43: Chapter 43 Brooches

Early the next morning, Old Neil hung a copper sign on the door of the Potion Room that read "Under Maintenance, Do Not Disturb."

He leaned his staff against the corner, took out the distribution map of the outer sealing nodes of the Chanis Gate from the safe, and spread it flat on the workbench.

"There are two things to do today."

He pointed his fingertip at each of the three red circles on the distribution map one by one. "Re-examining the mold root system and re-identifying the old physical evidence. Lu Li, Klein, you two go to Iron Cross Street for the re-examination. Daly, you will retrieve the complete archived records of the physical evidence from the Hoy Family secret room in the archives; leave this matter to her to handle alone. She has previously cross-referenced the physical evidence list from the secret room and is very familiar with the numbering and storage locations of that batch of evidence."

Klein took the distribution map and scanned the red-circled locations marked on it.

"These three nodes are the places where the root system remained deepest after the last cleanup."

"Correct. If the root system is to be reactivated, it must start from these places. Focus on checking the third section of the branch pipe, the one where the mold first grew into concentric circles."

The fog on Iron Cross Street was thicker than last week. The damp, cold smell of mold in the drainage pipe had faded significantly, and traces of grayish-white powder still remained on the areas of the stone wall that had been cleaned with holy water.

Lu Li squatted in front of the stone wall of the third section of the branch pipe and hovered his gloved fingertips over the blank area in the innermost circle of the concentric pattern.

Separated by a distance of a few centimeters, his spiritual perception captured an extremely faint change in temperature—less than half a degree lower than the surrounding stone wall.

This temperature difference could not be felt by direct fingertip contact, but when sensing from a distance with gloves on, the Prometheus's sensitivity to heat was just enough to distinguish a half-degree difference.

"The root system is dormant, but it is still absorbing heat." He withdrew his hand, took a portable thermometer from his waist pouch, and placed it on the stone wall.

The thermometer's needle tilted slightly to the left and then stopped at a scale below the normal range.

Klein was squatting at the other end of the branch pipe, using a compass to scan the residual mold hyphae on the stone wall.

The needle swayed slightly from side to side, with the amplitude not exceeding the normal margin of error. "The hyphae here have completely dried out. The holy water cleaning was very thorough."

"The hyphae are dry, but the root system is still there." Lu Li stood up and used the thermometer to measure the stone wall section by section from the outer circle to the inner circle.

The third circle was normal, the second circle was normal, the first circle—the temperature dropped by another half degree. He put the thermometer back into his waist pouch, recorded the data in his notebook, and casually drew a simple sketch of the temperature distribution.

"The temperature is lowest at the center of the concentric circle and rises circle by circle as you move outward. This is the normal gradient of heat conduction, but the low temperature at the center has dropped by less than half a degree since the last re-examination. The root system's activity is decaying, but it hasn't completely died yet. In another month, it should drop to match the ambient temperature."

Klein put the compass into his pocket, walked over, and glanced at the temperature distribution sketch. "We will need to come back for another re-examination then."

"Correct. Old Neil said that we need at least three consecutive re-examinations with normal data before we can cross this branch pipe off the priority monitoring list." Lu Li closed his notebook.

The two exited the drainage branch pipe along the original path.

As they climbed out of the iron fence at the back door of the Pumping Station, Leonard happened to be patrolling to the intersection. He was holding a compass in his hand and had a digestive biscuit in his mouth; when he saw the two of them crawling out of the sewer, the biscuit almost fell out of his mouth.

"You went down to check the mold again? Wasn't it already cleaned up?"

"The root system hasn't fully gone dormant yet."

Lu Li took off his gloves and brushed the dust off his cuffs. "Daly is in the archives retrieving the physical evidence records; you can help her if you have time. There are about forty pieces of old evidence from the Hoy Family secret room; it will take her quite a while to rummage through the boxes and cabinets alone."

Leonard finished chewing the biscuit and brushed the crumbs off his hands. "Sure. My patrol duty for today is finished anyway."

It was near noon when they returned to the Blackthorn Security Company.

Daly had already retrieved all the physical evidence files from the Hoy Family secret room from the old filing cabinets and stacked them neatly on the long table in the conference room.

In front of her was a list of physical evidence arranged by number, with notes from the time of archiving and storage locations attached to each number.

Leonard was helping nearby, moving a lead evidence box marked C-7 from the archives; it made a dull metallic clanging sound when he placed it on the table.

"Item 43 on the physical evidence list: Silver snake-shaped brooch, damaged, no spiritual residue. Archiving location C-7-43." Daly pointed her fingertip at that line on the list, waiting for Old Neil to come over from the Potion Room.

When Old Neil pushed the door open and entered the conference room, the lingering scent of steam from the Potion Room's distiller was still on his work robe.

He put on deerskin gloves, opened the C-7 evidence box, and took out a small lead evidence bag from inside.

The seal was intact, and the date was the day after the Hoy annual banquet.

Inside the bag lay a flattened silver brooch.

The surface had been smashed with at least three cracks of varying depths, and the ring structure of the snake-shaped loop had been crushed in the middle by external force, leaving only about two-thirds of the arc-shaped fragment.

