh.
“Looks like tonight is another sleepless night.”
...
...
In the darkness, several figures quickly shuttled through. In this environment that had almost no light at all, their movements were swift and agile, seemingly completely unaffected.
After detouring around some traps and fences arranged on the outskirts of the village, they soon stopped before a sparse forest. The person in the lead looked left and right, then said in a low voice,
“This is it. Forest District Three.”
“The range is larger than I imagined.”
Another person said, “I thought it would be like Number Two, with only a few dying withered trees used to fool those idiots in the urban districts.”
“Meg Mace, who guards this place, is not some simple person. It is said that when she was young, she obtained a mysterious ancient text passed down from several hundred years ago. That ancient knowledge allowed her to grow rapidly from an unknown ordinary person into an incredible figure. The fact that this Forest District Three can be the most flourishing among all the forest districts is inseparable from her great work.”
“Doesn’t that mean she is also a dangerous person who must be eliminated?” the third person said in shock.
“She must be eliminated, but not now. Tonight, our mission has only one goal, and that is to destroy this Forest District Three.”
The person in the lead lowered his voice and said,
“Remember. This matter is only allowed to succeed. Failure is not allowed. Do you understand?”
“Understood!”
“There is no time to lose. Move!”
“Yes!”