The two of them left the branch together.
Upon reaching the entrance, Lu Yuan's gaze drifted involuntarily toward the Polymath Tower.
A layer of inscription arrays was slowly circulating in the middle of the tower, its light significantly brighter than the surrounding runes on the city walls.
Those were the sealing inscriptions for the tower.
"I have one more thing to do," Lu Yuan said, stopping at the branch entrance.
Glock looked back at him.
"You go on ahead," Lu Yuan continued.
"I am going to pay a visit to the church."
Glock did not ask why; he simply nodded and turned to leave.
Lu Yuan turned toward the east side of the inner city.
Agnes had mentioned previously that the church's temporary residence was in a block east of the Old Council Square.
It was an area Lu Yuan had never visited.
After walking for about ten minutes, he saw the changes from afar.
An entire street of buildings was being renovated.
The exterior walls of several stone houses, which had originally been shops and dwellings, were being coated with white plaster. The doors and windows had been removed and replaced with pointed-arch styles.
New wooden beams were being erected on the roofs, and the sound of hammering echoed through the street as workers nailed things into place.
The largest building already had a holy light emblem embedded above its main entrance.
It was made of cast copper, polished to a shine, and reflected blinding spots of light under the afternoon sun.
A church.
A church currently under construction.
And not just one.
Lu Yuan walked along the street for a while and estimated that at least three buildings were undergoing construction simultaneously.
There were not many workers; most were church personnel dressed in greyish-white robes, moving lumber and mixing mortar with methodical, if unhurried, movements.
A few locals in civilian clothes were also helping, likely hired hands.
Several cargo carriages were parked on both sides of the street, piled high with stone and wooden planks.
Lu Yuan glanced at the source markings on the stones.
They had been transported from outside the city.
Bronze City was being gnawed away by ghouls, yet the church was busy building churches.
Lu Yuan did not dwell on this.
At the moment, he only cared about one person.
At the entrance of the largest church, two nuns were moving a crate of candles.
Lu Yuan walked over.
"Is Agnes here?"
The older of the two looked up and glanced at Lu Yuan.
Her gaze lingered for a moment on the Nightwatchers badge on his chest.
"Sister Agnes is not here today," she said in a flat tone. "She has been reassigned to a mission and likely will not return until tomorrow."
"Could you help me pass a message to her?"
The nun did not answer immediately, sizing Lu Yuan up for a few seconds.
"Who are you?"
"Lu Yuan from the North Ward defensive position."
The nun's expression softened slightly.
"What is the message?"
"Tell her I need her help," Lu Yuan said, carefully choosing his words. "We can discuss the details when we meet. Please ask her to find me at the North Ward Alchemy Workshop when she is available."
The nun nodded.
"I will pass it on."
Lu Yuan did not linger.
As he turned to walk back, he took one more look at the church taking shape.
The white outer walls were bright under the sun.
They formed a jarring contrast with the surrounding grey buildings, which were riddled with bullet holes and bloodstains.
On the return trip.
The sun began to slant toward the west.
Lu Yuan quickened his pace.
While passing through a section of the North Ward outskirts that had lost its runic coverage, the grey-white text at the edge of his vision suddenly flickered.
【Environmental Perception: Weak source of pollution detected...】
Lu Yuan stopped.
He scanned his surroundings. Nearby, there was only a two-story stone building with all its windows shut and the door left slightly ajar.
He pushed the door open.
The first floor was empty, with tables and chairs overturned and dried food scraps on the floor.
Lu Yuan took a brief look around and found a trace of extremely faint black energy winding its way downward.
It was toward the basement.
He drew his revolver and slowly descended the stairs.
The staircase was narrow and made of wood; it creaked as he stepped on it.
The basement was small.
There was only a sliver of light leaking in from the top of the stairs.
Something was curled up in the corner.
A person.
Or rather, what had once been a person.
The spine bulged out from under the skin, forming a row of bone-spur-like protrusions.
The mouth was split in half, revealing the gum tissue proliferating within.
The joints of the limbs had begun to bend backward, the fingers had grown long and thin, and the fingernails had fallen off.
