32: Chapter 32 Mold

Just after breakfast, Rozanne pushed open the lounge door, carrying a stack of files.

She nearly tripped over the wobbly-legged chair by the door, but after steadying herself, she pulled a patrol briefing from the top of the stack and announced in a tone that suggested she had discovered a new clue, "Something has happened on Iron Cross Street again."

Leonard poked his head out from behind a book of poetry, his hair as messy as a ball of yarn that had been clawed by a cat. "Weren't all the anchors already purified?"

"It's not an anchor." Rozanne placed the files on the coffee table. "Last night, the East Borough patrol team discovered a batch of new mold in the sewers. The variety is the same as those in the Underground Channel Secret Room, but the location isn't near any known anchors. The mold covers about twenty meters of a drainage branch, and the distribution pattern is concentric circles."

Klein took the briefing and read it from beginning to end. "What's in the center of the concentric circles?"

"Nothing at all. The patrol team turned the entire section of the branch inside out; the blank area in the center of the mold has no residual seals, no traces of runes, and the spiritual fluctuations are zero. It's as if that mold just happened to grow into that shape."

"Mold doesn't just happen to grow into concentric circles," Lu Li said.

After Rozanne left, Klein placed the briefing on the coffee table. Lu Li picked it up, his fingertips gently tracing the blurry photo—three nearly perfect concentric circles, with about thirty centimeters between each circle.

He turned the photo over, and on the back was a note from the patrol team: the central blank area is about one meter in diameter, the stone wall surface is unusually clean, with no residual stains.

"The mold in The Dark Channel was directional, all pointing toward the array eye. This batch of mold isn't pointing at anything, just surrounding an empty center," Klein said, setting down his teacup.

"It's not empty," Lu Li said, placing the photo back on the coffee table. "The patrol team said that blank area was unusually clean. In such a damp environment, there shouldn't be any residual stains on the stone wall. It wasn't clean to begin with—it was cleaned."

The two exchanged a glance. Klein pulled a paper figurine from his cuff and placed it on his knee. "I'm going to Iron Cross Street to take a look at the mold in person. Join me if you have time."

"Let's go."

The sewers of Iron Cross Street didn't seem as eerie during the day, but the damp, cold smell of mold remained thick and inescapable.

When the flashlight beam cut into the Darkness, the edges of the beam still shimmered with a subtle tremor—this was the automatic reaction of spiritual perception to environmental anomalies.

Lu Li walked in front, with Klein half a step behind, the paper figurine in his hand rotating slowly and silently.

"The mold starts from the third corner," Klein said, shining his flashlight on the first concentric circle pattern on the stone wall.

The mold was arranged very neatly, as if drawn with a compass. The outermost circle was about three meters in diameter, with two circles inside, each spaced evenly apart. The stone wall in the central blank area was indeed unusually clean, so clean it looked as if it had just been carefully scrubbed with a brush.

Lu Li crouched down and hovered his gloved fingertips over the center of the blank area. He didn't touch the stone wall directly, only sensing the spiritual temperature of that area from a distance of one centimeter. A moment later, he withdrew his hand.

"All spiritual residues have been cleared. Not just mine—the lingering traces of the patrol team's seal runes, the scent of holy water left when Old Neil passed by, all gone. This blank area has been licked clean by something."

Klein placed the paper figurine in the center of the blank area. The figurine lay quietly on the stone wall for a few seconds, then began to rotate slowly—it wasn't the figurine moving on its own; it was the gray fog pushing it. After rotating about three times, the figurine stopped, and a line of extremely fine gray fog handwriting appeared on the back.

"There is an extremely faint spiritual resonance signal within the mold. The signal source is not inside the blank area, but at the edge of the outermost mold—the resonance frequency highly matches the fluctuations when the Underground Channel Secret Room array was activated."

Lu Li looked down at the line of text. "It's waiting. It's not just the array residuals that were marked in the secret room. This concentric circle is a positioning circle—the innermost blank area is used to receive the target. Once the circle is fully grown, it only needs to place the target inside, and the resonance will begin."

"Who is the target?"

"The people it touched in the Underground Channel Secret Room. Me, you, that cultist, Old Neil." Lu Li stood up and walked along the outermost circle of the concentric patterns. He stopped when he reached the junction between the second and third circles.

On the stone wall was a line of extremely fine carvings, the characters small, the strokes shallow, as if scratched out with a fingernail. The content was only two letters in Hermes script.

He recognized these two letters—they had appeared on the title page of the Antigonus notebook; they were the abbreviation for the ancient name of the "Snake of Fate."

"What is this?" Klein walked up behind him.

"A mark left by the mold. It wasn't carved by a person—it grew out of the mold itself. Once these two letters are completely closed, the circle will be fully grown. It's still missing the last segment." Lu Li shone the flashlight on the carving again.

