Chapter 353: Violent Vomiting

Following Field's direction, it was easy to locate that highly irregular ledger entry.

Someone, or rather a group, had exchanged an entire set of ritual vessels for a large quantity of grain and the church's livestock.

This was a losing business deal; ritual items certainly would not use impure, low-grade silver, so the material cost alone was not low, let alone the long manual production cycle of professional goldsmiths and silversmiths. Even churches in wealthy regions might not be willing to prepare a full set.

After all, it was something used only a few times a year; if truly needed, even silver-plated or gold-plated versions would suffice.

So, where in the diocese could one possibly produce a set of pure silver ritual vessels? The answer to the question hardly needed guessing anymore.

"The monastery? What were they doing here?"

Dominic touched the wrinkled text, like chaotic, interwoven cart ruts in the mud, heading toward the unknown.

"So it's strange, isn't it? Even if grain reserves were insufficient, there were plenty of other larger villages near the main roads to go to; there was no need to come here to split a share." Field was greatly puzzled. "They took everything, almost emptying the place."

Only because of this set of ritual vessels would the church's administrators have risked depleting their entire stock, facing the danger of running out of food.

If any accident occurred before the harvest season, the trouble would be immense.

"And why exchange ritual vessels for it?" The most incomprehensible part lay here; it was equivalent to a farmer exchanging his livelihood, his farmland, for a bit of temporary grain—a desperate act at the brink of survival.

Moreover, as clergy doing this added a layer of moral and faith-related issues. Secularizing items whose value could not be measured in money constituted blasphemy against the sacred; if the impact was severe, it would invite punishment from the Church.

Unless under special circumstances, such as war or famine making survival difficult, or to maintain necessary charitable works, would the matter be open for discussion.

Yet Field could not think of any urgent situation the monastery could possibly have encountered.

"What do you think?" He turned to Dominic, who was fully immersed in the text, as if something were growing and spreading from within it, entangling his gaze and pulling him into that time.

His companion said nothing, but Field felt the other must have read something, just as before: clues that were intermittent and ambiguous, fatefully leading them toward a seemingly arranged direction.

Unease sprouted in his heart; though he still had not found its source, the holy emblem hanging above his head offered no comfort, instead giving him a sense of discomfort from being looked down upon.

"Something's wrong." Dominic massaged the area between his inner eye corner and the bridge of his nose with two fingers, flipped one hand backward to a blank page with no records, then flipped back to the original spot.

"I certainly know something is off; I want to know what you think."

"A convoy, not one specifically sent to collect stored grain." Thanks to previous experience with food procurement and manor management, it was easy to see that the grain offered by the church was a drop in the bucket for the consumption of an entire monastery; when averaged per person, there was very little left.

Field nodded in agreement; since their views matched, it was very strange what this convoy had come for.

"What if it was only for the convoy's use?"

"Not much." Field roughly calculated in his head; based on their convoy of nearly forty people when they arrived, it would only last about half a month, not counting fodder for the livestock. "If there weren't many people, it would be enough for quite a stretch of the journey."

"But what were they after? They couldn't possibly come all this way just to make a losing business deal, unless they were just passing through and their destination wasn't here."

"They were in a hurry." Dominic added.

"Hurried enough to set off without proper preparation, requiring mid-journey repairs; hurried enough to have no time to gather funds or stop, so they simply exchanged ritual vessels directly for supplies."

"Is that reasonable?"

Of course it wasn't; the more he thought about it, the more it felt bizarre.

Dominic quickly flipped through the entire notebook back and forth several more times, finding no second similar record; this instead confirmed something for him, making him urgent: "We must figure out what is going on."

"I doubt it." Field held a pessimistic view on this. He was probably suffering from an illusion from researching data, treating this place like the library of the Cathedral of Our Lady, thinking he could find cross-referenced materials to conduct research from different angles.

Even if there were any, they were not cut from that cloth.

"Flip through again; perhaps someone else happened to record it?" Dominic's knuckles pressing on his nose bridge were almost embedded, about to bruise purple, yet he himself was completely unaware, only urgently pulling out another old book and searching quickly.

The sense of unease increased. Field's mood sank; his companion's behavior made him inexplicably recall the owner of those notebooks, obsessively throwing himself into the pursuit of something ethereal and intangible.

However, he could not forcibly stop him; after all, they were only peers, and without a clear reason, persuasion was the only option.

"Pity; twenty-odd years have passed; there's probably no hope."

So much time had passed; the people in the church had changed completely; the current administrators might not even know the details.

"Wait, what did you just say?"

A casual remark caught Dominic's attention; his eyes, lingering among the old papers, suddenly turned over.

"Uh, no hope?"

"No, the sentence before that."

"I said... twenty-odd years?"

"Yes, that's it." Dominic flipped back to the record at high speed, checked the year, and pointed out excitedly, "To be precise, it was about twenty-one years ago, the record from June of that year."

"What does this mean?"

"Twenty-odd years ago; think about when that was."

Under the gaze of those bright eyes, Field finally found the key point the other was hinting at: "The monastery? The monastery moved away around that time."

Dominic became even more excited; Field seemed to see that flame-like, illusory light burning in his eyes again, blazing and leaping, just like his leaping thoughts at this moment, bursting forth related details from memory corners, filling out the speculation from an incredible angle.

"I remember the Baron mentioned they left in great haste, even ignoring the half-ripe wheat in the fields... the season matches too."

Overly fluctuating emotions seemed to worsen the headache; his skin flushed red, and sweat streamed down his temples.

In the damp, cold weather, facing the window light, Field saw a faint white mist rising between the other's hair tips.

"There is no second record here; was it not recorded, or did they not return?" Dominic's speech rate was accelerating, his articulation becoming less fluent; something was rolling in his throat, interfering with his expression.

His condition looked somewhat strange, like a damaged wind instrument, playing a made-up, fast-paced, off-key tune intermittently but persistently.

A pathological thought hovering between reason and impulse forced him to think and express, fighting against his body's discomfort.

Finally, the urge to express could not suppress the physiological reaction.

"Ugh!"

Before Field could react, Dominic vomited violently; that nausea made him unable to care about the precious paper records before him, as if he were trying to pull his stomach out through his esophagus.

The lunch he had barely eaten had long been fully digested; only a little tea water remained, mixed with plant fragments and roots wrapped in mucus.

The projectile vomiting quickly emptied the digestive tract, yet relief did not come; until yellow-green bile-like fluid was vomited out, his lips turning cyanotic from difficulty breathing, and he and his chair toppled to the floor.

"Damn it, damn it! Someone help!"

Field, flustered, turned the patient's head to one side to prevent him from choking on his own vomit.

(End of this chapter)