Two hours after dinner, Shang Luo lay in his room.

In fact, the meal was really good, using the best ingredients from all over the Western Hemisphere. The town of Aric is a small town, but because it is just outside the city of Rome, it is possible to collect such an abundance of ingredients.

If it weren't for the real Mayor Caesso's dissection room speech, he would have eaten twice as much. During the meal, he also confirmed that tomorrow would be the same standard from morning till night, and he was still looking forward to tomorrow's breakfast - if no one next door was singing.

The singing had been going on for two hours, and it came from Mayor Caesor's daughter, Karin Caesor, the Roman girl with long jet-black hair. Shang Luo still remembers her voice at that time, just like now:

"Beautiful Diana, goddess of the moon. You drove the silver chariot in the night sky, you let the farmers see the crops, you made the lovers—we—we———."

The singing came to an abrupt end. It's like the record is stuck, stuck on the last syllable. Stuck for a while, the song sounded again:

"Beautiful Diana, goddess of the moon."

With the singing, Mayor Keso at the door walked in:

"This. . . Forgiveness, stranger, for calling you that. I know you're a professional, far more than that insider. I used to ask the guards for help, but they "

"Can't the internal guards help you?"

"Of course they can help. But they don't want to make a difference, their tricks are too clumsy. They are afraid of the power of myth and do not dare to make the slightest change. They don't care what a little guy like me thinks, as you can see, even though I'm the mayor here. But before the empire that rules the entire Western Hemisphere, I'm just a nobody. So, stranger from Aurora, I would like to beg you in the name of a father to help my daughter. ”

"So your daughter, is she only going to sing over and over here?"

"No, no, no," Mayor Keso shook his head, "If the problem was as simple as that, even the internal guards would help me." The crux of the matter is that it wasn't Karin at all. It was just Karin's silhouette, an afterimage. Or according to them, it's just a substitute, a substitute for Karin. ”

"They, you mean?"

"Have you played the Heroes Parade - Elven Hill Expansion Pack?"

"Nope." Shang Luo shook his head. Although he did know that the Heroes Parade sold by the Romans was popular, he had been busy in Yangzhou, so he didn't have much time to play them.

"If you've played it, you'll know that this is a Celtic mythology-themed expansion. A class called 'Changeling' was added to the expansion, and the absurd Stolen Child in Grimm's Fairy Tales, published by Tech Barbarians, also featured this theme. I used to think it was just a barbarian babbling, but I didn't expect it to happen to me. The legend is like this. ”

He sighed: "Legend has it that the island of Britain is inhabited by a fairy, a fairy who cannot judge good and evil with human concepts. They are beautiful, noble, and tend to protect lost passers-by in the forest, but they act extremely cruelly. They are called the Issi, or in their own language, the Loyansu - the elves of the forest, who will replace the human child with a 'mimick', and take the real child captive to become one of the fairies. The child will learn the magic of the Issi fairy, grow up like a fairy, and forget about being human. And the imitation they left behind often has many flaws. Because it's not really human, it's just imitation. ”

While talking, the singing next door was stuck again.

"Beautiful Diana, goddess of the moon."

After the stuttering, the doomed song sounded again.

Shang Luo looked at the wall and thought for a while.

"When did this happen?"

Mayor Keso looked at the ceiling, "She was 7 years old, yes, I'm pretty sure that day." I remember that afternoon, I asked her to go out to buy some ingredients, and the store didn't sell her favorite white mushrooms, the kind called mushrooms. Karin, like any other Roman child, thought that the goods grew on the shelves, and for the first time she found that she couldn't buy her favorite food in the store. Later, after questioning, I learned that she had gone to the library and borrowed books about mushrooms, and she learned that mushrooms grew in the woods. So, she walked into the sacred forest on the shore of Lake Nemi, and it was not her who came out again. ”

"When did you first find out? On the same day? ”

"It was a long, long time before I found out. It's just that from that day on, Karin somehow suddenly became much more well-behaved. She studied hard in class, and she came home early every day to help the maid with some housework, and also helped her mother and Karin's mother with the garden. She became more and more diligent and perfect, and she was not at all like the lazy Karin she used to be. I used to think she was a treasure from God to me until. Right now. ”

The song repeated to one side, still stuck in the same position as before, without the slightest change.

"She started 3 months ago and she got stuck. She had to sing until 12 o'clock sharp, and she would not go to bed until the start of the new day. ”

“.”

Shang Luo quietly listened to the singing next door.

Every time the singing is impeccably perfect, only stuck at the end of the song. The song has been stuck there, never going to go any further.

"So, have you checked the reason?"

"After we begged the Legion back and forth, Mr. Titus came to our home. After examining Karin's eyes, he tells us about the transmutation. ”

"But that's a Celtic myth, why is it here?"

"No, it's not just a Celtic myth, it's not just in the British Isles. The same myth appears in the myths of Iberia, Germania, and the Slavs. Similar myths have arisen in all the places that were conquered by Rome. Mr. Titus did not hide the truth from us: this is the karma of the Romans as invaders, and it really happened. The roots of this myth come from the resistance of the aborigines to the invaders. Barbarians across Europe were displaced by the Roman conquest and went into hiding. They used to drop sick and dying children and healthy children of the Roman invaders. ”

"Like the golden bought of Lake Nemi?"

"Yes. Myth is history through stories, an eternal continuation of history—this is also the words of Mr. Titus. The myth of the reincarnation is precisely the karma of the Romans as invaders. It's just that I didn't think that this kind of retribution should not happen to me, let alone my daughter. I didn't invade anyone, and this is in Rome, where are the barbarians? Here are just the ones in the Sacred Grove."

The rest of the words are self-explanatory. If he had any karma, it was that he became an "accomplice" of the internal guards as a local, and offended the Sacred Forest. To Sacred Grove, he was indeed a "Roman invader".

"So, you thought of me?"

"Yes. I wonder if I've offended the king of the forest. You're going to perform the Golden Bough ceremony, right? If you become the new king of the forest, can you put my daughter back? It was just a gesture of the king's hand. In return, I am willing to truly live up to the history of the myth of the Golden Bough, and enshrine you as the secular lord of the land, the 'true' priest-king—yes, the reward promised to you by the Romans, though precious, is incomplete. The true king of the forest should also be the lord of the land, because the king of myths needs a secular coronation. The Romans feared that the true authority of the king of the forest would fall into the hands of outsiders. But as long as you are willing to save my daughter, the authority is yours. ”

He paused for a moment, and said:

"In other words, the hidden quest I've given you here is the real main quest! This is a father's request, and this is my last request as a lord of this land. When it's all over, everything here will be yours. ”

(End of chapter)