The old man's tone was very calm, as if he was telling a story calmly, and he just happened to appear in this story for a while.
"Sorry, it's easy to talk too much as you get older," the old priest smiled, looked at Vanna and said, "Do you have friends from other sects?"
"...I have a good friend, she is a priest of the Academy of Truth," Vanna thought for a moment, "but she doesn't tell me much about the precepts of Lachem, the God of Wisdom."
"Believers of the God of Wisdom... This is normal. Their creeds usually require a college degree or above to understand, and sometimes they also need to pass an advanced mathematics score test," the old priest nodded matter-of-factly. In contrast, it is the followers of the God of Death who are the best to deal with - after all, we are always going to die."
Having said this, the old man paused and looked at the neatly arranged files behind Vanna with some curiosity: Your Excellency, Judge, can you tell me, what are you looking for? "
Fanna suddenly hesitated.
She didn't know whether to tell the secret to the old priest in front of her. The hidden fire most likely pointed to a very dangerous shadow, and she couldn't be sure whether that "shadow" was monitoring the city-state through some way, or whether He was not sure whether the old man in front of him could really help him. If he told the truth rashly, he might alert the enemy.
But after a brief hesitation, she decided to reveal some information.
This is the deepest part of the Deep Sea Church, a sanctuary blessed by the Storm Goddess, and the old priest who looks after the archives is a determined warrior. He stays here to help visitors in this situation. .
"I'm looking for a file - it's not accurate to say it's a file, because it probably didn't exist from the beginning," Fanna said slowly while thinking about it, "Strictly speaking, it's a clue. In June 1889, it may point to a fire, but the relevant information has been erased."
"The fire of 1889?" the old priest thought, "I don't remember any fire..." He suddenly stopped and looked at Vanna thoughtfully.
"So, the erased data also includes our memories, right?"
"At least it includes people's memories," Vanna nodded lightly, "I don't have enough evidence. Apart from my own "knowledge", I have no way to prove the existence of that fire, and I'm not sure what its power was. In controlling this matter, I... Just doubting it. "
She suddenly felt a little embarrassed. As a judge, she was used to questioning and investigating, but this time the situation was completely different from the past. She didn't know who the target of her suspicion was, and she wasn't even sure whether the target was a human or a ghost. Launching an investigation based on her own ideas was completely inconsistent with her usual calm and steady style.
However, the old priest in front of her just nodded calmly: "Your piety and character are evidence, Your Majesty the Inquisitor."
After the words fell, the old priest quickly walked to a pillar between the nearby bookshelves and tapped a few specific bumps on the pillar with his mechanical prosthetic hand. The next second, a low roar came from deep in the floor. The creaking sounds of gears and connecting rods could be heard from everywhere.
The door to the archives was closed, and some of the bookshelves in the archives began to move slowly. Some of the bookshelves came closer and closed, and in the free area, pillars depicting many complex runes slowly moved up one after another. Rising from the floor.
As those pillars rose, the subtle sound of waves echoed softly in Vanna's mind.
"...There's no need to mobilize so much force," Vanna was a little confused by the old priest's actions, "It's just a preliminary investigation now."
"Past experience tells me that there is no "preliminary" investigation into huge threats," the old priest slowly walked towards Vanna. He raised his mechanical prosthetic hand made of brass, "and I think a Something that can interfere with cognition on a large scale, or even erase specific historical events, is a "huge threat." "
"...But your rash move to block the archives may attract a lot of attention."
"No, the archives will be randomly blocked several times every month to allow the sacred devices and bookshelves here to move." The old priest laughed, showing a mouth of jagged teeth, "Don't let the ancient scrolls "It's been too quiet for too long", this is the rule.
"Then I have no doubt."
"You just checked a lot of information. Judging from your expression, you must have discovered something, right?" The old priest nodded, "I can help."
"I found some records about "heresy worship" - although they are not directly related to the events I want to investigate, and the records themselves are very scattered, I feel something is not right," Fanna said frankly. "Those heresy worships have the characteristics Common characteristics, and concentrated in the first half of 1889, and ended abruptly after the factory leakage incident in Sixth Street..."
The old priest listened carefully to Vanna's description, and then found the corresponding file information under the other party's identification.
