The Strange Adventures of Hearn the Believer

"arrive."

"Pandora."

"Mrs. Vanessa! I'm reporting Pandora for skipping class again today!"

“Yord, your father definitely didn’t teach you that little boys who try to attract girls’ attention by deliberately being contrarian are all idiots who end up failing. Now, go to the balcony and calm down for half an hour.”

The wind and snow outside the window were heavy, and the pale sunlight shone only slightly through the glass into the old classroom. The little boy sitting in the second to last row by the window had his face as red as his nose usually was.

Soon, as the wind and snow poured into the room with each opening and closing of the door, the little boy, barely grown up, slunk out of the classroom.

After a brief silence, the classroom was soon filled with belated bursts of laughter.

On the podium, the middle-aged female teacher took off her glasses, which indicated mild presbyopia, and her gaze lingered on an empty desk in the corner of the classroom.

With a soft cough, she symbolically cleared her throat, and the lively classroom fell silent again under the female teacher's authoritative presence.

"Today, before class begins, I have some news to share with everyone. I'll be talking to that kid Yod privately later."

"What news is it, Mrs. Vanessa?"

"The city of Yisu has been quite turbulent lately. I don't know how many rumors you've heard from your families. I just hope that after this turmoil, everyone sitting in the classroom can continue their studies, including the few who often skip class. So, after school, please go home as soon as possible, because that's one of the few places where you can sleep peacefully. And there have been several missing persons cases reported to the police station in the lower city. Do you understand?"

"Understood, Mrs. Vanessa."

"Now let's begin class. Everyone, please turn to page 218 of Volume 3 of Sociology. Jeanne, go outside and call that brat in for class!"

……

The air was filled with a dry, cold smell of cheap tobacco. A fluorescent gas lamp hung from a corner of the ceiling along a makeshift pipe. The mottled walls were stained with a layer of charcoal black that didn't quite look old. Brass pipes were sporadically exposed from between the dark walls. An old gramophone lay quietly in a corner of the room. Judging by its condition, if it were to enter the black market, such an antique from the last century would probably fetch a good price.

These are probably family heirlooms or something similar. Due to historical reasons, almost every household in Isoo has one or two such antiques.

"A petty-bourgeois affectation." The young officer turned his gaze from every corner of the room, and finally, the brown-haired young man couldn't help but comment.

"Well, Drake, have you found anything?" The door opened, and another police officer returned to the room from the cubicle. He looked a dozen years older than the previous one, with slightly graying temples, but his eyes were bright, sharp, and experienced.

"Looks like he's had too much K and died of high, which suits him perfectly. He's a single, middle-class guy from the city center who's barely making ends meet. Look at the vibe in this room," the young cop replied. "Want one, boss?"

"Drake, it's time to go on duty." The old sheriff frowned.

“Beer comforts the palate, cigarettes soothe the soul. Don’t be nervous, Abel. Everything I’m saying is true. The forensic team has already taken samples on-site for testing. The results should be out by lunchtime at the latest. Besides, you’ve been doing this for so many years, you’ve seen more than a greenhorn like me. Don’t tell me you can’t figure out how this fat guy, who wasn’t even wearing underwear, died.” Drake put his hand on the old sheriff’s shoulder and lowered his voice. “Also, I found five gold bars in his genitals, products from a private workshop, all unnumbered. By the way, this fat guy’s genitals were really loose.”

"..."

Upon hearing this, the old police chief quickly took a step back to create distance.

"Wait, boss, I've already changed my gloves. The pair I'm wearing now are new!"

"Cough, remember to hand over the gold bars to the bureau. They are stolen goods and also evidence. They will help us solve these cases."

“Oh, that is indeed stolen goods…”

"Shut up, Drake. Leave the rest to the administrative staff. Let's go out first."

"Yes, sir."

