Chapter 3196: The Haze of Faraines (Part 4)

"I am! I am! You lunatic!! You……"

Old Siltek's roar came to an abrupt end. He looked at the priest's robe with golden patterns Schiller was wearing, as if he had seen a ghost, borrowing the faint light from the status light of Schiller's night vision goggles.

"You…… are you from the Tribunal?" His voice revealed fear, stuttering: "So you are here to silence me? Why on earth do you know so much……"

Schiller was impatient to listen to his nonsense. He shook the crowbar in his hand and said, "Tell me everything you know, otherwise I'll throw you back into the cave where your wife is."

"Don't, don't, don't!" Old Siltek roared: "You can't throw me back! That monster will take my life!"

"However…… however, since you've already chased me here, what else is there that you don't know?" Old Siltek said while gasping for air. The injury on his ankle made him sweat all over from the pain. Just from his reaction, Schiller could tell that he was indeed a pampered rich man and hadn't undergone any anti-interrogation training. What he said should have relatively high credibility.

"I know a lot of things, otherwise I wouldn't have found you here, but I'm interested in even more things. If you satisfy me, perhaps I can also give you a chance."

Old Siltek showed a bitter smile and said: "Forget it, I had long thought there would be such a day. Ever since I knew about that matter, I never thought I could survive in your hands."

"Stop talking nonsense, tell me what you know."

"I have some impression of this outfit of yours. Are you a member of the Pope's personal guards? This makes me a bit puzzled. I don't think the Pope would send his personal guards to deal with a small person like me, unless he actually also knows…… Fine, put the crowbar down, won't I tell you?"

"You should know about that hotel, right?"

"If you try to probe me again, I'll break your other leg."

"Fine, it seems you know. After all, this isn't any secret. It made such a big noise at the time that few people don't know about it. But you might not know that among the first batch of cardinals sent to investigate the hotel's abnormal situation was a famous figure, that is, one of the Three Sages of the church later on, Gade Berelton."

"Others didn't find anything useful in the hotel, and after returning, they only roughly described the scene of the tragedy, but Gade found something crucial in the hotel."

"What?"

"I'm not sure what it is, but that thing is the culprit of the frequently appearing abnormal events later on. Gade has a way to control it. If he takes action at the right time, it can bring about great panic, until the whole world is plunged into the threat of weird events."

"Why did he want to do this?"

"What else could it be for? Of course, it's for power. If there were no weird events that only the church could handle, how would the church have become the behemoth it is today?"

"This is too absurd." Schiller evaluated: "Relying on one person's power, it's fundamentally impossible to do these things."

"Of course it's not just one person's power. There are many people who want to make a fortune from this." Old Siltek didn't hide anything either. He said: "I was the one who saw the opportunity at that time and established an insurance company related to weird events, so I made a fortune. So to be precise, I can also be considered a member of this conspiracy."

"You are quite honest."

"This doesn't count as anything. Looking at your expression, you shouldn't be completely unprepared for this kind of thing, then you know this is actually a public scam, sacrificing some ordinary people to gain more power and money for us."

"If this is really the case, why did you end up like this?"

Schiller clearly asked the key point. Old Siltek sighed and said: "Because everyone didn't know that they had opened Pandora's box."

Schiller took out the diary of Sailor Peek from his arms. When Old Siltek saw this book, he was a bit excited and even reached out to grab it, but Schiller didn't give him this opportunity. He shook the book in his hand and said: "How much do you know about this thing?"

Schiller discovered the change in Old Siltek's expression. He knew he should have obtained a key prop, otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to get more intelligence from his mouth.

But seeing this book, Old Siltek couldn't calm down. After lying on the ground and gasping for a while, he said: "This is one of the reasons I came here."

"What?"

"This wasn't originally my thing. Do you know the Jeff family?"

Schiller nodded and said: "I had the honor of meeting their corpses."

"It seems they still couldn't escape. Perhaps you have heard the story of Jeff when he was young. He was a sailor, but because of a strange shipwreck, he was considered an unlucky person. Since then, almost no one hired him anymore."

"But I saw his letter. You said you were going to hire him."

"Originally yes, but unfortunately he died, so forget it."

"You were just lying to him."

"No, not entirely. I was indeed for this book in his hand, but I also indeed wanted to hire him, because I wanted to recreate that shipwreck and see if what was recorded in this book was true."

"So what's in this book?"

"Let's talk about that shipwreck first. For Jeff, that was the shadow of his life. He described that as a 'terrible storm,' but he told me that what really destroyed the fleet wasn't the storm on the ocean, but a terrifying existence that descended upon the sea."

Schiller frowned. He had a premonition, so he opened his mouth to ask: "What was that fleet transporting when it was sent?"

"Cultural relics," Old Siltek said: "The ship was full of looted cultural relics, many ancient scrolls and classics. The final destination of the fleet was England."

"Someone touched those classics, right?"

