Chapter 110: Chapter 114: Erased Traces
In front of the dilapidated, abandoned factory, the Abyssal Hound “A-Gou” gazed with vacant eye sockets at the crumbling structures as if trying to observe the ruins from another dimension.
Sherry stood next to A-Gou, looking around a bit nervously. After glancing at Duncan’s expression, she whispered hesitantly, “A-Gou, is there really no ‘residual pollution’ here?”
“If you mean ‘chemical spill’ as ordinary people call it, rest assured, any pollution here likely dissipated years ago,” A-Gou’s voice rumbled from his throat, “But if it’s pollution from certain Transcendent realms, that’s uncertain.”
“Did you find anything?” Duncan asked.
“… No, really nothing,” A-Gou hung his head slightly, “I just saw a flash of… ‘fire’ a moment ago, but now there’s nothing; it might just be some kind of ‘echo,’ a memory solidified and left behind by these ruins… Many Transcendent forces can leave similar traces in the real world, but to understand what kind of Transcendent force it is… I’m afraid we need to go in and take a look.”
“Then let’s go in,” Duncan nodded and stepped toward a gap in the abandoned factory, “You guys follow too.”
Sherry hesitated, but she followed, and A-Gou shook his head from side to side, the dark chains rattling. The Abyssal Hound looked curiously and cautiously at Duncan walking in front, “Sir… why are you also interested in the event from eleven years ago? Ah, of course, I’m just casually asking, a bit of trivial curiosity. Someone like you surely has your reasons…”
“Let’s just say it’s a personal interest,” Duncan cut off the Abyssal Hound’s words, “Don’t be so overly nervous in front of me, it makes me uncomfortable.”
“Right, right, not nervous, we’re not nervous…”
Listening to their obviously nervous response, Duncan simply shook his head helplessly, then glanced curiously at Sherry beside him, “In your memory, there was a major fire, but besides you, no one else remembers its existence, right?”
“… Yes,” Sherry nodded, realizing something, “By your tone… you also know about that fire, don’t you? It really existed, right?”
“… Yes, I know. So now I’m more curious about who erased the traces of that fire,” Duncan said softly, nodding slightly.
At the same time, his mind was filled with turmoil—he never expected things to align so coincidentally, nor did he expect that aside from himself and Nina, there would be a third person in Plunder City-State who knew about that “disaster.” His chance meeting with Sherry, their joint investigation, the fire traces that were erased, the illusion A-Gou just had… It all seemed to be drawn together by an invisible force, as if planets orbiting the sun.
This feeling of various elements being drawn together by invisible forces had made him cautious.
Nina’s textbook had briefly described some “common knowledge” of the Transcendent domain, mentioning how powerful anomalies or phenomena often possess the ability to interfere with the course of reality and could even guide certain events to occur like writing a script. Too many coincidences or continuous clues are often precarious “omens” which usually imply that the involved individuals are already influenced by some anomaly or phenomenon, unwittingly participating in or even advancing such events.
Against such intangible and harmless influences, his “Spiritual Body Fire” was essentially useless.
Thinking this, he couldn’t help but steal a glance at Sherry.
The girl and “A-Gou” were cautiously guarding against any disturbances in the factory ruins. She seemed to have no excess complicated thoughts, perhaps his sheer presence, a “great terror,” kept her from any distractions.
“… This looks just like an ordinary ruin…” A-Gou’s deep voice broke Duncan’s contemplation, “I don’t sense any Transcendent forces.”
Sherry looked up, examining the crisscrossing pipes and the warped and deformed beams of the ceiling.
This was the first “factory hall” they entered after coming into the factory, severely damaged in an accident eleven years ago. A powerful explosion had pierced its roof, causing the high pipes to rupture and the building materials to collapse. Sunlight streamed through the large hole above, making the scene resemble the jagged skeleton of a dead beast.
Yet aside from the explosion and collapse, there was absolutely no trace of a “fire” in the factory hall.
“It doesn’t look like there was ever a fire here…” Sherry muttered thoughtfully.
“No traces of fire, that’s the biggest problem,” Duncan’s deep voice suddenly came from beside her, as he also looked up at the broken pipes and roof structure, his brow slightly furrowed, “This level of damage, and clearly there was an explosion, would inevitably involve some form of accompanying fire, no matter the scale. There should at least be some traces of burning in the factory hall… But there’s not even a trace of a flame having been here.”
Duncan’s voice fell, and A-Gou immediately spoke gravely, “Yes, the way it looks here now, it’s as if all elements related to ‘fire’ had been deliberately erased, yet because it’s been erased too cleanly, it has left a more conspicuous void.”
“Was it erased…” Duncan muttered softly, slowly walking deeper into the factory. When he passed an abandoned, twisted machine, he stopped and casually glanced at a hole in the wall nearby.
He suddenly stopped walking, his eyes widening slightly.
Fire! A towering inferno!
He saw a sea of flames rising from the other side of the hole, saw the whole barren land outside the factory rolling with flames like a surging ocean, leaping into the air and plunging toward the ground, flowing toward the nearby streets and houses, with thick smoke billowing up and countless frantic people running through this hellish mirage!
This horrifying and intense scene had suddenly entered Duncan’s field of vision, but the next second, just as he turned his head to call Sherry over, the fiery scene suddenly dissipated.
Duncan blinked hard and walked up to the hole to look outside, only to see a barren land and a few dilapidated houses at its edge that were uninhabited.
A-Gou noticed Duncan’s unusual actions and immediately asked, “Did you find something?”
“I saw it too just now, fire,” Duncan answered gravely, “but it disappeared as I turned around.”
“Then it seems the ‘echo’ left here is strong,” A-Gou immediately analyzed. “To reappear twice in such a short time is not a mark left by ordinary transcendent powers. It seems that the ‘Sun Shard’ the heretics are looking for indeed appeared here… but I don’t know what triggers the ‘echo’…”
Duncan said nothing; he just slowly returned to the position where he had first seen the “echo” and stood there thoughtfully looking at the spot where he had stood before.
It seemed as though there was nothing here.
After a moment of thought, Duncan suddenly raised his hand and gently rubbed his fingertips.
A cluster of faint green flames quietly emerged from his hands.
The moment A-Gou saw the faint green flame, he suddenly shrank his neck and then stepped back three or four steps, while Sherry, accompanied by the clanging sound of black chains, also stepped back half a step, looking horrified at Duncan, “Are you… are you really planning to go through with this?”
“What’s there to be afraid of,” Duncan looked emotionlessly at the pair, “this isn’t meant to roast you.”
As his voice fell, he pointed his fingertips toward the ground.
The faint green flame seemed to become a flow of water, silently falling to the ground, and the next second, a translucent spiritual body of fire rippled and spread across the surface, instantly sweeping a few meters around Duncan’s feet!
Sherry looked at the scene with uncertainty, suddenly widening her eyes, “Ah!?”
Where the flames swept through, something suddenly emerged from the seemingly empty ground.
It was a pile of ashes, a curled up figure that faintly resembled a human!
It was a human being turned to ash, staring in the direction Duncan had just been looking at before dying.
Suddenly, Sherry thought of something, she lifted her head, surveying the empty factory.
And under Duncan’s deliberate control, the faint green fire of the spiritual body swept through the entire factory like a breeze.
Thus, the traces that had been erased were finally briefly unveiled before the Visitor.