113: Chapter 51 Tides

Once the summer solstice passed, the muggy heat firmly enveloped the entire Backlund.

Within just a few days, the city's temperature soared suddenly. The thick, sticky heatwave, wrapped in the smell of coal ash and river water, made it difficult to breathe and left one feeling irritable.

After the Hoi River dropped to its lowest water level of the year at sunset on the summer solstice, it finally began to slowly rise again.

The stone piers of the rows of old jetties at the Old Wharf were once again submerged at their bases by the murky river water. The Sea of Wraith crystals, which had been exposed in large areas during the low tide and were covered in tiny specks of light, all sank back to the dark riverbed, hiding all traces.

Inside the apartment in the River Bay District, the evening breeze was hot and weak; passing through the window, it brought no coolness at all.

Lu Li sat upright at the table, his fingertips lightly pressing on a thin stack of intelligence briefings—this was the latest news organized and sent by Abraham last week.

The spirituality peak of the summer solstice had completely faded, and the violently restless spiritual fluctuations in the direction of the Storm Cape had already steadily receded, but the trajectory of this recession was neither smooth nor regular, hiding abnormalities.

In the mere few days after the peak dissipated, the spirituality in that sea area had shown a short but clear rebound.

The intensity of this rebound was far from the peak of the summer solstice, but its fluctuation frequency and oscillation rhythm coincided highly with the waveform when Ince Zangwill was lurking at the bottom of the Hoi River in the spring, activating the resonance of the sealed fragments, without the slightest difference.

At the very bottom of the briefing, a line of handwritten notes was particularly eye-catching: "The black sail ship remained silent throughout, without any traces of sailing out or unusual movements."

But the cargo archive records of the Dock District showed that on the eve of the summer solstice, an anonymous cargo ship docked along the shore of the Old Industrial District and secretly unloaded several boxes of fully sealed goods at the entrance of the abandoned drainage pipe, declaring the product name externally as—ore samples.

Lu Li's gaze darkened slightly, his fingertips sliding across that line of records, and he understood instantly in his heart.

Ore samples never needed to be urgently unloaded overnight, especially not at a special node like the eve of the summer solstice.

"Ince has changed his hiding and operational location."

He muttered to himself, his thoughts rapidly reviewing the previous layout.

On the day of the summer solstice, they had sealed off the third berth jetty in advance, completely blocking the old path the other party had relied on, which used underwater routes and operated with the help of Sea of Wraith crystals.

With Ince's caution and suspicion, he must clearly know that the underwater passage had been exposed and was completely unviable.

Therefore, he shifted his position and set his sights on the Old Industrial District, which had been abandoned for many years.

Deep within the abandoned drainage pipe network of the Old Industrial District, there still remained the mold spiritual markers that Ince had personally carved in the spring.

The markers at that time had connected the entire underground passage, constructing a complete spiritual circuit, but they were later interrupted by them midway, completely losing their original function.

But the body of the pipe network was still there, its structure intact.

The end of the entire abandoned branch pipe connected to an old anchor point that had been forgotten for many years.

And the base of this anchor point happened to be rooted above the rift of the Sea of Wraith that ran through the entire underground area.

Lu Li tapped the table with his fingertips, clearly sorting out the other party's plan: "In the spring, he needed the complete crystals from the ghost ship wreckage to make a stabilizer to support the extraction of spirituality. But after the summer solstice, he doesn't need to be so troublesome."

"As long as he reactivates the anchor point base, he can directly open up the underground rift and extract the spiritual dust drifting from the Sea of Wraith. Although these dusts are weak in efficacy, they are enough to support him in delaying the erosion of 0-08, enough to prolong his life."

He spread out the yellowed distribution map of the Old Industrial District pipe network at hand, his eyes locking and verifying back and forth between the cargo unloading location and the anchor point's position.

"In the few days after the summer solstice, the monitoring equipment captured trace amounts of spiritual dust residue in the middle section of the abandoned branch pipe. It is the tidal dust unique to the Sea of Wraith. The concentration is extremely low, but it is extremely concentrated, precisely gathered in the area directly above the old anchor point base."

"He has already tried it once. Either he is testing the residual function of the base, or he is pre-heating in advance, paving the way for the subsequent formal extraction."

