Chapter 119: Chapter 123 Sealed in Memory
Heidi, panting heavily, ran up to Fenna. Nearby guards, upon seeing her approach, instinctively wanted to step forward to stop her but quickly recognized the disheveled, dirt-covered lady as the senior advisor to the city hall and church and immediately let her through.
“You’re leading the team personally,” Heidi said in surprise as she looked at Fenna, fully armed, and then glanced at the elite church group behind her. “And you brought so many people?”
“A fire at the museum is no ordinary situation,” Fenna replied briefly. She then looked Heidi over several times to make sure her friend was unharmed before she breathed a sigh of relief. “It looks like your vacation is ruined.”
“It’s ‘ruined again!’” Heidi said with a sad but resigned expression. “Why am I always so unlucky…ah, it hurts…”
Fenna noticed the unique large bump on Heidi’s head, stepped forward, and casually touched near her friend’s wound, while glancing in the direction from which Heidi had just run, her brows slightly furrowed. “Did you just escape?”
“I was saved…” Heidi sighed, feeling more comfortable as the pain on her forehead gradually faded. Her attention focused more sharply, and then she paused as if suddenly remembering something. She quickly scanned her surroundings and then suddenly moved closer to Fenna. “I need a quiet and blessed environment, preferably inside a church.”
Seeing her friend’s suddenly serious expression, Fenna quickly understood. She didn’t ask any questions but turned to instruct her own priests. “Take over the scene, seal off the museum, upgrade the contamination level to Spirit Realm…”
She hadn’t finished speaking when Heidi interrupted in a low, urgent voice: “Deep Abyss level.”
“Adjust to Deep Abyss level, evacuate all civilians within two hundred meters around the plaza!” Fenna ordered in shock. Then she turned to a priest with a short beard. “Take us to the nearest church, we’ll need a private prayer room—prepare incense number 16.”
The priest, who had just escaped from the fire, immediately nodded. “Yes, please follow me; it’s near the square.”
Fenna and Heidi quickly left the square and rode with the guide priest to a community church near the plaza. Before they arrived at the church, Fenna noticed Heidi’s complexion starting to unnaturally flush red.
“What’s going on?” Fenna’s brows furrowed tightly as she touched Heidi’s forehead, the high temperature under her fingers making her voice instantly change. “Why is it so hot?!”
“I might have come into contact with something ‘in the museum,’” Heidi quickly explained. “I used self-hypnosis to lock some information deep in my memory. The effect of the hypnosis just ended… I am gradually remembering.”
Listening to Heidi’s narrative, Fenna’s eyes slightly widened as she rapidly made a judgment—
A severe Transcendent phenomenon contamination, simply the cognition of which could impact the real world.
“Stop remembering immediately, slow down your thoughts,” Fenna put her hand on Heidi’s shoulder. “Look into my eyes, shift your focus elsewhere! If necessary, hypnotize yourself again!”
“I’ll try.” Heidi took a deep breath. She stared into Fenna’s eyes, deep and serene like the ocean, struggling to control the memories slowly surfacing in her mind, trying not to recall that majestic and grand stream of fire, not to recall the sea of fire churning in the pitch-black void. Yet, those memories still seeped out, like blood oozing from a wound, uncontainable.
But suddenly, a slight coolness coming from her chest made Heidi, who felt almost engulfed by flames, sober up a lot.
She looked down subconsciously, only to see the glass “crystal pendant,” worthy only as a freebie in an antique store in the Lower City District, faintly glowing at her chest.
That minor glow was nearly imperceptible to the naked eye, yet it served as an anchor firmly rooted in the real world, pulling back her dispersing spirit.
The next second, she heard the priest’s voice coming from ahead, “We have arrived at the church!”
Under the personal escort of Fenna the Great Saint, Heidi was quickly taken into the church. Because the priest had already sent a spiritual message to the church, a prayer room had been prepared, and the powerful soothing and protective incense was already lit.
In the faint smoke from the incense, the statue of the Storm Goddess Gomona quietly overlooked Heidi and Fenna as they hurried into the room.
