By the time the two arrived at the Seventh Agency branch, it was still a few minutes before nine o'clock.
People were bustling to and fro in the lobby.
Every now and then, the message tubes made a thudding sound, spitting copper cylinders filled with documents into the inbox.
Cecil did not go upstairs immediately.
She stopped at the fork leading to the conference room and the underground storage area, as if suddenly remembering something.
“Teacher, there is an Origin Web crystal cluster in the branch's underground storage room.”
“Hmm?”
“It was stripped from the brain of a sea beast.”
Her tone was calm.
“After that thing died, its internal circuits were still reorganizing themselves.”
Orphal, who was about to step onto the stairs, immediately pulled his foot back.
“Reorganizing themselves?”
The sleepiness in the old man's eyes vanished instantly.
Origin Web circuits relied on spirituality to exist.
The sea beast was already dead, yet the crystal cluster was still changing. How was this any different from a corpse lying in a coffin and still swapping its own brain?
“Second basement level, third storage room.”
Cecil helpfully provided the location.
Orphal turned around immediately.
“Go ahead with the meeting first. I'll go take a look.”
“Take your time.”
“How can I take my time with something like this?”
The old man walked toward the underground passage without looking back, the hem of his robe nearly knocking over the documents in an investigator's hands.
“Meetings happen every month.”
“But a sea beast that still uses its brain after death doesn't come around often.”
Cecil watched her teacher disappear down the stairs, not a trace of guilt on her face.
She hadn't intentionally sent her teacher away.
She had simply offered an option.
As for how quickly the old man chose it, that was his own problem.
Cecil turned and went upstairs, pushing open the heavy door to Conference Room One.
Both sides of the long table were already packed with people.
The air was thick with the scent of tobacco, ink, and spirit-blocking potions.
The curtains were drawn tight, and a ring of sealing runes glowed on the doorframe, blocking out even the sound of footsteps in the hallway.
Director Breed sat at the head of the table, a black-wax-sealed evidence bag placed before him.
Deputy Director Taylor was handing out copies of the post-incident review.
The sheets of paper fell onto the table one by one with soft thuds, yet they felt like notices of accountability being handed to everyone.
Sir Vere sat alone on the other side.
Xia'an and Dabu had already been reassigned by Cecil, leaving only his deputy behind him. He looked rather shorthanded.
The captains of the communications, field, and pollution control teams were also present.
These people usually managed their own departments and rarely sat together so neatly.
But on the night of the sea beast invasion, erroneous orders had flowed through every single one of their departments.
None of them could absolve themselves.
Because everyone around this table could be there to find the mole.
Or they could be the mole themselves.
Cecil sat down in an empty seat as if nothing were amiss.
Breed glanced at his pocket watch.
“Everyone is here. Let us begin.”
Taylor opened a ledger with blackened edges.
“The accountant of the Blue Sail Trading Company has already confessed.”
“They used fifteen gold crowns to bribe a Harbor Authority scribe, and obtained blank passes under the guise of emergency pollution materials.”
A field team captain frowned.
“Fifteen gold crowns?”
This amount of money couldn't even buy a decent carriage in Hastings Port, yet it could buy a scribe's conscience.
Clearly, the latter's maintenance costs were much lower.
“Who gave it to them?” Sir Vere asked.
“Simon Laird's assistant.”
Taylor flipped open the requisition records.
“A week before the sea beast invasion, he took out twelve emergency passes and only returned ten.”
“The serial number of one of those passes appeared on several transit slips of the Blue Sail Trading Company.”
“Another serial number authorized the evacuation order for the pollution isolation team.”
“So it was him?” the field team captain asked.
“It only proves that the passes came from his hands,” Taylor shook his head. “These passes can bypass transit audits, allowing goods to pass through the blockade. But they couldn't have simultaneously dictated the East Bank reinforcements, the alarm levels, and the shift change times for the pollution control unit. An assistant doesn't have the authority to make four departments act like fools on the same night.”
No one at the table refuted this.
The words were blunt.
But compared to those who died that night, they were already very polite.
Sir Vere tapped the record with his knuckles.
“What about the messenger captured from the Blue Sail Trading Company?”
“His memory has been artificially segmented,” Taylor pulled out another interrogation report. “When the interrogators asked about the first matter, he could still answer. But by the time they asked about the second matter, he could no longer remember who he was in the first. The only clue we can piece together so far is an alias.”
“Gray.”
“Physical features?”
“None.”
“Drop-off location?”
“None.”
“Voice?”
“None either.”
Sir Vere looked at him blankly.
“Then that name really is perfectly isolated.”
“At least the spelling is complete,” Taylor said.
This was one of the few silver linings in the entire interrogation report.
Breed did not join in on this worthless consolation.
He reached out to break the black wax on the evidence bag and pulled out an identification badge.
The metal had turned white from being soaked in seawater, with dried black mud clinging to its edges.
Most of the photo remaining on the badge had been eroded by water, leaving only a blurry face.
“Gray has been found.”
Breed placed the ID badge in the center of the table.
“Early this morning, the Harbor Authority people found his body in the East Bank drainage canal. The time of death was the night of the sea beast invasion. His spiritual body was destroyed, so we cannot use 【Speak with Dead】.”