On the side, Abraham tapped his fingertips lightly on the thick cover of the ledger, his expression calm, adding the most critical loophole: "Don't forget the details of that anchor point. During the spring encirclement and suppression, Leonard had infiltrated the interior and thoroughly washed the sealing structure with holy water. The base's core crystal had long since shattered and failed."

"If you want to restart this anchor point, the only way is to replace it with a brand-new core crystal."

He looked up at Lu Li, breaking the mystery in one sentence: "Those boxes of sealed goods unloaded in the dead of night with unknown origins are not ore at all; they are the spare crystals he prepared, along with a full set of replacement and repair tools."

Lu Li silently folded the distribution map and carefully tucked it into his inner pocket.

Shattered does not mean completely scrapped.

Holy water destroyed the crystal's function, not the physical structure of the base.

This anchor point had been rooted underground for many years, and the foundation of the sealing frame and spiritual path were still intact. As long as a brand-new core crystal was added, supplemented by the nourishment of the spiritual dust from the Sea of Wraith tides, it could be briefly restarted.

Such activation would cause irreversible, permanent damage to the base, and the number of times it could be used was very few, but for Ince, once was enough.

...

At the same moment, 15 Mingde Street, Moriarty Detective Agency.

The afternoon sunlight shone through the glass window, casting fine spots of light. Sherlock Moriarty was bent over his desk, organizing the week's commission files. The table was neat and tidy.

An enamel cup with a thick woolen cozy stood quietly in the corner. The tea in the cup had long since gone cold, and several investigation reports that had just been finalized lay flat next to it.

The commissions he had taken on recently were mostly trivial and ordinary, nothing more than finding people or objects, marriage investigations, and occasionally mixed with one or two small riot cases caused by low-Sequence Beyonders, calm and uneventful.

Sherlock leaned back slightly against the back of the chair, closed his eyes lightly, and took a short rest.

Since the spring, several carefully laid ambushes and interceptions had already greatly consumed Ince Zangwill's physical strength and spirituality, shattering many of the trump cards he relied on.

But that old Monster hiding in the Darkness, like a wounded lone wolf, the more covered in wounds he was, the more patient and cautious he became, and the dormant killing intent became even more bitter and fatal.

A moment later, he opened his eyes and reached out, pulling out a dusty old file from the depths of the drawer.

This was the mold marker sample brought back by Leonard from the abandoned branch pipe of the Old Industrial District after the spring operation concluded, as well as the complete spiritual analysis report.

The conclusion of the file was written clearly in black and white: after high-intensity washing with holy water, all the mold mycelium on the surface was completely dehydrated and died, and its activity had completely dissipated.

But at the end of the report, there was a subtle note that was very easy to be ignored—the deep roots of the mycelium were rooted inside the anchor point base, leaving trace amounts of spiritual veins. They had no autonomous activity, but they maintained an extremely weak, difficult-to-detect spiritual bond with the base's sealing structure.

This bond was silent on ordinary days, but once the base was restarted and spirituality flowed, it would instantly revive, light up with traces, and have nowhere to hide.

Sherlock rubbed the paper with his fingertips, his gaze calm.

He took out a thin paper figurine, picked up a fountain pen, and wrote a concise line on the back of the paper figurine: "Old Industrial District anchor point suspected of having a new core crystal replaced, awaiting verification of activation cycle."

Ince had completely abandoned the third berth route.

He finished writing, the handwriting was neat, recording all clues and judgments.

...

Twilight gradually deepened. The setting sun refused to sink below the horizon for a long time, dyeing Backlund's sky a hot orange-red.

Outside the desolate abandoned factory in the Old Industrial District, dust floated, and the broken walls and ruins cast heavy shadows in the afterglow.

Lu Li walked over slowly, meeting Sherlock, who had already been waiting there, from a distance.

Their eyes met, no extra pleasantries needed. Having hunted side by side several times, they already had plenty of tacit understanding.

The afterglow of the setting sun leaked obliquely through the broken glass windows, falling on the thick dust accumulated over the years on the ground. The light and shadow were mottled, dead and desolate.

The entire industrial area had long been unattended, leaving only dilapidated steel frames and rusted pipes standing quietly, brewing dormant danger.

"He is secretly replacing the core crystal." Lu Li spoke, his voice low and clear, pointing directly to the core. "The installation of the new core crystal requires repeated debugging; he must frequently enter and exit the underground branch pipe."