The strokes of the letters were only more than half complete, and the ends were still extending, as if some kind of slowly growing mycelium was filling the grooves of the carving bit by bit along a fixed trajectory.

Klein watched the two growing Hermes script letters. "The mold is tracking specific spiritual characteristics. After the Underground Channel Secret Room incident, Old Neil's spiritual detection report mentioned that the array's will marked the spiritual characteristics of everyone in the secret room before it faded. This mark is very shallow, not enough to constitute corruption, but it can be used as a positioning beacon."

"Correct." Lu Li turned off the flashlight, and the Darkness surged back in.

"It marked us, then retreated. Now it's using the mold to re-locate us. Once the circle is fully grown, anyone who has been marked will trigger the resonance if they stand in the center. What's on the other end of the resonance—still that fissure in the Underground Channel Secret Room. Although the fissure has healed, a very fine scar remains on the seal structure."

Klein was silent for a moment. He picked up the paper figurine from the ground and put it back into his cuff. "Then we won't give it the chance. The circle is still missing the last segment; we just need to clear the mold before it finishes growing."

The two walked back along the original path. The flashlight beam swept across the stone wall, the concentric circle patterns flashing and receding in the beam, and the two unfinished Hermes script letters on the edge of the outermost circle were slowly extending at a speed almost imperceptible to the naked eye.

When they returned to the Blackthorn Security Company, it was nearly noon. In the Potion Room, Old Neil was taking a freshly prepared mold sample analysis report out of a drawer. He saw Lu Li push the door open, took off his deerskin gloves, and spread the report out on the workbench.

"I've analyzed the samples sent by the patrol team. The composition of the mold is exactly the same as those in the Underground Channel Secret Room—scale secretions, residual runes, trace organic matter from the Antigonus bloodline mark. But this time, there's something new."

He tapped the data table on the last page of the report with his fingertip. "There is a directional spiritual resonance signal within the mold, and the signal frequency highly overlaps with your spiritual fluctuation characteristics. It is tracking you."

Lu Li picked up the report and turned to the page with the data table. The two curves almost completely overlapped—one was the spiritual fluctuation frequency of the mold sample, and the other was the baseline of his own spiritual characteristics filed in the archives.

"It's not tracking me personally. It's tracking everyone who was marked by it in the Underground Channel Secret Room. Me, Klein, that cultist, and you—you were also in the outer corridor of the Chanis Gate at the time, less than fifty meters from the secret room in a straight line." He placed the report back on the workbench.

Old Neil was silent for a few seconds. He retrieved his staff from the corner, the crystal at the top glowing with a pale blue light under the phosphorescent stone.

"The mold doesn't grow very fast; it can be cleaned with concentrated holy water. But if it appears in different locations at the same time—it means it hasn't just surrounded you. The mold in that branch section is just a little bit away from sealing the circle. Once sealed, the beacon placed in the circle will be activated, and the resonance will travel from the beacon to the fissure scar," he said, sitting in his chair and gently pressing his thumb against the crystal on the staff head. "For the next few days, it's best if you don't go to the sewer area for the time being. Wait until the mold is cleaned up."

"I can go to the archives to continue looking up information," Lu Li said, pausing at the doorway of the Potion Room.

"Don't let Leonard know too many details about the mold—he'll run off to the Iron Cross Street street market to look for clues again; the copper comb he bought last time hasn't been fully cataloged yet." Old Neil waved his hand, put his deerskin gloves back on, and placed the mold sample back on the lead tray.

In the afternoon, after Klein finished organizing the mold distribution map in the lounge, he closed the file. Lu Li came out of the archives, holding a piece of old patrol records he had just found. He spread the record out on the coffee table.

"This is a work log written by Ince six years ago when he was doing routine maintenance on Iron Cross Street. In the log, he mentioned 'old carvings of unknown origin' on the stone wall in the branch section and recommended cleaning. But the cleaning application was withdrawn by him the very next day. He should have already discovered the initial growth signs of the mold, but he didn't report it."

Klein pulled the old log closer to read it. The handwriting on the log was very faint, and the edges of the paper had begun to yellow, but the text was still legible.

Ince wrote: "Third section of the Iron Cross Street drainage branch, unknown carvings found on the stone wall, suspected to be residual old seals, recommend scheduling cleaning." The next day, he added a note: "Re-examination confirms it as natural erosion marks, cleaning cancelled."

"The carvings were the early form of the mold. He was only one step away from discovering the truth at the time."

"Perhaps he already discovered it. The growth rate of the mold is very slow, but six years is enough for it to grow from carvings into concentric circles. It was just waiting for an activation condition—the spiritual mark released when the array's will in the Underground Channel Secret Room awakened."

The two fell silent at the same time. Outside the window, the bell tower of the Saint Selena Cathedral struck the noon bells, the sound spreading out through the mist, deep and distant.

The gas lamp in the corner of the lounge flickered gently, and the flame stabilized again inside the glass shade.