Deep Sea Embers

Chapter 156 Suspicious Clouds
Fanna's eyes stayed on this record for a few seconds, and the judge's sensitivity made her smell something worthy of attention from these short words.

Heretic sacrifices that suddenly appeared among ordinary residents, the targets of the sacrifices pointed to invalid existence, and the sacrifices that did not meet the needs of the ceremony at all finally attracted the attention of extraordinary powers, and there was a small-scale insanity, and there was no follow-up. Investigative action...

Fan Na suddenly remembered something, put down the file in her hand, and hurriedly opened the record she had just seen.

Also in 1889, a little earlier, there was an incident of armed wounding in a shop facing the street in the lower city. The victim was a "customer" who suffered a mental disorder in the store. The suspect insisted that he saw the shadow of profanity on the window of the store and held a knife "to avoid the pursuit of invisible things". fight back".

In the follow-up investigation, the church found traces of heresy worship in the basement of the store. However, the sacrificial symbols on the scene were confusing and difficult to distinguish, and could not point to any effective existence. Through interrogation, it was learned that the owner of the shop who carried out the sacrificial activities in private was not at all. Knowing about mysterious rituals, his random sacrifices were "guided by the unknown."

It was also a random sacrificial ceremony that was theoretically impossible to take effect, and it also caused insanity in a small area, and there were no more investigation conclusions.

Fan Na frowned slightly. These two incidents seemed to have nothing to do with the factory leak 11 years ago or the fire that was wiped out, and they did not match up at all in terms of time. This was not the focus of her investigation today, but In such a recent record, two incidents of heresy worship with similarities appeared in succession, which in itself touched her nerves as a judge.

After a while, she put down the two files in her hand and continued to search for the follow-up files on the bookshelf. This time, she deliberately paid a little attention and actively searched for those event records that might be related to heresy worship.

After an unknown amount of time, she stopped suddenly.

The third record, still at some point before the "factory leak" accident, happened at the edge of the upper city. A maid working in a rich man's home suddenly went berserk and seriously injured three servants and the master in the family. She locked herself in the warehouse, and when the church guards and the sheriff arrived and broke in, the maid had committed suicide.

The sacrificial symbol carved with a dagger before the death of the deceased was found in the warehouse, and traces of heretical sacrifices were found in the deceased's room-pointing to another invalid existence, and the sacrificial process did not conform to any norms, but this The invalid sacrifices in the stake records did not drive the bystanders mad, but the sacrificers themselves.

Already the third...

If Fan Na was only slightly concerned when she saw the two records just now, then when she saw the third record, the expression on her face was completely serious.

She quickly arranged the recorded information in her mind, and analyzed them according to when and where they occurred.

The incidents happened very scattered, independent of each other in time, unrelated to each other in location, and theoretically there is no intersection between the parties.

Moreover, they have nothing to do with the factory where the leak occurred 11 years ago, and no trace of Sun heresy was found in the subsequent investigation.

Fan Na settled down and continued to rummage through the follow-up files. It didn't take long before she found the information about the leak in that factory.

It was a big event with a wide range of influence, and the number of heretics captured in the follow-up was almost the highest in the past 30 to [-] years. Therefore, a separate file was used to record the whole thing. The thick file book is quite heavy. Also includes numerous pictures and interrogation reports.

But it didn't take long for Fan Na to read all the contents of this file.

Because she had read the contents of it many times in other places. In the past few years, she had consulted the relevant documents of this old case more than once.

It seems that even in the archives deep in the church, there is no more information about the factory leak 11 years ago.

Fan Na also put back the leaked files from the factory, and after searching for a while, she suddenly found something:

After the "factory leak" incident, records similar to the previous three "heretical worship" cases never appeared again.

The factory leak happened in the middle of the year, and there was still half a year to go.

