69: Chapter 7 Each with their own clues

Sherlock Moriarty's private detective agency was located at 15 Mingde Street in Backlund. On the fourth day of business, this quiet, small office welcomed its second client.

The visitor was a middle-aged prostitute from the edge of the East Borough who called herself Amy. Cheap powder was thickly plastered onto her rough cheeks, failing to conceal the weary, withered complexion beneath, while layers of unwashed coal dust were embedded under her fingernails—the permanent marks carved by life at the bottom.

She had come for the sake of her missing neighbor, Old John.

Old John was a destitute homeless man who had made a living for years by doing odd jobs at the Hoi River wharf. A few mornings ago, he had left for the wharf as usual and had not been heard from since. Unable to bear it, Amy had tidied up his simple, dilapidated shack and found two items under the dusty bed: an empty, shriveled bottle of cheap liquor and a torn, incomplete boat ticket.

She had already reported it to the police, but the patrol officers, upon hearing that the missing person was a homeless man with no family, couldn't even be bothered to take a basic report, merely brushing her off with a few perfunctory words. At her wit's end, she caught a glimpse of that brand-new copper sign on the street corner—Sherlock Moriarty Private Detective.

Clinging to a final, faint glimmer of hope, she knocked on the door of the agency.

Sherlock accepted the commission.

The fee was only one shilling, with a three-pence deposit—the lowest rate in the entire Backlund detective industry. But with his agency newly opened and his reputation yet to be established, he had no right to be picky about clients.

After seeing Amy off, he put on his brimmed hat, pushed open the door into the cool autumn wind, and headed straight toward the chaotic and dilapidated East Borough.

He traveled back and forth, questioning the stevedores at the wharf and the vendors at the second-hand market one by one, before finally visiting the cheap taverns around the Underground Commercial Street.

The image of Old John in everyone's description was highly consistent: he was addicted to cheap gin, solitary and reclusive, made a living by manual labor, and occasionally ran a tab at the tavern, but he never failed to pay it back within a week—a rare, principled man among those at the bottom.

However, a group of veteran stevedores who had worked at the wharf for years revealed a more unsettling detail.

Recently, Old John was by no means the only person to have disappeared from the Hoi River wharf.

Those who went missing were all exactly like him: lonely, destitute, without fixed employment, with almost no social connections, and struggling to survive in the cheapest shanties—all single men from the bottom of society. They would be sweating while carrying cargo at the wharf one day, and by the next morning, they had completely evaporated into thin air, leaving no trace behind.

Sherlock took out his notebook and wrote down the names of these missing persons one by one.

Such highly overlapping backgrounds were certainly no coincidence.

Dust-covered memories and the archives of the Nighthawks surged through his mind, and he instantly grasped the truth—this was a classic case of cult-style sacrificial disappearances, a common tactic used by certain secret organizations to capture large numbers of living people as offerings for bizarre rituals.

He put away his pen and paper and walked step by step along the desolate wharf shoreline toward the long-abandoned River Bay District.

The River Bay District was adjacent to the Old Wharf of the Hoi River. With the completion and opening of the new port, this place had been completely abandoned by the city. A dozen mottled and dilapidated warehouses stood alone on the riverbank, their walls covered in dead, curled ivy, overgrown with weeds, and filled with a deathly stillness.

An old man squatting at the Old Wharf fishing gave him a crucial clue.

Recently, a group of mysterious people had rented the detached warehouse at the southernmost end of the riverbank. They were lavish with their money and paid the rent upfront without hesitation, yet they were active only at night and kept their movements secretive. The old man had caught a glimpse of them once in the middle of the night; the group was entirely dressed in dark, hooded robes, working together to move heavy wooden crates, and on the crates, the exclusive mark of the Storm Cape port was clearly printed.

Night had completely enveloped Backlund, thick with fog, and the evening breeze carried the fishy chill of the river.

Sherlock stepped alone into the dead-silent River Bay District, his gaze locked on the target warehouse across the way. Opposite the warehouse stood a crumbling abandoned apartment building; the glass in its second-floor window frames had long since shattered, making it an excellent hidden observation point.

He gently pushed open the creaking wooden door and climbed the stairs. When he reached the corner of the staircase, his footsteps suddenly halted.

On the dust-covered staircase floor, there were a few fresh, faint shoeprints.

The shoe size was on the smaller side, and the tread pattern was that of work boots common among bottom-tier laborers. Most importantly, the footprints were very light, showing signs of someone deliberately walking on tiptoes and trying their best to suppress any sound; they were unusually fresh.

He slowly crouched down, his fingertips lightly touching the accumulated dust around the footprints.

The dust layer was thin and soft, with no accumulation of dust beneath it.

The person had left only a few minutes ago.

His vigilance spiked; Sherlock suppressed his breathing and continued to walk slowly up to the second floor.

