Chapter 55 Three Relics, The Faith of the Sea God

Friday.

After finishing his morning work of appraising medicines, Lin Bo stopped by the church. The believers of the Tower-Guarding Order had already offered up their first batch of relics.

The old priest placed all the items in a small storage room, having specially prepared an exhibition table to arrange them neatly.

The church in Stone Tower Town had never been affluent. The exhibition table consisted of two rickety pieces of old wooden furniture pushed together, covered with the finest cotton cloth to hide the insect-eaten gaps.

With a single touch, Lin Bo could gauge the condition of the two pine tables. He whispered a true name, and beneath the linen cloth, the wormholes in the tabletop mended themselves, while the legs became firmly embedded into the surface.

The two exhibition tables, which originally creaked at the slightest touch, now stood firm and steady.

The old priest held a whale-oil lantern behind him as Lin Bo used the light to examine the old objects brought by the believers one by one. He then selected three items: a jewelry box, a gold ring, and a cloth doll.

According to [Starry Eyes], higher-tier reverberation relics would manifest various anomalies in their surroundings, such as the living nearby experiencing auditory and visual hallucinations, suffering from frequent nightmares at night, or the relics relocating themselves when unwatched.

There was a high probability that these three were merely faint-tier reverberation relics, and Lin Bo was not surprised. Faint-tier reverberations were the easiest to acquire, not uncommon even in a magicless world.

Reverberations of a higher rank possessed certain miraculous properties and required the intervention of miraculous power.

It was not the case that the older and more prestigious a relic was, the higher its reverberation tier would be.

Although the birth of a reverberation was inseparable from intense emotions and historical turmoil, its continuation relied on mystical factors.

Such items as the Imperial Jade Seal or battle-tested military flags were qualified to nurture high-tier reverberations; yet, lacking the nourishment of miracles, no matter how high-tier the reverberation was, it would gradually blur and eventually degrade into a faint tier.

This was also the main reason why collecting reverberations was difficult in a magicless world—it wasn't that there were no good things, but that the good things had all expired.

The barbarian [Flying Great Grass], who had teamed up with Lin Bo previously, was still complaining in the chat channel every day. He had scoured the major museums and antique markets of the country he was in, only to find they were either pure counterfeits or bought at high prices, only to turn out to be useless chicken ribs with merely faint reverberations.

Stone Tower Town was a small place. As the two major intelligence centers—the bakery and the lighthouse—the speed of information circulation here was very fast. If any household possessed a high-tier reverberation relic and caused a stir, it would be hard to keep it from the neighbors, and once the neighbors knew, it was equivalent to the whole world knowing.

Therefore, Lin Bo hoped to collect more faint reverberations in Stone Tower Town. If luck favored him and he drew a magic-themed instance dungeon, he might be able to establish connections with the mage community.

If high-tier reverberations could not be found in a small place, he would go to a big city; if not in a big city, he would go to the imperial capital. If he couldn't find them in Hongdu either, he would venture beyond the Sail Archipelago, head to the Fertile Continent, and travel to every corner of the planet.

Even if this process yielded no results, as the Tower-Guarding Order expanded and his personal abilities grew, he could personally step in to drive historical development and artificially manufacture high-tier reverberation relics.

Temporary stagnation was nothing to be discouraged about. He would follow the step-by-step study of the path of true names, finding joy with every advance he made.

Lin Bo put away the three reverberation relics and asked the old priest who had brought them. He recorded all their names first, planning to bestow rewards at the next Thursday gathering.

Reverberation relics would be damaged after being sacrificed to the Nexus. Although this was a voluntary offering by the believers, it still destroyed their belongings, so Lin Bo had to compensate the owners.

The old priest had kept a record of the items contributed by each member of the order, and Lin Bo entrusted him with finding out whether these three individuals had any urgent shortages of supplies or difficulties at home. Rewards that could alleviate immediate needs were, of course, the best.

The remaining ordinary objects without reverberations were returned to the believers as they were. There was no need to let them gather dust in the church.

He browsed through these antiques and spotted some pages of book fragments, on which sea-god worship scriptures were written in Cening script. The handwriting was crude, and there were quite a few problems with word spelling and grammar, making it even clumsier than Lin Bo, a foreigner who hadn't studied it for long.

"I thought the empire only believed in the Five Gods."

Hearing this, the old priest took half a step forward. Seeing the Night Watchman holding a few scripture fragments, he explained, "Actually, the Sea God faith was the indigenous religion of the Sail Archipelago. It was simply crushed and driven out by the Five Gods faith spread from the Fertile Continent."

