Chapter 333: The Missing

To the Special Bureau, it was clearly surprising that a group of Order of the Hidden Church cultists could successfully infiltrate the Borderland and cause so much chaos, but for those cultists who had infiltrated, everything that happened since the moment the Dark Angel Ankaira ascended into the sky had actually exceeded their expectations as well.

Their highest goal before had merely been to take advantage of the chaos caused by the Angel cultists, to fish in troubled waters while the Special Bureau and the Dark Angel fought a fierce battle, and to strive to collect just a sample of the Angel Catalyst.

However, no one could have expected the immensely powerful Dark Angel to fall immediately after ascending; no one could have expected the Angel Catalyst, which crashed into the Special Bureau's controlled zone, to trigger a "Breach" effect and smash directly into the dense fog of the "Deep Layer" of the Borderland's Otherworld—subsequently, they even more unexpectedly found that the Fog City, hidden for ten years, was exposed to the Special Bureau because of this event; a powerful Artificial Saintess was dispatched to eliminate the hidden threat, only to return severely injured twice in a row, and in the end, she was even killed by Yu Sheng, and their flagship was even stolen...

"At first, we thought it was truly a gift, really," the cultist sitting in the interrogation room lowered his head, a trace of sorrow even appearing on his pale face, "when the sensors scanned the Angel Catalyst breaching the Otherworld barrier, everyone rejoiced, feeling that the arduous Path of Holy Worship was finally smiling upon us—we had been lying low in that oppressive fog for ten years, waiting for the day the Dark Angel Ankaira would awaken; many had actually already reached their limits. But what happened later, what happened later..."

The cultist's lips moved, but he finally could not speak.

He was one of the operators on the "Bridge" of the Pillar of Order who had witnessed with his own eyes the "Ghost" controlling the ship fighting the Sage; he had personally experienced the terrifying process of being swallowed and imprisoned by the living ship, had witnessed with his own eyes the Sage's shameful act of betraying his faith and his compatriots, had lost half his life to the vacuum and hypothermia in the control hall at that time, and was afterwards "specially attended to" by the Special Bureau's powerful psychic interrogators; now, recalling the day the Angel Catalyst was sent into the ship, all he could think of was nothing but regret and despair.

But here, no one would sympathize with an Order of the Hidden Church cultist—the interrogation was still proceeding.

"Where is that Ankaira Crystal, the so-called 'Angel Catalyst', now?"

The cultist on the chair shivered, seeming somewhat hesitant.

But the interrogator gave him no chance to hesitate; when the figure sitting in the darkness spoke again, his voice was already laden with powerful and painful psychic force: "We have already sent people to search the entire ship and found no traces left by the crystal; you had better seriously consider how to answer this question."

"I, I'll say!" The man with a deathly pale face instantly hunched his body; the pain in his brain, almost boiling, made him break out in a cold sweat, and even the veins on his neck seemed to swell and twitch violently as if about to burst; he hurriedly begged for mercy and spoke rapidly, "We, we felt something was wrong after the Artificial Saintess was attacked for the first time; to prevent the situation from changing, the Sage ordered a small boat to jump at the edge of the 'Fog' and send the Angel Catalyst out..."

"You sent it away?!" Bai Liqing spoke through the intercom, her voice carrying a hint of coldness, "Where did you send it? To your dark nest?"

"The destination was a hidden jump point near the Great Triangle Nebula, but only the Sage has the authority to unlock the specific coordinates; I do not have the secret key. No, but..."

Bai Liqing frowned: "But what?"

"But that small boat had an accident... the Angel Catalyst was not delivered to the reception personnel."

Bai Liqing did not speak, and the interrogator in the room immediately asked, "What happened?"

The cultist subconsciously moved his neck, a trace of fear flashing in his eyes; it seemed that even now, recalling the situation at that time still left him with lingering fear, but after a moment of hesitation, he still spoke honestly.

"Three minutes before the small boat was about to jump, it suddenly transmitted a strange audio file; in the audio, all personnel on the boat were screaming and wailing, as if being tortured by something terrible, but at that time the ship was still flying properly at the Otherworld boundary, and the command group on the Pillar of Order was even communicating normally with the personnel on the small boat—the command group asked what was going on with the suddenly transmitted audio, and the personnel on the small boat even seemed very confused..."

Interrogator: "Under such obviously abnormal circumstances, did you still let that ship continue to execute the jump mission?"

"No, the Sage urgently ordered a halt at that time, but... it was useless; the personnel on the small boat seemed unable to hear the commands we sent, still started the jump engine while chatting and laughing, and then only a flash of light was transmitted on the monitor—they jumped away, but no signal of them 'emerging' was tracked in the real universe; that ship was lost, along with the Angel Catalyst on board."