It was identical to the early form of the face-hounds catalyzed by the greater ghouls in the pipe network.
But this was on the surface.
It was not in the pipe network layer!
Lu Yuan took a step closer.
Beneath the skin where the spine bulged, grey-green thread-like patterns were slowly spreading.
It was the hyphae he had seen before.
It had already seeped from the pipe network to the surface.
It had found a new host on the ground.
The half-mutant's eyeballs suddenly turned toward Lu Yuan.
There was no consciousness in the cloudy pupils, only pain and an instinctive hunger.
The mouth, split halfway, opened and emitted a garbled hiss.
Lu Yuan raised his gun.
Bang.
The silver-plated bullet passed through the skull.
The half-mutant's body twitched and went limp.
【Bronze City Status: +1, 8/50】
Lu Yuan stood in the basement, looking at the corpse on the floor.
The grey-green thread-like patterns were still slowly spreading beneath the skin.
It continued to spread even after death.
He stepped back, pulled out the small pouch of copper powder he carried, and poured all the remaining powder over the body.
"Where exactly is the hyphae spreading from?"
Lu Yuan looked at the seemingly normal surroundings and narrowed his eyes slightly.
"Did this person seem to be infected accidentally?"
There were no more clues for now, but one thing was certain: a certain amount of hyphae had leaked out.
However, if it only contaminated people, it was manageable.
After all, contaminated individuals were not very strong in combat.
Thinking of this, Lu Yuan suddenly felt a bit dazed.
Had he changed?
He turned and went upstairs, closing the basement door.
When he stood on the street, the sunset was already grazing the rooftops.
The hyphae in the pipe network were not just spreading toward the Abyss.
They were simultaneously seeping upward, and certainly not just in the North Ward.
Lu Yuan quickened his pace.
He returned to the North Ward before sunset.
Bo Er was near the entrance and nodded when he saw him return.
"No abnormalities during the day."
"What about the vertical shaft?"
"I checked an hour ago. The area of grey-green discoloration is even larger than it was this morning."
Bo Er paused.
"It covers about one-fifth of the entire copper powder circle now."
It had doubled in half a day.
Faster than estimated.
Lu Yuan walked into the Alchemy Workshop.
Bolen was on the first floor.
A sketch was spread out on the table.
The old man looked up at Lu Yuan and pushed the sketch toward him.
"I drew this this afternoon."
The sketch marked the potential spreading paths of the grey-green living matter in the pipe network.
Starting from the catchment basin, it moved upward through the main pipe network, reached the bottom of the vertical shaft, and then seeped toward the surface.
Downward, it extended from the right-hand passage of the catchment basin toward the Abyss, though there was no detailed map of that area, so the downward path was only a hypothesis.
"Spreading in two directions simultaneously," Bolen said, pointing at the sketch with his cane. "The upward path has begun to affect the surface—you discovered that as well."
He watched Lu Yuan's expression.
"I did," Lu Yuan said.
He did not elaborate.
"And the downward path?" Bolen asked.
"I don't know how far it has gone."
Bolen picked up a piece of paper from the table, which had a row of numbers written on it.
"The rhythm of the backflow changed again today. The thing below seems to be getting more and more active."
The grey-green hyphae network was accelerating its expansion.
Corroding the copper powder circle upward, it would break through the vertical shaft in three to four days.
Passing through the passage entrance downward, it was unclear how much further it was from contacting the ghoul colony in the Abyss.
"The window of time for sealing it might be even shorter than we thought," Lu Yuan said.
Bolen did not respond.
He looked down at the sketch and tapped his cane at a spot between the two arrows.
The catchment basin.
If they could cut it off there, both directions would be blocked simultaneously.
But that required sufficient weapons.
Outside the window, the last ray of sunlight fell upon the runes on the city wall.
The runes lit up, but their color was visibly dim.
Like an oil lamp about to run dry.
Lu Yuan closed the window.
He returned to his station and sat down.
The revolver rested on his knees.
The direction of the tunnel entrance was quiet.
The direction of the vertical shaft was quiet.
But he knew that silence did not equal safety.
Time was running out.
The night wind blew up from the tunnel entrance.
It carried the familiar stench of rot from the pipe network.
