Yarra’s Adventure Notes
Chapter 353 - 65 Divine Servant and Sands of Time_1

Chapter 353: Chapter 65 Divine Servant and Sands of Time_1

"What do you want to know?" Aide spoke gruffly. "Get your questions over with."

"Who is the mole?" Catherine was the first to speak. "Who did you contact when you infiltrated this place?"

"A mole? You mean a traitor within the Shadow Hand?" answered Aide. "I’m sure there is one, but I don’t know who it is. I’m nominally in charge of this operation, but the person actually in charge of coordination and arrangements isn’t me—it’s Ovis. As for who the mole is, only he knows. However, I have met several times the person who’s been taking care of our living arrangements and guiding us around here; they’re a thief known as ’nimble fingers’, supposedly one of the seven captains under Suspicion. Perhaps the traitor is Suspicion."

"What’s the purpose of you building such a base here?" asked Vivian. "This extensively connected base must have taken quite some effort. Is it just for a simple sacrifice?"

"The sacrifices aren’t simple at all." Aide shook his head. "Specific timings, locations and individuals are required for the sacrifices to be effective. We therefore need to locate the beings for sacrifice in various cities and often miss timing opportunities to avoid alerting local guards. We built this underground system for convenience."

"With such a complex system, how did you manage to build it?" Vivian asked in awe. "It seems nearly impossible."

"I don’t know." Aide replied. "I heard that people within the church have been continuously constructing it since seventy years ago."

"Is it your church?" Catherine asked. "What exactly is your church?"

"Catherine, hold on." Pannis intervened, "This question is too complex to be answered quickly. Can we ask simpler ones first? Save this question for the last, so nobody is left hanging on to their doubts."

"Oh, alright." Catherine gave Pannis a curious look, but followed his advice, continuing to question. "The two mages in black robes earlier, weren’t they with you?"

"No." Aide answered readily. "They’re from a different organization, but I’ve heard that they’ve been collaborating with our higher ups in recent years."

"Damn it, this Array is encrypted." While Catherine was asking questions, Muir hadn’t been paying much attention and was studying the three Teleportation Arrays in the center of the room. Now, he suddenly howled in frustration, running over to ask, "Why are these Teleportation Arrays encrypted?"

"I don’t know. I’m not the one who understands magic," Aide replied. "These three Arrays were all made by Ovis himself. As for their specifics, only he knows. So, they’re unusable now. Wait, no, one of the Arrays’ encryption frequencies was known to those two mages. If you can locate them, you might unveil it. However, I reckon your prospects of finding them aren’t great."

"Where did they go?" asked Muir. "Will they be back?"

"Apparently, there will be a special operation in the City of Innocence in two days. The mole behind the scenes asked to borrow our strength," explained Aide. "However, we were short of hands, so we sent those two mages to assist. I’m still not clear on what the operation is, probably ambushing a few men or something. As for them, they certainly won’t be back. They have their own bases and would directly return there once the operation ends."

"What organization do they belong to?" Catherine asked, "Do you know anything about it?"

"Their organization is called Sands of Time. Its leader is a demigod, and the minimum requirement to join is to have a Gold Rank power level. The majority within the organization are mages." Aide hesitated before speaking uncertainly, "It’s been more than twenty years since the organization was established, but they had only participated in small-scale activities in the past. They only started to take radical actions in recent years, reportedly collecting a large amount of... something. I have no idea about the specifics of it."

"Did they just arrive here?" Muir probed, "How many people came?"

"I know what you want to ask." Aide nodded, "Yes, they should be among those you are chasing. They came back from Diersalem City and they arrived here the night before yesterday. Two other people arrived a few days before them, but those people have already left."

"So, it really is them. If we find them and get rid of them, then destroy the Teleportation Arrays along the way, our mission would be essentially complete," Muir told the other Clergy. "I hadn’t expected our luck to be this good. With hardly any leads on this mission, we’ve still managed to complete it smoothly. Well, we don’t have any more questions. The rest is up to you."

"When were you resurrected?" Pannis asked, "Who resurrected you?"

"I was contacted by them shortly before my death, then only a few days after my demise, I was resurrected," said Aide. "I indeed feared death, so I accepted their invitation. As for who resurrected me, I don’t know, because I was already dead at the time. The first person I got in touch with after my revival was a Legendary Rank Undead Mage, who was my previous contact. So, I don’t know who resurrected us Legendary Rank Undeads; in the church, the matter is considered taboo."

