The chandelier in the Wolfblood Tavern was made of vertebrae. When Elisa counted to the seventh cervical vertebra, the scarred smuggler finally passed out drunk beside the oak barrel, and the copper cylinder on her waist rolled to the tip of her boots, which were stained with malt mash. The moonlight seeped in through the cracks in the nailed-up stained windows, cutting the bloodstained tabletop into dark red pieces like minced meat.
"Another pot of thorny vine wine!" She deliberately used the animal taming whip to overturn the empty cup at the neighboring table, and the bronze whip tip accurately hooked the drunk's collar. The sound of iron chains dragging the floor came from the depths of the tavern, and three waiters with obsidian in their eye sockets began to move over here - their ankles were tied with cast iron balls with reliefs of crying human faces, which were the moving nodes of the living version of the Wailing Wall formation.
Scarface suddenly opened his left eye, a waxy film floating in his pupil. "From the North?" He grabbed the copper cylinder with a rancid smell of alcohol, blue-purple meat scraps embedded in his fingernails, "This kind of people...hiccup...have to pay virgin menstrual blood as a guide fee."
The thorn tattoo on Alyssa's wrist jumped. She leaned forward with a half-full wine glass, letting the hem of her cape brush against the other's knees - the wolf hair soaked in aphrodisiac powder brushed against the skin, and the scarred man's breathing immediately became turbid. "The guide fee depends on what route you take," she poured the wine on the table, and the residual oil from the blood feed immediately floated out the pattern of the smuggling route, "For example, the canyon secret passage that can bypass Kane's blood wolf army..."
The copper cylinder was suddenly snatched away by a claw that stretched out from the side. Alyssa's whip instinctively shot out, but froze in mid-air - the owner of the claw was wearing the scarlet cloak of Lucian's personal guard, and the familiar emerald light flashed in the eye sockets of the mask. The young lord actually disguised himself as a wine dealer to keep watch.
"I'll buy this she-wolf." Lucien's claws lifted her collar, revealing the blood pact totem spreading under her collarbone. Scarface suddenly jumped up, pulled out a poisoned silver needle from his fake eye and stabbed it at the back of Alyssa's neck, but she pressed it back into her eye socket. In the dying spasm, the man squeezed out a strange nursery rhyme from his throat: "... thorns wrapped around silver mane, crowns buried twins..."
The spine chandelier on the tavern's dome suddenly exploded. Alyssa took the opportunity to kick over the sour honey wine barrel, and the viscous liquid wrapped around the embers of the fire pit and burst into blue flames. The waiters at the Wailing Wall screamed inhumanly, and the cast iron balls tied to their ankles began to absorb panic, and the human face reliefs on the surface oozed black tears.
"Catch it!" Lucien pretended to throw the bronze cylinder, but the real route map was hidden in the claw compartment. Alyssa flipped in the air to avoid the flying bronze cylinder, and the animal taming whip wrapped around the beam and swung towards the kitchen secret door. The flame of the eclipse was stirring in her palm, and she had to endure it - exposing the power of the curse now would alert Kane's spies.
The muffled sound of barrels rolling could be heard from the cellar. When Alyssa crashed into the pickled meat warehouse, she found that the rows of black pottery jars were not filled with pork at all - they were curled up bodies of silver wolf cubs, each with a barbed thorn stuck in the heart. The fishy sweetness of the blood feeding ceremony hit her face, and the tattoo on the back of her neck suddenly grew, and the thorn pattern under her skin spelled out the crown pattern of Lucian's collarbone.
"This way!" The kitchen apprentice suddenly pulled her into the smoker. The young man showed half of the engagement bell in his palm, which formed a complete totem with the one in Alyssa's arms. A fragmentary route map was embedded in the tar on the furnace wall, and the pass marked with blood was the Wailing Wall Fortress heavily guarded by Kane.
Lucian's cold emerald light approached the crack in the door. Alyssa pushed the boy into the smoke exhaust duct, turned around and kicked over the smoker. The burning pine resin wrapped the pickled wolf cub's body and threw it at the pursuers. She tore off the fragment of the route map stuck to the wall of the furnace while screaming - the material was clearly human skin, and there was an indentation on the edge of the silver ring that her mother often wore.
The howl of the Moon Howler came from the back alley of the tavern. When Alyssa jumped onto the stone steps filled with sewage, she found that the Blood Contract Totem on her palm was absorbing the resentment in the smoke. The iron balls of the waiters at the Wailing Wall rolled around, and the mouths of the human-faced reliefs expanded into black holes, transforming the screams of the tavern into scarlet ripples visible to the naked eye.
Lucien's hook suddenly pierced through her left shoulder. Alyssa used the blood from the wound to paint a false route on the wall. The moment the blood beads touched the black tears oozing out of the cracks in the stone, they automatically outlined a complete canyon secret passage. The young lord laughed wildly, pulled out the hook and licked the blood stains on it: "Good girl, this is a qualified contract bride..."
When Cain's black iron scepter smashed the brick wall in the back alley, Alyssa was stuffing the human skin fragments into the handle of the taming whip. The green flame burning at the tip of the scepter illuminated the thorn pattern moving under her collarbone, and those vines were climbing towards her heart along the blood contract totem.
"My dear brother," Cain stepped on Lucien's scarlet cloak, "You even want to tame the tavern rats yourself?"
Alyssa retreated into the shadows, the flame of the eclipse burning the route map she had just copied. When she glanced at the edge of the human skin map with the residual light of the green flame, she suddenly recognized that it was the fragment of the bed curtain that her mother grasped tightly when giving birth. The silver wolf rune from three hundred years ago twisted in the flames into a warning: **This road leads directly to the Crown Tomb**.
A baby cried in the ruins of the tavern. Alyssa crushed the hemlock seeds between her fingers, and the juice mixed with the pain of the blood contract was injected into her meridians. Amid the roars of Cain and Lucien confronting each other, she heard the second half of the Silver Wolf nursery rhyme echoing deep in her bones: "...When the twins weep blood, the Crown of Thorns seeks new corpses..."
Before the moonlight was swallowed by the dark clouds, Alyssa saw the thorn pattern on Kane's scepter oozing black blood - it resonated strangely with the contract totem in her palm. The stone slab at the end of the dark alley suddenly turned over, revealing the blood-feeding altar stairs leading underground, and the sound of chains coming from below was exactly the same rhythm as the engagement bell in her arms.