Chapter 199: Plan

Both Lionel and Mo Fei walked through the streets to find the hidden artifacts that were being awakened by the radical church.

They forgot to ask Old Bai to follow them, as the Old Man was standing near a shop, eating a loaf of bread, and checking the newspaper to finally move, but when he looked back, both of them had already left.

"Where did they go?" He muttered and quickly ran to find them in the crowded street, his breathing turning hard from old age.

Meanwhile,

Lionel pulled out a compass-like thing, but instead of showing only the four directions, it showed eight of them with two needles and 0 to 6 numbers. "Hmm... I believe Mr. Sherlock that the sealed artifacts are somewhere within the underground market."

"Where is it?"

Hearing the question, Lionel opened the buttons of his shirt and moved his hand inside.

Mo Fei’s eyes twitched as he stared at the scene unfolding ahead. His expression was clearly bewildered by that as he gave Lionel a disgusted look.

"Oh well, I know I’m too stunning, but it’d be great if you don’t admire me for too long." He pulled a small crimson handkerchief and buttoned his shirt again, leaving three of them open in his casual manner.

Mo Fei quickly looked around, and he found a few people staring at Lionel, and then they looked at Mo Fei. He froze and stared at the people with a deeply annoyed expression... attempting to create a look that simply meant that he didn’t know this mentally ill gentleman.

"You did that for a handkerchief?"

"Ah, well, you see... it was stuck there."

"You do know the purpose of pockets, right?"

Lionel shrugged and answered with his smirk. "Of course, I do. Which is undoubtedly why I secured it."

He pulled a silver needle from his pocket and pointed it toward Mo Fei. "See. I use it too." Thereafter, he quietly stabbed his finger and chanted. "Lostness of the stars, the coordinated nature of the eastern mountains. The wind carrying the world on its whispers answers the call, recalling the howl."

"That’s the most dumbest and absurd prayer I have heard in my lifetime."

"You should live more then." Lionel scoffed and pressed his finger against the fabric. Suddenly, the handkerchief twisted its shape. Twitching for at least five seconds, the cloth went quiet. When he removed it, two porcelain masks appeared, and he gave one to Mo Fei. "Use it because we need to hide our identity. If they get to know about us, then they may even specifically target us."

Mo Fei took the featureless mask from Lionel’s hand, staring at the glad surface with a grimace. The item felt strangely light, but of course it wasn’t an ordinary mask. A classic item for those dealing in the supernatural — designed strictly to block normal vision, spiritual perception, and facial recognition without drawing the direct ire of official demigods.

He already had the Mask of Abyss, but he couldn’t show it to Lionel. Besides that, his spirituality was still healing slowly, so it may store more corruption, so unless it was necessary he shouldn’t use it.

"I swear if I end up looking like a maniac because of this." Mo Fei muttered, pressing the mask against his face. The world maniac was already strangely familiar to him, the persona of the Detective was itself the embodiment of the lunatic.

Through the narrow eye slits, the world didn’t seem to change at all. A great artifact to bring here, but then his gaze lay on the crimson handkerchief. Was it an item of Cosmic Authority?

Lionel chuckled, adjusting his own mask with an effortless flick of his wrist. "Do not worry, my friend. In the underground market, a mask is the only true mark of a gentleman. Without it, you are either a fraud or a policeman — and frankly, neither gets a good discount in a good manner."

With Lionel leading the way. They stopped near a subway where a board read "Underground Market" and they turned away from the main thoroughfare and slipped down the stairs of the market. The gas lamps here were far apart, flickering with every movement of wind.

Lionel held the strange, eight-pointed compass flat in his palm. The twin needles were spinning erratically, clicking against the numbers 2 and 5 before suddenly locking toward the earth. "Oh, the anchor point is deep. They aren’t even trying to hide it at all." Lionel whispered, his tone shifting from casual mockery to the focused precision of an experienced Ascended.

Mo Fei felt it too. As an Ascended who had survived his fair share of cosmic madness, he could sense a subtle thrumming beneath the streets. It was the distinct characteristic of a sealed artifact undergoing a forced awakening; its negative effects were already beginning to breach its containment.

As they walked through the marketplace, Mo Fei found many rich men with their casual clothes and top hats. Some were buying basic ingredients, while some bought jewelry.

Nearby was a shop with a heavy discount that almost made it seem as if they were selling stolen things.

In the very middle was a shop of weapons, the sound of iron hitting against iron echoed throughout a few-meter radius, isolated only by the constant sound of people walking around.

Some ladies bought expensive fishes, only privileged to the upper class, the type of species that would take the six-month worth salary of a worker class.

Of course, rich people always had a penniless sense of taste after all. Even pungent and bitter things seemed to delight them, while the sweetest things felt spicy.

They reached a dead end dominated by a soot-stained iron grate that led into the city’s old storm drains. Lionel stepped forward, his fingers tracing a specific sequence along the rusted bars. The hidden mechanism clicked, and the grate swung inward, revealing a flight of damp stone stairs leading straight into the end of the marketplace.

Descending into the gloom, the sounds of the surface world vanished, as now only the remaining talking of thousands of people remained.

They emerged into a sprawling, subterranean cavern, illuminated by flickering green carbide lamps and bioluminescent moss growing along the old stone arches.

Masked figures in cloaks drifted between makeshift stalls. Here, the trade was entirely illicit: rows of outlawed repeating rifles, jars of preserved supernatural creature parts, forbidden occult texts, and raw potion ingredients lay on display.

Yet, neither Mo Fei nor Lionel stopped to look at them. The air grew progressively heavy from the constant, maddening scent of the various creatures’ limbs, mixed with a strange, fragrant smell of perfume. Possibly the perfumes, made from secret potions.

Mo Fei glanced at Lionel, who was scratching his head. "What are you doing?"

"Hmm, I don’t understand why I feel like we are forgetting something."

"It’s not important currently; we need to focus on this first."

Lionel’s compass needles vibrated violently now, pointing directly toward a reinforced door at the far end of the cavern, where four men stood in ceremonial robes. The spiritual radiation oozing from behind that door was beginning to make Mo Fei’s vision twitch, the telltale sign that the radical church’s ritual was reaching its critical climax.

Lionel, however, nodded, believing that it might not be important currently.

"Are they the one forcing the awakening?" Mo Fei asked in a muffled voice that was deepened by the porcelain mask. He loosened his coat and drifted his hand toward his hidden revolver. "We have a few minutes before this entire district becomes a spiritual wasteland, right?"

Lionel’s smirk finally vanished behind his mask. "I’ll approach them, hide behind a wall. Let’s see if they know anything before we execute them. I’ll wave my three fingers, take it as a sign."

"I have a few doubts on you, but let’s give it a chance." Mo Fei murmured, silently stepping back and moving away from him.

He pulled his revolver out, then stepped into a narrow street, hiding behind the wall, and adjusted his top hat.