Chapter 123

Chapter 123: Sealed in Memory

Heidi ran up to Vanna, out of breath. Nearby guardians reflexively moved to block her when they saw her approach, but they soon recognized that this disheveled, soot?covered miss was the senior advisor to the City Hall and the Church, so they let her pass at once.

“So you personally led the team?” Heidi looked in surprise at the fully armed Vanna, then glanced at the elite church troops behind her. “And you brought so many people?”

“A fire at the City Museum isn’t an ordinary incident,” Vanna said briefly. Then she looked Heidi up and down several times, and only relaxed after confirming that her friend was unharmed. “Looks like your vacation is ruined.”

“It’s ruined again!” Heidi said, her face full of sorrow and resignation. “Why am I always this unlucky… ah, ow…”

Vanna noticed the unusual lump on Heidi’s head. She stepped forward, laid her fingers lightly near the wound, and at the same time looked toward the direction Heidi had run from. Her brows drew together slightly. “Did you just escape from there?”

“I was rescued by someone… ah, that feels much better…” As the pain in her forehead slowly faded, Heidi’s thoughts also began to clear. Then she froze for a moment, as if she had suddenly recalled something. She quickly looked around, then hurried close to Vanna. “I need a quiet place under a divine blessing, preferably inside the Cathedral.”

Seeing her friend suddenly grow serious, Vanna reacted at once. She did not ask anything. Instead, she turned to the priests she had brought. “Take over order at the scene. Seal off the City Museum. Raise the corruption level to Spirit Realm—”

She had not finished when Heidi spoke in a low, urgent voice: “Abyssal Deep level.”

“Adjust it to Abyssal Deep level. Clear all ordinary people within two hundred meters of the square!” Vanna’s heart lurched, and she gave her orders at once. Then she turned to the bearded local priest. “Take us to the nearest Cathedral. We need a separate prayer room—prepare No.16 Sacramental Incense.”

The priest who had just escaped the fire bowed his head at once. “Yes. Please follow me. It’s near the square.”

Vanna took Heidi away from the square at once. Together with the guiding priest, they rode toward the community Cathedral near the plaza. Before they arrived, Vanna noticed that Heidi’s face had started to flush in an abnormal way.

“What’s happening?” Vanna frowned and touched Heidi’s forehead. The burning heat beneath her fingers made her voice change at once. “Why are you this hot?!”

“I may have come into contact with something in the City Museum,” Heidi said quickly. “I used self?hypnosis to seal some information in the depths of my memory. The hypnosis just wore off… I’m starting to remember it bit by bit.”

As she listened, Vanna’s eyes widened slightly, and in her heart she quickly reached a judgment—

Severe supernatural manifestation and corruption, able to affect the Mortal Realm world through cognition alone.

“Stop remembering at once. Slow your thoughts,” Vanna said, pressing a hand on Heidi’s shoulder. “Look into my eyes. Shift your attention somewhere else. If you can’t, then hypnotize yourself again!”

“I’ll try.” Heidi took a slow breath and fixed her gaze on Vanna’s eyes, deep and calm like the sea. She tried hard to control the memories rising in her mind, to keep herself from recalling that vast and solemn river of fire, that sea of flames surging and rolling in the dark void. But the memories still leaked out bit by bit, like blood seeping from a wound, impossible to stop.

Suddenly, a faint coolness rose from her chest, and Heidi, who had felt as if she were about to be swallowed by fire, came to herself a little.

She looked down by instinct and saw that the glass “crystal pendant” that could only count as a free trinket in a Lower City antique shop was glowing faintly on her chest.

That tiny bit of light was almost impossible to see with the naked eye, yet it was like an anchor rooted firmly in the Mortal Realm, pulling her scattered spirit back together.

The next second, she heard the priest’s voice from the front. “We’ve reached the Cathedral!”

With the powerful Saint Vanna personally escorting her, Heidi was rushed into the Cathedral. Thanks to the priest’s earlier Psychic Transmission to the Cathedral, a prayer room had already been prepared, and incense with strong soothing and protective effects was burning.

In the faint smoke from the incense, the holy statue of the storm Goddess Gamona looked down quietly at Heidi and Vanna as they hurried into the room.