The marks on the wall by the window confirmed his judgment. The thick dust on the lower edge of the window frame had been wiped away over a large area, leaving a clean section that matched the shoulder width of an adult—clearly, someone had been leaning here for a long time, watching the warehouse across the way.

And in the cracked brickwork of the windowsill, a neatly folded piece of thin paper was wedged.

Sherlock reached out to pull it out and slowly unfolded it.

The writing on the paper was faint, written in pencil; the strokes were sharp and concise, without a single redundant mark, every word condensed:

"The missing are dead; their bodies were sunk into the lower reaches of the Hoi River. The warehouse contains a blood altar of the Aurora Order; the array will be completed before the full moon. Do not approach, do not accept any commissions related to the warehouse. ——An Insider."

He flipped the note over. On the back, in the center, was a minimalist and ancient-looking symbol of a snake-shaped ring. The lines were simple, yet it exuded an inexplicably eerie familiarity.

Sherlock carefully folded the note, tucked it into his inner pocket, and looked up at the warehouse across the way.

From the gaps in the closed metal shutters, a wisp of dark red light faintly leaked out, piercing through the thick night fog. Its rise and fall in brightness was rhythmic, perfectly synchronized with a human heartbeat.

Aurora Order.

This name instantly surfaced in his mind.

The mastermind behind the Tingen catastrophe that had stirred the entire city and birthed the offspring of an evil god in Megose's womb was none other than the Aurora Order. They had suffered a crushing defeat in Tingen, yet unexpectedly, they had traveled to Backlund to restart their evil rituals.

Those homeless people from the bottom of society who had gone missing for no reason had long since become living sacrifices for the blood altar, their bones sunk in the river, with no possibility of rescue.

He turned around silently, left the abandoned apartment, and returned along the way he had come to his residence and agency on Mingde Street.

Under the lamp, Sherlock methodically organized and filed all the investigation records of the day. In the remarks column of Amy's commission, he clearly wrote down a conclusion: The missing persons are confirmed dead; recommend terminating the investigation.

Afterward, he tucked the mysterious note with the snake-shaped ring symbol into the inner flap of his notebook's back cover, keeping it safe.

This snake-shaped ring symbol was not unfamiliar to him at all.

In the array diagram in the secret room of the Hoi Family annual banquet in Tingen, beside the backup rune in the ruins of the Textile Factory, and in the center of the concentric circles of mold in the stone room deep within the city's The Dark Channel—he had seen this mark countless times.

The eerie symbols that had haunted Tingen back then were now replicated under the night sky of Backlund.

He recalled the faint, same-sourced spiritual fluctuation on the train from Tingen to Backlund; he recalled the weak resonance drifting from the East Borough when he first arrived at the station square in Backlund.

It was that existence with the same aura as him who had left this warning note, deliberately urging him to stop and not to investigate further.

Sherlock closed the notebook and locked it deep inside the drawer.

He clearly recognized the shortcomings of his current strength.

The Aurora Order's blood sacrifice ritual was a surging undercurrent that he was absolutely unable to contend with at this moment. After weighing the pros and cons, he chose to temporarily shelve this commission and withdraw all his investigative focus.

At this stage, finding the trail of Ince Zangwill was his core, highest-priority goal. He would endure the grievances regarding the Aurora Order for now; once his strength was sufficient, he would settle the score.

Ten days before the full moon, the night was as thick as usual.

Lu Li was still keeping watch on the second floor of the abandoned apartment in the River Bay District on time, silently observing the movements of the warehouse on the opposite bank.

The dark red light from the warehouse window gaps flickered steadily, never extinguishing day or night, indicating that the construction of the blood altar array had never ceased. The only change was that there was now a carriage at the warehouse entrance that had just finished unloading.

He quietly reviewed the results of his observations over the past week:

Similar cargo carriages had visited several times in succession, and the number of wooden crates delivered each time was steadily increasing.

The progress of the array's construction was already nearing its end.

Sweeping his gaze over the alleyway, Lu Li once again captured that familiar figure—the Mandated Punishers from the Church who often investigated this place.

And this time, the person was no longer alone.

Two regular members wearing the same dark blue standard uniform stood on either side of the Mandated Punishers. The three gathered at the alley entrance, whispering a few words; their movements were steady, their division of labor clear, and then they quickly dispersed.

One person went around to the back door of the warehouse to block the path of retreat; one person walked along the riverbank to check for hidden dangers around the Old Wharf; the leading Mandated Punishers remained in the middle, keeping a close watch on the main entrance of the warehouse.

The reinforcements from the Church of Storms had finally arrived in Backlund.

But they did not rashly launch a frontal assault, instead low-key conducting peripheral reconnaissance and setting up a blockade.

This action was enough to show that the Church's main force had not yet assembled, and for now, they would only endure and lie in wait, watching the situation evolve.

Lu Li withdrew his gaze, turned around, and returned to his temporary apartment, checking and verifying his equipment and status one by one.

