Chapter 412.
Chapter 412 Tracking
The room fell silent for a while.
This silence lasted for a full ten seconds before Agatha heard Bishop Ivan’s low, hoarse voice coming from beneath the bandages, “Uh-oh-“
“…… Your reaction is a bit surprising.”
“Because your information is too surprising,” Bishop Ivan seemed to have finally slowed down, he adjusted his sitting posture and his tone became extraordinarily serious, “You said that the boiling gold veins of the Frost City State had dried up decades ago? Is this the truth you discovered down there?”
“Yes. There’s a gate at the deepest part of the second waterway, probably blocked by the first city hall, and behind the gate is a long-drained mining channel – judging from its location, it should be in the enriched area at the bottom of the mine, and it’s also the theoretical area that will be the last to be mined… …”
Agatha didn’t hold back, telling as much as she could about what she had found underground, and in the process, Bishop Ivan’s eyes grew more and more stony to the naked eye.
After a while, Agatha finished her discovery below, but added with some hesitation, “…… That’s just a mine tunnel, there are countless mine tunnels inside the mines, even if that’s the deepest part of the rich area, you can’t judge from that that the whole mine has been depleted, so my conclusion has a big part of it is based on conjecture …… I know, this conjecture is too crazy.”
“…… Yes, an overly wild guess,” Bishop Ivan spoke slowly, “After all, if, according to you, the boiling gold shafts have long since run dry – that What is it that we’ve been continually shipping out of the mines for the past half-century? What is the boiling gold catalyst that the Frost City-State has been transporting to other cities for all these years?”
Agatha didn’t say anything, knowing that there was simply no way to avoid or answer the question Bishop Ivan was talking about.
The Frost City State had always produced the highest quality raw zeolite and finished catalyst rods, and over the past fifty years, the production of zeolite in Frost alone was almost equal to that of the rest of the city states in the entire Cold Cold Sea combined – the mines had an unending supply of zeolite, the digging machinery gulped down the wealth around the clock, and the catalysts produced in the smelting factories were transported throughout the entire world, and the ships that used those catalysts were all over the Cold Cold Sea, and the ships that used those catalysts were all over the world, and the ships that used them were all over the world. The catalysts from the smelting factories were transported to the entire world, and the ships that used those catalysts were spread all over the Boundless Sea.
And in half a century, not a single order of boiling gold has gone wrong.
If the veins had really been depleted decades ago, then let’s not even talk about the Frost Mines – with all the ships on the Boundless Sea, what were they burning in their steam cores? Phantoms?
After a long time, the Gatekeeper could only sigh softly, “…… If that’s also a contaminated creation, then our world is truly absurd to a terrible degree.”
“Our world has always been absurd, but perhaps …… you really found the key clue this time,” Bishop Ivan but shook his head, “Let’s not bother about whether that conjecture is crazy or not, from the perspective of sanity, decades ago it was The contradiction between the depleted veins and the mines that are still producing steadily today is most likely related to the anomalies in the city-state right now.”
“…… But according to the clues we had before, the current anomaly should be triggered by those Annihilationists,” Agatha reminded, “What do they have to do with the mines?”
“They don’t necessarily have anything to do with the mines – they may have just drawn on and triggered this crisis,” Bishop Ivan thought quickly, the experience he had gained over decades of his life, especially dealing with cultists, was helping him to complete the puzzle at the moment,… “There is no way those heretics could have laid out in the city-state for decades and still not been discovered, not to mention that the depletion of the mineral veins could be traced back to the Queen’s era, the Frost’s crackdown on heretics in that era was far more powerful than today’s, and no cultist could escape the Frost Queen’s eyes ……”
Saying this, this old bishop paused for a moment and suddenly asked again, “You just said that Consul Winston knows nothing about that door deep in the second waterway?”
Agatha nodded, “That’s what he said.”
“…… I don’t quite believe him,” Bishop Ivan shook his head hesitantly, “It’s true that the situation at that time in the Primordial Town Hall was a little bit chaotic, but the handover between the first few consuls and the political team shouldn’t have been so big mistake, especially such a crucial and sensitive secret ……”
“You mean that Consul Winston is hiding something from me?” Agatha frowned, “Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know, it could be to maintain the authority of the Town Hall, it could be that there is a bigger involvement behind this secret, it could even be because he has been controlled by something, it’s impossible to say,” Bishop Ivan said, but his eyes suddenly fell on Agatha, “I’m more surprised that you didn’t have any doubts in suspicion in this regard – you would not have been so negligent in the past.”
Agatha froze.
In this moment of daze, she recalled the scene she had experienced when she returned from the second waterway – the reflection in the pool of water, the reflection of her “other self” going in the opposite direction.