……

Outside, the snow was still falling heavily. This wretched place, Ys, was like this all year round. Abel couldn't remember how many times he had seen a clear sky in the more than thirty years since he was born; he could probably count the number of times on two hands.

When the repetitive, inorganic movements between the fingers came to naught, before patience and the flint structure of the lighter were completely ruined, the younger colleague beside him, who was always much more reliable inside than out, tactfully handed over a carefully maintained flame.

"Thank you." Years of high-pressure work had honed his skills, and the seasoned smoker skillfully lit his cigarette. In the brief moments between the comfortingly cheap tobacco burning, Sheriff Abel's nose inevitably caught a whiff of something off.

“Drake, you said you had changed your gloves…”

"Boss, what did you say?"

"never mind."

Abel shook his head, took a deep drag on the handmade cigarette in his mouth, and dispelled the suggestive and unpleasant odor from the person's surroundings and mind.

“This is the fifth one,” he stated briefly, as was his habit.

“Yes, five deaths in a week, all accidental: overdose of sedatives, getting caught in a lathe, falling from a height, gas explosion, and just now that fat guy who died from a drug overdose. What will be next?” the young man calculated.

Why do you think there will be another one?

“Because the big shots up there aren’t planning to settle down yet.” Drake raised a finger and symbolically pointed to the buildings in the upper city on the high cliff.

"You're overthinking it. Although the Church's Iron Knights are conducting a secret purge, their purging operation won't leave our police station with this inexplicable mess, let alone corpses."

"Of course, I know it wasn't the work of those church fathers, and the corpses left by those lumps of iron would never be so intact. But boss, are you sure you want to continue calling those freaks who only have a fanatical brain, whose bodies are all metal screws below the head, who can be screwed into ready-made power armor like a light bulb every time they go out, and who can lift a large-caliber machine gun and chainsaw to praise the glory of the great sages after being injected with enough stimulants? The paladins in the bedtime stories my grandma told me were not like this."

“In the bedtime stories your great-grandmother told your great-grandmother, we weren’t trapped in this godforsaken place, were we?” The sheriff was quite displeased with the young man’s remarks. “Besides, don’t openly smear the authority of Ys in the streets. Your father looked after me back then, so I don’t want you to be dragged out for target practice for no reason one day, understand?”

"Understood, I'll be careful, boss," the young officer replied.

"Sergeant Abel, the station has received another case, this time in the lower city center," an officer from the routine section reported as he climbed onto the platform where the two were standing.

"what happened?"

Abel exchanged a glance with Drake, his expression conveying a sense of "you jinx," and gestured for the officer from the routine department to continue.

"The person who came to report the case was Mr. Vladimir Vladin, a worker representative from the Lower City Union. His daughter had not returned home for five days."

"Boss, is it that Fladin who always drinks and plays cards with you?" the young officer asked uncertainly, but he quickly realized it, because the seasoned police chief in front of him, who usually left room for maneuver in his investigations, was now throwing that maneuver into some unknown corner, his neck veins bulging with agitation!

"Damn it! Come on, Drake, let's go see which bastards are going after little girls!"

Tonight, Ys is still filled with nothing but a monstrous blizzard. On ordinary nights, one can occasionally glimpse the starry sky through the top of the great void. The eye of the white wind is actually a cloudless, clear sky. But in the hundreds of days of the year, the lucky few who have the fortune, the leisure, and the courage to appreciate that rare night view are still pitifully few.

After all, this place has a curfew. In order to maximize the conservation of manpower, any group activities after midnight that are unrelated to work and rest are considered a direct or indirect waste of labor in the universal values ​​of Ys.

Whether you're doing repetitive aerobic exercise, suffering from a hangover, or simply experiencing insomnia after a night of partying, your work efficiency will be greatly reduced the next day.

But what right does someone who is restless and unable to eat or sleep have to embrace the sweet embrace of nightmares?