The room fell completely silent.
They had investigated for days and finally found someone who could connect the clues.
But the man had died before they even began their search.
He had even died with thorough preparation.
Cecil looked at the ID badge.
“What about divination?”
“We tried three times,” Breed's voice grew heavier, “but the branch had activated the wartime 【Official Seal Concealment】 that night.”
The faces of several captains turned pale simultaneously.
Cecil, of course, knew this procedure well.
Under wartime conditions, all orders issued through the dispatch desk would be stamped over by the branch's official seal.
Only the branch's collective spiritual mark remained on the document, leaving no trace of the specific issuer's causality.
This way, even if the enemy intercepted the official document, they could not trace a transfer order to curse the commanding officers.
There was nothing wrong with the system.
The problem was that it protected everyone.
Including the one who shouldn't have been protected.
“The Destiny Advisors at the headquarters could only use the ID badge, the Blue Sail Trading Company's transit slips, and the dispatch records as mediums for retrospective tracing.”
Taylor pushed the divination report to the center of the table.
“The first two attempts pointed to the deceased and the Blue Sail Trading Company.”
“Nothing beyond what we already know.”
“For the third attempt, we used the stamped stub of the evacuation order.”
“We asked: who made this order officially take effect?”
Having said this, he paused.
Everyone looked down at the end of the report.
No face appeared in the divination.
No name appeared either.
The Destiny Advisor only saw the deceased assistant holding the pass and walking through a door stamped with the branch's official seal.
Behind the door, there was no one.
A stamping machine stood in the center of the room.
Then, the stamping lever fell on its own.
“Click.”
The report had even recorded the sound from the divination.
And on the wall behind the machine hung a clock.
The hands did not move forward.
Instead, they turned backward by exactly twelve minutes.
No one spoke immediately.
Sir Vere was the first to break the silence.
“Dead men cannot give orders.”
“And machines do not choose the most fatal twelve minutes on their own.”
“Someone copied the deceased's pass serial number,” Cecil said, “and set the command in the stamping machine in advance.”
“He backdated the registration time by twelve minutes.”
“Once the machine read the time, it would assume the review had already concluded, stamping it immediately and sending the evacuation order to the pollution isolation team.”
The communications captain couldn't help but curse under his breath.
What they had received that night was not a clearly problematic fake order.
It was an official document with the correct serial number, correct authority, and even a review time that appeared perfectly normal.
“What the divination saw was the moment the order took effect.”
Cecil raised her eyes.
“If we want to find the person who set it, we must find that stamping machine.”
Breed neither agreed nor disagreed.
He took out another blank pass folded into a tiny piece from the evidence bag.
“This was found in the compartment of the deceased's boot sole.”
The waterproof paper was folded to the size of a fingernail, and when unfolded, it still carried the rancid stench of the drainage canal.
A faint three-toothed crescent pattern was pressed along the edge of the paper.
On the rightmost tooth, there was a pinprick-sized chip.
Taylor pushed the evidence under the lamp.
“All active stamping machines have been checked.”
“None of them match this chip.”
“What about the old equipment?” Cecil asked.
“The branch's equipment catalog is missing two pages,” Breed replied, “precisely the section on wartime backup stamping machines.”
The field team captain sneered.
“Another coincidence.”
“Coincidences that occur in succession within the Agency usually have another name,” Cecil said. “Arrangement.”
The pass.
The corpse.
The twelve minutes run backward.
And an old machine missing from the catalog.
The other party was not only familiar with the branch's regulations, but they also knew how to use every single regulation to cover their own tracks.
Taylor proactively pushed the pass toward Cecil.
“The original will be safer in your keeping.”
His movements were steady and natural.
Leaving this piece of evidence in any of the branch's evidence rooms would be as good as telling the mole that they had already traced the stamping machine.
Cecil did not decline.
She opened her portable evidence case, placed the pass into a compartment, and then sealed it with her own spiritual seal.
A pale blue pattern flashed and faded.
From this moment on, if anyone other than herself forced it open, it would leave a trace.
Breed looked around both sides of the long table.
“The public investigation into the sea beast invasion will be temporarily closed as a case of infiltration by the Mist Veil Society and bribery by the Blue Sail Trading Company.”
“The internal investigation will be classified as top secret.”
“From now on, cease all public tracing of the old stamping machine.”
“Anyone who publicly investigates it further is alerting the mole.”
No one raised any objections.
This order was equivalent to demanding they continue working as usual despite knowing a knife was hidden within the branch.
Not just as usual.
They had to pretend they hadn't been stabbed.
Just then, a knock sounded at the door.
The sealing runes glowed with a faint light.
Breed raised his hand to unlock the door.
An investigator pushed the door open and entered in a hurry.
“Director, the on-site verification team from the Storm Inquisition has arrived.”
“They brought temporary authorization from the Maritime Advisory Board, demanding access to all files regarding the sea beast invasion to complete the official risk assessment for the second hearing.”
Around the long table, several people raised their heads simultaneously.
Cecil knit her brows.
“When did they arrive?”
“Last night,” the investigator panted, “while the Council meeting was still underway.”
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