“Do not be too nervous. I mean no harm.”
The Faceless Man indeed had no face.
His face looked quite smooth, without any facial features.
It should have been an extremely terrifying face, but it did not seem too frightening, which seemed to have a great deal to do with his behavior.
After all, he looked very friendly.
“I am only here to help. My task was only to lure you into the sewer. What happened afterward has nothing to do with me. Officer, you should believe me, right?”
Ling did not lower the weapon in her hand, but her hostility had indeed decreased a lot.
The Faceless Man was an anomaly on record, and also one of the few creatures counted as friendly anomalies.
Even though this time he had indeed stood on the opposite side of the Special Task Force, that also could not prove he was evil.
After all, the concepts of good and evil of anomalies were different from humans.
They did not know that helping cultists was evil.
They only knew that helping others was justice, was friendliness.
The Faceless Man might have been used, but no matter what, he was ultimately still an anomaly.
It was also impossible to simply put down all vigilance toward him.
“Do you know their plan?”
“Of course I know, but I cannot tell you, because I agreed with them that I would not tell this plan to others. Not keeping one’s word is not something a good person should do.”
“They are not good people. You are aiding the wicked.”
“But I am not human. I do not care what exactly they are preparing to do. I only do what I want to do, what I believe to be justice.”
He laughed, and although no expression could be seen, the laughter was especially bright, as if he had thought of something very interesting.
“Do you know, I encountered a clown in the sewer. He, mm… how should I put it, is exactly the opposite of me. He is an out-and-out evil person, but the jokes he tells really are quite funny. Do you want to hear one?”
Ling was in no mood to hear jokes, but she still said nothing.
“Fine… This is what he told me.” The Faceless Man lightly coughed and slowly said.
“Some believe in the night, some believe in darkness, and some believe in the moon. These are originally things that could not be more unrelated, but their believers simultaneously pray to the same deity. Guess who He is?”
Ling was silent for a moment, then slightly shook her head, expressing her confusion.
“He is the Sea God! Hahahahaha!”
“What the hell…?”
Looking at the Faceless Man who suddenly began laughing wildly, Ling could not help but frown. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
“Oh, is this not funny? It seems you do not have much of a sense of humor.” The Faceless Man touched his chin, looking somewhat unsatisfied.
“You want to resolve this ritual, right? I mean, stop them.”
Ling nodded, and the Faceless Man also clapped, very satisfied with Ling’s answer.
“I cannot tell you his plan, but I can clearly tell you that girl is the key to this ritual. When the moon rises, the mist shrouds everything, the Second Moon will also rise into the sky again, and the sea surface will once again fall into chaos. The tide will submerge this place and make it into a new painting… Can I call it the City Beneath the Sea? Quite nice.”
“What you said is completely impossible. There is no sea nearby, not even a larger lake. If even this place would be submerged, then the world could not possibly still have any land at all.”
“Oh… it seems so. What you said is correct.” He had no intention of refuting Ling, only silently clasped his hands behind his back, and said without any sense of humor.
“Unfortunately, I do not know how to swim.”
“…What?”
“Nothing. All I can say is this much. I am also quite curious how you will do it. Mm… what will that bad-tempered man do? He should directly charge to the ritual site, kill everyone, disrupt the ritual, or save that girl, and then welcome the night, wait for the moon to rise, and look forward to the ocean submerging this place… probably? Would you do that?”
Ling’s brows furrowed even more deeply.
An even harder-to-describe thought slowly spread in her mind, and became more and more obvious.
“…You mean, what will truly bring disaster is not this ritual? Damn it… I do not understand what you are talking about at all… Can you not just tell me everything!”
“Ah ah, you people are always so impatient.”
“Countless people’s lives are in my hands right now! How do you expect me to have the patience to listen to your nonsense!”
The Faceless Man gently shook his head and turned around.
“They never asked you to save them.”
“I should not have wasted time with you!” Ling angrily turned around and prepared to leave, but the Faceless Man called out to her again.
“Consider it doing a good deed. A friendly reminder. Not everything you see is necessarily reality. The inconceivable, the unbelievable, does not mean it equals falsehood. Doubt more, think more… You should be able to find a way to break the situation. It is fine if you cannot find it either. Humans will not expect you to save them. The mistakes you make will not be borne by all of humanity either.”
The Faceless Man slightly turned sideways and tugged at his suit, slightly adjusting his attire.
He seemed to be preparing to leave as well.
“Giving up is also a choice.”
The sun was about to set.
…
She was not sure what she would encounter next, nor was she sure what dangers the next operation would face.
But she no longer had a choice.
For everyone, and also for herself.
“Move out!”
“Yes!”
As she gave the order, the church’s main door was directly kicked open.
Two or three police officers charged in holding their guns, and Ling also followed closely behind.
At the center of the church, before that prayer platform, a man with a face full of worry lightly looked toward Ling, and also toward the other police officers holding weapons.
“What are you trying to stop, the setting of the sun, or the rising of the moon?”
He was the priest, the only priest of Maulkinson, the inheritor of this church, Constantine.
“It is still not too late to stop now! Actively give up resistance, and we will show leniency!”
“You do not know at all what you are doing.”
The priest closed his eyes.
The Bible in his hand gently closed, and he casually turned around.
The next moment, several hidden doors suddenly appeared in the church walls.
Black-robed cultists immediately rushed out, waving the weapons in their hands at the police officers.
“Open fire at will!”
Ling slightly turned sideways to dodge a cultist’s slash, kicked him away, and the bullets from her gun burst out, directly knocking him to the ground.
She then tried to directly charge toward Constantine.
But in just a moment, more cultists surged forward.
They seemed to be unafraid of death, desperately charging at the police officers.
Continuous gunshots rang out, and black-robed people continuously fell, but immediately after, the next cultist would charge forward again, fearless of death, endless and inexhaustible.
Blood and corpses piled up in the church.
The light cast in through the stained glass fell upon the battlefield, and also fell upon Ling, who kept firing the bullets in her hand.
Afterward, the light slowly disappeared.
The sun had set.