Chapter 216: Rubbings

Although the current work of the Tribunal was vastly different from what he had imagined, being a member came with one distinct advantage—throughout Dunling and the surrounding villages and estates, few places openly barred entry, save for a handful of areas.

Much of this stemmed from the Church's deep-rooted presence in the region, where residents generally held clergy in high esteem; wearing the double-winged white robe often earned extra trust and preferential treatment.

As a man who adhered strictly to doctrine, Green never took this for granted, always returning unfamiliar greetings with the proper ecclesiastical gesture.

The Church's foundation lay in this very principle: the Father's Gospel was too difficult for ordinary people to comprehend, but the Father's impartiality toward humanity was embodied by His earthly messengers.

Yet for the obstinate and unyielding, gentleness and mercy did not soften them—they only emboldened them.

Of course, this did not mean one should act indecorously. Merely lifting the robe slightly to reveal weapons no ordinary cleric carried was enough to swiftly shift the attitude of even the most cold-shouldered shopkeeper.

A relic shop nestled in an alley, two turns away from the street, was where the informant reported Mo Lisen had acquired the copied manuscript.

Clearly, it never sought to attract ordinary customers, but relied instead on whispered rumors within a niche circle of those with specific needs.

Brother Wading gave the shopkeeper a casual glance before following Green into the cramped interior.

Two rows of three-tiered wooden shelves lined the walls, occupying most of the space; in the center stood a thick, long table. Numerous objects were haphazardly piled on the tabletop and shelves, all sharing the common trait of appearing aged.

Uncommonly shaped ceramic vessels, metal castings with indistinguishable green and red rust, stone carvings of varying sizes, roughly polished gemstone ornaments, and storage boxes—all left uncleaned or deliberately preserved in dusty, antique states—filled the air with the choking scent of a sealed tomb.

The most valuable items were perhaps a few books kept separately, surrounded by bags of lime for drying.

Ignoring the shopkeeper's half-spoken protest, Green pulled out a book and opened it.

The brittle, yellowed pages nearly snapped from the rough handling; the spine emitted a faint cracking sound, some pages stuck together and refused to separate, others dried to the point of crumbling at the slightest bend.

It contained content on treating illnesses—hardly even qualifying as medicine, since its remedies drew from wildly imagined, forcibly linked ingredients, alongside practices relying on external natural forces, such as "arranging candles in specific positions at fixed times."

If intended to attract medical college clients, it was wildly off-target; based on his knowledge of those professors, they would likely have no interest.

This clearly fell within the Church's condemned category of "superstition," hovering at the edge of mere verbal warnings; had it not barely touched upon medicine, it might have been seized and sealed.

The shopkeeper's reluctance to let clergy enter was likely due to precisely this reason.

In truth, it went further: they knew of similar shops that collected anything likely to spark a collector's interest—anything that looked old—sources of such varied goods were dubious.

The most direct and reliable supply, however, came from underground.

Desecrators who disturbed the dead for money often ended up selling their loot here, where it was openly displayed on shelves, while sellers would insist they knew nothing of the origins.

Picking up a ring at random, Green carefully explained to the shopkeeper how the soil residue clinging to the gem and setting was unmistakably linked to a specific cemetery—and far too fresh.

The man's heartbeat rose quickly; his unpleasant merchant's face glistened with sweat. He repeatedly wiped his forehead with a silk handkerchief, hinting he could donate money to the Father to prove his piety.

Many might gladly accept such offerings—including some colleagues in the Tribunal—but Green was certainly not among them.

He merely needed to give the shopkeeper a little incentive to remember who had sold the goods. This was information ordinary informants could never obtain.

As usual, after the second refusal of money, the man's tension became visibly palpable. Green made his request: he wished to know exactly what the medical college professors had bought from here.

The shopkeeper may have initially intended to pretend he remembered nothing, but when Green firmly grasped his hand and invited him to a quiet place to stay until his memory returned, he quickly begged for a moment to organize the information he could provide.

As the intermediary, he had to examine the manuscript to assess its value. He confirmed the informant's account: all the stolen pages came from the same book, its core content being the author's compiled notes on architecture.

Its value was mediocre. As one of the oldest cities, Dunling's architecture spanned vast eras, both above and below ground; finding such material was trivial—so abundant that architecture scholars had begun forbidding students from using it as a lazy thesis topic.

Folk compilations were even worse; many merely recorded styles without historical verification, likely the idle pastimes of wealthy amateurs.

Logically, reaching this point should have been sufficient; one could issue a warning and temporarily leave this minor shop untouched, then turn to the medical college as the primary target. But Green's doubts did not vanish—they deepened.

