Chapter 156

Chapter 156: The Missing Year

The old man’s tone was very calm, as if he was quietly telling a story and had only happened to appear in that story for a short while.

“Sorry, once you get old you tend to talk too much,” the old priest smiled and looked at Vanna as he said: “Do you have any friends from other churches?”

“…I have a friend. She is a clergy member at the Truth Academy,” Vanna thought for a moment. “But she doesn’t really talk to me about the teachings of the God of Wisdom Rahm.”

“Ah, a believer of the God of Wisdom… That’s normal. Their doctrines usually need at least a university education to understand, and sometimes you even have to pass an advanced mathematics exam,” the old priest nodded as if it were only natural. “By comparison, the followers of the God of Death are much easier to deal with—after all, we are all going to die.”

At this, the old man paused. He glanced with some curiosity at the neatly arranged case files behind Vanna and asked: “Inquisitor, can you tell me what you are looking for?”

Vanna suddenly hesitated.

She did not know whether she should tell this old priest about that secret. The hidden fire might point to a very dangerous shadow. She could not be sure whether that “shadow” was using some method to watch the city-state, nor could she be sure that the old man in front of her could really help. If she spoke too frankly, she might startle the snake in the grass.

But after a brief hesitation, she still decided to reveal a little.

This was the deepest part of the Deep Sea Cathedral, the sanctuary favored by the Storm Goddess. The old priest who guarded the archive hall was a resolute warrior. He stayed here to provide help to visitors in times like this.

“I am looking for a file—though calling it a file isn’t very accurate, because it might never have existed in the first place,” Vanna began slowly, choosing her words with care. “Strictly speaking, it is a lead. Something that happened in June of 1889. It may point to a great fire, but all related records have been erased.”

“A great fire in 1889?” The old priest thought for a moment. “I don’t remember any great fire…”

He suddenly stopped and looked at Vanna with a thoughtful expression.

“So the erased records also include our memories, don’t they?”

“At least they include people’s memories,” Vanna nodded lightly. “I don’t have enough evidence. Aside from my own ‘awareness’, I have no way to prove that fire ever happened. I don’t know what power is manipulating this either. I’m… only suspicious.”

She suddenly felt a little embarrassed. As an Inquisitor, she was used to doubting and investigating, but this situation was completely different from anything before. She did not even know who she was doubting, or whether that target was human or ghost. She had started an investigation based only on her own thoughts, which did not match her usual calm and steady way of doing things at all.

Yet the old priest only nodded calmly: “Your piety and your character are evidence enough, Inquisitor.”

As soon as he finished speaking, the old priest strode to a pillar between the nearby shelves and tapped several raised bumps on it with his mechanical prosthetic hand. In the next second, a deep rumble came from under the floor, followed by the creaking and clanking of gears and linkages starting to move.

The archive’s main door closed. Some of the shelves inside began to move slowly. Certain shelves slid closer together and locked into place, and in the open space that appeared, pillar after pillar rose from the floor, each one covered in intricate runes.

As the pillars rose, a faint sound of waves echoed gently in Vanna’s mind.

“…There’s no need to make such a big scene,” Vanna felt a bit at a loss because of the old priest’s actions. “This is only a preliminary investigation…”

“Past experience has taught me there is no such thing as ‘preliminary’ when you investigate a great threat,” the old priest walked slowly back toward Vanna. He raised his brass mechanical hand and said: “And I think anything that can interfere with cognition on a large scale, even erase specific historical events, counts as a ‘great threat’.”

“…But sealing off the archive hall so suddenly might attract a lot of attention.”

“It won’t. The archive is randomly sealed several times every month so that the holy devices and shelves can ‘stretch their legs’ a little,” the old priest laughed, showing a row of uneven teeth. “‘Don’t let ancient scrolls stay quiet for too long’—that’s the rule.”

“Then I have no more questions.”

“You just went through many records. Judging from your expression, you must have found something, right?” the old priest nodded slightly. “I can help.”

“I found some records of ‘heretical worship’—they are not directly related to what I’m investigating, and they are all rather scattered, but I feel something is wrong,” Vanna answered frankly. “Those heretical worship cases had common traits. They were concentrated in the first half of 1889, and they all stopped abruptly after the factory leak incident in the Sixth District…”

The old priest listened carefully to Vanna’s description, then, under her direction, found the corresponding case files.

