22: Chapter 22 Night Patrol of Iron Cross Street

Leonard's patrol report was placed on Dunn's desk first thing the next morning. The report was only a page and a half long, with handwriting so scribbly it looked as if it had been written with his left hand, but the content was far more detailed than any usual patrol log. He had discovered at least three fresh footprints around the perimeter of the abandoned Pumping Station on Iron Cross Street, the tread of the footprints matching perfectly with the boots worn by the cultist in the Underground Channel Secret Room. The footprints vanished at the iron fence of the Pumping Station's back door, where the melted sealing talisman on the fence was none other than the new one that had just been replaced three days ago.

"They're back." Dunn put down the report and rubbed the space between his eyebrows. Outside the window, the Tingen sky was a gloomy gray, and the cold November wind slipped through the cracks of the window, making the documents on the desk rustle loudly. He handed the report to Old Neil, who was standing across from the desk, and then pulled out a complete structural map of the sewer system around Iron Cross Street from his drawer, spreading it across the table.

"The same location, the same door, the same group of people. They aren't testing us—they're telling us that they can come in whenever they want."

"The talisman was melted from the inside." Old Neil slowly traced his finger along the main drainage pipe on the structural diagram, stopping at the Pumping Station's back door. "Melted from the inside means someone entered The Dark Channel beforehand and opened the passage from within at the appointed time. The only person capable of doing this is someone familiar with the structure of the drainage system outside the Chanis Gate."

"Ince." When Dunn spoke this name, there was no anger left in his voice, only a cold, hard exhaustion. Before his defection, Ince Zangwill had been responsible for the maintenance of the seals on the drainage system outside the Chanis Gate for seven years. Seven years was enough for a person to memorize the coordinates of every hidden door, every backup passage, and every abandoned anchor point better than their own birthday.

"Not just Ince." Old Neil pulled a folded slip of paper from his sleeve and spread it next to the structural diagram. "This is a copy of the old patrol logs that Lu Li pulled from the archives last night. While checking all records of abnormal events near Iron Cross Street between 1343 and 1348, he found at least four unarchived anomalies in spirituality fluctuations. The timing of each anomaly coincided exactly with the dates of the 'routine maintenance reports' Ince submitted within the Nighthawks. In other words, every time Ince went to Iron Cross Street for 'routine maintenance,' unrecorded spirituality fluctuations would occur at that location. And all of these fluctuations were subsequently expunged from the official archives by Ince himself under the pretext of 'instrument malfunction' or 'environmental interference.'"

Dunn pulled the copy of the old log closer, his eyes scanning back and forth across the four dates Lu Li had marked in red ink, then looked up. "What did he hide there?"

"Not an object. A person." Old Neil tapped the last annotation on the paper with his fingertip. "The frequency of the spirituality fluctuations in one of the abnormal records highly matches the waveform when the array in the Underground Channel Secret Room was activated—but the timing was a full six years earlier. This means Ince was already rehearsing the Spirit Descent Ritual underground at Iron Cross Street six years ago. He had enough time and resources to carve a backup rune on an abandoned anchor point. That sigil wouldn't need an array, only a vessel."

"Roy King."

"Or himself." Old Neil lowered his voice. "Roy King said at the annual banquet that Ince no longer had any use for him. But an abandoned chess piece wouldn't return to the same place three times in a row. Ince is still in Tingen, and he knows the structure of The Dark Channel better than Roy King. If Roy King wants to activate the backup rune, Ince is the only guide he can find."

Dunn fell silent for a few seconds, then put the structural diagram and the copy of the old log into a file folder, stood up, and took his dark gray trench coat from the coat rack. "Assemble the team. Tonight, we need to seal off all sewer entrances on Iron Cross Street."

At dusk, Iron Cross Street was shrouded in a thin layer of mist. The street lamps diffused blurry halos of light in the fog, and rainwater from the afternoon remained on the stone pavement, reflecting the lights. Every reflection trembled slightly, as if something were swimming beneath the water's surface at an extremely slow speed. Dunn mobilized all available field personnel of the Tingen squad, sealing off all six sewer entrances within a half-mile radius of Iron Cross Street. Leonard and Daly guarded the main entrance of the Pumping Station, while Klein guarded the backup entrance on the east side of the Pumping Station. That entrance was adjacent to the old corridor of the Underground Channel Secret Room, making it the most likely location for the backup rune to be activated.

Lu Li was assigned to the iron fence at the back door of the Pumping Station. He squatted down with his back against the cold brick wall, pulling the fragment of the worm of time from his pocket and holding it in his palm. The fragment lay quietly, the dark glow on its surface brightening and dimming in an extremely slow rhythm, with each cycle lasting about five seconds—much slower than the resonance frequency under normal circumstances. He thought to himself, it was not in a warning state—it was more like it was 'listening,' waiting for a specific frequency to appear.

