Chapter 353

Chapter 353: The Second Waterway.

“This is a safe place. At least for the past fifty years, the Frostholm authorities have never known that such a secret lies beneath their feet,” Nemo Wilkins said as he stepped into the hideout buried deep underground. He turned to Duncan and the others as they followed him in, his tone plainly proud. “These old sewers crisscross beneath the city. Most sections have already been abandoned, so they’re dry and safe. Some branches lead up to the higher-level pipe systems, but all the connecting points are secure. Even if one or two of them are discovered, City Hall cannot search the entire underground structure—they simply don’t have the manpower.”

As he spoke, the “tavern boss” walked over to a nearby concrete wall and turned a valve on one of the pipes. A faint hiss of gas came from somewhere far off. More gas lamps lit up at once, and the lamps that had already been burning grew brighter.

“In fact, City Hall is already doing pretty well just keeping the city’s basic functions running,” he went on, turning back around with a crooked grin. His long, thin face carried a trace of mockery. “As for what was hidden in the sewers half a century ago… only the old Artificers who once served Frostholm’s queen could really say.”

“…This is a facility left from the Queen’s era?!” Vanna immediately picked up on the truth in his words. Her eyes widened slightly in surprise. “These underground waterways… how did you manage to hide them?”

Nemo shrugged. “I wasn’t around for the chaos fifty years ago, but my grandfather talked my ear off about it all his life. He told me that the Frostholm queen once built a vast underground system beneath the entire city-state. At first it was meant to ease the pressure of land use and lay the groundwork for the city’s long-term growth. These underground structures included the most advanced underground waterways in the world at the time, power conduits, an electrical grid, and a whole transport system. The ‘sewer’ you see here is the deepest part of it. Strictly speaking, it was originally named the ‘Second Waterway,’ because above it there was a First Waterway—that’s the sewer system Frostholm still uses today.

“When the Great Uprising broke out, the city didn’t fall immediately. Even though the Rebels later claimed they ‘completely destroyed the mad Queen’s Guard Corps in a very short time,’ the truth was different. For a full seventy-two hours after the queen’s palace—now the civic center—was taken, the fighting continued. The loyalists who stayed in the city retreated from the surface into the underground. The crisscrossing subway stations and power conduit networks were full of people killing each other.

“The Rebels who had broken into the city center announced victory. The newspapers ran stories about the change of regime. citizens hid at home, uneasy and afraid. The subway stations were sealed. People lay on the ground near pipe shafts, listening to all kinds of unsettling sounds rising from the deep.

“All of this lasted until the day of the execution. The roar of the collapsing sea cliff shook the whole city and finally ended the last resistance underground.

“After that, the Queen’s Guard Corps blew up all the vertical shafts leading down to the Second Waterway and shut the gates that connected it to the First Waterway. Later there were more small skirmishes and intentional collapses. In the end, the entire Second Waterway was completely cut off from the upper levels.”

As he spoke, Nemo Wilkins lifted his head to look at the heavy dome overhead. His gaze seemed to pass through layers of steel, concrete, and stone to sweep across the busy streets of the city-state above.

“In truth, the new government set up by the Rebels wasn’t completely ignorant of these sewers,” he said. “They knew about Frostholm’s underground world. But so what? Knowing it exists is one thing. Doing something about it is another.

“The sea cliff collapsed. The city suffered heavy damage. After the civil war, it took Frostholm decades to recover. Boiling Gold became the city’s only remaining economic pillar. The ‘number one city-state on the Frost Sea’ was reduced to a few glorious pages in history books. Even today, the city still relies on the pipe system the Queen left behind.

“Under those conditions, who had the resources to search the huge network deep under the city? The cost of reopening the shafts and refurbishing the Second Waterway was unacceptable for the new government. And with Frostholm’s population and urban footprint both reduced after the war, the First Waterway alone was enough.”

“If it works, just make do,” Vanna murmured without thinking, recalling something Morris had said not long ago.

