Chapter 41: Chapter 41 Inside the Antique Shop
The interior of the antique shop was just as Duncan had guessed —— filled with disorder, decay, and a dismal appearance of doing poor business. Even just by looking at the dust accumulated near the display window, the Visitor could imagine how wretched the owner’s life had become.
The first thing he saw were the shelves near the walls on both sides, where large vases, sculptures, and totems of obscure meaning were placed on low, steady surfaces. Behind these shelves, the wall was gridded for smaller “merchandise”. The counter faced the entrance, a long bar, and the racks behind it were also dusty, filled with dark-hued frames and small trinkets.
Behind the counter, there was also a staircase leading to the second floor, which looked dim and its structure was not clear at the moment.
There was also a small door under the staircase which, in his “memory”, should lead to the storage area at the back of the shop —— half of the space cluttered with various items.
It was hard to believe that the Heretic whose body he now possessed managed to live off such a shop, which seemed like somewhere no one would visit, and still had surplus money to offer to the priests of the Sun God.
Duncan walked towards the deep counter; the old wooden floor creaked a bit. As he passed the stairs, he noticed the lamp fixed on the wall.
It was an electric lamp.
Duncan’s eyebrows immediately furrowed slightly.
The style of the lamp was foreign, with an iron frame and a murky lampshade that felt exotic, but no matter how one looked at it, the structure of the tungsten filament bulb within was clear —— the lamp’s source of light came from electricity.
In this world, was electricity already so widespread? Did the common households in the Lower City District also use electric lights?
Then why were the sources of light used in the sewer earlier gas lamps and oil lamps, torches? Why were the street lamps outside also gas lamps?
A great confusion surfaced, which Duncan found utterly illogical, especially in the environment of the sewer —— the existence of open flames, the use of flammable gas in gas lamps posed obvious disadvantages compared to the cleanliness and safety of electric lights!
Originally, he thought that technological limitations forced the city’s managers to use gas lamps as the light source for the sewer, but now it seems… at least in the Plunder City-State, technology had advanced to the level where electricity had entered ordinary homes!
A huge sense of incongruity filled Duncan’s heart. He tried to search the fragments of memory in his mind for corresponding knowledge, but only got the answers “this is common sense” and “that’s how the city is planned”.
It seemed that either this knowledge was not made public, so that the Heretic he was bound to was ignorant of it, or this knowledge was so fundamental that it did not leave a strong enough impression in the Heretic’s mind. Consequently, after death, the associated memory quickly blurred, leaving only the impression of being “common sense”.
With a confusion that was temporarily unresolved in his heart, Duncan reached out and turned on the electric light —— with a click of the switch, bright light immediately illuminated the area near the staircase and the counter.
There was another switch on the opposite wall for controlling the lighting in other areas of the first floor of the shop, but Duncan did not intend to touch it for the time being.
Now in the quiet of the late night, a small light lit in the closed antique shop could still be explained as “the shopkeeper getting up and moving around at night”, but suddenly brightening the whole place might attract unwanted attention.
Using the limited light near the staircase, Duncan’s gaze first swept over the nearby merchandise. The first thing that caught his eye was a wooden totem less than half a meter tall, with strange facial patterns painted in red and blue, and next to it, there was what seemed to be an antique vase made of ceramic —— they had price tags in front, with exorbitantly high prices marked on them.
The original price was four hundred and twenty thousand, after the discount, three hundred and sixty.
It gave off an air of self-abandonment.
Duncan’s gaze quickly shifted and swept across the entire shop.
If there were even one authentic item in here, he’d run the Homeloss headfirst into Plunder’s city walls.
The fakes couldn’t be faker, no need for a real collector to authenticate, any person with normal intelligence wouldn’t believe that this antiques shop in the Lower City District would sell genuine antiques—is it possible for someone who’s truly into antiques to start a market in such a poor area? The oldest thing in the store is probably that sign hanging at the door…
But Duncan wasn’t surprised by the store’s existence—it was understood that the shopkeeper knew he was selling fake stuff, and the people coming here to buy didn’t expect to put a thousand-year-old statue in their homes, everyone was clear on that, civilians from the Lower City District also needed a way to fulfill their own spiritual needs—the sign “Antiques Shop” at the door wasn’t hung up for others to see, but for the customers themselves.
After all, beneath Earth’s flyovers, there are those selling jade, with bracelets at ninety-eight apiece claiming to be from old pits with ice varieties, and if you’re not careful going home and knock against the door frame, a scatter of glass shards could fall—don’t the sellers and buyers know the drill?
Duncan wasn’t interested in the shopkeeper’s troubled past life, he was focused on one thing only: this place could be the first “landing spot” on land for him, the captain of Homeloss.
An “outpost” to learn about the world on land, about modern civilized society.
He had already made a decision in secret, that if conditions allowed for “walking in the Spirit Realm,” he would maintain his current body as much as possible, and use the “antiques shop” as a cover to operate within Plunder City-State. And if the training for Ai Yi went well, if Ai Yi could really control the stable transfer of “real objects” between Homeloss and Plunder, this antiques shop would also become a secret transshipment warehouse.
Duncan went behind the counter and sat down in a chair, carefully sorting through the fragments of memories in his mind, contemplating every possible source of trouble.
The original owner of this body was a believer in the Sun God, but was also the lowest member in the entire church hierarchy. Due to the city-state authorities’ continuous crackdowns on heretic activities, the living space for followers of the Sun God in Plunder had been squeezed to the limit. The members were extremely cautious in their contacts, wearing full hoods and masks outside of any gatherings, and many of the lower members’ connections to higher-ups in the church were limited to just one or two specific “contacts.” This was undoubtedly a good thing for the current Duncan—
This meant that even within the heretics, only that one person knew “his” true identity and contact methods, and once that person was gone, then no one would know of “his” unspeakable heretic identity.
He could walk right in front of the city-state’s authorities, his identity a clear and upright good citizen.
And the better news was that after carefully sorting through his memories, Duncan confirmed that this biggest risk had already disappeared.
Because “his” contact was one of the three black-robed heretics he had seen when he first awoke…
Those unfortunate three had been duped by a pigeon.
He felt a little more at ease in his heart and shifted to a more comfortable position in his chair.
After the biggest risk disappeared, if there was still something to worry about, it would be the other Sun God believers who had participated in the sacrifice ceremony at the underground meeting, as well as those believers’ backers—the much larger and more mysterious dangerous Sun God Church.
If his memories were correct, four years ago Plunder City-State had launched a severe strike against the Sun God Church within the city, and since then this heretic faith had been in decline within the city-state. Far from holding any ceremonies, they would be grateful just being able to hide themselves well, not getting caught by the church guardians.
But now, these extremely low-key heretics had done something quite high-profile.
The purpose of the sacrifice ceremony was to please the gods, while another was to gather power or enhance the god’s influence on the real world—those heretics in the gathering, including the high priest “Visitor” who held the ceremony, were actually just the grassroots members of the Sun God Church. Would these grassroots members spontaneously organize such a big event?
The fragments of Duncan’s memory weren’t very plentiful, and a low-ranking heretic would not be privy to the core secrets of the church. But just from the information that was available, he guessed that those suddenly active heretics must have been acting on instructions from higher up.
That sect that worshipped the “True Sun God”… They wanted to do something big in Plunder, and the sacrifice ceremony that was accidentally disrupted by him was probably just an insignificant ripple before the start of this big event.
Duncan didn’t have any particular attachment to the “Plunder City-State,” but if he wanted to use it as a starting point for development, then he had to consider what kind of impact a bunch of fanatics like the “Sun God believers” could have on him with their antics in the city-state.