Chapter 283: The Rain of Whispers

A dream?

Green leaned on the desk, straightening his back and waist, which had grown slightly stiff from lying prone for too long; his neck turned stiffly, like a hinge long without oil.

He must have been asleep on the desk for quite a while; wax dripped from the soot-blackened candlestick, solidifying and hanging upside down in the cold wind, while the wick's remaining faint glow trembled, ready to fall.

"The clinic recently..." The letter spread before him bore the content he had just read: an oral medication, said to be quite effective, was flowing out from the clinic, with a very limited range and a secret formula.

A few scattered droplets mixed with the muggy night wind drifted into the room, carrying a scent like background noise.

It was hard to define it as a stench. Green had been to other cities; their rainy days mostly exuded a smell of metabolic byproducts, as if the entire city were a hemiplegic giant composed of crowds and wood and stone, lying in place and gnawing at its surroundings. The larger the body, the heavier the bedsores.

But Dunling was different. Things unsuited for the city's surface had, for a hundred years without change, been carried by the water deep into the underground system.

Few residents pondered where those things went or what they looked like, or simply believed the space below was endless.

During the rainy season, the rising water level would lift a certain scent, emitting it from every crack connecting above and below; it was stale, chilling, and evoked the buried bones in underground cemeteries.

A city built upon a vast tomb; those parts abandoned by time had never truly died, always lying beneath their feet, settling and fermenting into a form no one could imagine.

That scent was the long exhalation of the dead, passing through stone-lined channels, carrying a tremor to the ears of those who became aware of its existence.

"..."

Green staggered back swiftly, kicked the chair into the unlit corner of the room, and casually grabbed a table knife from the uncollected dishes, hiding it behind his back.

He heard it again; somewhere beyond the reach of the light, a sound had been made.

A mature man's voice, utterly without warning, as if he had stood in that very spot throughout Green's sleep, waiting silently for him to wake and make a sound announcing his presence.

The kicked chair vanished into the shadow beyond the candlelight, collided with wooden furniture, and a teacup tipped over, falling to the floor and rolling to his feet.

Experience told him there were no footsteps of someone dodging mixed in; there was no person who had infiltrated the room, or perhaps it was an intangible, immaterial, untouchable ghost.

Green rolled up the letter he had already finished reading, pressed it above the faint candle flame, and in the brief darkness, pricked up his ears to catch any movement.

In an instant, while feeling the heat lick his skin, the light flared brightly, and the flames wrapping the half-rolled paper tube bathed the entire room in a dim yellow.

A simple bed, an overturned bedside table, water cups scattered across the floor, and a cabinet serving as both bookcase and wardrobe; these were all the things in the room, with no place to hide.

The door was locked from the inside, presumably by Brother Wading when he left; only two people held the keys.

The direction from which the sound had just come was the head of the bed, just like in the dream; like water without a source, it flowed from the void.

"What is it..." Green shook the paper into the fireplace, added two more logs to make the room brighter and warmer, yet the flames brought none of the usual comfort.

His mind should have been clear long ago, yet he still felt as if trapped in a bizarre dream, with something prowling around. Even though this place was less than two hundred paces in a straight line from the Sanctuary, the Father's protection could no longer reach here.

But that did not mean any demon or monster could come strolling about. The Father's servants would teach a lesson to anyone pretending to be a spirit, or whatever else it might be—provided they had help.

Picking up the sword enshrined beneath the holy emblem, Green reached into his pocket for the key, but found nothing. The pocket felt light and empty; the key had vanished without a trace.

Relying on memory, he quickly searched several habitual spots: behind the door, on the desk, and in the drawers. The only two small objects capable of opening the door had simply disappeared.

He could not recall when he had last been unable to find his keys. For someone with relatively low material desires, adding unnecessary clutter to life was rare; his dwelling had long maintained a simplicity bordering on rudeness, making it hard to imagine where such an important item could be hidden to escape notice.

After patting his robes thoroughly, he finally confirmed the key was truly lost; it was just that unlucky, disappearing at the worst possible moment.

This also meant he was locked inside this sealed space. The nearest personnel capable of providing force were two floors below, the Church's own armed forces, likely patrolling a fixed route.

He could shout loudly; within two minutes, the outside would be filled with a fully armed guard.

Yet some concerns lingered in his mind. On one hand, Green was unsure whether doing so would scare off a potential enemy, making the situation resemble an incompetent superior disrupting patrol arrangements.

On the other hand, his revelatory talent issued a vague warning, a mist-like warning—extremely hazy, seeping into and staining every inch of his body, yet vast and boundless.

It was as if, should he make even the slightest transgressive move, the omnipresent mist would turn toward this spot all at once.

The raindrops outside the window grew denser, trending from light rain toward a summer downpour; rainwater accumulated in the gutter at the height, channeling into the mouths of crouching gargoyles.

Streams of water cascaded down from above, falling toward the square, producing a gloomy sound like a small waterfall.

While he was torn between two choices, the light and shadow at the window shifted; the colors of the stained-glass Madonna window printed onto the roof: a blue robe, a creamy-yellow infant, a brilliant halo, stretching thinly over the beams, rotating with the moving light source.

Had a night patrol passed by outside? That would make things easier; as long as someone looked up, he could signal them directly with hand gestures.

Green hurried to the window, pushed the documents on the desk to a spot where they wouldn't get wet, and opened the window pane.

Pitch black.

Cold raindrops stung his face, so cold it made one doubt the current season, producing an inevitable sense of disorientation.

Disregarding this discomfort, Green looked down, trying to spot the watch patrol that had just passed, but the light source was gone. Like a candlestick dropped into a pool, it instantly sank into the bottomless rainy night, vanishing without a trace.

Thinking back... it appeared just as it had vanished, without any process, then disappeared.

He was somewhat unsure whether he was still in a dream; it was so real, yet something felt off. But if he was, then from what had he just awakened?

The water streams spewed by the gargoyles continued to fall, showing a tendency to increase further; the sound of the water striking below was not so noisy, as if landing in water of some depth rather than on a hard surface. Even for a summer downpour, this was among the heaviest he could remember.

A question surfaced in his thoughts: with such heavy rain, what patrol could possibly pass below holding torches?