Deep Sea Embers

Annie left happily, without seeming to suspect anything—after all, she was just a child.

However, the old guard stood at the gate of the cemetery for a long time, watching the direction Annie was leaving. It took some time before he realized it all of a sudden, and then touched his breast pocket with trembling fingers, took out a tube of medicine from it, and poured it into his mouth. .

He feels better.

"This is too evil...I have to report to the cathedral immediately...God of Death...This is too evil..."

The old man muttered, turned around and walked quickly towards the direction of the guard's hut. After he entered the room, he closed the door and went straight to the side of the bed to look at an old and ordinary-looking desk—after opening a cover on the desk, What is exposed below is the exquisite pipes and valves, as well as buttons and handles.

Several metal capsules lie quietly in the grid next to the pipe.

The old man took out the letterhead from the desk drawer, sat down, picked up the pen next to him, and began to quickly write a report, then rolled up the report and stuffed it into the metal capsule compartment, then opened the pipe in the dark compartment of the desk, and put the capsule compartment into the groove.

"May Bartok bless this pipeline and the rushing airflow within it... May the valve operate smoothly, without jamming, depressurization or bursting—may the difference machine in the sorting and delivery center be safe."

The old man prayed briefly, then stretched out his hand and pressed a button next to the pressure pipe, and only after the green light in the dark compartment turned on did he pull the handle next to the button.

A strange grunting sound came from the depths of the pipeline, it sounded like the movement of the airflow being blocked, but soon the sound disappeared, followed by the hiss of the normal operation of the pressure pipeline and the rapid sliding of the capsule device sounded.

The old man glanced at the pipe with some concern, and muttered: "...It can't be because the letter mentioned the existence of the superior, which affected the machine..."

After a while, the two green lights representing the delivery of "express mail" to the superior sorting center came on, and the old guard finally felt relieved and closed the cover of the dark compartment.

...

Alice was walking down the street with a big paper bag in her arms, looking curiously at the surrounding buildings, observing this city which is completely different from Prand, and observing people's lives in this city.

In the paper bag were the things she had just bought from the corner store—some vegetables, eggs, and frozen hard butter and two pieces of lamb for today's lunch.

Alice has been able to go shopping independently, although she is not very skilled, and occasionally gets the wrong amount of change, but she has been working hard to learn all this - improving every day, although not much.

She lowered her head slightly, holding the paper bag with one hand, and took out a note from the bag with the other hand, confirming the contents of the note.

There are some letters written in crooked handwriting on it. It is a shopping list for today. Some of the contents are words that she can read and write, and the other part is replaced by simple pictures-this list is written by herself, and it takes a lot of money effort.

Make your own daily menu, plan the ingredients you need to buy, write your own shopping list, and go to the store to buy things by yourself—try to figure out the amount of change, and then try to return home on time. If you can do it, the captain will would be very happy.

Alice will be happy too.

After confirming that the list and the contents of the paper bag are all right, Miss Doll put away the note in satisfaction, and continued to walk towards the temporary residence on Oak Street.

But just halfway there, a commotion from the corner of the street suddenly caught her attention.

She looked up to the direction where the sound came from, and saw about a dozen people gathered beside a rather old-looking residential building, some were pointing at the upstairs, and everyone was chattering They were discussing something, and occasionally heard words such as "that woman is crazy", "poor man", "the church is alarmed".

Alice couldn't help but slowed down, getting slower and slower, and finally stopped, looking in that direction with great hesitation.

It was... lively, the captain said not to just join in the fun, because if the head falls off in a crowded place, the excitement will be too great.

But it looked really interesting over there, and what they were discussing... seemed to be something the captain would be interested in.

Alice got tangled up, and in the tangled moved her steps towards that side, and then moved again.

"I'm going to check on the situation... I'm helping the captain to collect information... This is not just to join in the fun, but to join in the fun seriously..."

Alice put all her wits into convincing herself, and she succeeded.

