Chapter 72

Chapter 72: News from the Assembly Ground

To be fair, these cultists were actually quite cautious.

They did not trust this strange “comrade” just because Duncan took out the Sun Charm amulet. They also did not believe his story just because Duncan could describe what had happened in the sacrificial site in the sewers. All the way here, they watched his every move and every word. Even after they reached the assembly ground, they still carried out an extra test to confirm this stranger’s identity. For a group of cultists who lived in hiding, this was already the best they could do.

But all their screening methods treated Duncan as an ordinary human.

Those methods meant nothing to the captain of the Vanished.

The tall, skinny leader took the inconspicuous strip of cloth back from Duncan’s hand. He seemed completely unaware of how the power inside this extraordinary item had changed. After welcoming the new comrade, he raised his hand and pointed to a corner of the assembly ground and said: “Comrade, rest here for now. You are not the only unfamiliar face in this place.”

Duncan nodded and walked toward that unremarkable corner. At the same time, he watched every face that appeared in the assembly ground.

Unlike what he had seen earlier in the sacrificial site in the sewers, he was surprised to find that these Suntists were not wearing those distinctive black robes. They were dressed like ordinary citizens. They did not hide their faces under hoods either, but calmly showed their faces.

Duncan asked the believer beside him, curious: “When you gather here, do you not need to hide your faces?”

The believer he asked looked very surprised: “…The local believers here in the city-state of Pland all had to hide their faces during gatherings before?”

Duncan frowned slightly at once: “You are not from Pland…”

“We came from Lunsa,” another believer nearby said calmly. After confirming that the stranger in front of them really was a comrade of the Church, the Suntists here had clearly relaxed their guard. “We only settled down last week, but before we could even make contact with the local brothers and sisters, that attack happened…”

“Everyone here came from Lunsa?” Duncan was a little surprised. He finally understood why there were still so many Sun believers in the city even after the sacrificial site in the sewers had been destroyed.

“Yes. The comrades gathered here all came from Lunsa, though there are also groups from other city-states. Everyone is scattered in different safe houses,” another believer joined the conversation. “Sigh, we have all heard more or less about the situation in Pland. In the past four years, that damned Governor and the Church’s hyenas kept cracking down on our work… You have not had it easy either, but at least that is over now.”

Duncan only nodded without agreeing or denying. Then he heard the cultist he had questioned at the start speak again: “That pigeon on your shoulder is really… unusual.”

The corner of Duncan’s eye twitched.

Duncan knew that more than one person here was paying attention to the pigeon on his shoulder.

If you really thought about it, a pigeon was nothing strange. But coming to a secret meeting while “wearing” a pigeon like this did make things weird.

He could only casually brush it off: “It is my pet. It can help me with many things.”

While he was brushing it off on the surface, Duncan’s thoughts were already racing. Large numbers of Suntists were pouring into the city-state of Pland. This confirmed a suspicion he had had before:

The usually low-key Sun Church had suddenly staged something grand and flashy down in the sewers. These cultists really were preparing something big!

By sneaking in and muddling along this time, he had actually stumbled right onto the right trail!

At the same time, he also understood why the cultists attending this gathering did not hide their faces and were dressed like ordinary citizens.

Back in the sewers, the Sun believers had hidden their identities completely. The lower-level believers only had one-way contact with their superiors. All of that was to resist round after round of purges from the Church and to avoid leaks if traitors appeared inside the Church or key members were captured. It was a desperate choice made by the local Church when they had no other options.

But the rabble in front of him, who had only just gathered in Pland from different city-states, clearly had no such experience yet. After all, they were just cultists, not some disciplined special forces unit.

On the other hand, they had no need for such disguises either. Everyone gathered here was a “countryman” from the same city-state, already familiar with one another. Hiding their identities during meetings would be pointless.

Dressed like ordinary citizens, they could instead run the moment a safe house was exposed and scatter into the crowds of commoners in the Lower City, where management was lax.

