Chapter 331

Chapter 332: Piecing Together the Intel

The interrogation in the next room was still underway, and more shocking truths kept surfacing as time passed.

A timeline slowly took shape before Yu Sheng and Bai Li Qing.

The idea that “the world is terminally ill” had been part of Holy Revere Hermitage from the start. All their later moves and research aimed at the Dark Angels began with the mysterious Adar Crater seventeen years ago and the Angel remains found at the bottom called the Shadowless Skeleton. In their studies, they decided that fragments of Dark Angels, the Angel Catalyst, could be used to bring Healing to this world. The Angel Catalyst found in Adar Crater had already lost its activity, so they set their sights on Anka Aila.

That was ten years ago. To get Anka Aila’s Angel Catalyst, they hid inside Borderland for a full decade.

“Where did you learn about Anka Aila?”

From the shadows, the interrogator’s voice sounded calm. Power layered inside his words kept wearing down the Hermitage Order cultist’s mental strength, making it hard for him to rebuild his defenses once he started talking.

“…The intel came from Angel Cultists, from an exchange long ago.”

“You made a deal with the Angel Cult?” The interrogator leaned forward a little: “You wanted the remains of the Dark Angels. To the Angel Cult, that is unacceptable blasphemy. Why would they share their ‘Lord’s’ secrets with you?”

“We do have differences, but that doesn’t mean we cannot use each other,” the cultist on the chair drooped his head and spoke slowly, “besides, they didn’t know the truth about the Angel Catalyst. We called it a ‘gift’ left by the Dark Angels and said Hermitage Order wished to receive this gift. We told them nothing more. They mistook it as a sign we wanted to convert and happily cooperated.”

“Oh? So you also deceived your ‘partners’?”

Hearing that, a thin smile appeared on the pale man’s face. He shook his head, his tone mocking: “Deceive? The voice of the Angel already burned away those Angel Cultists’ sanity. They are flawed mortals, now with ulcers in their souls. Our ‘deception’ is actually a kind of salvation. No, it wasn’t deception. It was pulling them off the wrong path. And did we even lie? Why can’t the remains of the Dark Angels be a ‘gift’? In the end, it is a gift. The giver just didn’t give it willingly.”

“Alright, let’s drop that,” the interrogator said, clearly uninterested in judging the tricks between two cult groups. “Next question: back then Anka Aila was alive, only sealed. How could you be sure you would get her Angel Catalyst? Before this incident, no one thought something like Angel Fall could happen.”

This time the cultist fell silent. Two or three seconds later, he answered in a strange tone: “We didn’t expect Angel Fall.”

“Hm?”

“We targeted Anka Aila only because she was the weakest Dark Angel we knew of, and the only one sealed and unable to move, so she could be studied. For a long time, we didn’t even know where she was sealed,” the cultist said slowly. “In our best-case plan, the Angel Cultists would release Anka Aila, and Borderland would fight to the death over it. With Borderland’s strength, even if you couldn’t defeat Anka Aila, you should at least wound her, like when the Algladians tried to kill the ‘Goddess of Beauty’ in the Border region. In that process, there might be Angel Catalyst produced…”

Behind the observation window, Bai Li Qing pressed the button again: “So you only wanted a chance to fish in troubled waters, to collect whatever fragments fell off the Dark Angels after Borderland and Anka Aila tore each other up?”

Her voice had barely fallen when Irene, who had been quiet beside Yu Sheng, muttered: “Nice, from fishing in muddy water to fishing for Yu… let them grope around!”

Yu Sheng poked the little Doll on the head: “So all your brainpower goes into name puns now?”

In the Interrogation Chamber, the cultist didn’t hear Yu Sheng and Irene. He showed a complicated, bitter smile and nodded slowly: “Yes, that was our plan. So when Angel Fall happened all of a sudden, many plans were thrown off. That also indirectly led to our exposure.”

The interrogator said: “Indirectly led to your exposure?”