The jiaowei sealing box had stable spirituality with no abnormal fluctuations; the snake emblem token was intact and kept safely on his person; the spiritual pathways of the Sequence 7: Swindler were running smoothly and were under his control.

After days of repeated honing and practice, his Apprentice Pathway Sequence 9 Lock Picking ability was already perfect and proficient, enough to deal with all kinds of ordinary spiritual locks and physical locks. The only cost was that most of the space rune fragments in his pouch had been completely consumed as nourishment to improve his abilities.

There were only ten days left until the full moon.

The boarding time agreed upon by the client was three days before the full moon, which was exactly the critical juncture when the array would be completed and the ritual would be imminent.

The time left for him to prepare was already running out.

The next morning, as the sky grew slightly bright, Lu Li set off for Water Pump Street.

Abraham's rune shop had just received a new batch of low-level Apprentice Pathway runes, and he bought all the space perception enhancement runes in the shop and tucked them away.

Turning to the back alley of the shop, his gaze fell on the storage cabinet looked after by Old Eye.

The originally solid spiritual lock had been triggered, and there were several fine, fresh scratches on the surface of the cabinet door. The marks were faint and special, not caused by violent Lock Picking, but were the exclusive patterns left after repeated scanning and wiping by the Apprentice Pathway's space detection technique.

Old Eye held a feather duster and tapped lightly on the scratches on the cabinet door, saying in a flat tone, "The people from the Aurora Order have started using spatial arts to scan the area on a large scale. They aren't sure what is hidden in the cabinet, but they can sense that there is a high-level spiritual lock seal here, and they have been secretly investigating and searching for the traces of the token."

"Let them search," Lu Li said with a calm expression. "The token has always been on me; they will find nothing."

As he spoke, he took a light paper crane from his inner pocket and placed it gently on the counter. This was a message that had just been sent by the client recently.

"The boarding time is confirmed: three days before the full moon, at the third berth of the Old Wharf."

Old Eye picked up the paper crane, rubbed it with his fingertips for a moment, then looked up at Lu Li and stated the core rule of the ghost ship in the Sea of Wraith: "The ship in the Sea of Wraith requires a token for a ticket, and memories for the fare. Have you decided which memory you are going to use to pay the fare?"

Lu Li's lips curled up slightly, his tone nonchalant: "I'll just use the terrible memory from my past life in my university dorm, where I stayed up all night playing games and lost over a dozen times in a row."

"This memory is useless to me; it's boring and frustrating. But whether a memory is precious is entirely up to the captain's judgment. The captain of the treacherous sea may not have seen such pathetic and trivial mortal memories, and perhaps it might even be to his liking."

Upon hearing this, Old Eye's eyes behind his lenses flickered, and a faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, appearing both helpless and acquiescent. Such an outrageous line of thinking was something only Lu Li could come up with.

He withdrew his gaze, took a palm-sized copper compass from deep within the drawer, and pushed it gently in front of Lu Li.

"A Spirit World positioning compass, a tool exclusive to Sequence 9 Apprentice. Its effective range is only a few dozen meters, and its accuracy is mediocre in ordinary settings, but in a place like the Sea of Wraith where the Spirit World and reality are intertwined and chaotic, it happens to be just what you need to lock onto the true berth of the ghost ship."

He paused, then added a crucial detail: "The ghost ship will not dock at the wharf for long; it will only manifest and dock for the brief moment when the passenger boards. Without the compass, even if you stand at the designated berth, you won't be able to see any trace of the ship at all."

"Consider this a return gift for you helping me reinforce the storage cabinet last time; it's free."

Lu Li solemnly put away the compass and looked up, asking: "What else do I need to prepare? What are the taboos on the ship?"

Old Eye took off his copper-rimmed glasses and wiped them slowly, telling him the iron rules of the ghost ship one by one, his tone serious and solemn:

"The rules on the ship are simple, but every single one is a line between life and death."

"Pay the full memory fare and present the token as a ticket to board. Once on board, do not converse with the captain, absolutely do not look directly at the captain's face, and absolutely no use of any spiritual detection abilities is allowed throughout the journey. Get off the ship immediately upon reaching the destination, and do not look back at the ship."

"The most critical point—absolutely do not default on the debt. Once the captain does not receive the corresponding memory fare, he will throw the debtor directly into the Sea of Wraith. The wraiths there devour bones and souls, and no one has ever survived."

Every word and sentence was a lesson written in blood and tears.

Lu Li memorized them in his heart, engraving all the taboo rules into his mind.

After returning to his apartment, he took up his pen and transcribed all the precautions for the ghost ship into his notebook, and with the help of the Spirit World compass, he repeatedly calibrated the berth orientation and corrected route errors.

All the preparations went more smoothly and securely than expected.

Everything was ready, waiting only for the time.

Waiting quietly for three days before the full moon, waiting quietly for the third berth of the Old Wharf of the Hoi River, for that ghost ship traveling through the Sea of Wraith to arrive as scheduled.