"Some people moved those classics, right?"

"Some sailor moved those classics, right?"

"Some ignorant sailor opened Pandora's box."

"Was it this Sailor Peek?"

"No, not him. This sailor's era was even older, but they encountered the same thing. Something descended."

"What was it?"

"I don't know. Even if I knew, I couldn't say it. The cause of the matter was that a sailor had sticky hands and stole things. The first mate wanted to investigate thoroughly. In order to figure out how much had been stolen, they checked all the cultural relics and classics."

"A sailor responsible for checking the classics, in order to ensure that there were no other things mixed in the books, flipped through them one by one. He found a somewhat special book among them, which recorded terrifying taboo knowledge."

"He couldn't read the content inside, but he accidentally remembered a small section of a spell, written in Latin, which could probably be spelled out."

"Then he used this spell?"

"That's right. Actually, he didn't intend to use it originally, but that damn thief framed him for stealing things. He was beaten half to death by the first mate, and he even chopped off two of his fingers. He held a grudge and wished that everyone who bullied him would die."

"He felt it was a black magic spell, so he simply used this spell to curse the first mate, stuffed the note with the spell into the first mate's pocket, and even carved it several times under his own bed board."

"And then?"

"And then there was no then. This sailor suddenly went crazy, and then they encountered an unprecedented storm. Everyone in the fleet died, and only Jeff survived."

"Was he the thief?"

"How did you know?"

"I know he was a gambler, and gambling games were often opened on ocean-going fleets. Being unable to pay back debts after losing in such a hopeless place would cost one's life. He would naturally take risks."

Old Siltek nodded and said: "That's right, he was the thief who framed others. The key lies in how he survived."

Schiller looked at him without speaking. Old Siltek just wanted to say something, but Schiller shook the diary in his hand and said: "Is this the classic Jeff stole at the time? Did he get the method to survive from here?"

"Nothing can be hidden from you." Old Siltek hummed and said: "That's right. That guy stumbled and bumped into it. He couldn't steal the large cultural relics, and the strangely shaped ones had nowhere to hide, so he could only steal some ancient books and scrolls, and hand them over to his creditors to pay off debts."

"After the storm descended, he had nowhere to retreat, but accidentally found the method to survive in the books he stole."

"What was it?"

"I don't know either. When I got this book, it was already incomplete. I suspect Jeff didn't want others to know this method."

Schiller raised the crowbar in his hand and said: "Don't make me say it a second time. Tell me, what was the method?"

Old Siltek swallowed and said: "I really don't know."

"Fine, it seems you want to die with your wife." After saying that, Schiller dragged Old Siltek back the way he came. He let out a earth-shattering scream, but finally gave in halfway.

"He really tore those things up! I haven't seen them either! However, from what he said, I deduced some clues……"

"For example?"

"He might not have done anything."

"Are you playing with me?"

"No, I mean, he might have knocked himself unconscious before the disaster came, or it's also possible he was drunk. In short, he had no consciousness."

Schiller understood in his heart. Peek's diary recorded that they also encountered a storm at sea, but later returned home successfully under the guidance of the lighthouse, which meant they survived that disaster.

All parts related to the disaster were torn out, but Peek kept complaining about the boredom of ocean voyages and said they often drank, so it wasn't hard to guess that on the night the disaster descended, Peek and a few good friends were dead drunk. When they woke up, they found everyone was dead, but they had escaped a disaster because they were drunk.

This also matched the setting of Cthulhu Mythos. Whether it was the Great Old Ones or Outer Gods, they weren't deliberately trying to kill the sailors. More of it was that the sailors came into contact with taboo knowledge and brought madness onto the ship.

The method to deal with some monsters in Cthulhu Mythos was indeed not to listen, not to look, and not to feel. As long as my intelligence was low enough, I couldn't understand any text, couldn't understand any taboo knowledge, and my sanity value naturally wouldn't drop. Schiller was willing to call this school of thought the "Aba-Aba Weakling School."

The chronological order of the whole thing might be:

A fleet where a sailor named Peek was located unfortunately encountered a disaster related to Cthulhu Mythos. Peek and his friends stumbled and bumped into escaping a disaster and recorded their experience in this diary.

Later, the diary was transported to England as a cultural relic by the team where Jeff was located, and it happened that this fleet encountered a similar disaster. Jeff lost his head in gambling and wanted to steal the ancient books and scrolls to pay off debts. He happened to get this diary and, at a critical moment, deduced the method Peek used to survive the disaster, using this method to successfully survive.

Jeff, who returned, became the only lucky survivor of the shipwreck. People felt he might be a monster resurrected from the dead or the root of misfortune. No one was willing to hire him anymore, leading to his poverty.

Old Siltek, who investigated this matter, contacted Jeff in the capacity of his fleet boss, offered to help him solve his difficulties and re-hire him, thereby obtaining this diary from his hands. ===== CHAPTER 3197 =====