His open palm clenched slightly on his knee. Since transmigrating, this so-called "Fate Anchor" inside him had never truly explained its own origin—it was not the product of any Pathway, nor did it belong to any Sealed Artifact he knew of. It had simply fused with his spiritual body on that rainy night in Tingen, and then let him know too many things he shouldn't know. The theft order of the Antigonus Family diary, the sealed back door Ince Zangwill left outside the Chanis Gate, the true purpose of the Textile Factory ritual, and even which stage of backlash the key Old Neil was about to face would lose control—this information existed uninvited in his consciousness, like a script shoved into his head beforehand.

This wasn't precognition. Precognition was vague, uncertain, and required interpretation. But the information in his head was as precise as opening a book and checking page numbers against the table of contents. He knew this omniscience was the only trump card that could keep him alive in this crazy world, and he also knew it had to be hidden well—otherwise, if any high-Sequence existence discovered he knew too much, he wouldn't even get the chance to lose control.

He put the fragment back into his pocket, took out a copper bottle of holy water and a spare pair of sealed runic gloves from his waist pouch. The fingertips of the gloves were sewn with extremely fine silver threads, their patterns sharing the same origin as the runic structure of the seals outside the Chanis Gate, providing brief protection upon contact with sources of corruption. These were shoved to him by Old Neil before they set out—three pairs of new gloves, which had just been soaked in concentrated holy water in the Potion Room for an entire afternoon, with a faint scent of moonstone powder still lingering on the silver threads.

"The backlash of the key is divided into three stages." Old Neil had stood before the workbench with his back to him at the time, pressing the crystal on the staff's head tight without turning his head. "If I enter the third stage in front of Roy King, the key will begin to absorb my humanity to recharge itself. When that happens, use that spare copper bottle of holy water in your bag and splash it right at the snake eye on the key's handle. Don't hesitate."

"You sound like you think the probability of this happening is very high."

"About ten-odd percent. Not high, but I'm used to preparing for the worst." Old Neil rested the staff across his knees, pressing the base of the crystal with his thumb to confirm it was securely fixed, then looked up at Lu Li. "You're that kind of person too—which is why I'm telling you."

Right now, Lu Li squatted in the shadow of the Pumping Station's back door, the copper bottle of holy water and the sealed runic gloves placed within arm's reach, his fingers unconsciously rubbing the smooth surface of the fragment of the worm of time in his pocket. He mentally ran through every possible branch of what could happen in the next few days. Old Neil entering the Chanis Gate, Old Neil holding the key, Old Neil inserting the key into the rune inside Roy King—he had read about every single node in the original novel, but the original novel only gave him the ending, not the solution. He had to find the solution himself.

And the biggest variable right now wasn't Roy King. It was Ince Zangwill.

Ince had maintained the drainage system seals for seven years before defecting, so he knew the location of every abandoned anchor point. If he had already carved the backup rune six years ago, that sigil wouldn't need an array, only a vessel—and the vessel could be activated at any time. Roy King's appearance at the Pumping Station tonight was highly likely just a decoy. While everyone's attention was focused on the sealing nodes deep within the Pumping Station, Ince would be passing through a backup passage that everyone had ignored. The other end of that passage led to the last unblocked, abandoned anchor point outside the Chanis Gate. Once activated, the main Chanis Gate seal would suffer an asymmetric impact from the outside, tearing open a gap fine enough for the Spirit Descent Ritual to slip through.

So his task tonight wasn't to help Old Neil defeat Roy King—it was to stop Ince from making a move where he couldn't see.

In front of the spare entrance on the east side of the Pumping Station, Klein had been standing for nearly two hours. This old iron door, embedded in the eastern foundation wall of the Pumping Station, had a newly replaced sealing talisman on it, its copper surface still gleaming with a luster that had not yet been dulled by oxidation. Behind the door lay the old corridor of the Underground Channel Secret Room, which had been packed tight with quick-drying cement mixed with holy water by the engineering team Dunn had called in three days ago. But Klein noticed a very fine crack in the sealing wax along the edge of the sealing talisman. The crack was very fresh, as if it had just been squeezed by something from the inside. He noted this discovery in his patrol log, then leaned against the brick wall beside the iron door, closed his eyes, and extended the tentacles of his spiritual perception into the gray fog.

