Chapter 282: Mercy

By the time Richard walked back from the Black Trench to the Branch Office, his legs no longer felt like his own.

[Tireless] kept his fatigue accumulation rate very low.

But after an entire night, the exhaustion wasn't just physical—it was mostly mental.

He held onto the iron railing at the Branch Office entrance, taking a long while to catch his breath.

Mr. Hutton had been carried away by Lieutenant Colonel Ord's men.

His throat and the main segment of his circuit were burned out; he had to be sent to a physician on the mystical side for treatment.

The old gentleman had waved his hand, signaling for Richard to go rest.

But he couldn't rest.

Inside and out, the Branch Office was as busy as an anthill.

Lieutenant Colonel Ord didn't look much better, but he was still tallying the clearance list.

"East District, Alley Three, twelve people."

"Four in the northern section of the Black Trench, plus Old Ray."

"At the entrance of the North District funeral home, the gatekeeper and his young apprentice."

Lieutenant Colonel Ord read the names out one by one, and Richard helped.

When he reached Wentworth's name, he paused for two seconds.

"Wentworth, inspector squad leader of the Briston Branch Office. Ether erupted to its limit; burned to ash by the Black Trench."

"The remains have been gathered. We'll proceed with full standard honors."

When he finished reading, the lieutenant colonel turned to look at Richard.

"You kid." Lieutenant Colonel Ord looked at him for a moment.

"You played the biggest role in this entire ritual today. I will report everything to headquarters in the Imperial Capital, and you will be given priority in the distribution of the spoils."

"...Yes, Lieutenant Colonel."

Richard replied softly.

Outside, the sky was completely bright.

Sunlight fell onto the wet cobblestones, evaporating the lingering moisture into a thin mist.

Three streets west of Slag Alley lived the mother who had heard a child crying in the drain during her sleep the night before.

Right now, she was standing at her door, looking bewildered.

She didn't remember walking barefoot outside her door in the night.

She only remembered having a very long dream.

In the dream, there seemed to be water, someone counting, and a lullaby she had sung countless times at her daughter's grave.

When she woke, the dream had shattered into pieces she could not put back together.

In that small shack by the canal lived the old man who had leaned over the well the night before, answering, "It's me, your brother is right here."

When he got up early this morning, he stared at that well in a daze for a long time.

He remembered he had a brother who drowned.

But he didn't remember the call that had drifted up from the bottom of the well the night before.

That piece of memory had been wiped from his mind by a very light, very gentle hand.

Wiped perfectly clean, without leaving the slightest seam.

Across the entire city, the memories of every ordinary person regarding what lay "beneath the veil" that night were slowly fading.

Fading silently away.

They still remembered the lullaby the old priest had led;

but they didn't remember the hundreds of shadows with dead men's faces beneath the water, falling asleep one by one to the tune of that song.

Light was judgment, and it was also a boundary.

When the boundary between day and night was drawn, ordinary people were also separated by a boundary between what they "should remember" and what they "should forget."

The city quickly returned to its usual order. Those who had work went to work, those who had school... oh, it was summer vacation now; the students were all sleeping in.

The erased memories also left their recollections of staying in the shelter indistinct.

Watching the crowd from afar as everyone went about their day as usual, Richard felt an indescribable emotion.

Mr. Hutton had said it before: history books only ever record those who remain.

But on this night, even the right to remember had been taken back.

They would only feel that they had dreamed a slightly sorrowful yet inexplicably reassuring dream.

"This is mercy."

A voice came from behind him.

Mrs. MacNeil had suffered a backlash no lighter than Mr. Hutton's, but a Minor Adept's health pool was ultimately much deeper.

She sat in a wheelchair now, her face still ashen, but her eyes were clear.

"Ordinary people can't bear the weight of 'having seen.'"

"After seeing what lies beneath the veil even once, some go mad that very night, while others spend the rest of their lives sleeping with their eyes open."

Richard didn't commit to an answer.

Was it mercy? Perhaps it was.

...

Richard walked to the east end of Slag Alley and saw the black-and-white cat from Mrs. Weir's house crouching on the front steps. It meowed when it saw him.

He bent down and rubbed the cat's head.

Mrs. Weir came out of the house. Seeing him, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes crinkled.

"Little Richard, just got back?"

"Yes, Mrs. Weir."

Richard stood on the steps and glanced at her coal shed.

The wooden door of the coal shed was locked.

A brand-new brass padlock hung from it.

It looked completely out of place on an old house like Mrs. Weir's.

"...Mrs. Weir."

"Hmm?"

"This lock?"

"I had someone come and replace it this morning."

The old lady waved her hand. "The old lock still worked, but for some reason, I just wanted to change it."

"...Are you alright?"

"What could be wrong?"

"I'm just an old woman—what do I have left to fear?"

Richard said goodbye to the old lady and slowly walked home.

It was past nine o'clock by the time he got home. His family had already returned from the shelter.

His mother was boiling water in the kitchen.

The moment Evelyn saw him, she threw herself at him.

Richard reached out and hugged his sister.

"Brother, you look terrible."

The girl lifted her head from his chest and studied him seriously for a long moment. "Did you not sleep?"

"Yeah."

"I didn't sleep much last night either." Evelyn huffed. "The boiler room and the steam whistles were so loud."

"Didn't you used to say that steam engines sounded nice?"

"...Hmph, I was just being stubborn back then."

His father, Rogers, came downstairs without a word.

Richard glanced at his father.

Rogers clasped his hands behind his back, turned around, and went into the kitchen.

"Your mother already fried your eggs."

Richard sat down at the dining table.

His mother, Margaret, set a cup of hot water in front of him.

She didn't ask anything either.

She simply reached out and placed her hand over his.

