Ashes Of Deep Sea

Chapter 82: Chapter 86 A Better Plan

Nina went to school, as she had many times over many years, once more putting her faith in the promise her uncle made to wait at the shop until she returned home after school.

Perhaps she no longer believed him but still stubbornly acted as if she did.

Duncan stood behind the first-floor window of the antique shop, watching Nina’s quick-moving figure turn the corner of the street and disappear from his sight.

Uncle Duncan would be there in the shop waiting for her to come home. He had promised.

“Ai Yi, come here.”

A thought flashed in his mind, and a green flame streaked through the air, materializing the form of a pigeon in front of Duncan.

The bird cocked its head, eyeing its master with its mung bean-sized eyes.

Through the connection established by the spiritual fire, Duncan could clearly feel the pigeon’s location and its condition—though he was not yet able to fully share the senses, the level of perception he had was already enough for many tasks.

Duncan lowered his head, looking into Ai Yi’s small eyes, “You’re quite clever, aren’t you? You understand everything I say and are capable of doing a lot, right?”

The pigeon immediately flapped its wings proudly, “Loyalty cannot be spoken, loyalty cannot be spoken!”

“I have a bold idea now that I want you to try,” Duncan said with a smile, and then drew from his bosom the sun badge that had turned into a “Heretics Proximity Alarm.”

He carefully wrapped the badge in a cloth to prevent it from being exposed to ordinary people, then tied it cautiously to Ai Yi’s back using a strip of cloth.

The pigeon cooperated from beginning to end, even helping Duncan knot the cloth with its beak, seeming to fully understand what its master intended, as intelligent as a human except for being unable to precisely articulate its own thoughts.

“Just fly erratically around the city, and when the badge heats up, search for the resonating location, ideally pinpointing a specific building,” Duncan instructed seriously. “I’ll track your location… Start in the Lower City District and the Cross District, avoid the Upper City District because I’m not familiar with it and can’t determine addresses solely by location.”

The pigeon flapped its wings and cocked its head, “Some fries?” Nôv(el)B\\jnn

Duncan sternly replied, “If you manage to locate one, I’ll bury you in fries.”

Without another word, the pigeon flapped its wings and dashed toward the door, seemingly afraid its master would change his mind.

Duncan watched with a smile as the pigeon flew further and further away into the sky. He keenly tracked the bird’s current position and its surrounding environment. Then, he went back into the room, fetched a map of Plunder City-State, and laid it on the counter. He looked at the map while recalling the layout details of the Lower City District in his mind and continually confirmed the bird’s location through his perception.

This was easier than he had anticipated—the connection formed by the spiritual fire was even more stable than at the beginning. Ai Yi’s flight path was almost a clear and bright line in his mind, with a map and memory to assist, locating the bird was not challenging at all.

This was a good method.

Duncan breathed a sigh of relief, shifted into a comfortable position leaning on the counter—he had promised Nina he wouldn’t “seek trouble” outside, and he intended to keep that promise.

But he could send the pigeon out to hunt while he stayed home to write the report…

Frankly, this was a better plan, as the flight-capable pigeon could search far more efficiently around the city than he could by driving—of course, there was also a downside, that once a heretic nest was discovered, there was no way to infiltrate and gather information, only report value remained.

But Duncan didn’t mind this minor regret. Based on his experience from attending past meetings, those easily found were just low-level heretics gathering information, and their intelligence value was limited. If Ai Yi truly sensed a “big fish”… he had other methods to “fish out” that big one alone.

After all, Ai Yi’s abilities weren’t limited to just carrying a sensor around—its primary job was working as a courier…

If they found a big fish, Ai Yi could just open a door on the spot and teleport the person to Homeloss, where his body was stationed on the ship, making it more convenient to interrogate in detail.

It just so happened he had never tried using the pigeon to teleport humans, and he couldn’t experiment with innocent civilians—but it was different for those cult priests who had nothing better to do than murder and make sacrifices.

When necessary, they could be “expendable.”

Duncan leaned against the chair, sensing Ai Yi’s location while plotting his plan in his mind, feeling more and more that it was perfect—the draft of his whistleblower letter, interrogation plan, arrest and transfer procedures were all laid out. Now, all that was missing was something called “Sun Believer,” the two-legged walking moneybag.

The only thing still needing consideration in the complete plan was how to explain to Nina about the reward money from the authorities when his whistleblower letter did indeed work—he had promised the girl not to go “hunting.”

Thinking hard, Duncan suddenly remembered something—

In this world that had evolved to the Industrial Age, there was such a thing as “banks.”

This was an inevitable outcome and a necessary condition of economic and productive development.

Although banking systems in this world were nowhere near as convenient or widespread as those on Earth, they still had basic account features.

The City-States across the Endless Sea even built an interconnected financial system with this—although maintaining this system was far more difficult than on Earth, they still managed to establish it.

The original owner of his body didn’t blend in well and had never opened a bank account at the City-State bank—this was quite normal in the Lower City District, as usually only the respectable people of the Upper City District reached the “level” needed to deal with banks, but the bank itself was open to all citizens.

There was a bank in the Cross District.

With this in mind, Duncan decided he would go to the Cross District in the next day or two to establish his first “bank account” in this world. Afterwards, if his activities in the human world expanded, managing the flow of funds would become more convenient—even without considering the future, he could omit his address when writing whistleblower letters, leaving just an account number.

Of course, whether this was feasible would still need to be tested, as the original owner of his body didn’t have much experience (or to be precise, much positive experience) dealing with City-State security departments, but Duncan thought it was a reasonable plan.

In this not-so-safe world, anonymous whistleblowing was a normal choice for many concerned citizens under cautious considerations.

As for today… he decided to simply stay inside the antique shop.

This wasn’t entirely because he wanted to strictly adhere to his “promise” with Nina, but because this was his first time locating someone using the power of a Spiritual Body after letting the pigeon fly so far, and his inexperience required him to focus extra hard, thus needing a stable environment.

Another reason was that he really should seriously do a day’s “business”—the shop hadn’t opened since it came into his possession.

Duncan stretched, stood up behind the counter, and slowly approached the front door, hanging the “Open for Business” sign outside.

He now had some plans and a new scheme, and all this began just because he had made a promise with a seventeen-year-old girl—what an interesting experience.

…

Near the Cross District, within a dilapidated, abandoned factory, guards clad in black coats with silver linings had already put up a blockade. Judge Fenna, wearing light armor and carrying a blessed greatsword, accompanied by two Deep Sea Priests, walked down the sloped staircase to the abandoned space on the factory’s first underground floor.

Everything here remained as it had been initially—after the first batch of guards had received the whistleblower report and discovered this gathering place, they had sealed off the scene until now.

The vast basement reeked intensely of blood, coupled with a pungent smell from chemically burned materials, and the bodies of Heretics lay chaotically spread across the floor. Beyond these bodies of Sun Heretics, no signs of the Assailants were found—no additional bodies and not even scraps of additional clothing.

Fenna slightly furrowed her brow.

This was a one-sided crushing battle, where the Assailants’ strength far exceeded these mainly ordinary Heretics, and it seemed the incident happened so suddenly that a considerable number of these Sun Heretics were killed without even having the chance to resist.

Who took action?

A Wild Supernatural Being with a personal vendetta against these Heretics? Another powerful heretical cult? Or some out-of-control bloody sacrifice, where these self-destructive heretics summoned from the “Deeper Levels” a creature they couldn’t possibly control?

The young Judge was lost in thought.