Nina left for school, just like she had many times over the years. She once again believed her uncle's promise that he would be waiting for her at the shop when she got back. Or maybe she had stopped believing it long ago but still pretended to trust him.
Duncan stood behind the window of the antique shop, watching Nina run down the street until she disappeared from view.
Uncle Duncan would be waiting for her at the shop; he had promised.
“Ai Yi, come here.”
A thought crossed his mind, and a green flame shot through the air. A pigeon appeared in front of him. The bird tilted its head and looked at its owner with its little green eyes.
Through the connection established by the spirit fire, Duncan could clearly sense the pigeon’s location and state. While he couldn’t fully share senses yet, this level of perception was already quite useful.
Duncan looked down at Ai Yi's small eyes. “You're actually very smart. You can understand everything I say and do many things, right?”
The pigeon proudly flapped its wings. “Loyalty beyond words!”
“Well, I have a bold idea that I want you to try.” Duncan smiled and pulled out the sun badge, which had now turned into a “cultist alert device.”
He carefully wrapped the badge in cloth to keep it hidden from ordinary people and then gently tied it to Ai Yi's back.
The pigeon cooperated fully, even helping Duncan tie the cloth with its beak. It seemed to understand what its owner wanted, being as clever as a person, except it couldn't express its thoughts accurately.
“Just fly around the city. When the badge gets warm, search for places that resonate with it. It would be best to pinpoint a specific building,” Duncan instructed seriously. “Start in the lower town and near Cross Street. Don’t go to the upper town; I’m not familiar with that area, and I can’t pinpoint anything just by location.”
The pigeon flapped its wings and tilted its head. “Get some fries?”
Duncan kept a straight face. “If you can pinpoint even one, I can bury you in fries.”
Without saying another word, the pigeon flew straight out the door, as if afraid Duncan would change his mind.
Duncan smiled as he watched Ai Yi fly farther away in the sky. He clearly tracked the pigeon’s position and its surrounding environment. Then he returned to the room, took out a map of Prand City, and placed it on the counter. He studied the map while recalling the layout of the lower town and tracking Ai Yi’s position in his mind.
It turned out to be easier than he expected. The connection through the spirit fire was even stronger than before. Ai Yi’s flight path appeared in his mind like a clear, bright line. With the help of the map and his memory, locating the bird was not difficult at all.
This was a good method.
Duncan sighed softly and adjusted his position comfortably behind the counter. He had promised Nina not to go out and “seek danger,” and he intended to keep that promise.
But he could send the pigeon out to hunt while he stayed home to write a report...
Honestly, this was a better plan. A flying pigeon was much more efficient than him wandering around the city in a car. Of course, there was a downside—once he found the cultist hideout, he wouldn’t be able to sneak in and gather information, leaving only the value of the report.
But Duncan didn’t mind this little regret. From his experience at the last gathering, those easily found cultists were mostly just small-time informants. Their information was already limited, and if Ai Yi really sensed something big... he had ways to “catch” the big fish separately.
After all, Ai Yi’s ability was not just to fly around with a sensor. Its main job was delivering messages...
If he really found a big fish, he could have Ai Yi open a portal right there to send the person to the Lost Homeland ship. With his main body on the ship, it would be much easier to interrogate them.
He hadn’t tried sending a human through the pigeon yet. He couldn’t experiment on innocent citizens—but those cult priests who killed for fun were different.
When necessary, they could be “disposable.”
Duncan leaned back in his chair, sensing Ai Yi’s position while planning his strategy. He felt more and more that this was a perfect plan—he had drafted his report, outlined his interrogation, and planned the capture and transport process. Now he just needed a “Sun Cultist” to fill the role.
The only thing he still needed to consider was how to explain to Nina if his report led to a reward from the authorities—he had promised the girl he wouldn’t go out “hunting.”
After thinking for a while, Duncan suddenly remembered something—
In this world, which had developed into an industrial age, there were banks.
This was a natural result of economic and productive development, and it was necessary.
Although the banking system in this world was not as convenient or widespread as on Earth, it at least had basic account functions.
The cities across the endless sea had even built a flowing financial system based on this—though maintaining this system was much harder than on Earth, they had managed to establish it.
The original owner of his body hadn’t done well and had never opened an account at the city bank—this was quite normal in the lower town. Usually, only the respectable people in the upper town reached the “level” to deal with banks, but banks were open to all citizens.
There was a bank in Cross Street.
Duncan had a plan. He decided to visit Cross Street in the next couple of days to open his first “bank account” in this world. This way, if he expanded his activities in the human world, managing funds would be easier. Even if he didn’t think about the future, he could save time when writing reports by just leaving an account instead of an address.
Of course, whether this was feasible would need to be tested later. After all, the original owner of his body had little experience dealing with the city’s security department (or strictly speaking, had no positive experience). But Duncan believed this was a reasonable approach.
In this unsafe world, anonymous reports should be a normal choice for many concerned citizens.
As for today... he decided to stay quietly in the antique shop.
This wasn’t just because he wanted to strictly follow his “agreement” with Nina, but also because it was his first time using the spirit fire to locate Ai Yi after sending it so far away. His lack of familiarity with the operation required him to concentrate fully, so he needed a stable environment.
Another reason was that he really should take a day to do “business”—the shop hadn’t opened since it came into his hands.
Duncan stretched, stood up from behind the counter, and slowly walked to the front door, hanging the “Open” sign outside.
Now he had some plans and a new strategy, and it all started just because he made a promise to a seventeen-year-old girl. It was truly... an interesting experience.
...
Near Cross Street, in a rundown abandoned factory, the church guardians in long black coats with silver edges had already set up a perimeter. The judge, Vanna, wearing lightweight armor and carrying a blessed great sword, descended the sloping staircase accompanied by two deep-sea priests, arriving at the factory's underground abandoned space.
Everything here still looked as it did at the beginning. After the first batch of guardians received the report and discovered this gathering place, they had sealed off the scene until now.
In the large basement, the nauseating smell of blood was particularly strong, mixed with the acrid scent of chemicals burned by flames. The bodies of the cultists lay scattered across the floor. However, besides these heretics, there were no signs of any “attackers”—no extra bodies, not even scraps of clothing.
Vanna frowned slightly.
This was a one-sided crushing battle. The attackers were far stronger than these mostly ordinary cultists, and it seemed the incident happened so suddenly that many of the sun heretics were taken down before they could even resist.
Who did this?
A wild extraordinary being with a grudge against these cultists? Another powerful heretical group? Or some uncontrolled bloody sacrifice, summoning monsters from the “deep” that these heretics couldn’t control?
The young judge fell into deep thought.
(End of Chapter)