“Where is the logic in that?”
Dr. Hall looked at Elias, her face filled with disapproval.
One hundred and thirty-six wounded people being used as eyes. A watchman dragged into a dream and ultimately vanishing, just because he wrote a few names for others.
“Do you know who did it?”
Elias did not answer immediately.
His finger was still pressed against the drawing Robert had left behind.
When it came to an organization related to Moon Bay, possessing bizarre methods, and fond of using ordinary people as ritual consumables, he would naturally suspect his old friends first.
The Mist Veil Society.
If Elias were the Divine Scion worshiped by the Mist Veil Society...
What should he do if he couldn't see Moon Bay?
Have his subordinates find a group of living people to look for him.
If one person couldn't see clearly, find a hundred.
If living people couldn't enter, let them enter in their dreams.
Look at the coast first.
Then the waterways.
And finally, all the way to the lighthouse entrance.
This line of thinking was crude, wicked, and showed an utter disregard for human life.
It was indeed exactly like something cultists would do.
But as Elias stared at the unlit lighthouse in the drawing, he felt something was off.
The Mist Veil Society had just occupied that lighthouse.
They had set up a ritual there and used the reef as a temporary base.
No matter how idle they were, they wouldn't leave only to find over a hundred people to redraw a map to get back.
If that were the case, the Mist Veil Society's most pressing issue wouldn't be Elias, but the memory problems of its own members.
But then again, cultists' mental states weren't necessarily normal to begin with.
Who knew if they would think that taking such a massive detour felt exceptionally ceremonial.
In any case.
This dream mapping didn't seem to have any practical meaning for the Mist Veil Society.
“It's just a guess,” Elias finally said.
In the absence of evidence, suspicion was best kept to oneself. Speaking too definitively would only set oneself up for embarrassment later.
He looked down again, piecing several drawings together.
“You said this is a Moon Bay nautical chart. Who verified it?”
“There are a few old sailors in the shelter,” Dr. Hall replied.
“They only verified the general outline?”
“Yes.”
“The coast of Moon Bay is dangerous, and many waterways are off-limits to ordinary merchant ships.”
“They could only recognize the outer coast, a few reef areas, and the general direction.”
Elias pressed several drawings from the deeper parts of the nautical chart back together and pointed to one of the narrow waterways.
“There is no such waterway here at all.”
Dr. Hall followed his finger.
The waterway was sandwiched between two stretches of black coastline. The drawings of several wounded people aligned with one another, making it look as though a vessel could pass through.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
It wasn't as if Elias had never been to that coast.
In his memory, this location should be an entire cliff face eroded by waves.
The rock layers rose straight up from the sea to great heights.
Let alone a waterway, there wasn't even a gap where a small boat could dock.
If one wanted to pass through here, the only way would be to put wheels on the ship and teach it to climb walls.
“This should be a cliff,” Elias said. “The waterway on the map doesn't exist.”
Dr. Hall looked up.
“And how do you know that?!”
The man had recognized the lighthouse drawn by Robert at a single glance. Now, he could even point out geographical errors deep within Moon Bay.
This investigator simply knew far too much.
“I passed by there on a ship before and happened to memorize it,” Elias brushed her off casually.
Dr. Hall stared at him.
“Ordinary ships wouldn't pass through there.”
“Which is why I wasn't on an ordinary ship.”
“What kind of ship?”
“The kind of ship that can sail there.”
“...”
A rigorous answer with absolutely zero information.
Elias didn't give her a chance to press further.
He put the drawings back in place, shifting his gaze from the non-existent waterway to the unlit lighthouse.
If the drawings didn't depict the actual geography of Moon Bay, then what exactly had been mapped out?
Was it an error automatically filled in by the dream? Or did the entity borrowing the wounded people's eyes see a path that didn't exist in reality?
There still weren't enough clues. Drawing a conclusion now would only lead him astray.
Elias compared the first and second batches of drawings once more.
The outer coastline was basically correct; the errors only appeared as the perspective drifted deeper.
It was as if the entity responsible for the drawings could initially borrow real sights, but the closer it got to the lighthouse, the more what it saw ceased to belong to reality.
“Aside from dreaming, have these people shown any other changes?”
“Insomnia, trance-like states,” Dr. Hall thought for a moment. “And a few of them seem to have developed memory problems.”
“What kind of problems?”
“They forget things.”
“Sometimes names, sometimes past experiences.”
“At first, the symptoms were very mild, and they could still recall them when prompted.”
“But starting this evening, two of them would quickly forget again even after being reminded.”
Elias raised his eyes.
Memory loss.
This was certainly not among the side effects of ordinary 【Dream-soothing Paper】.
If it were just fatigue, they could recover with rest. But the fact that these people couldn't even retain what they were reminded of indicated that the erosion was still ongoing.