“Exactly. If it’s enough, you make do. This city is already full of wounds. It really can’t take another big shake-up,” Nemo said with a smile. “Besides, for a city this big, a bit of ‘moss’ growing deep in the sewers isn’t such a big problem. Heretic cults, spawns of darkness, veil of shadows, Anomaly objects from the runaway state… there are plenty of things hiding in the gutters. Any one of them is more worth the authority’s and the Church’s headaches than we are.”

Duncan had barely spoken, just quietly listening to this “Informant” ramble on. Now he finally broke his silence: “Such a huge underground facility, and from what I see, it still has gas and power. There’s no way you’re maintaining all this on your own, right?”

“Of course not,” Nemo Wilkins said with a laugh. “We have a few people, scattered all over the city. Some are even in certain departments of City Hall. Most of them are descendants of the Queen’s Guard Corps, like me. A few others passed General Tyrian’s tests and were confirmed as loyal, trustworthy brothers and sisters. But they’re not suitable for showing themselves in public.”

“…Tyrian told me he’d planted a few ‘informants’ in Frostholm. That was modest of him,” Duncan said, unable to stop himself from shaking his head. “That kid has buried quite a lot of strength here…”

Nemo heard the way Duncan referred to Tyrian as “that kid.” His expression froze for a moment, but he did not say anything.

While they talked, Morris was carefully studying the underground world around them. His gaze moved over the towering dome and the abandoned pipes crossing high overhead, then to the many valves and side branches that had clearly been installed later on the nearby walls. After a while, he suddenly asked: “Do you still control the entire Second Waterway?”

“Strictly speaking, only a small part of it,” Nemo said with a regretful shake of his head. “I’d love to say the whole underground kingdom is under our command, but we simply don’t have enough people, and the scale of the Second Waterway is beyond imagination. Right now, we control only about one fifth of the abandoned sewers. The rest are either cut off and unusable because of collapses, covered in toxic sewage, or corrupted by dangerous forces that make them hard to enter.”

“corrupted by dangerous forces?” Vanna’s brow furrowed at once. Her professional instincts started pounding.

“Sometimes, illegal supernatural who are being hunted flee into the sewers,” Nemo said. “If they die down here, they can cause large-scale corruption. But more often, it’s the darkness itself breeding monsters. This is, after all, a vast underground world. The gas we secretly draw from the upper pipe network is nowhere near enough to light the entire Second Waterway. When the light isn’t enough… some places fall into darkness, and then they stay in darkness forever.”

Vanna stared, at a loss for words. For a moment she even felt short of breath.

Coming from prosperous Pland, and being one of the protectors of order in a city-state, she truly could not imagine a city actually allowing such a situation to exist. A large-scale underground facility left in darkness for years, to the point that it was already starting to breed shadows that could not be purified—this was acceptable?

Yet the facts before her showed that it did exist, and Frostholm had lived like this for half a century. Nothing “too serious” seemed to have happened.

“We can’t rule out the occasional unlucky mortal who wanders down here and simply vanishes, or that the Guardians’ casualty rate at night is higher than in other city-states,” Nemo added. “But people are used to it.”

He clearly saw the shock on Vanna’s face. He had already guessed that these visitors were outsiders and knew exactly what she was so surprised about.

“Every few years, they clear out a few dangerous spots in the First Waterway and the subway branches,” he went on. “From time to time they flood the underground with incense and Sacred Bone Ash. They raise the Guardians’ death benefits a little. They have the Gatekeepers run a few more patrols. Most ordinary people still live reasonably well… That already counts as a good situation.”

He paused for a moment, then turned his head with a smile. “Believe me, most city-states aren’t much better. They never have been, from ancient times to now.”

Duncan and the others looked at one another, not sure what to say. After a brief and awkward silence, Vanna was the first to speak. She turned to Morris and asked: “What is your assessment?”

“No signs of cognitive interference. His thoughts and memories should be clear,” Morris replied to Vanna. His gaze remained fixed on Nemo Wilkins. In the old scholar’s eyes, a faint silver light slowly faded away.

Nemo blinked and showed a puzzled expression. “What are you talking about?”

Duncan turned his gaze on him, quietly fixing him with his gaze. “Mr. Nemo, congratulations. You have not been affected by cognitive interference.”