After night fell, moonlight blanketed the reefs outside the lighthouse.
The Waning Moon Key, which had just been filled that afternoon, hovered in midair, its missing portion completed by an illusory glow of moonlight.
With a slight ripple in space, 【Moon Gate】 slowly unfolded.
On the other side of the door was still the West Bank Third Supply Depot of Hastings Port.
Elias was in no hurry to enter.
He first checked the elemental revolver at his waist, then confirmed that the Roaring Cane, the Gluttonous Stomach, and his remaining spell scrolls were all on his person.
He had also put on the Spy's Derby Hat.
The blonde, scruffy-bearded John Constantine was back online.
“Sir.”
Jack stood by the eye of the ritual array and suddenly asked:
“Will your curse act up again today?”
Elias paused, his foot just about to step through the door.
“It shouldn't.”
He felt the dream demon mark behind his ear, which still hadn't disappeared.
Although the dream demon's true body was dead, the curse had not vanished with it.
According to Old Ed's previous explanation, the dream demon was both the caster and the active controller of that curse circuit.
Now that the active controller was gone, the remaining circuit could only operate along its last recorded path.
For several days in a row, it had acted up precisely at 4:17 PM.
Not a moment early.
Not a moment late.
And its duration had dwindled to just a few minutes.
The hallucinations were no longer complete scenes that could trap someone entirely, but rather disjointed fragments of Jiang Huan's memories with no context.
Just this afternoon, the cottage's peeling wooden door had suddenly turned into a silver-gray metal door.
The numbers above the door jumped from one to ten.
Inside, an emotionless female voice kept announcing the floors arrived at.
As for the frying pan in Jack's hand, it had turned into a glowing rectangular box in Elias's eyes.
No matter how he looked at it, it resembled a smartphone from Jiang Huan's memories.
A few minutes later, everything returned to normal on its own.
Elias had even gone out of his way to time it with his pocket watch.
From the appearance of the metal door to the cottage returning to its original state, it took exactly three minutes and forty-one seconds.
During this time, his consciousness remained fully awake, and he could tell exactly where Jack was standing.
It was just that the items in his field of vision would be forcibly replaced by memory fragments, and what he touched with his hands might not match what his eyes saw.
This meant that while the residual curse could no longer trap him to death in an illusion, it could still cause him massive trouble during combat or spellcasting.
Fortunately, today's episode had already passed.
“It's more punctual than the supply ship now,” Elias remarked of the residual curse. “At least it clocks in on time every day.”
Jack thought for a moment and silently pulled out a frying pan.
“Just in case.”
“Put it down.”
“Oh.”
Jack obediently put the pan back.
Although there was no disappointment on his face, his movements carried a lingering sense of unfinished business.
Elias did not want to know what the boy was actually looking forward to.
He stepped through the 【Moon Gate】, his figure vanishing into the silver ring of light.
After a brief moment of weightlessness, Elias landed on the floor of the supply warehouse.
He bent down and crawled out of the crate. After confirming that no one was paying attention outside the warehouse, he pulled down his hat brim and slipped into the night.
After only a single day, the streets of Hastings Port were noticeably livelier than the night before.
Several paperboys waved freshly printed copies of the Hastings Port Daily, shouting along the streets:
“The Octowin has received limited defense authorization!”
“The Kingdom's warship is arriving at Moon Bay soon!”
A freshly painted banner was even hung over a tavern entrance.
—Warship to Defend Hastings Port.
Beneath the banner, a group of red-faced, drinking workers gathered around a newspaper, discussing loudly.
“If those sea beasts dare to come ashore again, a single blast will send them right back to the sea!”
“We can't rely on our harpoons to block the docks every single time, can we?”
Beside them, a dockworker rolled up the Velen Industrial Post in his hand and smacked it onto the table.
“Wayland even dares to cheat the lighthouse keepers out of their pay. Do you really dare trust them with the cannon?”
“Cheat?” the man who spoke earlier immediately retorted. “Wasn't the manager in charge of the lighthouses suspended?”
“The paper says he might even face prison time.”
Another person chimed in:
“The keepers' wages were increased by thirty percent, and the deceased families are getting compensation.”
“Wayland has already corrected it. What more do you want?”
“Can the dead come back to life?”
“Then when the sea beasts come ashore, will you go stand in their way?”
After a few exchanges, the argument quickly escalated to banging on tables.
The tavern owner stood nearby holding a wooden keg, looking left and right, and finally decided to put away his most expensive glasses first.
Some held up Wayland's relief vouchers, while others pointed at the photographs of the deceased in the newspaper.
Neither side could convince the other.
Yet hidden beneath their rising voices was the exact same fear: they were terrified of the sea beasts returning, but equally terrified of that cannon falling into the hands of those who shouldn't control it.
Elias passed by the crowd without stopping.
Ordinary people only knew that the Kingdom was finally willing to send a warship to protect the port.