"That's it," Fanna pointed to the documents that were found, "the sacrificial ritual that should be invalid, the substantial mental damage, although the scale is small, they are all real acts of heretical worship. All cases The closing report looks normal, and those who should have been arrested were arrested, and those who should be sentenced were sentenced, but I think that in fact, each of these cases... was not properly investigated."
"For a case of this scale, arresting and trying those involved is equivalent to a complete investigation, but you are right, when several similar incidents are stacked together... the situation is different," The old priest looked through the files and frowned, "All the people who held sacrificial activities were "inexplicably bewitched", but the source of the bewitchment cannot be investigated..."
He muttered, looking up suddenly.
"Your Majesty the Inquisitor, you only examined the files from 1889, right?"
"Yes," Fanna nodded, and then responded, "You mean..."
"The incident you are paying attention to did indeed happen in 1889, but have you ever thought that these weird cases of heresy worship did not necessarily start in 1889," the old priest said quickly, and then looked up Looking at the other rows of the bookshelf, "The earlier records are here. They are in the three rows from bottom to top. You can read them all." Fanna immediately walked towards the files and started checking the records in the case file with the old priest. .
Vanna immediately walked towards the files and started checking the records in the files with the old priest.
But just a moment later, they almost simultaneously found similar records of heretical worship events in the case files they were looking through.
In 1888, 1887, and even all the way back to 1886, there are some.
"There is also a record here...the sacrifice incident that occurred in the port area, and here, there is only two months between the last record!"
Vanna quickly flipped through the file book in her hand, feeling her heart pounding. She raised her head and told the old priest what she had discovered, but suddenly she found that the old priest was standing still in front of the bookshelf, motionless. Staring somewhere.
"Did you find anything?" Vanna immediately frowned and asked nervously.
"There is no record of 1885," the old priest said softly, as if murmuring to himself. "It should be here, in this row, after 1884... But now it is directly after 1884 1886..."
"Let's just stop here." At the edge of the sixth block, Duncan looked back at the direction he and Shirley came from, exhaled slightly and said, "There shouldn't be any more gains from investigating here."
They were delayed in that small church for a long time, but their current level of mysticism, which was "the two of them combined are not as good as a dog", was obviously not enough to crack the strange time-space blocking phenomenon in the underground temple.
Before they left, the underground church returned to its original state. The nun between ashes and a living person was still praying devoutly in the main hall of the church and had no reaction to the departure of Duncan and Shirley. .
The exterior of the church is still dilapidated and the area around the church is still deserted.
But Shirley didn't really care much about the secrets in the church. "I...can I really go home?"
She looked at Duncan quite nervously, her tone uneasy but mixed with an inexplicable hesitation.
"Of course, I have never restricted your freedom to leave," Duncan smiled and ruffled the other person's hair. Although Shirley was similar in age to Nina, he couldn't bear the girl's petite and thin figure. Zhu treated her as a younger child, "Today's investigation is over, you can go home."
Shirley subconsciously turned her head and glanced in the direction of home, and wanted to move, but suddenly hesitated: "Then... shall we continue the investigation after that?"
"Of course, this matter is far from over," Duncan raised his eyebrows, "What? Are you reluctant to leave?"
"Ah, no, no, no!" Shirley waved her hands quickly upon hearing this, "I'll just... next time I investigate:
"I will find a way to contact you. You can also take the initiative to come to me." Duncan smiled and rubbed Shirley's head. "And it's not just for investigation. If you encounter any other difficulties, you can also come to me directly." Please help."
Shirley blinked, always feeling something strange, but in the end she nodded slightly, but before turning and leaving, she couldn't help but asked curiously: "Then... what's next for you?" Any plans?"
"Me?" Duncan was stunned, thought for a moment and said, "I'm going to buy a bicycle this afternoon." Shirley was stunned: "...Huh?"
"Buy a bicycle," Duncan repeated seriously, "I have promised Nina for several days, and it's time to fulfill my promise today. What, is there something wrong?"
Shirley opened her mouth for a long time before finally holding back one sentence: "Ah... Agou said, no matter what, you have to do something about subspace invasion...
Before she finished speaking, a shadow suddenly appeared in the air next to her, and Agou's broken voice hurriedly shouted in the shadow: "I didn't say it!!"
The shadow disappeared in the next second - apparently Agou was afraid that others would see him if he showed his head outside.
Duncan:…
He hesitated for a long time, and finally gave out a helpless smile: "Okay. Now the subspace invasion is going to buy a bicycle for his niece - let's say goodbye."