The Tribunal might not be the most knowledgeable about the medical college, but it was certainly among the second most. These were people who risked everything to rush down forbidden paths; it made no sense for them to buy irrelevant books while focusing on a new direction.

This answer was unsatisfactory. He decided to press harder—after all, he had nothing to lose.

Green shook his head in disappointment and turned to leave. Brother Wading understood, seizing the shopkeeper and dragging him out; the hard armor and excessive force made him cry out in pain.

More than physical pain, the psychological terror was worse—clearly, not everyone could bring themselves to hang themselves for profit.

This shattered his final psychological barrier. He frantically rummaged through a storage room in the back and pulled out several sheets of paper, no longer daring to hesitate.

According to him, these were later-collected loose pages, intended to be sold at a higher price to that professor. The torn edges were clearly damaged—not like the old, rebound books in the Church's collection, but torn directly from their bindings.

He planned to sell the same item twice. Even though this petty trick conveniently served Green's purpose, it still provoked outrage.

Carefully pinching the pages, Green felt an unusual flicker of curiosity—what content could possibly interest Professor Mo Lisen?

Their condition was surprisingly good; the thin paper still retained resilience in his fingers. The script was written in Northic, differing only slightly in vocabulary and grammar from modern usage—readability was adequately preserved, suggesting a relatively recent date, which limited its value.

What made this book unusual was that it did not merely collect ordinary buildings—it also studied functional structures: river embankments, aqueducts, bridges, quarries, even sewers.

He collected these common yet overlooked urban elements, recording them for his own amusement, occasionally sketching rough diagrams and smearing large patches of dark, muddy ink—as if pressing the paper onto a floor where an ink bottle had spilled. This made the already unclean pages even more chaotic, disrupting layout.

Only after careful reading did Green understand their meaning: the author, feeling words alone insufficient, pressed paper against stone surfaces, inked them, and made rubbings—hoping readers could, without leaving their homes, touch the bricks and stones of Dunling.

To this end, he even descended underground to rub the sewers—rarely studied by anyone—and claimed their complexity rivaled that of the streets above.

Among all the rubbings, one page would inevitably catch the reader's eye.

Unlike the others, which showed discernible rectangular outlines, this was a pattern of only obtuse angles—broken white lines forming a shape that, at first glance, bore no resemblance to stone, but evoked something alien rising from black water.

Several interlocking regular hexagons hovered between textual transcriptions; the extending lines indicated they were not isolated, occupying a width beyond the reach of the rubbing paper somewhere underground.

Even though Green had grown up here and had studied countless Church archives, he had never seen such an architectural structure—neither in foundations nor walls. It was like suddenly lifting a floorboard to discover a beehive built inside a home he thought he knew completely, yet without a single hum.

Within the "beehive" were patterns nearly fused with the stone texture, but blurred by water erosion or the author's crude rubbing technique—some areas softened like melted wax, others sharply geometric with straight lines and curved arcs.

Through the rubbings, they were brought to the reader—real, yet uncertain—alongside the conflicting, contradictory thoughts of the craftsmen, who tried to replicate something, switching endlessly between incompatible patterns, never forming a complete shape.

The remnants of this contradictory design, like chrysalises forever unable to emerge, did not fully die; they remained frozen in struggle within the hexagonal cells.

Green suddenly snapped the book shut, startled to realize he had been distracted by the rubbing, neglecting the written text.

The patterns within the hexagonal rubbings resided on the page, yet seemed to extend beyond it, breaking free of form, conveying information distorted twice over but still unextinguished.

He reopened the book, forcing his gaze to avoid the shapes, reading the author's sparse notes—forcing connections to decorative styles with no resemblance, convincing himself it was merely a pastime project undertaken during construction breaks.

Based on his experience, such abstract, seemingly symbolic markings were often closely tied to behavior warranting vigilance.

【Heretical Worship】

Shifting his thoughts from the scattered books to records of heresies, Green swiftly reviewed all heresies the Church had dealt with.

Typically, beyond the trivial scams of fools deceiving fools, organized heresies usually had a system, borrowing from or even directly copying each other—or even the Holy Scriptures—and often had similar artifacts.

The rubbing's pattern was clearly not random, yet after scouring his memory, he found no comparable reference—it was from a heretical system never recorded by the Church.

Green realized he might have caught the tail of something significant—a potentially excellent, though possibly immature, opportunity requiring a long line and patient fishing.

The order reached the most critical informant the moment the two returned to the Renhuidao Sect, and they began to wait patiently.

Half a month later, he received the result—

A great fire and news of the informant's death.

End of this chapter.