"Regarding the..." Pannis hesitated, thought about his question a few times before cautiously asking, "how much do you know about the disaster that occurred a hundred years ago?"

"I don’t know much about this, after all, I was only a few years old at the time and had not yet joined the church," Aide recalled. "But I’ve heard from people in the church that, before the Great Disaster, the church was secluded and had very few members. It was only after the Great Disaster that the number of followers secretly increased. Sacrifices were occasionally made even before the Great Disaster, but they were rare, however, each time they were successful. After the Great Disaster, the frequency of sacrifices increased, but all failed. We privately suspect that it was because the heroes had closed the passage between the Death World and the Living World."

"You’d better answer faster," Pannis frowned, dissatisfied with Aide’s pace. "We don’t have much time, we need to hurry."

"Apart from sacrifices, what else have you done?" Catherine asked. "To awaken your god."

"Even if there were, I wouldn’t know," Aide shook his head. "I’m only responsible for the sacrifices, I haven’t interacted with many people."

"What’s the name of your church?" Catherine asked. "Where’s the headquarters?"

"Our church is called Divine Servant, supposedly because the Pope calls himself a Divine Servant," Aide said. "As for the location of the headquarters, I don’t know, I’ve never been there. It’s said to be in a very hidden place that is rarely reached, so almost no one in the church has been to the headquarters."

"Right, how come you didn’t activate those puppets when you passed through the sewer outside?" Lina suddenly interjected. "Surely, you don’t also have a Crystal Card."

"That’s because we are the dead," Aide replied. "While Ovis and the others are alive, almost everyone in the church is semi-dead, carrying a strong death aura. Puppets can’t sense the breath of the living, naturally, they don’t get activated. The people of Sands of Time were the same, one of the requirements for cooperating with us was to imbue them with the death aura, so they could move freely in some dangerous places without being attacked."

"Like the Crying Cave." Lina nodded. "I understand."

"Tell us more about your church," Catherine continued. "You’ve seen the Popes of your church, haven’t you? Who are they? Have you seen their appearances? What are their identities?"

"The Popes, there are three in total," Aide recalled. "I’ve only met them a few times, the three always appeared together, as for their appearance... let me recall."

"Hurry up," Pannis’s tone was very urgent. By now Catherine didn’t find it strange, because she too had noticed, Aide’s face was becoming darker and darker, not just his face, his whole body was turning purple-black, yet he himself appeared oblivious.

"I’ve never seen their faces, so I can’t be certain about their appearances," Aide was puzzled by Pannis’s impatience, but he still answered normally. "However, they never show their true appearances to others, no one in the church should have seen their real faces. It was said that their figures are very thin, like..."

Just as he was speaking, Aide suddenly stopped without warning. There was no sign of life in him, this time he had returned thoroughly to the eternal Death World.

"You had estimated his death earlier?" Catherine asked. "Is it because he betrayed his resurrector that lead to this?"

"Yes, when reviving ghouls, undead mages will add an insurance," Pannis explained. "Once a ghoul betrays, it will return to death in a very short time."

"So that’s why you prevented me from asking him these questions at the start?" Catherine suddenly realized. "Because these questions could be judged as his betrayal?"

"Not a probability, but a certainty," Pannis replied. "So we asked some questions that didn’t have much to do with their internal affairs first, once those questions were mostly answered, then we moved on to the key ones, because no one knows which question will be judged as their betrayal."

"But his death is strange," Catherine examined Aide’s corpse. "How did they do it?"

"Quite simple," Pannis pulled over a headless corpse, opened up the chest with a knife, and pointed at the internal chest. "Ghouls don’t breathe, they don’t have a heartbeat, but they do have circulating blood. What provides them with the essential life energy is not the heart and blood, but the special energy crystals in their chest. Once these crystals become inactive, the ghoul will die without any perception. If a ghoul is judged to have betrayed, then the crystal will automatically become inactive."

"I see," Catherine nodded. "But, haven’t you got many questions left unanswered?"

Pannis shook his head with a smile, "Not really, he wouldn’t be able to answer my questions at his level, so asking him would be pointless. It’s okay, the world is so big, sooner or later we’ll meet someone who can answer. We’ll have plenty of chances then."

"Have you two finished chatting?" A cold voice suddenly emerged behind Pannis. "If you’re done, then it’s my turn." (To be continued. If you like this work, welcome to qidian.com to vote for recommendation tickets and monthly tickets. Your support is my biggest motivation. Mobile users, please visit m.qidian.com to read.)