Chapter 74

Chapter 74: There’s a Mole, Cancel the Deal

Duncan still failed to dig up any more memories from his mind.

Even though the original master of this body had truly cared about Nina, and everything related to Nina had once been the deepest memory in his mind, years of illness and heavy drinking and drug abuse had ruined it. When the cultist named Ron let out his last breath, there had not been many warm memories of his family left in his numb head.

There was only one thing he could be sure of: eleven years ago there really had been a great fire, and it had happened in the Lower City—that fire had taken the lives of Nina’s birth parents and forever changed the path of that child’s life.

It might have been a coincidence, but there was an even greater chance that what had happened was really tied to the “Sun fragment” that these Suntists were searching for.

If that was the case, then a fragment of the Sun had appeared by accident in the city and started a fire. Innocent citizens lost their lives. A child became an orphan in the flames. And years later, that child’s only remaining relative had fallen and become one of the cultists who followed that same fragment of the Sun…

In the dark, it felt like some cursed fate circling around the Sun, trapped in its pull like gravity.

Right then, one of the cultists around him suddenly spoke, cutting off Duncan’s thoughts: “These days I asked around among the residents nearby. I never heard about any famous big fire in the Lower City eleven years ago… but someone did mention that back then a factory had a leak. Poisonous gas from the storage tanks spread across several blocks. A lot of people fell into hallucinations and went mad. That incident even made the papers at the time.”

Duncan raised his head in surprise and saw that the speaker was an ordinary-looking female cultist.

Before he had time to think over what she said, he noticed the cult leader’s gaze turn toward him: “Brother, you just happen to be a local here. Do you know anything about this?”

Duncan froze for a moment and suddenly realized that he had become the focus of the whole scene. To these out-of-town cultists who were trying to gather information, a “local who lived in Pland’s Lower City” was without doubt a great source.

Feeling the gazes around him, he thought for a second and quickly came up with an answer: “Eleven years ago I wasn’t living here yet, so I don’t know the details. But I did hear people mention the factory leak…”

While he fobbed them off like this, he looked at the woman who had spoken earlier: “So there really was no big fire in the Lower City eleven years ago?”

“At least from what I found out, that’s how it is,” the woman nodded. “According to what I heard, Pland’s Lower City hasn’t had any large fires for at least twenty years… There are small ones, like kitchen fires, but those obviously don’t count.”

Duncan blinked and said nothing.

He clearly remembered that Nina’s parents had died in a great fire eleven years ago. In the fragments in his mind, there was even the scene where “he” carried Nina out of the burning building.

Where did it go wrong? Did something get scrambled when this body inherited its memories? Or had that fire back then not happened in the Lower City at all? Or… was it simply because this cultist here had failed to find out the truth…

A faint doubt rose in his heart. Because this matter involved Nina and “himself”, he could not help but pay more attention to it. And just then, he heard another voice from across the room. It was the girl named Shirley: “That factory leak eleven years ago… was it the one in the Sixth District?”

“The Sixth District? Mm… that sounds right,” the woman nodded. “They say the impact was huge at the time. The chemicals left many people with long-term side effects. Quite a lot of residents in the Lower City still remember it today.”

A few cultists nearby nodded in agreement when they heard this. It looked like they had found out more or less the same thing.

“A factory leak…” The leader standing in the center of the gathering suddenly broke the silence. His deep, commanding voice cut through the cultists’ chatter. “An apparent industrial accident is very likely an supernatural incident disguised by The authority. And it happened exactly at the Node eleven years ago… This is a very important clue. Next we will investigate in this direction and see whether this so-called factory leak points to the holy fragment of the Sun.”

The cultists present all nodded and accepted the order at once. Then the masked leader continued: “In addition, we must not only pay attention to supernatural events that happened in the Lower City eleven years ago. We must also watch the unusual things in the city-state of Pland in recent times.

“Even though the fragment of the Sun is still asleep for now, the day of its awakening is close. Its activity is growing every day. Four years ago, our brothers and sisters in the Church tried to wake that fragment ahead of time. Their attempt failed, and the failure of the ritual even drew the furious slaughter of the Deep Sea Church. But that attempt was not completely useless—the stimulus of the awakening ritual deepened the connection between the fragment of the Sun and the Mortal Realm. That is enough for it to gain the power to affect the Mortal Realm for a short time before it fully awakens, and that may help us find it.

“In the near future, pay close attention to the newspapers in the city-state, and to every rumor in the streets and alleys. Any event that looks unusual may point to the fragment of the Sun. Do not let any clue slip past. Understood?”

The cultists all lowered their heads and accepted the command with respect. Duncan, however, focused on another key Node the leader had mentioned:

Four years ago!

Four years ago, the Deep Sea Church in the city-state of Pland had indeed wiped out the largest Sun heretic stronghold in the city in one stroke. They said the scale of the incident had shaken the whole city. It had also been the battle that established the fame of the city-state’s current Inquisitor, Vanna—and after that, the Suntists in this city had never recovered, even up to today.

All this time, Duncan had only known that surface-level information. Now it seemed the truth behind it all was that the Suntists in the city had tried to wake a sleeping fragment of the Sun ahead of time?!

Without noticing it, a chain of truths that had been hidden in the past unfolded before Duncan’s eyes. He quickly pieced together the fragments of information in his mind and thought about how to get more out of these cultists. But right then, a strange smell suddenly slipped into his nose.

It smelled like burning sulfur mixed with the sour, acrid stench of some chemical.

The next second, the other ordinary cultists around them smelled it too. Some looked at each other, as if searching for the source of the stench. The leader standing in the center of the gathering reacted at once. He suddenly pulled from his coat a charm amulet modeled after the Sun—the very same kind of Sun charm amulet Duncan carried. Its surface was burning with illusory, half-transparent flames.

The sharp, acrid smell was coming from that fire.

“Filthy impurities… the flame has been deceived!” The leader glanced at the burning Sun charm amulet, his voice suddenly filled with both shock and anger. “There is a heretic hiding among us!”

The room burst into an uproar at once. Duncan’s first reaction was that he had been exposed. He didn’t know how, but it seemed the Sun charm amulet on the leader had finally recognized him as a “heretic” who did not believe in the Sun at all.

Thinking of this, he let out a small sigh and was about to release the dove. But before he could move, he heard another sigh come from across the room—

The sigh came from the girl in the black dress, the maiden named Shirley. She shook her head in regret: “I knew A-Dog wasn’t reliable. The disguise couldn’t even last three hours.”

Before her voice even fell, a mass of pitch-black flame suddenly exploded into being at the girl’s side!

The flame was born out of thin air. It had the shape of fire, yet was black as shadow. It ignited on the girl’s arm and, in one second, spread across almost a third of her body. In the next moment, Shirley’s right side looked like fuel for the black fire. It crackled as it burned. The flowing flame streamed downward, the part in midair twisting into a black chain, and the part that fell to the floor condensing in a heartbeat into a bony, burning monster!

It was a pitch-black hellhound, a huge dog more than half as tall as a grown man. Its body looked pieced together from countless twisted, piled-up bones. Where there should have been flesh, there was only burning black fire and writhing shadows. Its skull was jagged and ferocious. Where its eyes should have been were empty sockets filled only with blood-red mist, packed with endless hunger and malice!

A black chain extended from the huge dog’s neck all the way to Shirley’s arm, faintly merging with the girl’s body.

“A Abyssal Hound… a summoner from the Cult of Annihilation?!” The leader in the center of the gathering was both shocked and furious at the sight. “What is the meaning of this?! Are you people who worship the Abyssal Deep planning to start a war with the Suntists?!”