“These are them,” Vanna pointed at the documents that had been pulled out. “Sacrificial rites that should have been ineffective, yet they caused real spiritual damage. Each case was small in scale, but every one of them was true heretical worship. All the closing reports look perfectly normal. The ones who should be arrested were arrested, and those who should be sentenced were sentenced. But I think every one of these cases… was not really investigated thoroughly.”

“For cases on this scale, catching and sentencing the offenders already counts as a complete investigation. But you are right. When several similar incidents stack together… things change,” the old priest flipped through the records and frowned. “All the people who carried out the sacrificial rites were ‘mysteriously enticed’, yet the source of that enticement could not be found…”

He muttered to himself, then suddenly looked up.

“Inquisitor, you only checked the files from 1889, correct?”

“Yes,” Vanna nodded, and then she immediately realized something. “You mean…”

“The incident you care about did indeed happen in 1889, but have you considered that these strange heretical worship cases might not have started in 1889?” the old priest spoke quickly, then looked toward several other rows of shelves. “The earlier records are here. The lower three rows from the bottom are all available. You can read them.”

Vanna went toward those shelves at once and began to check the records together with the old priest.

After only a short time, they almost simultaneously found similar heretical worship cases in the files they were reading.

There were entries from 1888, 1887, and even back to 1886.

“There’s another record here… a sacrificial incident that happened in the Harbor District. And here, this one was only two months after the last one!”

Vanna flipped through the ledger in her hands as fast as she could, feeling her heart pounding. She looked up to tell the old priest what she had found, but suddenly noticed that the old priest was standing frozen in front of a shelf, staring at one spot without moving.

“Did you find something?” Vanna frowned at once, a little nervous.

“There are no records for 1885,” the old priest murmured softly, almost like talking to himself. “They should be here, on this row, right after 1884… But now, it jumps from 1884 straight to 1886…”

…

“Let’s stop here,” at the edge of the Sixth District, Duncan looked back toward the way he and Shirley had come and let out a small breath. “We won’t get anything more by investigating around here.”

They had spent a long time in that little church, but with the two of them together still not matching a single dog’s level in occult studies, they clearly were not enough to solve the strange Space-Time Lock in the underground sanctum.

Before they left, the underground sanctum had already returned to its original state. The nun who was caught somewhere between ashes and the living still prayed devoutly in the main hall of the church and barely reacted when Duncan and Shirley departed.

The exterior of the church was still dilapidated. The area around the building was still empty and deserted.

But Shirley no longer cared much about what secrets might be hidden inside the church.

“I… can I really go home?” she asked.

She looked at Duncan with obvious tension, and in her uneasy voice there was also a faint, hard-to-name hesitation.

“Of course you can. I have never restricted your freedom to leave,” Duncan smiled and ruffled her hair. Although Shirley was about the same age as Nina, her body was so small and thin that Duncan could not help treating her as an even younger child. “Today’s investigation is over. You can go home.”

Shirley instinctively turned her head to glance in the direction of her home. She wanted to lift her foot, but suddenly hesitated again: “Then… will we keep investigating after this?”

“Of course. This matter is far from over,” Duncan raised an eyebrow. “What is it? Are you reluctant to go?”

“Ah, n-no, no!” Shirley waved her hands at once. “I just… just mean, next time we investigate…”

“I’ll find a way to contact you, and you can come find me on your own as well,” Duncan said with another smile as he rubbed Shirley’s head. “And not just for investigations. If you run into any other trouble, you can come straight to me for help.”

Shirley blinked. She felt something was a little strange, but in the end she still nodded lightly. Before she turned to leave, she could not hold back her curiosity: “Then… what are you going to do next?”

“Me?” Duncan paused, thought for a moment, and said: “I’m going to buy a bicycle this afternoon.”

Shirley stared at him, dumbfounded: “…Huh?”

“Buy a bicycle,” Duncan repeated in all seriousness. “I promised Nina. It’s been several days already. It’s about time I kept that promise. Why, is there something wrong with that?”

Shirley opened and closed her mouth for a long time before she finally forced out a sentence: “A-Dog said you ought to at least do something that a Subspace invader is supposed to do…”

Before she even finished, a shadow suddenly leaped out of the air beside them. Dog’s hoarse voice rang out hurriedly from within the darkness: “I never said that!!”

In the next second, the shadow vanished as if it had never been there—obviously Dog was afraid someone might see him if he stayed out too long.

Duncan: “…”

He held back for a long time before he finally managed a helpless smile: “All right, then. The Subspace invader is going to buy his niece a bicycle now—we part ways here.”