402 Garland City
Selma Payne’s POV:
Garland City didn’t have a prepared werewolf embassy like the Elf King’s, so we were arranged to stay in the palace’s guest rooms. Perhaps to show off their status, the guest room was decorated luxuriously. There were glittering crystals and gorgeous gold and silver threads everywhere. Garland City spared no effort to carve the unique family emblem on these luxurious decorations.
The family emblem of Garland City’s mayor was just like the legendary garland, a vortex-shaped ring surrounded by all kinds of flowers and plants. I carefully observed the family emblem on the carpet and somehow felt that the pattern on it was familiar.
Daisies, marigolds, irises, lilies...
... Although the style was completely different, had I seen these flowers somewhere before?
Counting, there were precisely thirteen kinds of flowers on the garland.
Thirteen...
Wait a minute!
It was that stone slab!
To my surprise, I discovered that the flowers on the city’s emblem were precisely the same as those on Mullwica’s stone slab. Not only were the thirteen flowers the same, but even the order of their arrangement was the same!
In an instant, my back was drenched in a cold sweat. I wasn’t sure if it was a coincidence or if there was a deeper meaning to it. It was reasonable to say that the mayor’s family in the Elf Forest should not have any relationship with the witch tribe of the Rocky Mountains, which was thousands of miles away.
But there were thirteen flowers. There were tens of thousands of flowers in the world that could form the number thirteen, and how many ways did the thirteen flowers have to be sorted? How could it be so coincidental that two completely unrelated things would collide and create a similar one?
Speaking of which, who was the demon that the witch summoned for revenge? Claire didn’t mention his name.
I immediately turned back to look for Claire, who was on duty in the night’s second half. She was also confused by my question. “I don’t know either, Your Highness. The legends don’t mention such details. In fact, even the names of the male and female protagonists have yet to be passed down. Everyone blindly calls them ‘boy’,’ witch’, and ‘demon’.”
“What’s with the family emblem of Garland City? Was this drawn according to the garland left behind by the real Goddess of Nature? Or are the plants just local flowers representative of the area?”
“The family emblem is said to be drawn according to a real garland. It was said that many years ago, the mayor of the first generation who had picked up this garland was eager to show it off to the whole country, but he was afraid that the journey would be bumpy and the real thing would be lost, so he ordered to change his family emblem and created a wreath according to the real appearance of the wreath to announce it to the whole country. You see, a small chip on the leaf is protruding out from the upper right corner of the family emblem. This is the piece that the boy in the legend bit.”
She pointed to the upper right corner of the family emblem on the carpet. There was a round gap on the leaf, like a bite from an insect.
If that was the case, could it be inferred that the real garland looked like this?
So, if these thirteen flowers came from the Goddess of Nature, why would Mullwica, who believed in the Goddess of Fate, collect a stone slab with the pattern of the Goddess of Nature’s sect? Could she have had some connection with the elves? But before I came here, numerous research associations had already briefly browsed through the books and notes left behind by Mullwica. There was no mention of any information related to the elves.
And that unknown demon...
This couldn’t really be a coincidence. Neither the garland nor the stone slab was an ordinary item, and their patterns must have special meanings. And this might be the answer I couldn’t understand, no matter how much I thought about it.
I became even more determined to see the garland with my own eyes. Just as I was suffering from the lack of a way to do so, a solution appeared in front of me.
The next morning, the mayor of Garland City politely invited us to a breakfast banquet. During this period, his wife also attended. I saw an unexpected pattern on his wife’s luxurious long robe-the family emblem of Chena City’s mayor.
“Pardon me, but do you have any relatives with Chena City’s mayor?” I asked.
“Of course, my dear,” the mayor’s wife smiled kindly. “The current Chena City’s mayor is my grandnephew. That child even lived in Garland City for a few years when he was young. Tsk, tsk, he was a lively and smart child. His wife died early, and my poor great-granddaughter... It’s a pity that such a good child’s life is full of misfortunes. Alas, I’m old, and I like to talk about trivial things. I hope Your Highness can forgive me.”
They were so closely related by blood! According to the low reproduction rate of elves, a family of three generations could have at least ten people, which was considered a full house. And according to the mayor’s wife, she was close to Chena City’s mayor.
I was surprised by this unexpected surprise – the lobbyist was here!
After breakfast, I immediately sent a text message to Chena City’s mayor, asking him to help me persuade his great-aunt and uncle. It turned out that this was the right decision. In the evening, the mayor of Garland City agreed to let us see the legendary garland.