Chapter 18

Chapter 18: Sewer

Before leaving the cave where he had been hiding, Duncan first tore some rags from the nearby corpses and wrapped them around himself.

It was not because he could not stand the chill in the cave, but to cover his open chest a little. The hole in his chest did not affect Duncan’s “life” at all, yet as someone who was a normal person at heart, walking around with a completely chilled chest felt a bit too strange. Putting something over it at least gave him some comfort and lessened the eerie feeling of the “draft” blowing through him.

Duncan also thought about the chance of suddenly running into other people in this underground space. By common sense, having a big hole in his chest would probably not help when talking with strangers…

So after this simple treatment of his “wound”, Duncan carefully left the gloomy, damp cave. He stepped into a passage connected to the cave and slowly walked deeper inside.

This temporary body he occupied was not “convenient”. The fatal damage in his chest did not only hurt his flexibility. Duncan could clearly feel how weak this body was. The arms and legs were so thin that even walking was slow. It was nothing like the body of the ghost captain, which was so strong it clearly went beyond that of a mortal.

Duncan could not see this whole body yet, but from the parts he could see, he guessed it belonged to a teenage boy. A boy whose body had grown weak from long-term, severe malnutrition. Even though a powerful ghost captain’s soul was controlling this body now, the strength of the soul did not seem able to break the physical limits of such a frail vessel.

Sadly, he had no other choice now. Duncan could only control this barely usable body and slowly explore the deep passage. He knew that with this temporary body, he would be helpless in any real danger. All he could do was pray this shell would last a little longer.

The passage was deep, damp, and dark, but there seemed to be hidden vents. A faint airflow kept moving past nearby. Every so often, he saw torches or oil lamps hanging on the walls. Their presence proved that people still came here.

After following the passage for quite a long distance, Duncan suddenly saw the road ahead open up. Traces of human construction appeared in his view. At the end of the passage there was a fork. The passages connected to it had smooth walls and high half-round arches. The brick floor was black and wet. Along both sides, two channels flowed with nauseating sewage.

On the walls to both sides of the path, he could also see openings that looked like drain pipes. Sewage poured out from some of these outlets into the channels below and flowed toward an even darker distance.

“…A sewer?”

Duncan reacted quickly. What lay before him was clearly a rather large sewer system. The place that had held so many bodies earlier must have been a natural cave that happened to connect to this sewer.

A huge sewer, a natural cavern connected to it, and hidden corpses.

Countless guesses flashed through Duncan’s mind. While his thoughts spun, he carefully studied every detail of this “sewer”.

It was large in scale and finely built. The main supporting parts seemed to be made of reinforced concrete. If needed, it could probably even serve as some kind of underground shelter.

To build something of this size, the city above the sewer had to be quite large. Its technology must also have reached a certain level.

Technology did not exist in isolation. Behind every piece of engineering there had to be countless related industries and techniques supporting it. Even a sewer could show Duncan the construction, planning, materials, and maintenance level behind it, as well as the residents’ way of life.

This was enough for Duncan, who was now badly short on information, to gain some valuable knowledge about the civilized world.

Duncan walked along the sewer. After only a short distance, he suddenly stopped, and his gaze fell on a nearby wall.

A lamp was set into the wall. It had a glass shell, and outside it there was a metal cage that looked quite sturdy.

Compared with the torches and oil lamps he had seen in the cave, this wall lamp was clearly brighter. Inside the frosted glass, a bright flame burned steadily. Its light was enough to illuminate a long stretch of the sewer.

Duncan moved closer and examined it carefully. For him now, anything from outside the Vanished, especially creations of modern civilization, held great appeal.

After studying it for a while, Duncan finally understood what this light source was. It was a gas lamp.

But this gas lamp seemed a little different from the ones he had seen in books. Besides its shape, the most obvious difference was a few thin symbols on the glass cover.

The symbols seemed to have been added when the lamp was first made. They curved and twisted like pictographs. Duncan did not know these symbols, but he was reminded at once of the mysterious runes he had seen on that mechanical ship and on Alice’s “coffin”.

Although the content was different, they had a similar… “feeling”.

It was something sacred, something ritual.

Duncan stepped back a bit. He looked toward the deeper part of the sewer and saw a bright gas lamp burning every so often along the walls.

For an underground facility that almost no one visited except for necessary maintenance, the lighting here even felt a bit excessive. And on the shell of each gas lamp, there might be similar mysterious “runes”.

This gave Duncan a feeling, as if these densely spaced gas lamps were actually fighting against something in this deserted underground darkness. As if the humans of the civilized world behind them were fighting against something.

Duncan walked along the path lit by the gas lamps. At the same time, his eyes watched the surrounding walls, floor, and arches for any useful clues. Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed something odd.

He stopped between two gas lamps. This was one of the darker sections in the sewer. He looked up at a slant and saw that high on the wall, near the arch of the sewer, dark red paint had been used to draw something.

Duncan narrowed his eyes and tried hard to make it out. At last he saw what those rough lines formed. He saw many hands reaching up toward the sky, as if devoutly worshiping something. In the direction those hands crowded toward, a sphere hung high, shining with blazing light.

Under this picture of worship and crowding, there was a line of crooked writing. The strokes trembled, as if filled with intense fanaticism and expectation. The letters were not from any script on Earth, yet Duncan understood them naturally—

“The False Sun will fall in the end. The true Sun God will be reborn from blood and fire! All life returns to the Sun, all order returns to the Sun!”

Duncan stood silently in the sewer. He raised his head, staring at the dim border of the gas lamps’ light, staring at the dark red graffiti, staring at that blazing Sun that seemed soaked in blood and worshiped by crazed believers.

It was as if he had been staring at another world for a long time.

He stayed like this for a long while, until a burst of noise suddenly came from deeper in the sewer. Several footsteps reached Duncan’s ears.

He quickly turned his head toward the sound and saw a few robed, hooded figures walking over from ahead. Their heads and faces were hidden in the shadows of their hoods, like grim ghosts appearing in the filthy depths of the sewer.

Duncan did not hide. In fact, there was almost nowhere to hide in this straight stretch of sewer, and this clumsy, temporary body could not pull off any “blind-spot dodging” tricks. So after thinking it over for a moment, he simply stood in the middle of the sewer and calmly watched the very suspicious hooded figures walking toward him.

Since this body could not run and was doomed to be a one-use shell, he might as well trade it for a little more information before it was gone.

The next second, the hooded figures coming from the depths of the sewer noticed Duncan.