They knew nothing of the Moon Bay seal, and even less of why Thomas was so willing to accept so many restrictions.
From a practical standpoint, Ophelia's report had indeed torn a hole in Wayland's propaganda.
But Wayland had immediately turned around and suspended a manager, offered pay raises and compensation, and repackaged 'sending keepers to their deaths for a long time' into 'timely correction of administrative oversights.'
The blame was pinned on a scapegoat.
Meanwhile, the company became the party that discovered the error and took responsibility.
Jiang Huan was so familiar with this playbook that his teeth itched with annoyance.
It seemed that no matter the era, the public relations departments of capitalists could master these tricks without any guidance.
He quickened his pace, heading straight for the Third Relief Shelter.
The relief shelter was still brightly lit.
Most of the 136 patients lay in their beds, none of them daring to fall into a deep sleep.
However, there were two more ascetics in black and silver robes in the hall than the night before.
One stood among the beds, responsible for maintaining the silver dream threads connecting the patients.
The other sat at the far end of the long table, pressing his palm against the moon-pattern node formed by the anomalous 【Dream-soothing Paper】.
Theolan, who had been guarding the table the entire time, was finally able to free his hands.
“Mr. Constantine.”
Seeing Elias enter, he skipped the pleasantries and handed over a thick file.
“I found it.”
Elias took the file.
“That kind of 【Dream-Mourning Sealing Wax】 belongs to the Moon-Returning Boat 【Quiet Tide】 from thirty-seven years ago.”
“Thirty-seven years?” Elias flipped to the first page, seeing a faded structural diagram of a ship. “That's quite a long time.”
“How much of this ritual ship could possibly be left? Hasn't even the bottom of the hull rotted away by now?”
He quickly flipped through several pages.
“Where is the ship?”
“According to the records, it was burned.”
Elias stopped flipping pages.
“Burned?”
“Yes.”
“Then what are you showing me this for? Charcoal?” He looked up at Theolan.
Theolan did not show the slightest reaction to his skepticism.
He took the file back from Elias and flipped directly to the last few pages.
“The hull of the 【Quiet Tide】 was indeed burned.”
“But before it was burned, the 【Dream Helm】 and the 【Return Bell】 on the ship were dismantled.”
Theolan pointed to two lines of darkened records.
“They were sent to the old sea burial ground in White Dike for separate purification.”
“There is a transfer receipt in the archives, but no final destruction receipt.”
Elias looked down again.
The transfer date, item number, and recipient's signature were all there.
Only the space where the purification results and destruction time should have been recorded was left blank.
The page and the binding threads were completely intact, not looking like they had been torn out or damaged recently.
The receipt might have never been generated, or it might be stored elsewhere; it couldn't directly prove that someone had stolen the ritual items.
But since the replica Moon-Returning Boat had already appeared, this omission could hardly be treated as a simple oversight.
“In other words,” he tapped the names of the two ritual items with his finger, “even though the ship was burned, the truly useful parts might have been saved.”
“Someone installed the 【Dream Helm】 and the 【Return Bell】 onto an ordinary ship, then used old-style sealing wax to anchor the dream anchor.”
“That way, they could still reconstruct a Moon-Returning Boat.”
“Yes,” Theolan nodded. “An ordinary ship serves to carry the people and the ritual items in reality.”
“As long as the two core items can still function, it has the potential to re-enter the route formed by dreams.”
Elias closed the file.
“Is the old sea burial ground in White Dike still in use?”
“It was originally decommissioned.”
“After the sea beast invasion, there were too many unidentified deceased and unclaimed belongings in the city, so it was temporarily reopened.”
Theolan said, “This only proves that it was the last recorded location of the two ritual items. Whether they are still there requires personal verification.”
“That's enough.”
At least they finally had a place to go.
The old sea burial ground had just been opened after the disaster, and the temporary staff might have seen old ritual items that shouldn't have been there.
Even if the place had been emptied out, it was still better than staring at a dream drawing and waiting for the boat to return on its own.
Elias glanced at the two ascetics who were currently maintaining the dream circuits.
“You can leave now?”
“Yes,” Theolan answered flatly. “They will maintain the suppression in my stead. My job is to recover the out-of-control ritual items.”
At this point, he paused, then actively added:
“Do not worry.”
“The Ascetic Society will only handle the out-of-control ritual items that belong to our society.”
“The commission from the Society of Freemen still belongs to you, and the reward will not be redistributed because of my involvement in the investigation.”
Elias was stunned for a moment.
He had originally planned to clear this matter up before setting out.
He hadn't expected Theolan to bring it up on his own.
“You actually knew to explain the money part first this time.” Elias patted him on the shoulder with some gratification. “You still haven't learned humor, but you've certainly improved in worldly wisdom.”
“I had to make this clear,” Theolan replied earnestly.
“Excellent, I like making friends like you!”
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