Pressing her head with one hand and holding the paper bag in the other, Miss Doll quickly joined the crowd and looked up at the residential building in front of her with them.

Different from the two-story building that the captain temporarily rented, the building in front of him looked older and more cramped. The narrow windows and the external gas pipes seemed crowded and chaotic. It seemed that there were many independent residents. gathered inside this building.

The discussion among the people around was messed up. Alice didn't understand what was going on after listening for a long time, so she patted the shoulder of the person next to her carefully, and asked politely, "Excuse me... what happened here?"

The person next to him was taken aback, but he relaxed when he saw that it was only a young girl wearing a veil who made the noise. He raised his head and pointed to it: "A woman is crazy, insisting that she killed her." My own husband also wanted to strangle his own child... First, the magistrate was alarmed, and now even the people from the church have arrived, so I don’t think it’s a small matter.”

As soon as he finished speaking, another person beside him said, "It is said that even the people from the church have arrived... Could it be something not so good?"

"... I hope nothing serious happens," a woman muttered among the crowd. "I live downstairs from them. If something happens, we'll have nowhere to go..."

"No matter if there is something wrong, it's better to go to the church today and ask the priest to do an exorcism. It's always good to be careful."

The surrounding crowd started discussing again, and soon reached a field that Alice didn't understand. She was a little distracted in this messy discussion, and her eyes slowly drifted to mid-air.

Light and fluffy threads floated in her field of vision, and more thin threads extended from nearby residential buildings, fluttering in the air, like hair swaying in the wind, stirring quietly looking at the sky.

Alice blinked suddenly.

She suddenly noticed that some of the lines floating above the city-state were extraordinarily illusory, transparent, and even flickering like a badly connected electric light.

...

There is a faint musty smell in the old residential building, and there is a slight leak in the old piping system, and the sound of dripping water can be heard from time to time. The guards dressed in black, holding canes and lanterns gather In the living room, it makes the room that is not spacious enough look cramped.

A long-haired woman with disheveled hair was nestled in the corner of the sofa, her head was lowered as if frightened, and she occasionally muttered vague sentences.

There were two black-clothed guards standing by, guarding the mad woman.

The guards are checking the remaining clues in the house, and they have been busy here for two hours.

Just then a gust of gray wind blew through the corridor, through the open door, and swirled into the living room.

The guards stopped their work one after another to pay tribute to the whirlwind of gray and white.

Agatha's figure stepped out of the vortex, her gaze swept across the room.

"What's the situation now?" She raised her head and looked at the highest-ranking guard on the scene.

The captain of the guard is a neat woman with short black hair that reaches the ears. Faced with the gatekeeper's inquiry, she immediately took a step forward: "We collected a small amount of 'mud' samples on the floor of the bathroom. Those samples collected were consistent."

"Elements..." Agatha said softly, then frowned, "A small sample? How many? Only so much?"

"About one test tube," the female captain with short hair raised her hand and gestured. "That's all the samples—we've searched the entire building, and there's only a little left on the bathroom floor."

Agatha was silent, then turned to look at the long-haired woman curled up in the corner of the sofa.

"Is she the person involved?"

"Yes," the team leader nodded, "she rents here, we have investigated it, her background is clean, she has no criminal record before, she is an agent accountant of a nearby firm, and her husband once worked in the Boiling Gold Mine. Work—according to the data, he died in a mine accident three years ago.”

Boiling Gold Mine...Mine Disaster...

Perhaps influenced by recent events, Agatha instinctively noticed these words, and then she collected herself before coming to the side of the woman who was still muttering.

"Ma'am—I am the gatekeeper of the city-state, you are safe now," Agatha said in a calm voice, quietly using the power to calm the spirit, "tell me, what happened?"

The long-haired woman on the sofa suddenly stopped trembling when she heard the sound, and then mumbled something vaguely, and then she suddenly raised her head.

A pair of eyes still lingering with fear and madness stared at Agatha.

"He's back, he's back...I killed him, I killed that monster...in the bathroom! It melted in the bathroom!"