Since The Dark Channel incident, his perception range on the gray fog had expanded by a circle. At this moment, the gray fog spread out in his consciousness, boundless and slowly churning. He let his spiritual perception sweep along the edges of the gray fog through the underground drainage network of Iron Cross Street—there were two stable spiritual signals in the direction of the Pumping Station's main entrance, which were Leonard and Daly; in the direction of the Pumping Station's back door, there was an extremely faint signal that almost merged with the shadows, which was Lu Li. The Marauder Pathway's spiritual characteristics appeared as translucent, silver-gray points of light on the gray fog, blurrier than the signals of other Pathways, as if mostly covered by a thin veil.

Deep within the Pumping Station, at the lowest level of those old drainage pipes abandoned for decades, a signal was moving. Its spiritual characteristics exhibited an extremely unnatural stability—not as if it had been suppressed, but as if it had been forcibly adjusted by some external force to just below the threshold of conventional spiritual detection. This adjustment was too precise, so precise that it didn't seem like something a Beyonder could achieve on their own. Only those who had long-term contact with high-grade Sealed Artifacts would leave this kind of calibrated trace in their spirituality.

Ince Zangwill.

Klein opened his eyes, fished a spare paper figurine from his sleeve, and wrote a line of text on its back with a fountain pen: "There is a moving signal deep within the Pumping Station, located in the old main drainage pipe on the second underground level, heading from south to north. Presumed to be Ince Zangwill. He is not meeting up with Roy King—he is moving toward the abandoned anchor point outside the Chanis Gate." He folded the paper figurine, placed it in his palm, and activated it with his spirituality. The paper figurine trembled slightly in his hand, then silently floated up, flying through the night mist toward the Pumping Station's back door.

When Lu Li received the paper figurine, the gas street lamp was flickering above his head. He made out Klein's handwriting in the intervals of the light, then quickly folded the paper figurine and put it in his pocket. As expected, Ince was moving toward the abandoned anchor point. If that backup rune had indeed been carved on the anchor point six years ago, with Ince's familiarity with the drainage system, he could bypass all Nighthawk blockades deep within the Pumping Station and reach the target directly through an old passage that no longer existed on any official map. And once the backup rune was activated, the main Chanis Gate seal would suffer an impact from the outside. The impact itself wouldn't be enough to destroy the seal, but it would tear open an extremely fine crack in the sealing structure. The moment the crack appeared, the Spirit Descent Ritual would have an opportunity to exploit.

He placed the receiver on his lap, took out Klein's paper figurine again, and wrote on its reverse side with his fountain pen: "I'm going after Ince. The anchor point is located at the intersection of the old main drainage pipe and the third sealing node outside the Chanis Gate. If the backup rune is activated, notify Old Neil immediately." Then he folded the paper figurine again and tapped its edge with his spirituality—this was a spiritual messaging technique he had learned in the archives, which allowed the paper figurine to fly back to the sender along the same path.

After doing all this, Lu Li stood up, hung the copper whistle around his neck, gripped the copper bottle of holy water tightly in his left hand, pressed his right hand against the fragment of the worm of time in his pocket, and bent down to slip through the iron fence of the Pumping Station's back door.

The entrance to The Dark Channel opened before him. At the fork of the old corridor that had once been sealed with cement, there was still a low iron door with an old Nighthawk seal pasted on it, the seal completely intact—but this door did not exist on any current drainage system structural map. Lu Li pushed the door open and squeezed sideways into the old passage that had been forgotten for decades. There were no lights in the passage, but the dark glow emitted by the fragment of the worm of time in his palm was enough to illuminate the stone steps beneath his feet. The stone steps extended downward for about thirty steps, then turned into a horizontal stone-paved corridor. The walls on both sides of the corridor were covered in black mold, which had formed the shapes of countless open palms on the walls, all fingers pointing in the same direction—the end of the corridor.

There was a copper door. The sealing runes on the door had all failed, hanging dryly in the stone crevices like dead snakes. A faint, dark green light leaked from beneath the door crack, perfectly matching the glow of the array in the Underground Channel Secret Room.

Lu Li put on his gloves, unscrewed the cap of the copper bottle of holy water, and pushed open the copper door.

Behind the door was a tiny stone room, about two meters square, its four walls covered with the same eye symbols as the Underground Channel Secret Room. In the center of the stone room squatted a figure—a silhouette in a dark gray trench coat, of medium build, holding a ritual dagger in his right hand, the blade already plunged into his own left palm. Dark red blood flowed along the fuller of the blade to the floor, spreading slowly in the groove of the old rune on the ground.

Ince Zangwill turned his head. His face was more haggard than what Lu Li had seen in the archival photos, his eye sockets deeply sunken, but his gaze was clear—clear to a near-pathological degree, like someone who had hidden in the Darkness for too long and had finally waited for someone he could speak to.

"You're too late." Ince's voice was hoarse and calm. "The rune has already been activated."