Chapter 216: Rubbings

Although the Tribunal's current duties were 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 explicitly barred entry, save for a handful of restricted zones.

Much of this stemmed from the Church's deep-rooted presence in the region; locals generally revered clergy, and those wearing the double-winged white robe often received extra trust and preferential treatment.

As a man who strictly adhered to doctrine, Grein never took this for granted, always returning unfamiliar greetings with the proper religious salute.

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 equal regard for all humanity was embodied by His earthly messengers.

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

Of course, this did not mean acting in bad taste. Merely lifting the robe slightly to reveal weapons no ordinary cleric carried was enough to instantly shift the attitude of even the most hostile shopkeeper.

A curio shop nestled in an alley, two turns away from the street, was where the informant reported Morrison had purchased the manuscript.

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

Wading scanned the shopkeeper without concern and followed Grein 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. Objects were haphazardly piled on the tabletop and shelves, all sharing one common trait—they appeared old.

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 uncleaned or deliberately left dusty—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, Grein pulled out a book and opened it.

The yellowed paper nearly snapped from the rough handling; the spine emitted a faint crack, 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 like "arranging candles in specific positions at fixed times," relying on external natural forces.

If intended to attract students from the Faxue Academy, it was wildly off-target; based on his knowledge of those professors, they would likely find it uninteresting.

This clearly fell within the Church's condemned category of "superstition," existing on the borderline of mere verbal warnings; had it not even vaguely touched upon medicine, it might have been seized and sealed.

The shopkeeper's reluctance to let clergy enter likely stemmed from this very reason.

In truth, it went further: they knew of similar shops that collected anything likely to spark a buyer's curiosity—anything that looked aged—sourcing an eclectic array of dubious goods.

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 items' origins.

Picking up a ring at random, Grein 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 quickened immediately; his unpleasant merchant's face broke into 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 an offering—including some of Grein's colleagues in the Tribunal—but not Grein himself.

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

As usual, after the second refusal of money, the man's anxiety became visibly palpable. Gelinshishitichu his request: he wished to know what exactly the Faxue Academy professors had bought from here.

The shopkeeper may have initially intended to pretend he remembered nothing, but when Grein warmly grasped his hand and invited him to accompany them to a place where memories could be awakened—until he remembered—he quickly begged for time to sort through what he could recall.

As a dealer, he had to examine the manuscripts to assess their value. He confirmed the informant's account: all the stolen pages came from the same book, consisting primarily of the author's research notes on architecture.

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

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

Logically, reaching this point should have been sufficient; they could issue a warning and temporarily leave this minor shop alone, then turn their attention to the Faxue Academy as the primary target. But Grein's doubts did not dissipate—they deepened.

While the Tribunal might not be the most knowledgeable about the Faxue Academy, they were certainly among the second most informed. These were people who risked everything to pursue 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—there was no loss in trying.

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

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

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

According to him, these were later-acquired loose pages, intended to be sold at a higher price to the professor. The torn edges clearly differed from the Church's own collected, rebound old books—they were damaged by being forcibly removed from their original binding.

He intended to sell the same item twice. Even though this deceit conveniently served Grein's purpose, it still provoked disgust.

Carefully pinching the pages, Grein felt an unusual flicker of curiosity—what content could possibly interest Professor Morrison?

Their condition was surprisingly good; the thin paper retained its resilience. The script was written in Northese, with only minor differences in vocabulary and grammar from the modern form, ensuring basic readability. The relatively recent date limited its value.

What made this book different 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, jotting down notes for his own amusement, occasionally sketching rough diagrams and smearing large patches of black ink—like pressing paper onto a floor where an ink bottle had spilled. This made the already unclean pages even more chaotic, disrupting the layout.

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

To this end, he even descended underground to make rubbings of the sewers—places few cared to explore—and claimed their complexity rivaled that of the streets above.

Among the various rubbings, one page would inevitably capture the reader's attention.

Unlike the others, which clearly showed rectangular outlines, this was a shape with only obtuse angles—broken white lines in the ink formed a pattern that, at first glance, bore no resemblance to stone, but evoked something alien emerging from dark water.

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

Even though Grein 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 indeterminate—along with 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.

Grein 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 almost no similarity, as if convincing himself they were merely idle sketches made during breaks from construction work.

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 he had read to records of heresies, Grein swiftly reviewed all heresies the Church had dealt with.

Typically, beyond the trivial scams of fools deceiving fools, organized heretical faiths tended to have a system, borrowing from or even directly copying one another—or even the Holy Scriptures—and often had similar artifacts.

The pattern in the rubbing was clearly no random scribble, yet after scouring his memory, he found no comparable reference—it belonged to a heretical system never recorded by the Church.

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

The moment the two returned to the church, the order reached the most critical informant; they began waiting patiently.

Half a month later, he received the result—

A fire. And the informant's death.

End of Chapter