Perhaps each entry into the dream used their own memories as payment for viewing Moon Bay.
“Are there records of this?”
“Yes.”
Dr. Hall said, reaching into her leather bag once more.
Elias's gaze subconsciously followed.
Every time he thought she had run out of clues, Dr. Hall would always look down and pull out a new one.
A moment later, she pulled out a stack of medical records.
Elias fell silent for a moment.
She actually had them.
“Why do you even carry these around?”
“I'm a doctor,” Dr. Hall said, cradling the medical records as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Elias looked at the medical records, then at her rather small leather bag.
The spatial relationship between the two was somewhat disrespectful to physics.
“I'm wondering if you have an entire dispensary packed in there.”
“No.”
“Then can you fit me in there?” Elias asked in all seriousness.
Dr. Hall clutched the bag closer to her chest, her face expressionless.
“No!”
“You hesitated just now.”
“I was considering whether to hit you with it.”
Elias glanced at the bag.
Judging by the capacity it had demonstrated so far, that hit would probably be quite heavy.
He wisely refrained from further testing the physician's professional patience.
“Instead of looking at the medical records, why don't you just take me to see the patients?”
“Dr. Hall?”
The female physician's hand paused on the records.
Back at the Society of Freemen, she had found this Mr. Constantine to be highly mysterious. Now that they had spent some time together, she was slowly realizing something.
He was indeed mysterious. But he was also genuinely infuriating.
Dr. Hall gritted her teeth.
“Fine.”
She stuffed the medical records back into her bag and turned toward the ward area.
Elias followed behind her.
As they walked through the narrow aisle between the temporary beds, many of the wounded watched him warily.
Staying awake for so long had left their eyes bloodshot and their faces pale and ashen.
Some held water cups, their fingers trembling uncontrollably.
Others kept muttering, as if repeatedly reciting their own names.
Although the shelter was brightly lit, there was very little sense of security. Everyone kept their eyes wide open, terrified that if their eyelids fell, they would wake up missing some piece of their past that could never be recovered.
Dr. Hall stopped before a bed against the wall.
An elderly sailor lay on the bed.
The old man's left leg was wrapped in bandages, and a freshly scabbed wound ran across his face.
He wasn't walking around like the others, nor was he using cold water to refresh himself. He simply leaned against the headboard, repeatedly rubbing a brooch in his hand.
It was a plain, ordinary women's brooch.
The silver edges were worn down, and a piece of dull blue glass was embedded in the center.
The old man's movements were very gentle. Each time his thumb brushed over the brooch, it carried a habit formed over many years.
Elias stood by the bed, looking at the brooch first.
“Sir.”
The old man slowly raised his head.
“Is this your wife's?”
“Yes,” the old man answered without hesitation. “She wore it for many years.”
“Later on, she thought it was too old and refused to wear it anymore.”
“So I kept it for her.”
At this, a faint smile appeared on the old man's face.
It was a smile filled with the helplessness and familiarity that only comes after living together for many years.
Elias squatted beside the bed.
“What was her name?”
The old man opened his mouth.
The smile froze on his face.
“She...”
A simple name was stuck in his throat.
His lips moved several times, but he couldn't make a sound.
The blankness on his face slowly morphed into panic.
The old man clutched the brooch tightly, its metal edges digging into his palm.
“I know it.”
“Of course I know it.”
His breathing gradually quickened.
“We've been married for forty-three years.”
“She liked blue, hated the smell of the sea, and every time I came back from a voyage, she would throw my coat outside the door.”
“The fish soup she made tasted awful.”
“But why can't I say it?”
The old man looked up, tears already glistening in his eyes.
He remembered his wife's habits. He remembered the trivial details of their life together. He even remembered that awful fish soup he had endured for over forty years.
Yet, he couldn't remember her name.
Dr. Hall hurriedly stepped forward.
“Molly.”
She took the old man's wrist.
“Her name is Molly Banks.”
The panic on the old man's face suddenly eased, like a drowning man finally grasping a piece of driftwood.
“Yes.”
“Molly!”
He nodded repeatedly.
“Molly Banks.”
“It's her.”
“Of course it's her.”
The old man repeated it a few times. With each repetition, his voice grew a little firmer.
Yet, only a few breaths later...
His voice quieted down again.
The same confusion re-emerged in his cloudy eyes.
He looked down at the brooch in his hand, then looked at Dr. Hall.
“Who is Molly?”
The surrounding sounds seemed to suddenly drift away.
Elias looked at the old man.
The thing in the dream wasn't just borrowing their eyes. It was also taking things from them.
And what it took seemed to be the very parts they were most unwilling to forget.
Elias fell silent for two seconds, then stood up.
“You should rest now, old-timer.”
“Alright.”
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