"The wharf archives can corroborate this. The batch of sealed cargo boxes secretly unloaded last week was small in quantity and extremely light in weight, which completely matches the specifications of core crystals and repair tools, definitely not heavy ore samples."

He tapped the ground with his toe; beneath his feet was the entrance to the shaft leading to the underground pipe network and directly to the abandoned anchor point. The pitch-black opening was hidden among weeds and rusted steel bars, deep and terrifying.

Sherlock nodded slightly, his knuckles tapping lightly on the rusted iron fence at the edge of the shaft, his tone carrying a trace of caution: "In the battle at the third berth, we destroyed his last batch of spare rune fragments. The path of extracting underwater crystals has been completely sealed off by us."

"But fragments and crystals have always been just a means for him to prolong his life, not his ultimate goal. What he really wants is to delay the erosion of 0-08 and break free from the Judgement of fate."

"The abandoned anchor point directly extracts spiritual dust from the underground rift. Although the effect is not as good as pure crystals, it wins in being safe and concealed, without the need to take risks in the water, and even less need to expend power to trigger the resonance of fragments. The only threshold is a brand-new core crystal."

"The mold markers he spread across the entire pipe network in the spring were for precise positioning and stabilizing the path. Now he doesn't need to do anything extra; he knows every structure and every spiritual vein of this anchor point better than anyone else."

As his voice fell, Sherlock added in a grave tone: "And inside the base seal, there is a high probability that he has already pre-buried warning runes. Rashly approaching the core area will only instantly trigger the alarm and alert the enemy."

Lu Li raised his hand and took out an ancient bronze compass.

The thin needle in the center of the compass trembled slightly, steadily deflecting towards the direction of the underground anchor point, the arc clear, and the rhythm regular.

Compared to the chaotic and floating spiritual fluctuations in the spring, the current abnormality was steady and continuous.

"Inside the base, stable new spiritual activity has already been generated."

He lowered his eyes to look at the compass and said slowly: "We will not rashly penetrate into the core, but only set up hidden spiritual markers on the periphery of the branch pipe. The marker fluctuations are extremely faint, perfectly avoiding the detection range of the warning runes, and will not cause any abnormalities."

"As long as he restarts the anchor point and extracts tidal spirituality, the markers will be able to precisely capture the spiritual peak and record the time interval of each activation."

"Only by figuring out his operational patterns can we determine the precise timing for interception, rather than blindly waiting."

Hearing this, Sherlock raised his hand to brush his cuff, and a slender paper figurine drifted out quietly, circling in the air once.

The paper figurine was pure white, its spirituality extremely weak. It landed silently on several key nodes on the periphery of the shaft, leaving a few faint traces in the air that were invisible to the naked eye, completely covering the anchor point's peripheral monitoring circle.

The layout was complete, leaving no flaws.

The two stood in the shadows of the factory, nodded at each other, turned around, and went their separate ways, leaving this dangerous, desolate land.

...

Night completely enveloped Backlund, and the muggy heat had not yet dissipated.

Returning to the River Bay District apartment, Lu Li organized and archived the compass monitoring data and the calibration records of the peripheral spiritual markers one by one, properly storing all clues.

He walked slowly to the window, raising his eyes to look at the heavy night.

In the distance, the towering bell tower of St. Hillan Cathedral stood silently, solemn and dignified, hidden in the thick Darkness. The surface of the Hoi River in the direction of the Old Wharf reflected the cold moonlight, shimmering with a faint, dark green light. Beneath the tranquility, undercurrents surged.

This year's Backlund was hotter and more stifling than in previous years.

The secret briefings of the underground market, the secret movements of the Secret Order, the layered layouts of various agents, the trajectory of Ince's dormant counterattack... all scattered clues fell onto his notebook, interweaving into a fine, silent, giant net covering the entire city.

On the windowsill, a pot of ivy quietly sprouted a fresh, tender new leaf in the hot evening breeze, life quietly budding.

On a hot summer night, people's hearts are restless.

Lu Li looked at that new green, a faint thought inexplicably arising in his heart.

If only there could be a glass of iced lemonade at this moment, it would be good to dispel the heat all over his body.

Unfortunately, in this era, ice cubes are a luxury that ordinary people cannot touch.

And no one knows that at the bottom of the silent Hoi River, the spiritual tide of the Sea of Wraith is quietly brewing, following the secret underground rifts, waiting for the next moment to surge up.