Chapter 155

Chapter 155: .

Vanna’s gaze stayed on this record for a few seconds. The sharp sense of an Inquisitor made her smell something worth notice in these short lines.

Heretic sacrificial behavior that had suddenly appeared among ordinary residents. A sacrificial target pointing to an invalid existence. A ritual that completely failed to meet any proper rules, yet in the end still drew the attention of supernatural power. A small area of mental derangement. No follow-up investigation…

Vanna suddenly thought of something. She put down the file in her hand and quickly opened a record she had looked at just now.

It had also happened in 1889, a little earlier. In a street-side shop in the Lower City, a sudden stabbing had occurred. At first, it had been a case for the security bureau and should not have appeared in the Church’s archive at all. But the later investigation showed that the attacker was a “customer” who had suddenly suffered a mental break inside the shop. The suspect insisted that he had seen blasphemous shadows on the shop window and had taken up a knife to “fight back” in order to escape the hunt of “unseen things”.

In the later investigation, the Church had found signs of Heretic worship in the shop’s basement. However, the ritual sigils at the scene were so messy that they could not point to any valid entity. Through questioning, they learned that the shop’s master, who had been doing secret ritual worship, did not understand any true occult rites at all. His clumsy sacrificial attempts had been done under “unknown guidance”.

Again, it was a messy sacrificial ritual that should not have worked in theory. Again, it had caused mental derangement in a small area. And again, there had been no further conclusion to the case.

Vanna frowned a little. These two cases seemed to have no link with the factory leak eleven years ago, or with the great fire that had been erased. The times did not match at all, and they had not been her focus today. But to see two Heretic worship cases with such clear similarity appear so close together in the records still touched her nerves as an Inquisitor.

After a moment, she put down the two files and went on searching the shelves for later records. This time, she kept some of her attention ready and actively looked for any cases that might be tied to Heretic worship.

She did not know how long had passed before she suddenly stopped.

The third record was also from a time before the “factory leak” accident. It had happened on the edge of the Upper City. A maid who worked in a rich household had suddenly gone mad. She had badly injured three servants and the male master of the house, then locked herself in a storeroom. When the Church Guardians and constables arrived and broke down the door, the maid had already taken her own life.

In the storeroom, they had found symbols of a sacrificial rite that the dead woman had carved with a dagger before she died. In her room, they had found traces of Heretic sacrifices. Once again, they pointed to another “invalid” entity, and the steps of the rite did not match any known rules. Only this time, the useless sacrificial activity had not driven others mad. It had only driven the sacrificer herself insane.

It was already the third one…

When she had seen the first two cases, Vanna had only paid a little extra attention to them. But after seeing this third record, her face had turned completely serious.

In her mind, she quickly lined up the information from these records and began to analyze them by their time and place.

The events were very scattered. In time, they were separate. In place, they were in different areas. In theory, the people involved had no contact with each other.

None of them had much to do with the factory that had leaked eleven years ago. The later investigations had also found no trace of the Suntists in them.

Vanna calmed herself and kept searching through the later files. Not long after, she found the record of the factory leak.

It had been a major event with a very wide impact. The number of Heretics caught afterward had been the highest in twenty or thirty years. So the whole case had been given a file of its own. The thick folder was quite heavy and held many pictures and interrogation reports.

But it did not take Vanna long to read through all of it.

She had already read the same material many times in other places. In the past few years, she had looked up the records of this old case more than once.

It seemed that even here, in the archive deep inside the Cathedral, there was no more information about the factory leak eleven years ago.

Vanna put the factory file back as well and kept looking through the later records for a while. Then she suddenly noticed something:

After the “factory leak” accident, no more records of Heretic worship like the three earlier cases appeared.

The factory leak had happened in the middle of the year. There had still been a full half year afterward.

This gave Vanna a certain feeling. It was as if all those Heretic worship events that “should not have worked, yet still worked” had all crowded into the time before the factory leak. After the factory accident, it was as if they had hit a node. All Heretic worship had ended suddenly after that…

Of course, common sense could explain this too. After the factory leak, the Church and the authority had arrested thousands of cultists. That large-scale sweep had cleared the Heretic forces in the city-state. So it was quite normal that no more Heretic worship events had happened in the next half year.

But for some reason, she still felt that the logic behind these seemingly unrelated events should not be so simple.

She stopped beside the tall shelf. After thinking quietly for a long time, she went back to where she had started and pulled out the first file about Heretic worship again. She read as she thought.

These cases were far too scattered and had been buried in a heap of messy disaster records. If she had not stubbornly decided to go through everything today, and had not planted the thought of “something is wrong here” in her heart ahead of time, she might not have noticed anything strange even now. But the strange was still the strange. Once she sensed it, that feeling of wrongness grew in her like a seed taking root and sprouting, making it hard for her to ignore the warning of her instincts.

While Vanna was carefully reading the records, the sound of slow, unhurried footsteps suddenly came from nearby. With it came a faint smell of machine oil mixed with incense.

Vanna looked up and saw the old priest who managed the archive walking toward her.

He limped as he walked. Clearly, it was not only his right hand. His legs had also been hurt.

“There are not many people in the archive at this hour, so I came over to take a look,” the old priest said with a smile: “Have you found the information you wanted?”

Vanna let out a slow breath and put the file back in its place: “I found some information, but I did not find the answer I wanted.”

“An answer?” The old priest sounded a bit curious. “What kind of answer are you looking for?”

“…How long have you been here?” Vanna did not answer him directly. Instead, she suddenly asked a question that did not seem related.

“Ah, that has been a very long time. Let me think… almost twenty years now,” the old priest said with a smile. “Ever since a homemade bomb from those Heretic madmen blew off one of my hands and one of my legs, I have stayed here.”

Vanna thought for a moment, then asked with some curiosity: “Is it always this quiet here? Do other people come to read these files like I do?”

“Most of the time, it is very quiet,” the old priest said with a smile. “People do come to look up files, but not many. Books are the memory people have of the world, and this archive is the deepest part of that memory. What is stored here are old cases that have already been dealt with, or sealed files that have been judged unfit for the public. Once they are sealed, they are buried in the depths of time together with the past.

“Countless new things happen in the city-state every day. Everyone is busy walking toward tomorrow. They do not have much time to come back and turn these sealed files. And besides…”

The old priest paused for a moment. He lifted his head and quietly looked up at the shelves of books that almost reached the dome. After a long time, he spoke softly.

“And besides… sometimes the files that are sealed away are not just records of the past. Sometimes, pieces of history itself are sealed in those pages. The past, present, and future of our world all rest on an unsteady base. If you turn too many things in this archive, it is not very good for your body or your mind.”

“…That sounds a bit like the Flamebearers’ warnings.”

“Yes. The Flamebearers like to warn about things like this. They guard history. They always fear that something will spread from ancient times and corrupt the foundation of our world. They are so sensitive about it that some people even think those Enders, who shout about doomsday corruption, are Flamebearers who have fallen…”

The old priest spoke and then shook his head with a smile: “When I was young, I was close with a few friends from the Flamebearer sect, so of course I heard a lot of their theories. Their teachings are different from those of the Storm Goddess, but at least we all serve the True Gods. Some of their ideas are still worth listening to.”

For some reason, as she listened to the old man speak, Vanna’s mind slowly calmed down. She felt a bit of respect for this senior who had given most of his life to the Church, and she did not mind talking a little more with him. So she asked casually: “Do you still keep in touch with those friends?”

“No, I do not,” the old man said, shaking his head slowly. “One morning, I suddenly realized that I had never known their names. So most likely, they have already died for their faith…”