Thinking along these lines, Duncan let his gaze sweep over the assembly ground. All of a sudden, he felt a pair of eyes fall on him.

He looked toward the source at once and saw the owner of that gaze.

A petite girl with short black hair was standing a dozen meters away.

The girl wore a black dress trimmed with white lace. Her face was delicate and quiet, and she looked about the same age as Nina. The most striking thing about her, though, was the dark red collar around her neck. A small silver bell hung from it. It looked a little cute, yet also strangely unsettling.

When Duncan turned his gaze toward her, the girl just happened to look away, very casually, as if nothing had happened. Her shift was so smooth that it showed no flaw, but Duncan was sure that earlier stare had definitely come from this young lady.

Why was there such a young child among these cultists?

Doubt rose in Duncan’s heart. He glanced again at the girl’s clothes and bearing… For some reason, he kept feeling that this girl did not fit in with this place at all.

As he was thinking, the creak of hinges suddenly came from nearby. The tall, skinny cult leader ordered the basement door to be shut, then walked to the center of the assembly ground.

All eyes in the room turned to the leader at once. Duncan also pulled his thoughts back and watched the change in the scene. He saw the tall, thin man stand in their gaze with calm confidence, a faint smile on his rather grim face. Then the man took something from his coat and raised it high for everyone to see.

It was a pale gold Sun mask—the very same type of mask that the cult priest who had led the sacrificial ritual in the Underground Assembly Hall had worn before.

“Offer respect to the Lord’s radiance, and silently recite the true words under the Lord’s gaze,” the tall, thin man said loudly, his tone filled with devotion. “Bow your heads to this mask that bears His divine blessing. May the Sun’s Spawn rest their protection within it and help me guide the brothers and sisters gathered here.”

The cultists around him immediately chanted the true God’s name of the Sun in unison. Then they pressed a clenched fist to their brows and bowed their heads in a gesture of reverence. They were not paying respect to the tall, thin man standing in the center of the assembly ground at all, but to that Golden Mask, as if the mask itself were the true body of some higher being and the man holding it was only a vessel.

Duncan also went through the motions among the crowd of cultists, copying their gestures. But he had no idea what the so-called true words were, so he simply muttered a few lines of the multiplication table under his breath and started carefully watching the cultists’ movements, trying to work out the meaning behind each step of the ritual.

The tall, skinny man solemnly put the mask on his own face.

The next second, Duncan immediately sensed that something about the man had… changed.

He could not tell exactly what the feeling was. It was as if, in the instant the other man wore the mask, his whole bearing changed, and as if an extra shadow had appeared behind his figure. Duncan stared at the Golden Sun Mask, shaped in imitation of the Sun, and saw the lines on its surface slowly shifting. In that moment, the mask seemed to come alive. It felt as though some distant and mighty consciousness had projected a faint trace of its power into it, turning an otherwise ordinary item into something extraordinary.

With that single act of “putting on” the mask and that brief ritual, the ordinary person wearing it had been “sanctified” and turned into a symbol of some kind of divine authority.

The cultists around him cried out in unison: “May our Lord’s radiance endure forever! May our Lord’s path descend upon the mortal world!”

Duncan recited the multiplication table up through the sixes, all while his mind raced, trying to recall.

He had also seen a priest wearing a Golden Mask in that assembly hall in the sewers before. But at that time, the priest had already finished the “putting on” part. On top of that, Duncan still did not understand what was going on around him, and the temporary body he was using had been in bad shape. So he had not realized that this seemingly ordinary Golden Sun Mask had anything special about it, nor had he wondered why the priest wearing it was called an “Envoy” by the common cultists.

Now it seemed… Could this so-called Sun mask actually be a “communication device” used by those “Sun Spawn” hiding outside civilized society, letting them remotely control believers and observe the world? Or, more accurately, was it some kind of mental projection device?

Once he suddenly realized how interesting that item was, Duncan’s gaze on the Golden Mask changed at once.

[This thing… might be fated to end up with me.]