Chapter 11 Perhaps

Perhaps in the realm of magic, Pierre was just an ordinary human who knew a smattering, not even the weakest vampire would take him seriously, but in terms of investigating intelligence and collecting historical secrets, Pierre could be called an absolute expert. His abilities in this area might not be inferior to Nangong Sanba: humans were a species full of curiosity, and their own weakness would also urge spirit detectives to pay special attention to intelligence gathering. Pierre had already investigated a lot before coming to this village, and during the two months he was trapped, he was constantly studying the tattered ancient books he brought with him. What he had investigated during this time was much more than Hao Ren had imagined.

The noise in the village square continued, and it was unknown when this long celebration would end. The strange villagers didn't seem to worry about anyone escaping from this place, or they had other ways to monitor the village boundaries. Until now, no one had come to the longhouse to check on the situation, which surprised Hao Ren somewhat: "I thought they would keep a close watch."

"Watch whom? You? Or me?" Pierre shook his head. "There are patterns to their behavior. Although there are no loopholes that can be exploited to escape, you can find some gaps by following the rules. They are relatively lenient towards newcomers to the village, probably to prevent suspicion. After all, people who have just entered the village still retain a considerable degree of self-will. If the villagers behave too abnormally, it will cause a series of problems. And as you stay in this village longer and longer, you will imperceptibly accept it, identify with it, become unwilling to leave, and even forget where you are and where you came from. At that time, the villagers will use the rules of the village to restrain you, and you will gladly accept it. In the end, you become a complete walking corpse, you think you belong here, you were even born here, you will have a false memory, the content of this memory is that you were born and raised in this village, and are destined to grow old and die here—at that time, all traces of your foreign origin will be corroded and fall off, you will put on their clothes, stand in their ranks, yes, you will also become a 'villager', just like what you saw during the day."

Vivian was immediately surprised: "You mean those villagers were also transformed from people trapped here?!"

"If my investigation and speculation are correct, it should be so," Pierre nodded gently. "When I first came here, I found traces of 'transformation' that had just been completed on several villagers. They had the Cat King's tattoo on their bodies, but after a month, these traces completely disappeared, and they became completely 'villagers'. That Winston village chief is probably one of them."

Vivian stroked her chin: "I'm reminded of the idiom *wei hu zuo chang*."

"There's only a circle of fence outside this village," Hao Ren looked out the window. Due to the angle, he could see the village boundary from here, and the dilapidated low fence was clearly visible. "You haven't tried to walk out? Theoretically, the villagers trapped here can't leave this land, and your chances of forcing your way out should be pretty high."

Pierre knew Hao Ren would bring this up, he shook his head with a wry smile: "Impossible, no one can cross that fence. The other side of the fence is still the village, I've tried it many times. There's magic at work here, of course, you might want to try it."

Hesperides frowned: "Everything was normal when I came here three hundred years ago, what exactly happened here?"

Pierre immediately looked around cautiously, as if what he was about to say would attract some kind of evil spirit in the night. He lowered his voice and said in a mysterious tone: "According to my investigation, it's probably related to a wicked witchcraft ritual performed by an ancient family."

"Family? Witchcraft ritual?" Hesperides was stunned. No matter what she thought before, she felt that what happened in this place should have been caused by Hercules and that ancient artifact, but she didn't expect it to involve other aspects. "What did you find out?"

"The earliest record is more than two hundred years ago," Pierre put down the window panel of the room and lit another spare oil lamp in the room, as if to dispel the surrounding darkness. "At that time, this village was just an ordinary small, remote, and poor village. Although it was hidden deep in the dense forest, there were no bad rumors, and the towns outside the forest still occasionally communicated with the village. Later, a fallen noble family moved here. They were exiles from the French Revolution. After losing power and status, they only had wealth left. They settled in a small town outside the forest, but this family was soon ostracized and hostile by the residents of the town. The situation was so serious that the lives of family members began to be threatened..."