This gave Fanna a feeling, as if the "should be invalid but effective" heresy worship incidents all appeared together before the factory leak, and after the factory accident, it became a node, and all the heresy worship incidents After that it came to an abrupt end...

Of course, this can also be explained with common sense: after the factory leak accident, the church and the authorities arrested thousands of heretics. It is also normal that heretical worship events no longer occur in .

But for some reason, she always felt that there shouldn't be such a simple logic behind these seemingly unrelated events.

She stopped by the big bookshelf, thought for a long time, and then returned to the beginning. She pulled out the first file about "Heretical Worship" and flipped through it while thinking.

These incidents are too loose, and they are submerged in a lot of messy disaster records. If she hadn't come to sort it out suddenly today, and planted the idea of ​​"this matter is suspicious" in her heart in advance, I am afraid that even her When she first got these materials, she didn't notice anything strange—but the strangeness is the strangeness. Once she realized it, the feeling of disobedience and awkwardness began to take root in her heart like a seed, making it difficult for her to ignore the intuition. The warning.

And when Fan Na was seriously looking through the materials, a burst of unhurried footsteps suddenly came from nearby, along with the vague smell of engine oil mixed with incense.

Fan Na raised her head and saw that the old priest in charge of managing the archives was walking towards her.

He walked with a limp, apparently not just his right hand, but his legs and feet too.

"There's no one in the archives at this time, so I'll come and have a look," the old priest said with a smile, "Have you found the information you want?"

Fan Na exhaled softly, and put the file back in its place: "I found some information, but I didn't find the answer I wanted."

"Answer?" The old priest was a little curious, "What kind of answer do you want?"

"...How long have you been here?" Fan Na didn't answer directly, but suddenly asked a seemingly irrelevant question.

"Ah, it's been a long time, I think... almost 20 years," the old priest laughed, "Since a hand and a leg were blown up by a homemade bomb made by a group of heretical lunatics, I It's always been here."

Fan Na thought for a while, and asked curiously: "Is this place so deserted on weekdays? Will anyone else come here to look up these files like me?"

"It is very deserted most of the time on weekdays—there are some people who come to read the archives, but there are never many," the old priest smiled, "Books are people's memories of the world, and this archive is the deepest memory. Department——The things stored here are all the "old cases" that have been processed, or the "secret volumes" that are judged not to be released to the public. After they are sealed, they are buried in the depths of time together with the past history .

"Countless new things happen every day in the city-state. Everyone is busy heading towards tomorrow. How can there be so much time to come back and flip through these sealed files. And..."

The old priest paused suddenly when he said this. He raised his head, quietly looked up at the volumes that were almost stacked up to the dome, and spoke softly after a long time.

"And...the sealed dossier is sometimes not just a record of the past, there may also be some 'history' itself sealed in those pages, the past, present and future of our world are built on unstable foundations , too much rummaging through this archive is not good for your health."

"...This sounds a bit like the admonition of the fire passers."

"Yeah, the Firebearers like to warn about this, they guard history, always worried that something from the ancient times will creep over and pollute the foundations of our world-they are overly sensitive in this regard, and As for those who even think that the group of final preachers who preach the 'Doomsday Pollution Theory' are the fire spreaders after the fall..."

The old priest said, shaking his head with a smile: "When I was young, I had close contacts with a few friends from the Fire Passer Sect, and I naturally listened to a lot of their theories. Although it is different from the teaching direction of the Storm Goddess, at least We all belong to righteous gods, and there are some things in it that are worthy of reference."

For some reason, while listening to the old man's narration, Fan Na's mood also calmed down a little bit. She has some respect for this senior who dedicated most of her life to the church, and she doesn't mind chatting with the old man at this moment , and asked casually: "Are you still in touch with those friends?"

"No contact," the old man slowly shook his head. "One morning, I suddenly realized that I never knew their names, so they must have been martyred..."

(In the new month, the double monthly ticket starts, let’s count the number of tickets~~)

(End of this chapter)