The internal circulation within Richard's body was intact and stable, just heavily depleted.

Margaret withdrew her hand.

"...As long as you're back."

...

The post-battle cleanup continued intermittently for several days.

There were thirteen nodes in the Anchor Network, and the "anchor" at every single node had been steeped in the resentment of hundreds of the dead for twelve whole years.

That lineage of Black Soil River Basin mysteries had been devolved into thirteen ordinary objects.

They didn't hold much weight on their own, but they were all pseudo-supernatural items nourished by twelve years of death wails.

Mrs. MacNeil laid the thirteen items out one by one.

Richard kept [Silent Observation] active and took notes beside her.

The first item was a broken lantern from the sluice gate.

It was a common oil-paper lantern with a bamboo frame. Most of the paper had rotted away long ago.

But a dark brown straw rope was wrapped around the lantern's base.

Richard swept his Spirit Vision over it.

"There's something woven into this straw rope."

Mrs. MacNeil used tweezers to pick the straw rope apart bit by bit.

Inside the core of the rope was a strand of dried black moss.

"Multi-Eyed Black Moss."

"This lantern was originally meant to guide the souls of the dead in the tombs along the Black Soil River."

"A guiding lantern." She placed the lantern back on the table.

"Along the Black Soil River, they believe that when a person dies, they must pass through one trial after another, and every trial needs a lantern to light the way."

"The Echo Society altered it. It was originally meant to guide souls to the Underworld, but it was changed... to guide souls to the bottom of the Black Trench."

"To walk toward the center of that web."

Richard looked at the broken lantern.

The guiding lantern had lit the way for twelve years, leading thousands of the dead into the waters at the bottom of the Black Trench.

The second item was a palm-sized clay jar.

The mouth of the jar was small, sealed with a layer of black wax.

"A Canopic Jar," Richard recognized.

He had seen complete sets in the museum Storeroom.

Mrs. MacNeil nodded.

"Liver, lungs, stomach, and intestines—one for each."

"This one..." She leaned in closely to inspect the jackal head on the jar's lid.

"This is the one for the lungs. The guardian deity is the jackal-headed Duamutef."

"It's empty inside, but it 'remembers' that it once held lungs."

"The Echo Society used it to anchor the dead who died of consumption or lung diseases."

"The jar recognized 'lungs,' and the lungs of the dead recognized the jar first."

Richard thought of Lizzie.

The third item was a fragment of a stone stele engraved with a line of priestly inscriptions.

Mrs. MacNeil's fingertips hovered over the inscription, tracing it in the air.

"This is a passage copied from the Book of the Dead.

When the deceased passes the trials, they must face the forty-two gods and deny the sins of their life one by one."

"'I have not killed,' 'I have not stolen,' 'I have not caused anyone to starve'..."

"This is called the 'Negative Confession'."

As Richard listened, goosebumps broke out on the back of his neck.

"The Echo Society used it in reverse." The medium's tone turned cold.

"They didn't have the dead 'deny.' They made the dead 'admit.'"

"Admit that they were poor, admit that they were sick, admit that they 'deserved' to be harvested."

"For every admission, they were nailed deeper by this stele."

That peaceful smile on the Chief Responder's face, that phrase "this is how it should be done"... so this was where it all stemmed from.

They tested the remaining items one by one. The final piece was a palm-sized clay tablet covered in symbols.

"This is the core." Mrs. MacNeil's expression changed when she examined the clay tablet.

"The previous twelve items are the knots in the web."

"This clay tablet is the master rope that ties those twelve knots together. It bears the general outline of that 'replacement' ritual."

The medium wrapped it separately in three layers of salted oil-paper.

"It needs to be sealed and handed over to Manchester headquarters."

"The higher-ups will use it to cross-reference case files shared by other countries on the Western Continent."

Richard looked at the old items.

The lantern that guided the way, the jar that held organs, the stele that weighed sins, the casket that sealed names...

They were originally meant to help the dead pass the trials and find peaceful slumber.

But in the hands of the Echo Society, everything had been inverted.

The guiding lantern led the dead into the net;

the casket that sealed names stole their true names;

and the ritual meant to seek peaceful slumber had been altered to forbid slumber entirely.

"Madam."

"Yes?"

"Can they... be used as normal supernatural items?"

Mrs. MacNeil glanced at him.

"They have already been purified once.

After being rectified by that Virtuoso of the Solar Tradition, very little power or malice remains on them."

"Once this case is thoroughly investigated, according to the rules, these objects will be our spoils."

But as for continuing the investigation, not even a trace of Mr. Reeve was left.

What had completely dissolved it was the Solar Tradition Virtuoso's golden line of "to illuminate is to weigh."

It wasn't human to begin with.

It was a "container jar" planted in Briston by that Black Soil River Virtuoso who walked the narrow path.

"I originally wanted to channel something out of Mr. Reeve."

Mrs. MacNeil said.

"To figure out which tier of variant the Silence Spell used to kill Bigelow actually was."

"And how many secrets the Echo Society still has hidden within the Empire's borders."

"All of this should have been readable from Mr. Reeve, the 'container'."

"But the sun's golden light burned it too cleanly."

"An ordinary medium has no way to channel it."

Mrs. MacNeil shook her head.

"Spirit channeling requires an 'anchor'.

A corpse, a pinch of ashes, a personal relic.

Following this anchor, one can call that person's 'echo' back from the Spirit Realm."

"I can't do it."

"...Though I can't do it," Mrs. MacNeil smiled.

She raised her hand and pressed it against the spot on her wrist where she wore a Bone Bracelet.

"But I can invite my teacher to."

An ordinary medium needed a focused "anchor" to channel spirits.

But a Major Adept medium did not.