“Agatha, what’s wrong with you?” Bishop Ivan’s voice snapped her out of her trance.
Agatha blinked and shook her head slightly.
“Are you sure it’s okay?” There was obvious skepticism in Bishop Ivan’s tone, “You’ve wandered off more than once in the last two days and ……”
“I’m fine, I’ve been fine,” Agatha interrupted the old bishop instead, for some reason, after a brief trance, her tone was lighter at the moment, she exhaled softly and got up from her chair, “It’s just that I suddenly figured out some things- -I should get going.”
Bishop Ivan stood, “…… You’re traveling to the mines?”
“The Navy is holding back the enemy, the Magistrates and Guardians are in control, they’ve bought time, I still have a chance to figure out the source behind all this, it’s time to go.”
Agatha paused here and as if for emphasis added, “Time is limited, I can’t rest here for too long.”
“Good, then depart,” Bishop Ivan nodded gently, “I hope you find out the truth and return safely.”
“I will find out the truth.”
…… Every now and then, distant gunshots rang out in the thick fog, interspersed with the occasional warning broadcast from a sheriff’s or guardian’s unit, and the sound of sirens automatically sounding at certain facilities.
The city-state had become a blur in the fog, which was filled with invisible horrors.
“I’d be more than happy to take on hundreds of heavily armed cultists, or charge through a burning city a few more times, by comparison.”
Vanna said as she casually dispersed her giant sword, condensed from cold ice, and frowned at the ground in front of her.
In the limited field of vision, the ground as far as the eye could see was strewn with crisscrossed with ghastly cracks, while a large amount of filthy black mud slowly flowed and wriggled between those cracks and quickly fell into coagulation, some of which even barely retained the outlines of a humanoid form, yet took on a chillingly twisted appearance on key limbs.
“That’s disgusting.” Vanna muttered again.
“Seriously, you’d really be happy to fight again in a burning city?”
Maurice’s voice came from the sidelines, and the old scholar, carrying his cane, glanced at the shattered “battlefield” in front of him and casually said to Vanna.
“…… Well, don’t want to,” Vanna shrugged, “Whether it’s a foggy fake city-state or a burning city with a black sun coming down, it’s not much better.”
As she spoke, the fog flowed and a tall figure suddenly emerged from among the mists behind Vanna, the figure’s head was swollen and misshapen, its large one-eye trembling violently in the fog, and in the next instant, the creature lunged at Vanna.
Vanna didn’t turn around, but just stomped on the ground – an invisible shockwave instantly spread, the deformed and twisted thing only took a step forward, and then directly shattered the lower half of its body, and quickly turned into mud after falling to the ground.
Under her conscious control, Morris, who was close at hand, was not affected by the shockwave at all – the old scholar just held up his monocle and calmly looked around the foggy street.
In the next second, he suddenly looked to a certain location, and a flash of silver light emerged from the bottom of his eyes:
“Mycafini’s Conjecture and Proof.”
The next second, a continuous, low popping sound like a watermelon being stomped on came from the fog, and several figures could be vaguely seen emerging from that fog, their heads exploding like fireworks.
“The good news is that these inferior fakes mimic the ability to think to some degree, and the controller behind them needs to be even more mindful to do so,” Morris retracted his gaze, the silver light in his eyes diminishing, “I was worried at first that they were all empty shells of chaos, and then the power of knowledge wouldn’t be not work very well on them.”
Vanna watched with an odd expression as the monsters with exploding heads gradually turned into mud in the distance, and glanced back at Morris, “When you taught me back then, you didn’t say that the ‘power of knowledge’ turned out to be so good.”
“That was when I judged that you were not suited for this path.” Maurice said casually.
Vanna: “……”
Miss Inquisitor felt for a moment as if she had been mocked, but after recalling her test scores from that year, she decided to remain humble.
“Is there any more around?”
She asked in a low voice as she maintained her guard.
“Not for a while.” Morris shook his head.
He was constantly aware of his surroundings – when the monsters emerged from the fog, their chaotic minds would be the first to appear in his perceptions; the mists could block one’s vision, but the light of the minds stood out to him like a bright light in the darkness of the night.
Few people can actively control their own thinking, so in the field of “detecting intelligent creatures”, no one can compare to the saint of the God of Wisdom.
“It’s good that there aren’t any for now, though there will be new ones popping up soon,” Vanna breathed out, moving her arms and legs a little, “Do you feel that the number of fake freaks in the direction of …… is high, and that they are significantly more aggressive than the others? those elsewhere?”
“You feel it too?” Morris raised his eyebrows, “Then it seems I was right.”
“You mean ……”
“Those ‘fakes’ that emerged from the fog didn’t all act blindly, some of them, there is someone behind them who controls them.”
(End of chapter)