Chapter 173

Chapter 173: The Fire Spreads

Subspace corruption did not fade on its own, just as justice did not enforce itself. After so many years fighting the twisted Shadows in the deep layers of the world, Vanna knew this very well.

If this cathedral had once been corrupted by Subspace, and the duty nun here had already fallen to that corruption, then the thing that had invaded this place would never simply vanish on its own. Taking into account the eerie “afterimage” nun in the main hall and the wrong atmosphere hanging over the entire Sixth District, it was clear that the door of the underground sanctum had not stopped the intruders here. So… where had the invading Subspace power gone?

Vanna raised the consecrated lantern in her hand. The Whale Oil, filled with holy power, burned quietly inside the lamp. Wherever its glow spread, everything in the underground sanctum came into her sight. The blade slashes and bullet marks all over the walls were like words carved again and again by the closed loop of time, calmly telling her their secrets.

…Words?

Vanna suddenly frowned, as if a flash of lightning had gone off in her heart.

If this nun, who died in the underground sanctum, had already seen her fate when she closed the door, would she have tried to leave some kind of record, to warn whoever came to investigate later?

That was how a well-trained cleric should react!

“Check this place again,” she lifted her head and ordered the warriors loudly beside her. “Every mark. Sword cuts, bullet marks, bloodstains, all of it—this sister very likely left some kind of message before she died!”

“Yes!”

The Guardians moved at once. Each of them held a consecrated lantern as they spread out and began an even more detailed, more focused search of the underground sanctum they had already swept once.

Vanna did not stand idle either. Once she realized the fallen nun might have left a message before her death, she went back to where the nun had died, back to the entrance of the underground sanctum, and carefully checked the floor and walls near the door.

She had just destroyed the sanctum door, but she was sure there would be no message on it. The sanctum door was part of a precise seal, with the holy symbols of the Goddess carved into it. Leaving marks on it would weaken the sanctum’s protection. The nun would never do that.

The sword-bearing nun still lay quietly on the ground. Blood that had not yet clotted slowly flowed beneath her.

Vanna crouched beside the body and examined the nun from head to toe. Then, based on the angle at which the nun had fallen when they forced the door, she guessed her posture and position at the time of death. She bent down at the most likely angle, pried open the nun’s clenched hand, and checked the condition of the sword.

Suddenly, her movements stopped.

Vanna’s gaze fell on the ground beside the nun.

There was a row of sword marks there. At first glance they looked like a messy scrawl, as if someone at the edge of death had scratched the ground with an unsteady blade.

In their earlier inspections, Vanna and her subordinates had all overlooked them. This time, the young Inquisitor finally realized that these seemingly chaotic scratches were actually a kind of “message”, badly distorted and carved over and over again.

“Over here.” She lifted her head and called loudly to the searching Guardians. Then she lowered her eyes again and carefully tried to read the information hidden in the sword marks.

She stared for a long time before she finally picked out a few characters:

“1885.”

It was only a line of numbers.

The Guardians had gathered beside her now. Standing at Vanna’s side, they too managed to see the numbers in the sword marks. The short-bearded Guardian in the lead clearly did not understand what they meant. He looked at his commander in confusion. “Inquisitor, these numbers… Inquisitor?”

He saw the shock on Vanna’s face. The moment she saw the numbers, her eyes widened as if thunder had exploded in her heart. Even this Inquisitor, who always showed a calm and steady face to her subordinates, could not control her expression.

Vanna snapped back to herself at her subordinate’s call. She drew in a sharp breath and felt her heart pounding. The memories of searching through the archive alone rose up again. She remembered those strange records of heretic worship, the files reaching back from 1889, and the missing records for 1885…

All these memories finally gathered on this underground sanctum and on the messy sword marks before her: 1885.

“1885… She used her last strength to tell us that she actually died in 1885…”

Vanna muttered to herself under her breath. The Guardians beside her looked at each other. One of them frowned. “But why would she go out of her way to stress that?”