A gaunt man wearing silver-rimmed glasses emerged from the private darkroom carrying the last batch of freshly developed photographs, water glistening between his fingers. After neatly placing the photos into a dark red, lacquered wooden briefcase, he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and began wiping his hands.

Whether out of urgency or some other reason, his technique was accompanied by a series of slight tremors, like that of a Parkinson's patient. However, he was still relatively young. Even in Issu, being in the latter half of one's thirties is still considered a prime age, far removed from the neurological diseases that are common in the elderly.

After all this, the tall, thin man seemed to breathe a sigh of relief and slumped into the chair behind his desk.

The kerosene lamp burned silently in a corner, dimly illuminating the room. This was not his mansion, but his private workshop, located beneath ruins in the lower city. One had to walk through a shallow corridor of about two hundred meters through underground ruins to reach this private workshop nestled within the mountain walls surrounding the city of Issu. This was also where he worked alone before joining Morgan's research group. From its construction to its opening, only a handful of people were involved. The first few laborers he hired for a small fee had all been tricked by him in the days before and after completion, falling into that terrifying bottomless abyss through that shallow corridor.

No one doubts that homeless people who make a living by doing odd jobs are everywhere in the downtown area. Most of them are also potential destabilizing factors that threaten public order. After a few bottles of vodka, a street brawl often breaks out, or girls from nearby schools stay out all night. When the sun rises the next day and illuminates the streets and alleys of the downtown area, the tragedy of one or more families is already a foregone conclusion.

In his view, Ysul was a stern mother who never generously provided the people living there with material comforts, but she never completely deprived them of the hope of striving for a better future. By spending a little money to complete the workshop, and at the same time removing some unnecessary poison from the city that gave him birth, Valentine considered himself a noble and upright person, from the bottom of his heart.

Safe and secluded, aside from being less convenient, this workshop is in no way inferior to Morgan's, Valentine was confident of that.

Now that everything has calmed down for the time being, the thin man reclined in his chair, lit a cigar he had bought from the black market in the lower city, and began to enjoy a limited amount of mental relaxation while thinking about his next move.

Morgan has succeeded.

However, the subsequent chain reaction far exceeded everything he had promised.

Clearly, in their theory, the already corrupted Mechanicus was corrupt only in its mind, not its body. Less than a week after the aircraft took off, the entire shadowy world of Ys was filled with unease. The Church carried out an indiscriminate purge of private societies operating in the shadows. Although he had not yet been targeted, many of his colleagues had already been hanged in the Highland Church as a warning to others. He was able to escape this fate thanks to his foresight and personal preparations.

Morgan, that old fox, listed "test flight" as the itinerary for Frost Moon 11 in the plan he submitted to them!

From the very beginning, that old fox never intended to bring along the rest of the society's capable and opinionated members, such as Valentine, to break through the White Wind's barrier. That old fox had always believed that there should only be one voice in a team, so he only brought two strong and capable henchmen who could fly aircraft and a photographer who was a sycophant who madly worshipped him and believed he could faithfully record that unprecedented epoch-making feat of the Quaternary Age.

"Damn lucky Morgan, you old bastard, you can probably see the shadow of the Southern Plains by now."

Valentine sighed softly.

His immediate priority is to sever ties with Morgan's Society. After this storm has passed, he will have the opportunity to reorganize his team, and those photos will be his capital for a comeback.

The photos were all taken by the young photographer whom Morgan took with him at the end, with Morgan's permission. All he paid was a small amount of money and the status of a Morgan confidant.

That callow youth seemed to genuinely believe that everyone in the Morgan Society was a group of like-minded academic elites who had come together to explore the history of human destiny in the Quaternary period.

In a sense, they are, but behind the scenes, the underhanded dealings between the key participants have never stopped.

Valentine, Morgan, and Sterling—from the very first day they shook hands and formed their society, the three of them secretly vied for ultimate dominance.