The priest was left outside the prayer room—he might not be able to withstand the spiritual contamination that could occur next.
As Heidi set foot into the prayer room, Fenna heard the illusory sound of waves ringing in her ears, and she felt as though a supremely great existence was gazing directly at her soul. Following that, all the candles in the church began to burn fiercely, crackling and popping amidst the intense flames!
She looked up at the statue of the Storm Goddess, which seemed to have suddenly become distant and majestic. An indescribable aura of authority was exuding from the statue, slowly focusing around Heidi.
“The Lord is watching…” The visions in the prayer room startled Fenna, but she quickly breathed a sigh of relief. She turned to Heidi, noting that the flush on her face was fading, “You are safe now. Release your memories, let us see what you have seen.”
Heidi didn’t speak, merely nodding her head. Then, she casually took off one of her earrings, which had a small mechanism at its end. She used her fingernail to trigger the device, ejecting a sharp spike just a few millimeters long.
Without hesitation, she tightly clenched the earring with the protruding spike, allowing the blood to seep out from her palm.
This was the deepest mental suggestion she had branded into herself at the beginning of her career as a mental therapist—when the platinum spike pierced her palm, it could release all the impurities sealed in her memory.
The next second, the illusory and overlapping sound of waves in the prayer room became extremely distinct, all while the burning candles turned dim and flickered. The entire room seemed to be draped with a swaying, blurred veil of gauze; multiple layers of this gauze moved around the statue of the goddess, reflecting faint, blurry illusions—
That was a scene Heidi had urgently sealed in her own memory.
It was only a fleeting glimpse of the momentary truth.
Within the shimmering phantom veils, Fenna saw what Heidi had seen:
In a pitch-black void, a column of flames surged skyward, more blazing than any fire in the world, more breathtaking than any power created by humans—a flame-wave sweeping across and engulfing everything. Even a saint like Fenna tensed her muscles upon seeing it!
How far did that flame surge in the darkness? Tens of thousands of kilometers? Millions? Or even further?
What was it? Pure flame, or something more primitive that could touch the eternal truths?
Fenna didn’t know when she held her breath, watching the column of flames rise in the darkness, then watching it gradually fall. The flowing fire, like a viscous paste, formed a fierce and irregular arc in the void darkness, until the vision gradually faded, until the surrounding illusory waves of sound slowly calmed down. She remained stunned for a long time.
It was after a while that she suddenly felt as if sea wind were moisturizing her thoughts; the tender consolation of the Storm Goddess brought her back to her senses. She looked at Heidi, only to find Heidi staring at her in astonishment.
“Is this… what you saw in the museum?”
“Perhaps… maybe…” Heidi’s heart thumped wildly. Although this was extracted from her own memory, the effect of self-hypnosis had still surpassed her imagination, “But this thing… it doesn’t seem like an ‘artifact’ that could be displayed in a museum…”
“This couldn’t be any ‘artifact’,” Fenna said quickly, “Even if we can’t judge its scale, but just by intuition, I know it couldn’t possibly be stored within any building… You couldn’t have seen it in the real world.”
Heidi paused, frowning tightly, and after a long time, cautiously spoke, “I might have seen it while I was unconscious… and performed self-hypnosis while unconscious. What I saw might not be its physical form or entity, but rather I saw its ‘projection’ on a mental level.”
“Are you sure?” Fenna looked at her, “I am not questioning your abilities as a mental therapist, but… it’s not easy to temporarily contain spiritual contamination in an unconscious state.”
“I am confident,” Heidi said slowly but firmly, nodding her head, “I received rigorous training at the Academy of Truth, where I could contain hazardous information with my subconscious mind even when my main consciousness was out of control, but because self-hypnosis in such situations is uncontrollable, it results in the loss of many key pieces of information, so I can’t tell you what the specific circumstances were when I saw this ‘projection,’ nor do I know what the opportunity or medium was.”
“…Okay, I trust your professionalism,” Fenna scrutinized Heidi for a while before softly exhaling, “It seems… you really saw something incredible, huh.”