“To prove she did not die in 1889…” Vanna answered without thinking, but stopped halfway and showed the same baffled look on her face. “Right… why would she stress that year? If she died in 1885, there is no way she could know there would be another disaster in the city-state four years later…”

The young Inquisitor sank into confusion. Many clues had already surfaced, and they seemed about to merge into one whole. But right in the middle, a huge gap yawned open, and she could not bridge her thoughts.

If the numbers this nun left were meant to show the year of her death, then that year had to have a special meaning. The “warning” she wanted to send had to be hidden in that year. But… what warning could have such a strong link to the year 1885?

Did this nun see something in her final moments? Had she already foreseen that the records for 1885 would vanish from the archive of the central cathedral? Or did she know why those records would disappear?

Sadly, the truth had faded with her cooling blood. The moment the underground sanctum’s door closed, the secrets this nun knew were doomed to be lost. All she could send across time and space to Vanna with her life was this hard-to-read line of numbers.

Vanna looked up and saw the Guardians focusing their gazes on her. In several of those eyes there was not only concern, but also careful watchfulness.

“I visited the archive at the central cathedral earlier,” she said to her subordinates after ordering her thoughts. “In the archive, all records from 1885 were gone for some reason. It seems that this year is definitely…”

She suddenly stopped.

The scenes of searching the archive rose again in her mind for no clear reason, as if some other force kept urging her to recall them. She remembered herself walking again and again between the huge shelves, and between these images she suddenly heard the gentle sound of waves.

Vanna slowly opened her eyes wider.

She still could not recall anything other than reading files alone, but she already knew that something might be wrong with her memories of the archive. Her Spiritual Insight gift was warning her. The Goddess was warning her too!

“Back to the central cathedral,” she suddenly said to the subordinate beside her. “I need to go to the archive!”

The Guardians looked at each other, not sure at first why the Inquisitor had become so tense and grim. But they did not hesitate for long and accepted her order at once.

Just as the Guardians were about to leave, one of them glanced down at the ground beside him and suddenly cried out: “The writing is disappearing!”

Vanna looked over at once toward the sound. A faint cluster of ghostly green light was reflected in her eyes.

Her breath caught at once.

On the ground, the marks the nun had carved before she died were fading bit by bit, like pencil lines being erased from a page. Wherever a sword mark vanished, tiny sparks of ghostly green flame flickered, so small that the naked eye could barely catch them. No one knew where these “sparks” came from. It was as if they had always been spreading in a dimension human sight could not reach, and now they had suddenly stepped into the view of people in the Mortal Realm.

Vanna could not have been more familiar with this ghostly green fire.

It was the master of this flame who had guided her to this cathedral!

In that instant, countless guesses surged up in her mind. Some were about the Vanished, some about the ghost captain, and others about Subspace and the number 1885. Yet none of her guesses fit.

No one could explain what role that ghost captain was really playing. Vanna also could not understand why his flame would erase the marks right in front of her at this moment. But one thing was very clear to her—this was no place to stay. She had to get back to the central cathedral at once.

In the blink of an eye, the marks on the ground were gone. The ghostly green flame that had appeared from nowhere also slowly faded from everyone’s sight.

“Do not go near this patch of ground. The flames may still be spreading outside the range we can see,” Vanna warned her subordinates. “Now pull out of this cathedral. Second squad will stay outside the cathedral, set up a cordon, and wait for orders. Everyone else, return to the central cathedral with me.”

The Guardians answered in unison: “Yes!”

Vanna nodded. After a brief thought, she added another order: “Also, notify the reserve forces in the nearby blocks… We are sealing off the entire Sixth District.”

In the main hall of the small cathedral, Vanna led the Guardians through.

One Guardian glanced toward the statue of the Goddess without thinking and suddenly cried out: “That praying ‘nun’ is gone too!”