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 Frankie, an elderly gentleman who looked about the same age as Priest Augustus, dressed in a somewhat outdated brown checked coat.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.

But it was not very dark here; moonlight and the light from the gas streetlamps next to Saint Delan Square streamed in through the windows, and the bright light from the gas lamps in the entrance hall behind also illuminated this place.

"Are you still here?" Shard asked quietly in his mind while inspecting the first floor.

[Are you afraid of ghosts?]

"Of course not, I just wanted to ask, since you said my soul is sensitive, do you sense any problems here?"

[Currently, no, but you might want to walk further inside.]

The first floor was twice the size of the upstairs space Shard lived in, as the second floor had been divided into two separate rooms.

But due to some past events, only load-bearing walls and floors remained on the first floor; all partition walls and furniture needed to be provided by Shard himself. The space was empty, but the advantage was that he could quickly look back to the entrance hall, making it a little less frightening.

Mia's eyes glowed in the dark. The timid cat was initially frightened by the unfamiliar environment, but after being held by Shard for two laps, it got used to the place. It struggled to jump down from Shard's arms, and seeing no danger, he let it onto the floor.

The petite cat raced around on the floor, making pitter-patter sounds. However, it soon disappeared from Shard's line of sight.

It took a search to realize that with the first-floor passageway opened, the door leading to the basement behind the stairs was also finally revealed.n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

Shard was certainly glad to see this since the house was too big for him to occupy alone, and he had long thought about renting out a part of it. If the basement was large enough, he could completely divide it into separate rooms to rent to the poor...

"How can I even think of doing this? Have I gone mad for gold pounds?" Shard reprimanded himself, bending down to pick up Mia who was scratching incessantly at the wooden door of the basement.

There wasn't a single piece of furniture on the first floor; the walls, having been well-maintained before, still looked decent, belying their age. However, it was unclear how long this door had stood here, its veneer severely rotted, to the extent that even the delicate paws of a small orange cat could leave marks on it.

When I tried to push the door open, it almost fell off its hinges. But precisely because this door wasn't sturdy, the basement had good ventilation with the outside world, so there was no concern about a lack of oxygen.

Priest Augustus hadn't mentioned any problems with the basement when speaking of this house, so with the creaking sound as I pushed the door open, Shard boldly carried the cat down the steps.

The basement ceiling was only about two meters high, somewhat low. Standing on the stairs and holding the oil lamp high, apart from the rusted steam pipes piled in the corner, there was only the stale air.

"The church is really cautious. They really moved away all the suspicious items, not even leaving a single pebble behind."

Mia, the orange cat, cuddled in Shard's arms, curiously gazed at everything dimly-lit around them. But because the floor of the basement wasn't clean, this time Shard didn't set her down.

Thinking of turning around in the basement to see if any burrowing rats had taken residence there, I then stepped down from the stairs. But the moment my shoes barely touched the ground, a whispering voice arose by my ear:

[You have come into contact with "Miracle."]

"Miracle?"

Miracle elements are related to God, and Shard stopped in his tracks, lifting the oil lamp even higher, trying to spot any strange traces:

"I knew it wouldn't be all quiet here, but a 'Miracle' element appearing really wasn't part of my plan."

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.


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