90: Chapter 28: Intelligence on the Cape of Storms

One week after the New Year, the residual snow on the streets of Backlund had yet to melt. Melting snow dripped from the eaves, freezing into fine icicles at the street corners, and the entire city remained immersed in the damp, cold chill of winter.

Inside an apartment in the River Bay District, Lu Li sat upright at a wooden table, reviewing his income and expenditure accounts for the past four weeks line by line.

The rent here was two shillings higher per week than in the East Borough, but the expenditure structure had already changed: the space perception rune fragments, which were previously a necessary stockpile, had transitioned from fixed weekly purchases to sporadic replenishment on demand after the inventory seized from the Secret Order was exhausted. The holy water and spiritual detection needles brought from Tingen still had remaining stock, so there was no need to go to the church black market for supplies in the short term.

At this stage, the largest expenditure remained the cost of intelligence.

Firstly, the targeted purchase of exclusive shipping and navigation records for the Storm Cape in the Fog Sea from Abraham, and secondly, the recurring membership fees required to maintain the "Traveler" codename identity in the underground market and register commissions; these two expenses accounted for the majority of his spending.

Income remained stable. The full payment for the cargo ship overturning case at the wharf shipping company had been received, and the final payment for the cross-commission from the associate professor at the Geological Research Institute had been secretly settled through Old Eye's second-hand bookstore. Combined with the earnings from scattered intelligence trades in the black market, his wallet was currently well-stocked, and there was no immediate pressure on cash flow.

Lu Li closed the leather-bound ledger, picked up the thin linen note sent by Abraham via a messenger last night with his fingertips, and read it carefully again.

Last night, near lights-out, a messenger exclusive to the Apprentice Pathway knocked on the apartment glass window, bringing the latest movements of the black sail ship in the Fog Sea.

The black sail ship had sailed into the downstream waters of the Hoi River at midnight last night.

This ship was completely different from the ownerless ghost ship that had previously wandered the river surface; it did not dock at the Old Wharf pier in the Sea of Wraith, but instead quietly moored at an abandoned private shipyard at the junction of the River Bay District and the East Borough.

This shipyard belonged to a bankrupt inland shipping company; its official wharf registration number had long been cancelled and archived, and it was not within the scope of routine patrols or spiritual inspections by the Church of Storms' Mandated Punishers, making it an excellent secret hideout.

After the ship docked, the materialized wraith puppets on board left the ship in batches, relying on the extensive underground drainage pipe network of Backlund, and all of them sneaked towards the hinterland of the Old Industrial District.

The liaison staff member previously marked by the Aurora Order had arrived at the abandoned Textile Factory deep in the industrial district, meeting with at least three Aurora Order Beyonders on-site.

Lu Li folded the linen note in half, tucked it securely into the inner pocket of his coat, and stood up to change into his outdoor cold-weather jacket.

He had to reach the outskirts of the Old Industrial District to recalibrate the coverage of the warning runes before the dawn light fully spread.

The black sail ship's mooring point had shifted, completely jumping out of the triangular spiritual monitoring zone he had previously set up, and a hub where the underground pipe networks intersected between the private shipyard and the abandoned Textile Factory remained in a blind spot of the rune warnings.

Locking the brass door, Lu Li stepped down the iron staircase. The biting cold wind before dawn filled the corridor, and the light from the wall-mounted gas lamps flickered, casting swaying, fragmented shadows on the snow-covered stairs.

The Underground Commercial Street on Water Pump Street was still quiet and desolate in the early morning. Most of the permanent black market shops had not yet opened, and several Nightwatchers wrapped in thick, coarse wool blankets were dozing off with their eyes closed against the mottled walls, breathing steadily.

Lu Li walked through the main thoroughfare and turned into a quiet side alley, seeing Abraham at a glance, who was lowering his head to organize goods—a basket of well-preserved native Spirit World dust from the Southern Continent.

This type of niche, low-Sequence Beyonder material was suited for obscure Pathways and had a very low circulation volume in Backlund, with few people asking after it. However, after the North-South shipping routes of the Fog Sea restarted, the cross-border supply volume was much more stable than last year.

Lu Li took out a blank notepad and transcribed the latest intelligence: the precise mooring shipyard number of the black sail ship, the estimated number of wraith puppets disembarking in batches, and the high-level spiritual fluctuation frequency bands captured around the abandoned Textile Factory. After writing it, he handed it to the other party and simultaneously settled the final payment for last week's intelligence commission.

Abraham put away the coins and lowered his voice to remind him of the current situation: someone had recently been secretly inquiring in the underground market about the supply channels for brand-new rune fragments. The person's aura was obscure, and it was highly likely that they were personnel from the Aurora Order.

The spiritual marks left by the Aurora Order's Apprentice messenger on the wharf anchor chains had all been cleared, and after several anchor point missions failed, they had begun to reverse-trace the person behind the scenes who had intercepted their supplies.