The line of Hermes script originally engraved on the back had become so blurry that it was almost unrecognizable to the naked eye, but a recognizable letter still remained at the apex of the arc—it was perfectly consistent with the position of the largest letter spacing in the inscription on the back of the pendant.

Old Neil fetched the pendant from the Potion Room and placed the two side-by-side on the workbench.

The inscription on the back of the pendant was complete and clear, and the irregular distribution pattern of the letter spacing was identifiable at a glance.

Although the inscription on the back of the brooch was severely damaged, judging from the remaining arc and the position of the only remaining letter, it was complementary to the curvature of the pendant.

The pendant was a convex arc, and the brooch was a concave arc. When put together, they formed a perfect ring.

"The brooch and the pendant are a pair. The pendant is the half-token that Roselle left for the creditor, the Snake of Fate, and the brooch is the half-token that the debtor kept for themselves. After Roselle was assassinated, the brooch changed hands and ended up in the possession of the Hoy Family."

"Elliott discovered it while organizing family documents, but he didn't know what it was—he only wrote in his thesis 'suspected to be encrypted, key unknown'. He donated the brooch to the Hoi Family secret room collection, and later, it was discovered by Roy King while organizing the posthumous manuscripts. On the night of the annual banquet, Roy King tried to use the brooch to activate a mechanism in the secret room, but the mechanism didn't respond, and instead, the brooch was flattened."

"What are the conditions for repaying the debt?" Klein stood beside Old Neil, looking down at the two halves of the snake-shaped ring that had been put together.

On the surface of the broken brooch, under the cold light of the phosphorescent stone, several scattered letter engravings vaguely appeared, corresponding one by one to the positions with larger spacing on the pendant.

Old Neil picked up a pencil, spread a blank sheet of paper on the workbench, copied down all the recognizable letters on the pendant and brooch one by one, and then rearranged them according to the irregular sorting pattern of the letter spacing.

Two full sentences in ancient Hermes script gradually appeared on the paper.

The first line was "jiaowei", extracted from the encrypted information on the back of the pendant.

The second line was "On the night of the full moon, open with blood", extracted from the encrypted information on the back of the brooch.

"jiaowei is the key."

Old Neil put the pencil down on the paper and took off his deerskin gloves. "The condition for repaying the debt is to activate the jiaowei with blood on the night of the full moon. What will happen after activation is not written, but this is likely the opportunity the client has been waiting for."

"He suspended purchases after The Dark Channel incident, not because he gave up, but because he missed the night of the full moon. The next full moon is in two weeks." He spread out the distribution map again and added another circle in red ink between Iron Cross Street and the Chanis Gate.

"If he wants to activate the jiaowei, he must obtain the jiaowei. The jiaowei is still in the Sealed Artifact warehouse at the Backlund diocese headquarters. The transfer approval will take another two weeks—right before the full moon. If the approval gets stuck, or if he gets the jiaowei in advance, what happens next will fall on us."

The conference room was quiet for a few seconds.

Dunn unhooked the copper whistle from his waist and placed it on the table. "I will go send a telegram to the Backlund diocese headquarters to request expedited approval. At the same time, I will notify the jiaowei warehouse administrator to strengthen supervision. Lu Li—you said last time that the transfer approval for the jiaowei would take at least three weeks; how much time is left now?"

"If counted from the day the application was submitted, there are more than two weeks left. Expedited approval can be compressed to ten days at the fastest, but it requires the signature and endorsement of the Tingen Nighthawks captain," Lu Li said.

Dunn picked up a pen, signed the end of the application form, and pushed the form to Old Neil.

"Old Neil, please add a line with your signature in the name of the Backup Team leader for seal maintenance. Just state that the transfer of the jiaowei involves the security of the Chanis Gate seal and recommend priority approval."

Old Neil took the form, wrote a line in the remarks column, and then signed his name and holy emblem number.

He folded the form, put it into a file bag, sealed it, and handed it to Rozanne. "Send it out now. Backlund has a 3:00 PM cutoff time every day; get it to the telegraph office before the cutoff."

Rozanne took the file bag and walked toward the telegraph office.

Lu Li put the pendant and brooch back into the evidence bag, sealed it, and handed it to Old Neil to be stored in the safe.

"If the approval for the jiaowei goes through smoothly, I need to steal the fire before the full moon. The digestion progress of the Prometheus is still missing the 'fire of a Sealed Artifact'—Old Coppersmith's alchemical fire is only spiritual fire; the jiaowei is a Level 3 Sealed Artifact fire."

"What are the conditions for stealing the fire?"

"Complete Darkness, stealing from the hands of a Beyonder whose Sequence is higher than mine."

"Warehouse administrator Mr. Moran is Sequence 7, one Sequence higher than me. After the approval is passed, the jiaowei will be taken out of the warehouse and sent to the temporary storage cabinet in the materials room. The materials room can create a completely dark environment using blackout curtains. The only problem is the jiaowei's spiritual alarm system—as a Level 3 Sealed Artifact, it will automatically sound a warning when moved. I need to solve this problem first."

Old Neil thought for a moment. "The alarm system of a Level 3 Sealed Artifact is usually bound to a sealing talisman."

"When the warehouse administrator takes out the Sealed Artifact, they need to unbind the talisman first. After unbinding, there is a window of a few minutes where the talisman is temporarily ineffective. Those few minutes are enough for you to steal the fire."