“Simply put, Angel Fall ‘shocked’ the structure of space itself. Add to that our poor understanding of the Angel Catalyst, plus mistakes in our contact and containment procedures… a chain of errors led to a power spill during one test. It briefly Pierced space, which is how you discovered the deep Boundary City, the one you call Mistbound City.”

Behind the glass, Yu Sheng and Bai Li Qing looked at each other without thinking.

Yu Sheng instantly recalled how that thick-fog Otherworld had appeared: without warning. But before the entrance opened for the first time, a string of short, frequent tremors had shaken the area near the opening point. It was nothing like a normal Otherworld opening. It felt like some human-made interference.

And that happened shortly after Angel Fall.

“So that’s it?” he whispered to himself. [Then it seems those short tremors when Mistbound City first opened weren’t attempts to open the Otherworld at all. They were Hermitage Order people scrambling to shut it down after a failed test. They simply underestimated the Angel Catalyst’s Piercing power. After hundreds of rounds of leak and block, Mistbound City still opened and dragged someone in…]

[The unlucky nephew deserves most of the credit.]

Feeling a flash of sympathy for Zheng Zhi, Yu Sheng’s attention was drawn back to the voice from the speaker.

In the Interrogation Chamber, the interrogator’s low voice rose again: “About Mistbound City, or in your words, the deep Boundary City. What do you know? How did this Otherworld form?”

“I… I don’t really know… I mean it!” the cultist said, trying hard to sound believable. “I only boarded the Pillar of Order under orders. The place existed before we came. Maybe only the Sage or someone higher knows what that Otherworld actually is… I only know the Otherworld is very large, almost as big as all of Borderland. Yes, there’s a whole ‘Borderland’ inside the endless fog, right ‘under’ the real Borderland.”

Behind the window, Yu Sheng and the others stared at one another.

“Wow…” Irene scratched her cheek: “It’s really that wild? Not just Boundary City, but areas outside it too?”

“Borderland folks just got even more Earth Spirit,” Yu Sheng said as he glanced at Bai Li Qing and spread his hands, “so this was your ‘second floor’ all along?”

Bai Li Qing said nothing, but her face grew a shade cloudier.

A secret right under the Special Affairs Bureau’s nose, a situation even Borderland’s own people didn’t know, ended up being told to them by a Hermitage Order cultist. Even someone as cool and distant as her found that very displeasing.

Seeing the director sister turning cloudy, Yu Sheng wisely chose not to tease her again.

Two seconds later, Bai Li Qing steadied herself. Her face returned to normal as she pressed the button once more: “So you used Mistbound City, this ‘channel’ hidden beneath the real world, to steal the Angel Catalyst from under our recovery team’s noses?”

She meant the piece of Anka Aila crystal that mysteriously vanished in the suburbs after Angel Fall.

But the cultist in the Interrogation Chamber shook his head.

“Strictly speaking, we didn’t ‘steal’ it. It fell in on its own,” he said slowly. “That crystal smashed through the barrier between the real world and the deep Boundary City and briefly formed a Breach Point. I told you, the Angel Catalyst has a very strong Piercing property. Even without deliberate activation, it can sometimes release that power.

“We actually didn’t plan to act at all, because Angel Fall ruined every plan and the Special Affairs Bureau moved faster than we expected. The chaos we hoped for didn’t happen. Everyone’s eyes were locked on Angel Fall. Out on the wilderness beyond Boundary City, your Outposts and surveillance points were everywhere. We had no chance to retrieve the Angel Catalyst that fell outside… but no one expected a crystal would drop straight into the fog…”

“Then you just picked it up?”

Bai Li Qing spoke into the mic, then glanced back at Yu Sheng with a strange look.

She was clearly remembering something Yu Sheng had said earlier:

You pass by and see something shiny in a roadside pit and pocket it. It happens.

What could Yu Sheng say? He remembered his offhand joke too. He could only scratch his hair in embarrassment: “Still, it’s not quite the same as what I said. That crystal was huge. They couldn’t have pocketed it…”

Bai Li Qing: “…”