Chapter 81: Church on move
The searchers Han Zhen and Miao Tianhe had selected spent hours circling the cathedral district, moving through deserted streets and inspecting the buildings abandoned after the residents took shelter.
Near the northern side of the cathedral, one of them left the street and climbed onto the surrounding rooftops, where he could watch several roads without being noticed from below.
He was nearing the end of a long prayer hall when a figure shifted within the narrow shadows between two buildings.
Someone was crouched beside the wall of an abandoned residence.
At first, the searcher mistook him for a civilian hiding from the siege, but the man neither appeared injured nor behaved like someone seeking shelter. He kept one hand pressed against the base of the building and worked at something concealed beneath the other, stopping whenever soldiers crossed the distant road.
The searcher lowered himself against the sloping roof and continued watching. When the man moved deeper into the darkness, something beneath his palm briefly reflected the light from a nearby brazier.
Unable to identify it from that distance, the searcher followed from above. He crossed the roofs carefully as the figure moved between the buildings and crouched beneath another patch of shadow.
A loose piece of stone shifted beneath his boot and a small pebble broke from the roof’s edge, struck the tiles below and bounced twice before falling into the street.
The man froze with one hand still pressed against the wall, his head slowly turned towards the rooftop, and the nearby brazier cast enough light across his face to reveal a black Church mask.
The searcher immediately slipped one hand beneath his sleeve and activated the communicator fastened around his wrist. Keeping his body close to the roof, he began retreating with his other hand near his weapon.
"I found one of the Church—"
A hand clamped around his jaw from behind as another caught the back of his head. His neck snapped sideways with a sharp crack and a second wrench separated his head from his shoulders before the body could strike the tiles.
The attacker caught the corpse and carried it down into the street, where the first masked man had risen from beside the wall. "Thanks, it seems we have been exposed."
After dragging the body beyond the nearby brazier’s light, the killer dropped the severed head beside it. "Then finish your part instead of standing around."
"We need to move faster now, or the Holy Son will become angry." The first man glanced along the deserted road. "These orders came from above, and I heard rumours that one of the Church Cardinals performed an Oracle before we were sent here."
The other man seized the front of his clothes and pulled him closer.
"Shut your mouth, a Cardinal is not someone people like us should speak about, they can hear what we hear and see what we see, so keep quiet and do your work."
"Yeah, I understand." He pulled himself free, then muttered as he returned to the wall, "I only want to leave this place, collect the rewards and never enter another one of these trials."
Neither man checked the dead searcher’s wrist, beneath his sleeve, the communicator remained active and carried every word into the shared channel.
The participants stationed throughout the fortress heard the unfinished warning, the sound of his neck breaking and the entire conversation that followed.
Those searching the inner districts abandoned their routes and began converging upon the northern streets, but the two masked men disappeared before the first group arrived.
As soon as the report reached the battlements, Han Zhen and Miao Tianhe left with several others. Xingluo joined them on the way into the city, accompanied by only a few of Wuxia’s shadows.
Several gruelling hours of fighting had already pushed his army to its limit, so most of the shadow soldiers remained behind to support the defenders.
Pulling them away would leave multiple sections of the walls exposed, although Wuxia could still summon more around Xingluo if the search became a battle.
The first group reached the abandoned residence and found their teammate beneath the shadow of its outer wall. His severed head lay several steps from the body, with the communicator around his wrist still connected to the shared channel.
Participants immediately climbed across the surrounding roofs, entered the empty residences and searched every adjoining street. They found no trace of the masked men or whatever one of them had been placing beside the wall.
By the time Han Zhen’s group arrived, even the remaining traces of mana around the stone had faded.
"Spread out, but remain connected," Han ordered after examining the body. "They know we heard them. Whatever they came here to do, they will try to finish it as quickly as possible."
The search expanded across the inner city as teams blocked the roads around the cathedral and inspected every building overlooking the Inner Sanctum.
Xingluo remained beside Miao Tianhe while Wuxia’s shadows crossed the rooftops ahead of them, slipping through alleys and ruined structures that the participants could not search as quickly.
Formation nodes had already been concealed throughout the inner city, some were buried beneath the roads, others fixed against buildings or hidden among the ancient markings covering the cathedral district.
Viewed together, they formed an enormous pattern around the sanctuary that bore no connection to the fortress’s protective formations.
At the opposite end of the city, another black-masked man knelt within the shadow of a watchtower and fitted the final node between the stones. He pressed his palm against its surface and released the mana gathered within his arm.
The node sank out of sight as a heavy pulse spread beneath the entire city, trembling through the streets and shifting loose objects inside the abandoned buildings.
Several crystal coffins scraped against the cathedral floor, yet none of the defensive barriers surrounding the fortress reacted.
Upon the cathedral steps, the Saintess turned sharply towards the inner district, her staff struck the stone as she steadied herself, and when she tried to seize control of the unfamiliar formation, it refused to answer her.
The same pulse reached Han Zhen, Miao Tianhe and Xingluo halfway through their search. They paused only long enough to determine that it had originated somewhere within the fortress.
"That came from inside the city," Miao Tianhe said.
Han Zhen was already moving. "Close every road around the cathedral, they have finished setting up the formation, so find them before they activate anything else."
Reports passed through the shared channel as the searchers tightened their positions. Wuxia summoned several more shadows around Xingluo and sent them through the passages between the military buildings and across the surrounding rooftops.
The search continued until one of the shadows returned to Xingluo and pointed towards a deserted section near the edge of the cathedral district.
She immediately changed direction, with Han Zhen and Miao Tianhe following as the remaining searchers approached through the neighbouring streets.
They found a narrow courtyard enclosed by abandoned military buildings, where four black-masked men stood waiting at its centre.
Wuxia’s shadows occupied the rooftops first, by the time the participants entered from the surrounding roads with their weapons drawn, every visible route out of the courtyard had been blocked, yet none of the masked men attempted to escape.
Xingluo counted them and searched the windows and rooftops beyond the courtyard. All four black-masked Church members were present, but the Lesser Holy Son’s white mask was nowhere among them.
Han Zhen’s gaze passed across the group once more before he stepped forward. "Where is the Holy Son?"
A low laugh escaped from behind one of the black masks. "You’re too late, bitches, the Holy Son has already gone to do his work."
Deep inside the cathedral, an old man sat among the sheltered residents with a heavy cloak concealing his body. Beneath its hood, an evil smile slowly spread across his wrinkled face.