Chapter 332

Chapter 333: The Missing Catalyst

To the Special Affairs Bureau, it was surprising that a bunch of Hermitage Order cultists could slip into Borderland and stir up so much trouble. But to those infiltrators, everything after the moment Anka Aila rose into the sky went far beyond their expectations.

Their highest goal had only been to fish in troubled waters while the Angel Cultists made a mess and the Special Affairs Bureau fought the Dark Angels, hoping to harvest a little sample of Angel Catalyst.

No one expected the mighty Dark Angels would soar and then crash. No one expected the Angel Catalyst that fell into the Bureau’s control zone would trigger a Piercing effect and drop straight into the deep fog Otherworld under Borderland. Later, they never dreamed the Mistbound City they had kept hidden for a decade would be exposed to the Special Affairs Bureau. A powerful Artificial Saintess was sent to remove the danger, yet she returned badly hurt twice. In the end she even ran into Yu Sheng, and their main ship got ransacked.

“At first we really thought it was a gift, truly,” the cultist in the Interrogation Chamber lowered his head. Even a trace of sorrow crossed his pale face. “When the sensors scanned the Angel Catalyst Piercing the Otherworld’s barrier, everyone rejoiced. We felt that our hard holy road had finally smiled at us. We had lain in that heavy fog for ten long years, waiting for the day Anka Aila would awaken. Many of us were already at the limit. But what happened later, what happened later…”

His lips moved, but he couldn’t go on.

He had been one of the operators on the bridge of the Pillar of Order. He had watched with his own eyes as the Ghost controlling the ship fought the Sage. He personally suffered being swallowed and bound by a living ship. He witnessed the Sage betray the faith and betray his own people. Half his life was taken by vacuum and hypothermia in the Control Hall, and afterward the Special Affairs Bureau’s interrogators with strong psionics gave him “special care.” Now, when he recalled the day the Angel Catalyst was sent into the ship, all he could feel was regret and despair.

No one here would pity a Hermitage Order cultist. The interrogation continued.

“Where is that Anka Aila crystal, the so-called Angel Catalyst, now?”

The cultist flinched and seemed to hesitate.

The interrogator didn’t allow it. The figure in the dark spoke again, now with painful force: “We already sent people to search the whole ship. We found no trace the crystal ever left. You’d better consider your answer.”

“I’ll talk!” The pale man hunched at once. Agony boiled in his head, sweat ran cold down his skin, and the veins in his neck swelled and twitched as if about to burst. He begged and spoke fast: “After the Artificial Saintess was ambushed the first time, we felt something was wrong. To stop the situation from getting worse, the Sage ordered a Shuttle to jump at the edge of the fog and send the Angel Catalyst out…”

“You sent it away? To where? Your dark nest?” Bai Li Qing asked through the intercom, her voice edged with cold.

“The destination was a hidden jump point near the Triangulum Nebula, but only the Sage had the authority to open the exact coordinates. I don’t have the key. B-but…”

Bai Li Qing frowned: “But what?”

“But that Shuttle had an accident… the Angel Catalyst didn’t reach the receivers.”

Bai Li Qing said nothing. The interrogator asked at once: “What happened?”

The cultist moved his neck without thinking. Fear flickered in his eyes. Even now, remembering it made his heart tremble. After a brief pause, he told the truth.

“Three minutes before jump, that Shuttle suddenly transmitted a weird audio clip. All the people on board were screaming and wailing, like they were being tortured by something horrible. But the ship was still flying fine along the boundary of the Otherworld. The team on the Pillar of Order was talking normally with the Shuttle. When command asked what that sudden audio was, the crew seemed confused…”

“In such an obvious abnormal situation, you still let the ship jump?” the interrogator asked.

“No. The Sage urgently called it off. But… it didn’t work. The people on the Shuttle seemed unable to hear our orders. They joked and chatted as they started the Jump Drive. Then the monitor showed a flash. They jumped. The real universe never picked up the signal of them ‘coming out.’ The ship vanished, and the Angel Catalyst with it.”

