At night, the Schallebu used to be stationed near the river. Thanks to the long-term presence of the Shale Division, their former camp has not been re-shaded by pastures, and the fire pits dug by the herdsmen, as well as various materials abandoned or left behind, have greatly reduced the difficulty of camping for several people. After leaving Batu and the others to prepare the dry rations they needed for tomorrow, Cheese wandered alone to the river mentioned by Wu Qi in the name of surveying. The water here is not clear in the night, only the sound of rolling waves and the sound of the water indicates that it is still full of water.

Cheese stared at the water, his eyes flickering with a mist of magic, if the parasite infected by the child in the Schaller Department did come from the river, then there was something unusual about it. And he was skeptical that the parasites really came directly from the river. Cheese has heard people say before that there is a kind of parasite that will parasitize the ant's body at the beginning, and they will control the ant to climb onto the tip of the grass and let the cattle and sheep eat it when they eat the grass, so as to complete the transfer of the host, and when the person eats the parasitic beef and mutton, they will enter the human body.

The parasites in the child's body were not large, but judging by their size alone that they hatched directly from the eggs was too arbitrary, as he had heard in the examples, the parasites that could live in the ants were obviously much smaller than the ones he had found. Therefore, it is not certain that the origin of those bugs is so simple. And in addition to the growth process of parasites, Cheese is also curious about their parasitic range, are they only parasitic on humans, or can they be other human-like homeotherms? Do they change hosts? And are they infectious?

Too many questions were interrupted before they could be answered, and the mystery contained in itself by the huge crack that devoured the parasite was no less than the former. The mage felt a bit of a headache, and he didn't think he would have any trouble before he arrived in the City of Ten Thousand Laws. In fact, if Lothar hadn't been swallowed by the rift, Cheesebook wouldn't have needed to remain involved in the incident. But now, in order to get the Count back, he had to pick up all the clues he had put down again.

"Hopefully it's still too late, no, it has to be in time. "It's the third day, and Cheese doesn't know what kind of situation Lothar has entered when she falls into the crack. But even if the Count was only imprisoned, three days of water and fasting would be enough to kill a man. He's gambling, and he's well aware of that. He's betting that Lothar can survive until now on his own, until he can save him. And even though the mage had confidence in the Count when he explained it to the others, he was still dazed and worried when he faced the river alone.

The magic light in his eyes was extinguished. The Grey Robe didn't see any signs of magic in his surroundings. This was consistent with the result he had observed the knot that had replaced Lothar, and Cheese had not seen anything like it, and in his experience, when there was no magic reaction on something that was clearly wrong, it often meant only one thing. The idea is that the beings that make or use them are not comparable to the level of wizards or spellcasters, so those beings use more principled powers than magic.

"Wet Soul, Flesh Tower, Mother of Crypts, Mother of Shadows—" taboo names came out of the mage's mouth, but he wasn't worried that chanting the names of these evil gods would draw their attention, these existential names were not so easy to invoke, and their sincere followers or valued people had their own way of calling them. Cheese muttered the names, hoping for clues that might be relevant to the situation at hand. But this is not easy, even if it is the same evil god, because they show different postures, they will use different names and different styles of behavior. Moreover, these styles are often contradictory or even contradictory, and it is not uncommon for believers of the same evil god to be hostile to each other or even kill each other because of the different incarnations they believe. Relying on experience to decipher the identity of an evil god is no less difficult than carving a mark into the stern of a ship to record the location of what you have fallen into the water.

The words stopped. Instead of chanting the blasphemous names, the mage closed his eyes and began to breathe deeply, and everything around him began to fade between the cheese's breaths, until only the sound of his own heartbeat remained in his world. Then at some point, the sound of the heartbeat was gone. The lines of the chains appeared on the surface of the mage's skin, but compared to the past, these chains now looked thick and thin, and the colors were also different. This is because they were not made at the same time.

In the six years since the Rat-Man Plague, in addition to teaching Rat-Man and taking care of his own magical research, Cheese has also put a lot of energy into his true profession, but these energy investments have not allowed the mage to master more spells or abilities, it has only allowed him to accomplish one thing, a deeper self-awareness. He was chasing the man behind the name cheese, the essence of himself. It's an indescribable process, and the result is the new chains that have grown up on Cheese. These chains are not shackles, on the contrary, they are mediums. The best cage to trap a beast is the beast itself, a lesson that the Lord of the Grey Tower taught every Grey Robe a long time ago. The same goes for the chains on Cheese's body, and there are no external forces that can trap the energy within him, unless those forces are also a part of him.

The gray robe covered with chain-like patterns on his skin slowly knelt down, and he stretched out his hands, and the two chains that snaked from his arms ended in the palms of his left and right hands. When he pressed the palms of his hands to the ground, the chains on his body were connected to the outside world. "Hum!" the earth began to tremble in an instant, like an earthquake when a rift appeared. However, this time, the shaking did not bring about changes in the ground, and its amplitude was not so intense, of course, this may also be because the epicenter of this earthquake is relatively deep...

"There was an earthquake just now!" Batu said to the mage as soon as Cheese returned, though he knew that the mage must have felt something.

"It was just a small tremor, probably an aftershock from the other day. Cheese replied casually, making it impossible to see his connection to the small earthquake, "By the way, do you know where the river flows downstream?"

"Underground. "Many rivers in the prairie are like this, and I don't know when a spring suddenly appears, and a stream is formed, and several streams merge into a river." Rivers, on the other hand, flow back into the ground at their ends. Almost every river changes course every year, so only tribes that have migrated to the same area several times can grasp the pattern of changes in water sources. What's wrong?"

"Nothing. In this way, some problems can be explained. ”