The priest was left outside the prayer room—because he might not be able to withstand the mental corruption that could follow.

As Heidi stepped into the prayer room, Vanna heard unreal waves crash by her ears. A feeling as if a supreme, great being was directly casting a gaze over her swept across her soul. Right after that, every lamp and candle in the Cathedral flared up, roaring, their flames laced with sharp crackles!

She looked up at the statue of the storm Goddess and saw it suddenly grow distant yet towering. An indescribable air of majesty poured out from the statue and slowly gathered around Heidi.

“The Lord has cast a gaze…” The manifestations in the prayer room made Vanna’s heart jump, but then she slowly let out a breath. She looked at Heidi and saw that the flush on her face was fading. “You are safe now. Release your memories. Let us see what you saw.”

Heidi did not speak. She only nodded lightly, then took off one of her earrings. There was a tiny shifting mechanism at its end. She pressed it with a fingernail, and a spike only a few millimeters long popped out.

Without a trace of hesitation, she gripped the earring tightly, letting fresh blood seep into her palm.

This was the deepest mental suggestion she had planted in herself when she first became a psychiatrist—when the Platinum Spike pierced her palm, all unclean things sealed in her memory could be released.

In the next second, the unreal, layered sound of waves in the prayer room suddenly grew very clear, while all the burning candles turned dim and flickering. It was as if the whole room were covered in shifting, blurry veils. Those veils rippled layer upon layer around the Goddess’s statue, and within them vague phantoms appeared—

It was a scene Heidi had urgently sealed inside her own memory.

It was only the instant truth she had glimpsed in a single flash.

In those swaying, unreal veils, Vanna saw what Heidi had seen before:

In a pitch?black void, a column of flame shot up, more blazing than any fire in the world, more shocking than any power humans had ever created. It was like a towering wave of flame sweeping out to devour all things, and even someone like Vanna, the Saint, felt every muscle in her body tighten the moment she saw it!

How far did that flame surge through the darkness? Hundreds of thousands of kilometers? A million? Even farther?

What was that? Pure fire? Or something more primal than fire, a kind of power that could touch truth from before time?

Vanna did not know when she had stopped breathing. She watched the stream of fire rise in the darkness, then slowly fall. The flowing fire was like thick ointment, forming a grand, ragged arc in the empty dark. Only when the vision slowly faded, and the unreal layered sound of waves eased around her, did she begin to recover her senses.

She did not know how much time passed before she suddenly felt something like sea wind moistening her thoughts. The storm Goddess’s gentle comfort woke her. She looked at Heidi and found that Heidi too was staring at her in shock, as if fixing a gaze on her.

“This… is what you saw in the City Museum?”

“Maybe… I think so…” Heidi’s heart pounded. Even though this scene had been drawn from her own memory, the way self?hypnosis worked still made it feel beyond anything she had imagined. “But this thing… doesn’t seem like the kind of ‘exhibit’ you can keep in a single City Museum…”

“This can’t be any kind of ‘exhibit’,” Vanna said quickly. “Even if we can’t judge how large it really is, I know by instinct that it can’t be stored inside any building… You could not have seen it in the Mortal Realm.”

Heidi paused, her brows tightly knitted. After a long time she spoke, unsure. “I might have seen it while I was unconscious… and done the self?hypnosis while I was unconscious. What I saw may not have been its real body, but its ‘projection’ on the spiritual level.”

“Are you sure?” Vanna looked at her. “I’m not questioning your skill as a psychiatrist, but… finishing a temporary containment seal against mental corruption while unconscious is not easy.”

“I am confident,” Heidi said, nodding slowly but firmly. “I received strict training in this field at Truth Academy. I can rely on my subconscious to complete the containment of dangerous information even when my main consciousness is in a runaway state. But because self?hypnosis in that state is uncontrollable, it makes me forget many key details. So I can’t tell you the exact circumstances under which I saw this ‘projection’, or what the trigger or medium was.”

“…All right. I believe in your professional skill,” Vanna said, staring at Heidi for a while before letting out a slow breath. “It seems… you really did see something truly extraordinary.”