Vivian interjected: "Why?"

"Because of researching witchcraft, and even people returning from other places brought the family a bad reputation. There were many such fallen nobles at that time. Because of the drastic changes in social status and the precariousness of life, they began to seek some less legitimate spiritual sustenance and power. These records cannot be found in official history, but I found corroboration in many secret documents. The fallen noble who moved here was quite obsessed with researching witchcraft, and his family was even more addicted than other families: they had been fascinated by this path for several generations, and unlike those who could only hold fake magic books and circle around a campfire shouting, they possessed some real magical knowledge.

"Because of this reason, this noble family who lost power and status was rejected by the townspeople, and even faced the danger of being sent to the guillotine, so they had to move away from the town, and later built a house somewhere between the town and the small village in the forest."

"In the forest? How carefree..." Vivian raised an eyebrow. "What happened next?"

"There are multiple versions of what happened next. Some say that the family summoned demons from another world in their basement, and the demons destroyed the town outside the forest and cursed the village in the forest. Others say that the head of the family went crazy because of researching witchcraft and turned into a demon himself, but my investigation is more inclined to the third version: a magical item with considerable power was originally hidden in the small village in the forest, and the noble who moved here came for this magical item. He and his family deceived a hermit in the village, stole the artifact from the hermit, and tried to obtain the artifact's magic power. After discovering that he had been deceived, the hermit came alone to demand an explanation. However, the noble deceived him again, pretending to return the artifact, but poisoned the wine. In the end, the weak hermit and the noble engaged in a witchcraft war. The noble was defeated, and before dying, he set a fire, burned down his house, and burned to death all his family members, wanting to die with the hermit. However, the hermit relied on the power of the artifact to escape..."

Pierre paused here, the following words were the key point: "The hermit who escaped the fire returned to the small village with the artifact, but died of poisoning at the entrance of the village. His dying anger polluted the magical item, so the magical power of the ancient era immediately spread out, cursing the entire village. I guess the hermit's obsession was 'No one can take anything from this land', so this obsession was distorted by the curse, turning into no one can leave this land. That's my investigation and speculation."

After Pierre finished speaking, Hesperides crossed her arms and nodded: "I'm afraid your guess is indeed the closest to the truth, but only one thing is unlikely—that 'hermit' is not someone who can be dealt with by ordinary humans."

As soon as Pierre heard this, he immediately realized that the people in front of him probably knew part of the truth. He widened his eyes: "Do you know who the 'hermit' in the story is?"

"We came here to find him," Hao Ren said. "He was called Hercules back then."

Pierre reacted for a few seconds, and finally let out a strange cry: "Ancient Greek mythology, the Hercules of the Twelve Labors?!"

Hesperides muttered to herself, "To be honest, I think the Twelve Labors back then were pretty unethical, it was too torturous, but unfortunately Hera was stirring things up behind the scenes, I reported the problem to Zeus a few times back then, but it was useless..."

A strange look appeared on Pierre's face, he seemed to be hearing someone boast about this ancient mythology in the first person for the first time, and he was a little unaccustomed to it—although Hesperides wasn't boasting.

"But no matter what, Hercules is indeed missing now," Vivian touched her chin. "It seems that the key to the problem is related to that family back then. They probably touched something they shouldn't have, causing the power of the artifact to get out of control. Pierre, do you know where the family's old residence is?"

"Outside the village," Pierre pointed in a certain direction. "Actually, it's not far from here. The ruins of the old house have been swallowed by the forest, but I guess the main structure of the house should still be there. After all, it was a house built by nobles. According to records, it used a lot of stone and ancient concrete. I know the key to lifting the curse should be there, but unfortunately I can't get out."

"We'll take a trip," Hao Ren stood up. "The space-time distortion here shouldn't be able to stop us."

"You'd better wait until dawn," Pierre said. "At that time, there will be some changes in the village."