The pale man spoke, then lowered his head again, hunched over and muttering: “Like I said, this world is full of flaws. They must have fallen into some ‘fault-deep pit’ in reality, swallowed by the world’s sickness…”

After that came a string of rambling words about the world’s defects, the coming end, and the holy road. The man seemed trapped in fear. Long interrogation and psionic stimulation had made it worse. Several attempts at “technical care” failed to wake him back up.

A moment later, the interrogator’s voice came through the observation room speaker: “Director, the subject has temporarily lost the ability to communicate.”

Bai Li Qing’s face was blank: “Send him back to the Containment Zone. Don’t let him die. When he’s clear again, continue.”

“Understood.”

A pale blue glow rippled over the wide observation glass. In a blink the clear window returned to a silver-white slab of sturdy metal wall.

The room went quiet. No one spoke. Everyone was digesting the huge load of intel and sorting strands of clues in their heads.

…Not everyone, of course. Irene was sitting on a nearby table, fully focused on playing cat’s cradle with her Black Threads. She had stopped understanding the interrogation about halfway through.

At last Yu Sheng broke the silence. He turned to Bai Li Qing: “Do you think this cultist is telling the truth?”

“About eighty percent,” Bai Li Qing said mildly. “I trust the Interrogation Specialists I trained myself. In front of them, a prisoner might stay silent, but once they talk, the odds of lying are small. Even if there is some trickery, it doesn’t matter. We still have many ‘subjects.’ Nearly a hundred Hermitage Order believers. Some will speak. We can cross-check the statements. It’s easy to see what’s true.”

Yu Sheng nodded lightly: “Yeah… I think it’s pretty credible too. A lot of what he said sounds too wild, but because it’s wild, it feels real. You can’t make up a lie with that kind of texture. Still, even if what he told us is true, he definitely left things out. Like… the part about Adar Crater and the Shadowless Skeleton.”

“Right. Many details are vague. He’s hiding a lot of dangerous traits of that Shadowless Skeleton. The goal is obvious.”

Yu Sheng grew curious: “Do you know where that Adar Crater is?”

Bai Li Qing slowly shook her head.

Yu Sheng was surprised: “Even the far-reaching Special Affairs Bureau under the Divine Powers can’t find it?”

“The universe is huge,” Bai Li Qing said, a little helpless. “This kind of ‘secret site’ is likely deep inside regions ruled by Hermitage Order. It might not even be in real space.”

“Alright, I thought you knew everything,” Yu Sheng said, scratching his hair. “So that thread is cut… unless some cultist hands over the entire Youth Form Chart of the Hermitage Order’s hideouts.”

“Impossible. In the universe, the coordinates of any Entity for a Phase Engine are a set of real-time functions with lots of variables. Except for a very few gifted ‘star readers,’ ordinary brains cannot memorize or comprehend the massive data inside a Youth Form Chart. A dedicated Navigation Computer must parse it. None of the Hermitage Order believers you caught are star readers. Even if they wanted to help, they can’t tell you where those jump points ‘are’ at this moment.”

She paused, then explained further: “To the vast and empty universe, without jump coordinates that a Phase Engine can read directly, a conventional engine faces nothing but endless void measured in billions of light years.”

Bai Li Qing’s sudden stream of technical terms made Yu Sheng’s head spin a little, but thanks to a novelist’s imagination and a good mood, he barely kept up. He asked: “What about the Navigation Computer on that ship?”

“It was scrubbed clean,” Bai Li Qing said with a touch of regret. “The tech team I sent is trying to rebuild your ship’s navigation System, but the odds are slim.”

“…Alright.”

Yu Sheng sighed.

[He wanted to say his The Door didn’t need those complex navigation and jump systems, but then he remembered The Door still needs ‘coordinates.’ Without them, randomly doing Door Opening across the whole universe to find the Hermitage Order nest would be less likely than Irene suddenly having a flash of genius and chewing through those two ‘captain’s manuals’ at home…]