Chapter 198: Preparation

Lin looked back at the poster, her eyes lingering on the manic grin of the man beneath the fedora. A faint smile touched the corner of her lips that was a mixture of pity, understanding, and severe caution. "In this world, Zhuo, the line between a saint and a calamity is incredibly thin." Lin spoke, placing a comforting hand on his tense shoulder. "A man who fights demonic cults and corrupt royals might be a savior to the oppressed, but to the Central Government and the World Congress, he is an unpredictable virus that threatens their order."

Zhuo glanced back at the poster as they quietly walked out of the narrow street. "Can we do anything?"

Lin remained quiet and pulled a bread out, snapping it in half, then gave one to Zhuo, who was still eating the cone. "Don’t be naive. Yes, he helped us. I know, and I’m grateful for his help... but we are incapable yet to judge his actions. If everyone goes after him, and they find out we are helping him, then they may even go after us... beside that."

Her expression subtly shifted as she remembered the face of the Detective... that ridiculous smile wasn’t a common smile. He seemed to break through his cold exterior just for that simple action; it almost seemed forced but at the same time deeply natural. "If he had managed to perform this much, then he must have found a way to escape too. Solving this many in-depth things needs an excellent mind; for now, we can only believe he’d escape."

Zhuo swallowed the piece of bread, then bit the cone again. "Right..." He murmured quietly in a soft whisper that seemed almost bitter.

"Not everyone can be saved." Lin spoke in a stern tone as they sat down in a public bench.

"Can we try to find out the reason for his actions? Do you not think that banking fraud seems unusual for a detective?"

She turned toward him and ate the bread before grabbing a glass of ginger beer. "If you are serious about it... we can search for the reasons."

Hearing those words, Zhuo’s face brightened once again, the usual smile creeping over his lips. "Really?"

Lin rolled her eyes and saw a vendor selling coffee; she waved her hand and called out. "Sir, can I have two coffee cups."

The man immediately started his work and ignited the flames to make coffee. Lin took another sip of ginger beer and finally said, "But we will stay away. We aren’t going to act suspicious, if someone misleads us and thinks we know him, then it may cause some trouble."

Zhuo nodded and quickly ate his cone; then he started biting his bread.

Smack!

Lin swatted his hand away from his mouth. "Slow down, you’re going to choke." She scolded him gently, seeing him beginning to eat slowly again.

Just then the man approached them and gently put two cups on the bench. "Here, Miss."

"Thank you." She paid for it and sipped the tea.

Within a few minutes after the man returned, suddenly a suffocating presence settled in the environment.

Lin’s hand stopped instantly as she took one last sip and slowly placed the half-drunk cup down. Her gaze suddenly turned serious when the faint presence of awakening crept over the surroundings. "Something is wrong."

Zhuo blinked and looked around to understand the reaction.

Within the next moment, a strange scent erupted from the ground beneath, a smell of malice, bitter and dusty. She pulled her purse and adjusted her sword, tucking in her belt. "We are leaving."

Zhuo quickly followed her, taking a big bite of bread, and asked while running behind. "Why?"

"There is a strange presence. It has the same spirituality of mid-grade artifacts." They quickly turned to an alley and entered into the narrow pathway ahead that reached for the platform to Yureshia.

The train groaned as it hissed through the silence. She quickly reached for the counter, bought a ticket, then grabbed Zhuo’s hand to lunge inside the train.

Just as they were sitting inside, the spiritual infection started to form a conceptual barrier of decay. Her eyes narrowed as she looked through the window, feeling the infection of the forced awakening. "Who is doing this...? Do they not know that a Proclaimed Deity is sleeping beneath?"

Zhuo heard the muttering, his eyes widening by the term. He clenched his sword tightly, and within a few moments, when the train reached closer, he himself began to feel the spiritual infection. "A Deity?"

"Not in the traditional sense, Zhuo. They call themselves a deity, but if someone is forcing the artifacts to awaken, then that entity may awaken. It’s not a strong being, an Ordinal six can easily manage it, but even then its awakening will make the infrastructure fall apart. Prepare yourself, the presence is everywhere in Yureshia."

The train compartment groaned, the locomotive hurtling deeper into the transit tunnels toward Yureshia within just few hours. Outside the window, the passing landscapes rapidly lost their autumn charm, swallowed whole by an unnatural smog that had an awkward texture of sickeningly sweet but rotting flowers.

Zhuo pressed his forehead against the glass. His breath came fogged the pane, but it did little to obscure the terrifying shifts in his vision.

He opened his Arbiter eyes. The world dissolved into chaotic streaks of motion, but these were no longer the predictable trajectories of dust particles or falling leaves.

Zhuo’s hand gripped the bag of the Bell of Catalyst hidden inside and murmured. "The streaks... aren’t straight anymore. They’re bending toward the city center."

Lin sat rigidly. Her fingers were wrapped tightly around the leather hilt of the thin sword tucked beneath her dress. The elegant scent of the ginger beer was replaced by the oppressive weight of her radiating spirituality.

"The ley lines are being forcefully rewritten by the influence. I can sense the presence of nearly forty artifacts of Grade 3 or higher... Someone is trying to stitch the spiritual fabric of Yureshia. I can’t tell who it is anymore. Argh, how dumb are they to awaken it in a city like that?"

When she paused, the overhead gas lamps inside the train flickered violently before dying out thoroughly. The compartment was plunged into the same murky fog, illuminated only by the flashes of the external subterranean lights as they sped through the industrial outskirts.

SCREECH—!

The wheels shrieked sharply. Passengers throughout the carriage ranted, luggage tumbling from the overhead racks as the train’s momentum dropped. Zhuo braced his feet against the floorboards, his eyes wide as he watched a ghostly residue of spiritual infection begin to seep through the seams of the train doors. It drifted inward like a physical entity, carrying the unmistakable malice of a forced awakening.

Through the front windows of the carriage, the towering silhouettes of Yureshia’s factories seemed to loom ahead, presenting the shapes of malicious giants under a suffocating sky.

Lin stood up, her coat sweeping outward as she drew her blade just an inch from its scabbard, revealing a gleam of silver that flickered with a royal blue light.

"The train won’t make it to the central station. The corruption will drive everyone mad here; first we need to manage the drifting entities whose attention has shifted here. Stay vigilant." Lin commanded, her gaze fixing on the emergency exit door at the end of the aisle. "After that we have to fight our way into the western district before the conceptual barrier seals the city completely."

Zhuo nodded, drawing his glinting blade out. His heart began to beat rapidly against his ribs as the chaotic murmurs of the cosmic madness began to scratch at the edges of his mind.

They stepped out into the corridor when the shadows around the train twisted their shapes and the growling begun, while both were entirely unaware that just a few miles away in the very same district...

was also him.