The man with a deathly pale face spoke, then could not help but lower his head again, hunching his body and muttering: "As I said, this world is full of defects; they must have fallen into a 'fault deep hole' in the real universe and been swallowed by the disease of this world..."

Next came a string of crazy words about "world defects," "the end of the world is coming," and the "Path of Holy Worship"; this man seemed deeply immersed in fear, and this fear emotion was amplified by the long interrogation and psychic stimulation, so that the interrogator's several attempts to use "technical care" to make him sober failed.

After a moment, the interrogator's voice came from the speaker in the observation room: "Director, the interrogation subject has temporarily lost the ability to communicate."

Bai Liqing was expressionless: "Send him to the containment area; don't let him die; interrogate him again when he wakes up next time."

"Understood."

A layer of pale blue light floated on the surface of the large observation window, and the transparent window instantly turned back into a silver-white solid metal wall.

The room fell silent for a moment; no one spoke; everyone was silently digesting the information-heavy intelligence they had just heard and sorting out the confused clues in their minds.

... Of course, it might not be everyone; for example, Erin was sitting on a table not far away at this moment, intently playing cat's cradle with her black threads—she had completely failed to understand from the latter half of the interrogation just now.

In the end, Yu Sheng was the first to break the silence; he turned his head to look at Bai Liqing: "Do you think everything this cultist said is true?"

"The credibility is above eighty percent," Bai Liqing said indifferently, "I believe in the ability of the interrogation experts I personally trained; prisoners might not speak in front of them, but once they speak, the probability of lying is very small. Moreover, even if there is some deception, it is not a big problem; we still have many candidate 'interrogation subjects,' nearly a hundred Order of the Hidden Church cultists; there will surely be a few willing to speak, and at that time we can compare the confessions to easily judge the truth."

Yu Sheng nodded lightly: "Hmm... I also think the credibility is quite high; although many of the situations he described sound a bit too outrageous, it is precisely because they are outrageous that they seem more real—lies should not be fabricated to produce this effect. But then again, what this guy confessed might all be true, but there must be parts he intentionally did not say, such as... the part about the 'Adar Great Pit' and the 'Shadowless Bones'."

"Exactly; many details are vague; he must have concealed many dangerous characteristics of that 'Shadowless Bones'... the purpose is obvious."

Speaking of this, Yu Sheng suddenly felt curious: "Do you know what place is the 'Adar Great Pit' he mentioned?"

Bai Liqing slowly shook her head.

Yu Sheng was a bit surprised: "Even the omnipotent Special Bureau cannot find it?"

"The universe is very large," Bai Liqing said somewhat helplessly, "let alone this kind of 'secret location' that one can guess is deep in the dark star sector controlled by the Order of the Hidden Church; it might even not be in the real universe."

"Alright, I thought you knew everything," Yu Sheng scratched his head, "then this part of the clue is effectively cut off... unless some cultist can confess the entire star map of the Order of the Hidden Church's hiding place."

"Impossible; the coordinates of any physical celestial body in the universe are a set of functions with real-time changes and containing a large number of variables for the Phase Engine, and except for a very few uniquely talented 'Star Readers,' ordinary human brains simply cannot directly memorize and understand the huge data in the 'star map'; this must be assisted by a dedicated navigation computer for analysis—you have not captured any such 'Star Readers' among those Order of the Hidden Church cultists you caught, so even if they are willing to cooperate, they cannot say where exactly the jump points leading to their nest are currently located."

Speaking of this, she paused, and further explained: "For the vast and empty universe, if there are no 'jump coordinates' that the Phase Engine can directly analyze, then for conventional engines, there is nothing left but boundless void measured in billions of light-years."

The many professional terms Bai Liqing suddenly threw out made Yu Sheng a bit confused, but he barely understood the other party's meaning with the powerful associative ability (and good mindset) he had honed by writing his own novels, and immediately asked again: "What about the navigation computer on that ship?"

"It was cleaned very thoroughly," Bai Liqing said with some regret in her tone at this point, "the technicians I sent over earlier are already trying to restore the navigation system of your ship, but the probability of success is slim."

"... Alright."

Yu Sheng sighed helplessly.

He wanted to say that his "Door" did not need those complex technologies like navigation or jumping, but just as he was about to speak, he remembered that his Door also needed "coordinates"; without coordinates, expecting to open doors all over the universe to find those Order of the Hidden Church cultists' nest, the probability of success might be even lower than the chance of Erin suddenly having a flash of inspiration one day and helping him chew through those two "Captain's Handbooks" at home...

(End of Chapter)