Only tonight, there was a faint hint of sweetness in the rot.
Like the scent of some fruit before it ripens.
Lu Yuan closed his eyes and began to practice the Guard technique as usual.
He also took the opportunity to rest, letting his Sanity recover as much as possible.
The night passed without incident.
Day nine.
Dawn broke.
【Sanity: +12...113/120】
【Guard I: +0.3...5.2/10】
The effect of his Guard practice last night was not massive, but it was growing.
Lu Yuan opened his eyes, and before he could even stand up, Bolen brought bad news.
"On the second section of the conduction pathways, the corrosion rate of the inner wall is twice as fast as yesterday." The old man squatted in the corner of the first floor, clutching a small piece of debris he had scraped off the pipe wall.
"The thinnest part of the pipe wall is less than half of what it was. At this rate, it will be eaten through within one to two days."
Lu Yuan looked at the debris.
Its surface was covered with a layer of dark brown corrosion, and the inner side shimmered faintly with a grey-green hue.
"Can it be repaired?"
Bolen shook his head with a grim look.
"Repairing it is useless. The thing flowing through from inside is itself corroding the pipe wall. Repair one layer, and the next layer just rots away."
Lu Yuan did not ask again.
He went out to check the vertical shaft.
The discolored area of the copper powder circle was already approaching half.
There were more grey-green fine threads growing out from the gaps in the cover plate than last night, and a few had already begun to wrap around the gravel pressed against the edge of the cover.
Lu Yuan used the tip of his copper sword to snap those few hyphae.
A wisp of grey-green liquid oozed from the broken end, hissed on the copper blade, and then vanished.
Afterward, Lu Yuan walked around the defensive position; there was more than one vertical shaft connecting to the pipe network layer.
And the conditions of the two nearby drainage covers were also deteriorating.
One of them had a copper powder discoloration range that had already reached one-fourth, and a distinct acidic, rotten smell could be detected at the gaps in the cover.
The other was slightly better, but the discoloration had also expanded a bit from yesterday.
Lu Yuan had the Nightwatchers thicken the copper powder circles on all three covers; that was all they could do.
When passing behind the Alchemy Workshop, Lu Yuan glanced at the caged living greater ghoul.
It was quieter than yesterday.
It hardly twitched anymore.
Its shattered lower jaw no longer opened and closed.
But the grey-green thread-like patterns on the grey-red muscle membrane had spread over the entire surface of its torso, more than twice as dense as when it had been brought back two days ago.
Clearly, it was gradually growing in an unknown direction.
Lu Yuan withdrew his gaze and walked into the Alchemy Workshop.
When he returned to the Alchemy Workshop, it was nearly noon.
Agnes was already waiting on the first floor.
She had come alone, dressed in white robes and holding a golden scripture.
Lu Yuan thought for a moment and briefly explained the situation.
He needed to enter the Polymath Tower, he needed to go inside to retrieve an item, and he asked Agnes if she had any way to help.
Agnes did not answer immediately upon hearing this.
Her gaze fell on the two wax-sealed glass vessels on the table and lingered for a moment.
"May I see them?"
"Yes."
Lu Yuan handed them over.
Agnes hovered her palm over them, and a pale golden light seeped out.
The grey-green thread-like object in the vessel twitched once and then returned to its original state.
"Indeed..." She withdrew her hand. "It has a certain degree of immunity to holy light..."
Agnes looked at the hyphae before her, silent for a moment.
"I will arrange the matter of the Polymath Tower. The church has routine holy light maintenance every few days. I will confirm the next schedule; it is not difficult to add one person to the list."
"When is the earliest?"
"Confirmed tomorrow night, entering the day after."
The day after.
Day eleven.
"That works."
As Agnes left, she left behind one sentence:
"Wear the inner church robes, keep your head down, follow the group, and do not speak. I will have someone bring the correct size."
After Agnes finished speaking, she set the vessel down and turned to leave.
She did not tell Lu Yuan what he would have to pay once it was finished.
As the door closed.
The room fell into silence once again.
Lu Yuan put the somewhat wilted hyphae back, turned, and began to make preparations.
Rate on N.U.
