Steampunk: Sixth Era Epic

Chapter 143 Hidden Wall

Shard greeted Priest Augustus familiarly, and the middle-aged priest discreetly hid the novel that seemed out of place in the church under his desk. After checking Shard's two documents, he asked them to wait for a while and then left. However, he soon returned, handing back the property deed and house deed that had been kept in the file bag to him.

"Later today, the church will send... a professional property assessor to survey the condition of that house to determine whether you can open the sealed areas," Priest Augustus said.

Of course, when Shard left the church, Priest Augustus told him quietly on the stone steps in front of the church door that the "professional property assessor" was actually Dawn Church's Circle Sorcerer.

As Shard was preoccupied with Mia's dinner and the storybook from Miss Luisa, he did not chat further with Priest Augustus and headed straight home.

Since Dawn Square, where Dawn Chapel was located, was very near Tobesk City Center, only the sunset was just appearing on the distant horizon when he arrived home, and to his surprise, a group of young people were enthusiastically feeding pigeons with breadcrumbs in Saint Delan Square at his doorstep.

There were many pigeons in the square during summer, which even sometimes perched on the second-floor bedroom windowsill of No. 6, Saint Delan Square in the early mornings. Mia enjoyed looking at the pigeons on the windowsill through the window, so Shard never opened the window.

After dinner, Shard wanted to immediately look at the book borrowed from Miss Luisa. However, the Dawn Church's "building safety inspector" arrived earlier than he had expected, showing up in the early evening.

The safety inspector's name was Mr. Frankie, an elderly gentleman who looked about the same age as Priest Augustus, dressed in a somewhat outdated brown checked coat. As they shook hands, a whispering voice in his ear reminded him that this old man was a Circle Sorcerer.

The so-called safety inspection was merely a walk-through of the areas to be opened. Mr. Frankie talked with Shard about the past events in the house while they walked together from the first floor to the second.

They observed the sealed passageway on the first floor and stood in front of a locked door on the second floor; finally, they discussed the incident that occurred when the church cut off the staircase to the third floor.

Mr. Frankie did not find anything abnormal with the house, so he smoothly signed off on the safety report.

Shard had thought he would have to pay to have someone open the passageway and repair the staircase, but when Mr. Frankie was leaving, he inquired about Shard's schedule, and then half an hour later, he brought a team of workers.

While permanently removing the sealed passageway on the first floor, the other two areas could not yet be resolved.

The key to Room No. 2 on the second floor was originally kept at the church, but due to the upcoming Day of Prayer, the church was auditing the storeroom and did not allow any sensitive items to be taken out during this period, so the key would only be delivered after a week. Mr. Frankie asked Shard not to unlock it himself.

As for the broken stairs to the third floor, they were not currently repairable. The problems with the first and second floors were due to a century-old curse, while the third floor was truly not open for safety reasons.

This meant that Shard had to find someone to repair the house himself and notify the church when doing so. The church could then help reconnect the stairs free of charge.

When the first floor of No. 6, Saint Delan Square was reopened, the wooden boards on the windows were removed and replaced with glass, and the debris was cleaned up, it was nearly eight o'clock at night. Shard, who had been standing on the stairs holding Mia and watching the construction crew work, came down to bid farewell to Mr. Frankie, who had stayed there all this time.

"If you find any problems with the house, remember to come to Dawn Chapel to find me. Of course, since you know Augustus, you can also go to him; he can find me," Mr. Frankie said heartily.

"Although you might find it odd that Dawn Chapel is responsible for this, after all, it was the church that sold the house to Mr. Sparrow Hamilton three years ago. So it is quite reasonable, there's no need to doubt, yes, that's right."

Shard could only nod in response.

After sending off the group, he finally had the chance to enter and inspect the first floor of his house.

Because the gas lines on the first floor were cut off for safety reasons when the passageway was sealed three years ago, there were no gas lamps on the first floor. Holding the cat and carrying an oil lamp with a glass chimney, Shard walked from the newly cleaned entrance hall into the large living room on the first floor and, as expected, saw that it was completely empty.

The two windows of the living room had been boarded up for a long time, and with the passageway connected to the entrance hall being tightly sealed, there was not much dust on the floor at all.

Fortunately, the whispering voice only appeared once. Had it been a repetitive reminder of elemental presence, Shard would have definitely turned around and left right then.

But after making a round in the basement with the oil lamp, aside from realizing that I'd need to spend money on installing gas lighting, I found nothing.

I had even thoroughly examined the walls, trying to discover any mysterious unknown languages, but there was nothing there. If there had been, the church would not have failed to notice.

"Now this is interesting. Two hundred years ago, two Sorcerers of Nine Rings died on the first floor, and afterward, the owners here kept dying violently. It seems it was because of these Miracle elements, which are harmful to ordinary people..."

As I thought this, my soul's Ring of Fate began to rotate, starting with the Arcane Technique "Echo of the Past."

All I heard was the sound of my own footsteps and Mia's dissatisfied meows.

"If sound doesn't do it..."

My right eye took on a blood-red hue, and even though the oil lamp only illuminated a small area, Shard's vision now revealed extremely faint bloodstains in the darkness.

These stains were likely left over from a hundred years ago, looking like the shape of footprints and almost covered the entire basement floor, stretching from deep inside the basement all the way to the entrance.

"There are no stains leading from the entrance to the inside, which means the presence of the bloodstains originated from something that happened within the basement," he thought to himself.

Taking the basement stairs as a starting point, Shard followed track of the intertwined footprints in reverse order, in the sequence they were made a hundred years ago, to find their end. He finally stopped in front of the wall directly facing the basement steps.

The footprints stopped at the wall, where both the wall and the floor had deeper bloodstains. Meanwhile, the person who made these footprints seemed to have lingered around here for quite a while, causing the bloody footprints to overlap continuously before finally heading towards the basement exit.

"How did the wall get bloodstains so high up? It doesn't look splattered but more like it was smeared on... And why linger here? What happened in this place? Even if someone was pondering something, there's no need to linger in a basement... Could there still be space behind this wall?

No, the church couldn't have missed such a trick."

Shard frowned, cradling the cat in one arm while setting the oil lamp down by his feet. Then he pressed his hand against the wall. At that moment, all he felt was an icy coldness. When he tapped his fingers against it, there was no hollow echo.

"Should I get a hammer and break this open?" Shard wondered, as he stared at the wall for a while longer before a new idea struck him just before giving up:

"Anyway, trying it out won't cost any Gold Pounds."

With that thought, he summoned his Ring of Fate. Mia was startled by the sound of bells and steam whistles and laid sprawling on Shard's shoulder, looking back with her amber eyes wide; the orange cat had never seen anything quite like it.

As the Ring of Fate slowly revolved, Shard controlled the Core Rune "Space-Time," manipulating the flow of Spirit to make the rune emit a faint glow. That glow illuminated the wall in front of him.

After that, the wall vanished like a phantom, revealing a narrow passage...

Shard believed his own expression would mirror that of the cat currently beholding the Ring of Fate.

[A hidden wall lies ahead.]

She said, laughing.