great-warnovel Chapter 404 The Icon in the Niche
Chapter 404 The Icon in the Niche
Chapter 404 The Icon in the Niche
The canyon is not a good place to live. It is long and undulating, and people can only build small houses on the flattest areas.
Following the contours of the mountains and rivers, a scattered pattern of settlements has formed, stretching and intersecting like lines.
Due to the lack of fuel, lighting was a rare and luxurious thing in this era, making the bottom of the canyon, where there was no sunlight, a truly dark place.
The residents living here are used to groping their way forward in the dark.
Only at long intervals are there tall wooden watchtowers with torches burning on them, and people standing guard on them, but they seem rather lazy.
The river gurgled and splashed as Hermione and Umbridge mingled among the crowd along the slightly cleared and leveled makeshift steps. One of them was made invisible, and the other had cast a Disillusionment Charm, so they didn't want to be seen.
The Muggles around them were all covered in tattered rags, trying to conceal themselves even in the darkness.
But Hermione could still keenly notice that they all had various deformities to varying degrees: lumps on their backs, swollen hind legs, an excessively long arm, or a head that could only tilt to one side.
This is why they need to be invisible; here, two seemingly normal humans would attract considerable hostility.
"The people of the Deformed City have their own faith—the Holy Spirit of Death," Umbridge explained in a voice only the two of them could hear.
"This is something that arose from the mixing of local culture with Catholicism after colonization."
"Especially in the years following the apocalypse, the belief in the Holy Spirit of Death has even shown a trend of spreading to the United States."
Although this woman made Hermione very uncomfortable, she had indeed put in a lot of effort to investigate information about the Deformed City. The reason she worked so hard was that she wanted to gain Hermione's appreciation and escape her misery as soon as possible.
In her fragmented narration, she tried her best to subtly reveal her background, abilities, and connections to Hermione.
This "poor lady" comes from a branch of the Selwyn family. She graduated from Durmstrang with excellent grades and has good relationships with many Fiends commanders and even Saints. Because of her outstanding abilities, she was entrusted with an important task and came to the Central American Isthmus to take care of the Fiends.
But Hermione wasn't stupid; after a brief exchange, she had roughly analyzed Umbridge's mix of truth and lies.
This woman has a strong desire for power and is not stingy with using various means to seek promotion, including deception, flattery and bribery. Her abilities may be passable, at least her illusion spell is decent, but she is not very smart. Her clumsy acting and rhetoric only make people feel disgusted.
She couldn't possibly be a distant relative of the Selwyn family; otherwise, after all these years in the UMNO party, she might as well have gone to Malfoy Castle to seek refuge.
Despite her best efforts to conceal it, she couldn't hide the fact that her mother was a Muggle and that she had a Muggle brother. What made Hermes even more uncomfortable was that after discovering that her brother had no "talent," the woman decisively banished her mother and brother to the underworld.
It's important to understand that the policy of the Malay Party is that as long as a wizard is born into a family, even if the rest of the family members are Muggles, they can still live in the surface city. However, Umbridge chose to cut ties decisively. Her weak, incompetent, and unambitious father could only be bossed around by her, and her mother and brother were just a burden to her.
He claimed that he was entrusted with this important task because of his outstanding abilities, but in reality, it was obvious to everyone that being a fire watcher was a thankless job. Fiendfire was violent and unruly, and if one was not careful, it would turn on its master. Moreover, this place was far from Grindelwald and far from the center of power. Only those unpopular wizards would be exiled here, which was tantamount to banishment.
The UMNO party values strength and talent and despises cheating and back-door dealings, but Umbridge always tries to achieve success in this way.
Clearly, she was sent here because she was reported for bribing her superiors. Although she tried to cover it up, Hermione can now see through the thoughts of many wizards even without Legilimency, which is approaching Dumbledore's level.
"She wants to use me as a stepping stone to move her operations to New Hogsmeade," Hermione thought to herself.
This woman was no pushover. Even far away in Central America, she kept a close eye on major news in the wizarding world. Many members of the Fiendfyre army didn't recognize Hermione, but Umbridge knew her achievements like the back of her hand, from her second-year capture of Lucius to last year's killing of Voldemort. She knew the girl had displayed incredible power during the Battle of Volgograd, and afterwards, she even found out that Hermione lived on the second floor of the Eiffel Tower in New Paris. She knew that this 14-year-old great wizard held considerable influence in Grindelwald, and that if she could just get her to talk...
You can transform yourself and integrate into that city of hope in the Scottish Highlands.
"This woman is quite suitable for intelligence work. It's not a waste of her talent to send this crazy old man to investigate Voldemort."
Hermione remained calm, but she had already made up her mind not to let Umbridge have her way.
She stood on the edge of a recessed cliff by the roadside, where a simple skull statue made of piled stones stood, and many Muggles were devoutly worshipping it. There were many such statues along the way.
"I noticed they're all different colors," Hermione interrupted Umbridge's rambling, pointing to the icons.
Some were draped in blue scraps of cloth, others in yellow or black, and the one in front of us was red.
"They believe that although the Holy Spirit of Death is omnipotent, different prayers should correspond to different incarnations of the Holy Spirit in different robes," Pink Clam said frankly.
"The yellow-robed deity bestows food, the blue-robed deity bestows health, the white-robed deity symbolizes power, and the black-robed deity represents magic and witchcraft."
She looked at the red-clad statue before her: "As for red—it seems to represent fire and warmth."
Suddenly, a series of drumbeats came from a tall building ahead, and the Muggles around them put down what they were doing and gathered in that direction with great excitement.
They were talking excitedly to each other, but Hermione could only barely understand a few words from their heavily accented Spanish mixed with various local dialects.
Sacrifice—miracles—elixirs, etc.
She lifted her foot and merged into the crowd of Muggles, and Umbridge quickly followed.
Most of the buildings here are simple shacks made of basic materials, but there are also sturdy stone houses built by those who monopolize resources. The higher you go, the more exquisite these buildings look, and you can even see the carved patterns and decorations under the firelight.
They exhibit an Aztec-like style, and the final destination for the Muggles is a massive, pyramid-like stone altar situated in a canyon.
A large amount of fuel was used for lighting here, and torches dispelled the darkness, allowing Hermione to see the people around her more clearly. The scene was like a chaotic dance of ghosts, with all sorts of deformed and ugly faces that could stop a child from crying.
This wasn't the core area of the deformed city; Hermione had simply chosen a canyon to walk through. Clearly, there were probably many more altars like this.
Some priests stood on the stone pyramid, dressed in clothes made of mutated animal skins and bird feathers. Hermione sensed magical fluctuations emanating from the higher-ranking individuals among them.
They are wizards, and their bodies are not deformed.