Chapter 174

Chapter 174: Before the Storm.

The nun who had been quietly praying in front of the Goddess’s statue was gone.

Only the empty floor remained in front of the pulpit. Bright gas lamps lit the vast main hall and its rows of seats. Vanna and the guardian warriors searched the not?so?large hall from end to end, but they still did not find that strange nun.

Of course, Vanna knew that the nun had most likely “never existed” from the very beginning. The real body had clearly died years ago in the underground sanctum. The figure praying in the main hall was only a projection. But even so, the sudden disappearance of that projection still filled everyone with uneasy confusion.

“Nothing in the corridors and side rooms either!”

The last two guardian warriors who had gone to search also came back to the main hall. Their report confirmed one thing: the nun’s phantom had completely vanished from this cathedral.

Vanna frowned slightly and thought quickly.

The phantom was gone, but when had it disappeared?

Was it when she entered the underground sanctum for the second time? When she saw the real nun’s last numbers written before death? Or…

When that strange, ghostly green flame flared up out of nowhere and wiped away the traces on the floor?

If it was the former, then the phantom might have vanished because she, the “observer from the Mortal Realm”, had seen through the truth and broken part of the illusion here. But if it was the latter… then it meant that the ghost captain had made a move.

That ghost captain had erased the traces in the underground sanctum and, at the same time, wiped away the nun’s phantom in the main hall— for reasons no one knew.

Staying here would not yield anything more. The urgent task was to report what they had found to Bishop Valentine, then go to the archives and confirm the warning she had just sensed.

Vanna quickly led her squad members out of the cathedral. As they crossed the doors and looked back again, they saw, as expected, a cathedral that was completely abandoned and in ruins.

Vanna let out a breath. At least she had brought her subordinates safely out of that strange place. Then, on a sudden impulse, she lifted her head and looked up above the cathedral.

A plump white dove stood on the high spire, tilting its head as it watched them, looking completely harmless.

[Why is this dove still here?]

Vanna could not help feeling a little curious, but she quickly pushed the doubt aside. After arranging personnel to stay and guard the small cathedral, she turned, got into the car, and headed back toward the Central Cathedral.

The white dove spread its wings and flew away from the cathedral at high speed.

But the dove did not go very far. Once it left the line of sight of the guardians posted around the cathedral, it darted straight into a nearby alley.

Ghostly green spirit form fire surged up in the empty alley, twisting into a door and a vortex. Duncan stepped out of the flames, then frowned slightly and looked thoughtfully in the direction of the cathedral.

Bringing this matter into the open had been the right choice. Drawing in Vanna and the official power behind her had produced far more than he expected. The investigation had moved forward. Professionals were professionals; what they knew went far beyond what amateurs like Shirley and Dog could manage.

When he was close enough, Duncan could use the mark he had left on a target to directly listen to what happened around them. Because the mark on Vanna had been strengthened during her last visit to the antique shop, this listening even allowed Duncan to sense, to some extent, the young Inquisitor’s emotional shifts. Just now, he and AI had stayed above the cathedral, and through this link he had “watched” the guardian squad’s entire investigation inside.

Duncan stood in the shadows of the alley, quietly sorting through the information he had just gained.

It was very likely that the nun had been fighting her own Subspace projection. There had never been other intruders. Had the intruders crawled out through the rift in her own soul?

The clerics of this world… once completely crushed by corruption, would they actually turn into a direct “channel” that linked Subspace and the Mortal Realm?

Did this happen only to clerics, or did all humans carry this hidden risk, with corrupted clerics simply being far more dangerous?

Of all the things he had learned, this was what drew Duncan’s attention the most, and what surprised and puzzled him the most.

Duncan did not know much about the True Gods of this world and the Churches under their names. But from what he had observed, he could at least confirm that these Churches stood on the side of order and protection. Their clerics kept the city?states safe in the extraordinary realm, and they were the firmest line of defense against the corruption that seeped from the world’s deep layers.

Yet now he knew that this firm line of defense could, under certain conditions, itself turn into a “pipe” between the Mortal Realm and Subspace… Why?

If this transformation did not happen only to clerics, but could turn any human into a Subspace channel once certain conditions were met, then what would that mean?

The Subspace that everyone feared so much, its ties to the Mortal Realm, to mortal life in the world, seemed far more complex than he had first imagined.

Besides this, there was also the string of numbers “1885” that the nun had left behind.

It was something Duncan and Shirley had not found when they explored this place before, and now it surprised him greatly.

If Vanna’s judgment was right, then the nun had not died in the fragment incident of the Sun in 1889, but had already died in 1885. For the years after that, this small cathedral must have been shrouded in twisted time and space!

What did that mean?

Duncan’s thoughts rose and fell. He slowly lifted his hand and rubbed his fingertips together. A small ghostly green flame quietly burned in front of his eyes.

He could clearly feel the spirit form fire spreading—in invisible dimensions, along the “other side” of the city?state of Pland— and sending faint feedback to him without stop.

This was his third source of confusion.

Shortly after Vanna found the string of numbers in the underground sanctum, the numbers vanished into thin air. spirit form fire had briefly appeared at that moment, so the young Inquisitor would surely think it was the work of “Captain Duncan”. But in fact…

Duncan was even more confused than she was.

He had not erased that string of numbers. He had no idea why the flames he released earlier had suddenly appeared in the underground sanctum and burned away “1885” so precisely. It gave him a feeling that the fire had not spread through space to the cathedral, but had spread through time back to the year 1885.

Duncan suddenly froze.

Maybe… it was not an illusion…

For some reason, he suddenly remembered when he had studied Alice’s wooden box. He remembered the scene he had glimpsed of the Frostholm queen’s execution half a century ago, and the warning he had heard then—

“…Please do not corrupt history…”

Duncan’s face grew dark, his brows slowly knitting together. He thought of something he had heard not long ago:

In this world, everything except Subspace could be corrupted.

…

Vanna hurried back to the Grand Cathedral. She had wanted to go straight to the archives to confirm the severe sense of wrongness in her memory, but she went to see Bishop Valentine first and told the old man what she had found at the small cathedral in the Sixth District.

After listening to Vanna’s report, Valentine stayed silent for a long time. He frowned deeply and thought for a while before muttering with a pained expression: “Subspace… this really is the worst kind of trouble among all kinds of trouble…”

“When we were about to leave, the string of numbers pointing to 1885 in the small cathedral and the nun praying in the main hall both disappeared. It seemed related to the power of ‘Captain Duncan’,” Vanna added. “But we did not stay in the cathedral to run repeated tests. We were worried about the risk of corruption spreading.”

“…A wise caution,” Bishop Valentine nodded lightly. “We still cannot be sure what attitude that ghost captain really has. For now, it seems that he did give us an important piece of information, but then erased some clues at the end… In any case, he is not our ‘friend’.”

Vanna thought for a moment and looked at the old man in front of her: “Has there been any reply from Church headquarters? Have you reported our situation to His Eminence the Pope?”

Bishop Valentine looked at Vanna and nodded. “I have reported everything here to the Storm Cathedral. His Eminence the Pope said he will send support as soon as possible— but the Cathedral ship is still some distance from Pland. Even the fastest courier vessel will not reach us in just a few days. So… we must be ready to rely on ourselves.”

As he spoke, the old bishop sighed softly, turned around, and gazed at the statue of the Storm Goddess.

“Disaster is brewing, and we do not know when it will break out. Whether Pland, this Sea Jewel, can wipe away the coming gloom will depend on our own ability.”