Among the old objects offered by the believers, there were several others related to the indigenous Sea God faith, though they were not ancestral heirlooms, but acquired through trade.

According to the old priest's memory, when he was young, a group of "Sea Folk" would often visit Stone Tower Town every ten days or half a month, crossing the sea in canoes. They used minerals, bird feathers, herbs, handicrafts, and the like to exchange for whale oil and whale bones.

The trade between Stone Tower Town and the Sea Folk had a long history, but the last time anyone saw the Sea Folk was nearly ten years ago.

"...Perhaps those people have all died out."

Lin Bo was thoughtful. He recalled the abandoned human village on the nearby island and the solitary human discovered by the fungal gull last night; perhaps that was the last believer of the Sea God.

"The craftsmanship of these people has quite a bit of style." Lin Bo inspected the Sea Folk trade goods, which were whalebone-carved pendants, flutes, and rosary beads.

Even after years without maintenance, these utensils were still imbued with an oily sheen. Touching them lightly, what responded to the mage was a profound silence—this was also one of his tricks for distinguishing whale products.

These whalebone artifacts all contained magical energy and had the capacity to carry high-tier reverberations, but unfortunately, they were merely ordinary handicrafts that neither carried the emotions of their users nor experienced the turbulence of worldly affairs.

However, this also gave Lin Bo a clear direction for searching for reverberation relics: in the future, he should pay more attention to whale products with history, especially bone carvings passed down since ancient times.

Seeing Lin Bo's interest, the old priest explained, "The Sea God believers believed that whales were the children of the gods. In the ancient Sail Archipelago, only they were qualified to use whale bones to make statues, totems, or other religious items."

The old priest had some understanding of the indigenous religious conflicts—a history that many imperial commoners could not access.

In the past, whale hunting was strictly prohibited in the Sail Archipelago. Only on specific Sea God festivals would designated sinners go out to sea to hunt whales. After bringing back a whale, according to tradition, these brave sailors had to be put to death, and their blood used to appease the Sea God's grief over losing his children.

However, sailors capable of hunting whales were an excellent labor force in any era, and wasting them like this seemed extremely cruel and inhumane. Therefore, human sacrifice in history was ordered to be abolished by the archipelago's monarchs after being performed only a few times, replaced by the burning of wooden puppets.

All whale products—fish skin, fat, bones, internal organs, and so on—were forbidden for commoners to touch; instead, they were used for special religious ceremonies. Only the flesh and blood were distributed to believers to eat after being offered, which was considered a holy meal at the time.

Precisely because of the Sea God sect's strict control over whale hunting, it wasn't until the Five Gods faith replaced it that the islanders began to develop the whaling industry without reservation.

In less than a few years, the country rapidly entered the era of the Industrial Revolution relying on abundant whale oil fuel.

Contemporary historians often denounced the backward indigenous religion for hindering scientific and technological development.

"Are whale products passed down from ancient times still common?" Lin Bo asked.

"Not very common. During the period of religious conflicts, the Five Gods sect frequently and collectively destroyed Sea God relics. Nowadays, they are only occasionally unearthed from ancient dynastic tombs; some enter museums, while the rest drift among the populace, held in the hands of religious enthusiasts and collectors."

"Pity." Lin Bo put down the bone flute in his hand.

He instructed the old priest to commission the merchants within the order to inquire about sellers of whalebone artifacts in Gold Shell City as soon as possible.

With that, he turned and headed out of the storage room.

The old priest lagged behind by a step, quietly lifting a corner of the tablecloth. Seeing the mirror-smooth tabletop, a look of "as expected" crossed his face. He whispered praise that the Saint was never stingy with his grace, yet sighed over the poverty of the order, feeling it truly lacked decorum.

Returning to the church hall, the lighthouse keeper had not yet left and was talking to a gull perched on his shoulder.

The massive white bird leaned close to the Night Watchman's ear, making low cackling noises. The man nodded in agreement from time to time, speaking in a strange, hard-to-understand, melodiously toned language, communicating back and forth with the gull.

A few altar boys peeked from behind a pillar, watching the scene with infatuated expressions. The old priest waved his hand to chase them away, and they turned their heads three times with every step they took, lingering as they left.

A moment later, Lin Bo released the gull, deep in thought.

The sole human on the deserted island discovered by the reconnaissance flock yesterday had been spotted again by the gull this early morning, and this person had already left the island by sea, sailing eastward.

Did that person know the whereabouts of the Sea God sect's relics?