Chapter 732 — The Difficult Study of Ancient Objects

Daniel came to a halt in a plaza.

He sat down on a bench and closed his eyes to rest, yet his fingers tapped lightly against the armrest beside him.

Formless data flowed through it, and a consciousness waiting far away answered the bishop's summons. With a faint ripple surfacing in the air, a female believer in a long white dress appeared before Daniel and bowed deeply. "Bishop, you summoned me?"

"Mm," Daniel said, opening his eyes slightly and nodding. The woman before him was his subordinate in the Long Twilight Order, cultivated by him for years, her loyalty beyond doubt, and he had already promoted her into the security department. Even so, she had no right to know of the master's existence; she was merely a somewhat satisfactory assistant. "Dana, there seem to have been some rumors in it lately."

"Rumors?" The female believer frowned, briefly puzzled.

Daniel projected the few messages he had just seen, letting them float clearly before Dana.

To be honest, Daniel himself had not paid them much mind at first: the mind held a great many linked believers, and among so many were no small number of idle or overly neurotic sorts. Countless useless messages flowed through that vast network every day, and excessively lurid, bizarre tales made up a fair share of such useless information.

Yet when he casually pulled up the statistical data on these few messages, he could not help but take notice.

These things that looked like rumors and ghost stories... had appeared more than once in the past half month.

The female believer read through the information Daniel displayed, thought back briefly, and nodded. "Yes, Bishop, there have indeed been rumors of this sort in it lately. But after investigation, they all proved to be baseless talk."

Daniel lifted his eyelids. "Investigated?"

"Yes," the female believer nodded. "The Inspectors patrolled all over the Phantom Pivot City and found no so-called anomalous void. The managing priests checked all connection records, and no one suddenly vanished from it or dropped connection abnormally, and the believers who claimed to have lost their memories were later found. After examination, it is said, no brain problems were discovered; the so-called memory loss was likely mental imbalance and delusion brought on by prolonged connection."

"All delusion and rumor, then..." Daniel murmured softly. "But there is more than one such message..."

The female believer opened her mouth as if about to say something, but she fell silent at the same moment as Daniel.

An invisible wind blew through the Phantom Pivot City. A global announcement from the great temple at the city's center spread through the whole of it, and every Sleeper active within the city raised their heads toward the great temple as one, Daniel among them.

In his field of vision appeared an announcement from the Pope:

"Concerning the recent reports of mental anomalies, voids appearing in it, connectors suddenly vanishing, and memory defects after disconnection, all are rumors. The faithful within the Order must not believe them..."

When the announcement ended, the female believer Dana blinked and looked at Daniel. "Bishop, it seems the Radiant Pole Order's investigation has reached its conclusion. These are indeed all rumors."

"Rumors, then..." Daniel muttered softly, then waved a hand. "Very well. I have nothing else. Go about your business."

"Yes, Bishop." The female believer lowered her head, bowed, and stepped back half a pace, her figure vanishing into a rippling flash.

Daniel shook his head and let his gaze sweep across the plaza before him.

A faintly glowing vortex of light drifted about the plaza, skimming close to the ground and moving swiftly and silently.

That was a so-called "Inspector"—not manually operated, but rooted in the mind and running according to specific logic, an autonomous phantom akin to a magic puppet. They patrolled the whole of it day and night, inspecting this Phantom Pivot City; their range of activity was even broader than that of the Long Twilight believers within the city.

The Inspector came to the bench where Daniel sat and gently bumped against his leg. Receiving no response, the mote of light drew back a little, then came forward and bumped him again.

Not especially clever, but dutiful to the last.

In theory, an Inspector would let no anomaly in the mind escape it. Those messages might indeed be rumors woven by the bored, but... still, best to report it to the master.

Daniel stood, took a step forward, and his figure vanished into a rippling phosphorescence.

......

In the high-end laboratory of the Magical Technology Research Institute in Dark Radiance City, a group of senior magical technicians, rune masters, and traditional mages and scholars borrowed from elsewhere were gathered around an experiment table, staring wide-eyed at the object set in its center:

A heavy tome with a black cover, its age impossible to determine.

Gao Yang stood in the laboratory too, gazing with the experts and scholars from every field at that black-covered book. To his left stood Rebecca and Jenny, their eyes equally wide; to his right stood Kamael, whose expression could not be read, and Virodai, who never had an expression at all; and at his feet lay Tyr, dragged over by main force to make up the numbers but now sound asleep.

The Ultimate Book—no one recognized it, and no one could explain its principles. Even the most learned scholar could only stare at the thing in blank bewilderment.

So Gao Yang had no choice but to assemble experts of every kind, letting these professionals who had distinguished themselves in their respective fields judge for themselves and see how the book's secrets might be cracked. He did not ask that they recognize or analyze the book—at the very least, he wanted a thought on how to break the deadlock.

That was why he had dragged Tyr over as well, hoping to draw help from a siren's mysterious knowledge—though it seemed this had been a mistaken line of thought.

This salted fish had taken one look at the Ultimate Book, declared she did not recognize it, and then gone to sleep. She had been asleep nearly an hour now; never mind cold water—even boiling water would not wake her.

Gao Yang had tried. It truly would not wake her...

And coiled up on the floor as she was, she took up an outrageous amount of space.

Gao Yang shook his head, stretched out a leg to nudge Tyr's tail aside, and stepped forward. "Everyone, have you any thoughts?"

Pi Yun, standing at the front, turned his head at the sound, twirling the beard he rubbed nearly every day yet which never seemed to grow any thinner. "Your Majesty, this... to be honest, I can make nothing of it at all."

Gao Yang sighed. "Even your experience yields no line of approach..."

The implication being: even the experience of a double-dyed turncoat, a man who had betrayed his faith twice over, was not enough?

Pi Yun showed not the slightest shame, utterly composed. "That Beiyila and that whole host of All Things Perish higher-ups studied it for hundreds of years and got nowhere. What use is my experience?"

The implication being: for a profession like "remnant of a cult," one cannot judge by the number of post changes but must look at time actually served. Though he had leapt back and forth between two cult factions, his real working experience, added together, was not worth mentioning, and naturally he had never come into contact with a divine artifact of the Ultimate Book's caliber at the top of a faith.

"Your Majesty, I am sorry, we have found no line of approach either," Jenny said, stepping up from the side and lowering her head. "Although runes are carved on parts of this book, they are in a runic system no one recognizes at all, and the samples are too few to analyze any pattern. Moreover, I suspect those runes are not the book's true functioning structure; its function is likely realized through a more complex and more advanced mechanism."