Lu Li looked calm and tucked the note away properly. The rune fragments he had deployed throughout the wharf area were all taken from the inventory seized from the Secret Order; there were no organizational markings or spiritual tracing patterns on the surface, and only the Marauder's exclusive spiritual tentacles could complete the entire process of positioning, retrieval, and deployment.

Even if the Aurora Order was certain that someone had intercepted the supplies, they would be unable to trace the spiritual trails to lock onto him.

Bidding farewell to Abraham, Lu Li took a detour to the church on Mingde Street.

Old Kohler was squatting under the oak tree at the church, holding a worn-out fishing net, meticulously repairing the weathered and damaged armrests of a bench. Hearing footsteps, he looked up and stood up, took an object wrapped in an old newspaper from his canvas tool bag, and handed it to Lu Li.

"A drawing my girl made on the second day of the New Year, specifically left for you." Old Kohler's tone was gentle, his brows and eyes filled with the gratification of a father. The drawing depicted the old oak tree in front of the church, its branches hung with small, silvery-shining road signs, and under the tree stood a faceless human outline. On the back of the drawing paper, immature handwriting was written: To the kind person with the brass buttons on their backpack.

He added that his daughter was now obsessed with drawing and would sit on the steps of the church altar to draw every day after school. The charcoal pencil used for drawing had been bought for only half a penny from a second-hand stall at the wharf.

Lu Li pinched the warm paper parcel and raised his eyes to look at the old oak tree. The silver fragment that the little girl had hung on the branch swayed gently in the soft morning light, scattering fine, silvery-white spots of light that fell onto the gray-blue church steps.

Bidding farewell to the father and daughter, Lu Li walked up the external iron stairs to the second floor of the church. The door to the Sherlock Moriarty Detective Agency was left ajar, and Sherlock Moriarty was bent over his desk, organizing the archived files of recent commissions.

The two needed no further words, tacitly exchanging intelligence: the black sail ship had docked at the abandoned private shipyard at midnight to avoid church patrols; the wraith puppets were transferring via the underground pipe network, and three Aurora Order members had already completed their assembly at the factory; the "Traveler" codename in the underground market had suspended accepting orders and was fully focused on intelligence gathering, and current financial reserves were sufficient.

Sherlock pushed a completed river patrol supplementation plan, intended to be submitted to the River Bay District church outpost, to the corner of the table, then pulled open a drawer and took out a piece of the outer shell of a jiaowei sealing box.

There were incomplete heat-insulation runes remaining on the fragment. He embedded the runes into the interlayer of a paper figurine and activated it with a slight movement of spiritual energy from his fingertips. A pale blue light instantly wrapped around the paper figurine, condensing into a miniature spiritual barrier, sufficient to isolate conventional low-Sequence spiritual probing.

Withdrawing his spiritual energy, the paper figurine returned to his sleeve. Sherlock analyzed in a deep voice: Once the Aurora Order realized that the spiritual signals of the spare runes had been intercepted and interfered with, they would highly likely dispatch mid-to-high Sequence Beyonders to trace and investigate.

He planned to ascend above the gray fog on a chosen day to conduct large-scale divination, verifying whether this black sail ship carried any high-ranking Church of Storms Beyonders of Sequence 5 or above.

Immediately after, the two synchronized and checked the puppet sneaking routes, the intersection nodes of the underground pipe network, and the calibration progress of the warning rune blind spots. Lu Li took out the spiritual fluctuation data of the Textile Factory recorded by Abraham, handed it to Sherlock for verification, and then took it back.

Before leaving the agency, Lu Li stopped at a second-hand book stall at the street corner and bought a yellowed, old volume of "Evolution of Architecture in the Old Industrial District of Backlund." The gap-toothed stall owner was curled up by a charcoal brazier to keep warm and chatted casually, saying that this book had been gathering dust for years with no one interested in it, as it was filled from beginning to end with old records of abandoned factories and underground pipe networks.

When he returned to the apartment in the River Bay District, the daylight had already spread across the river surface.

Lu Li spread out the old architectural booklet, flipped to the page showing the full distribution map of the underground pipe network, and, comparing it with Abraham's complete intelligence, used a charcoal pencil to precisely mark the location of the abandoned Textile Factory, the optimal sneaking route for the puppets from the shipyard to the factory, and simultaneously circled the three blind spots of the rune warnings at the intersections of the pipe network.

After finishing the markings, he closed the booklet and stood up to water the ivy on the windowsill.

Just as the Landlady had said, the ivy sprouting in the New Year was full of vitality; in just a few short days, it had sprouted two more tender new leaves, fresh and green.

Outside the window, the melting of residual snow accelerated, and a thin mist swirled over the surface of the Hoi River. The black sail ship lay dormant in the dark, the Aurora Order was gathering quietly, and the shadow of the Church of Storms had already completely taken root beneath Backlund.