Now that Morgan has fled, Valentine has nearly all the design data. He can simply stay hidden and prepare for two years until the storm passes. Then, he can reconsider his manpower, funding, materials, technology, and site. After all, the tiny airport built on the basis of a natural cliff cave has been completely exposed. In short, Valentine can find a way to get everything except the test flight site. This is different from the difficult research and development process starting from scratch, and it is not the first test flight with many uncertainties. Morgan has already personally proven the feasibility of this design. All Valentine needs to do in the future is to replicate Morgan's results.

Thinking of this, Valentine felt an irrepressible itch in his heart. He held a key to leave Ys, although he was already a step behind that old fox Morgan. What if that old fox took off too hastily and crashed shortly after flying over the White Wind? Everything outside the White Wind was an uncertain factor in academia, just as one can never predict what will happen next.

Now, he is younger than Morgan, and has more energy, financial resources, and time to do this. All he needs is a long period of patience and accumulating strength before unleashing his potential.

Given time, the future is promising.

Wait, there's a problem.

A thought flashed through Valentine's mind: a problem he had overlooked while he was busy hiding and stockpiling supplies, and since Morgan took off, the whole of Ys was in chaos.

Morgan took four people with him, including himself, while the remaining seven members of the Society remained outside the city of Iss, six of them excluding Valentine himself.

"Downing, Alcott, Miller, Hoffman, Sterling, Pandora..."

Valentine exhaled a deep puff of smoke, then slowly recited the names of several people he had worked with over the past five years.

He spread out a sheet of paper on his old desk and wrote down six names in carbon ink, adding notes about their corresponding roles after each name.

A mechanics professor, a seasoned metalworker, a circus performer, a librarian, a foolish sugar daddy, and... a scholar of ancient literature.

As Valentine wrote down his last post, the corner of his mouth twitched involuntarily. Those in Morgan's Society who knew the inside story understood the reason perfectly well.

Even Sterling, the financial backer, could not have imagined that the most crucial step in the "Leap of the White Wind" project—deciphering a large number of ancient documents and the design drawings themselves—would be accomplished independently by a twelve-year-old girl who usually hung around the Society workshop and claimed to be Morgan's niece.

If he hadn't seen it with his own eyes, Valentine would never have believed such an unbelievable truth.

However, that old fox Morgan probably took that little girl with him too. There must be many places outside of Bai Feng where she can be of use. Compared to that vast world, the Shangji documents under the city of Yisu are just a drop in the ocean.

Thinking of this, Valentine casually blacked out the name Pandora, a personal habit of his, a bit of a waste of ink, but he liked it.

Add to that two pilot henchmen, a fanatical, idiotic photographer, and Valentine himself and Morgan, two archaeologists and leaders whose roles overlap somewhat. The "fathers" in the Church of Issu, even if they plucked the last few stray hairs from their heads, could never have imagined that such a motley crew of private individuals was secretly plotting and ultimately accomplishing the groundbreaking feat of "Flying Over the White Wind" on the 11th day of Frost Moon in the 198th year of the Fourth Age.

The remaining five people are unusable, even though they are all skilled workers, they are not irreplaceable.

If they were smart, they should have already gone into hiding like me. But who knows if any of them were captured and interrogated by the church, only to be released as bait to lure out the remnants of the church?

With that thought in mind, Valentine raised his hand and crossed out each of the five names.

It wasn't that he had changed his habits on short notice, but rather that he realized his current situation was no longer as comfortable as before. Even ink was a precious resource with limited reserves, and his writing work for the next two years was foreseeably abundant, so it was best to conserve resources.

Knock, Knock...

"!"

The ghostly knocking sounded without warning, and Valentine's thin frame tensed instantly. All his previous composure vanished the moment the knocking began, and he glanced at the office door with a look of surprise and uncertainty.

The workshop naturally has doors inside, but who could silently bypass all the external warnings... no, it should be said, who could risk that almost cursed history, that ominous legend about the "short-lived generation" that has been passed down to this day, to venture into the shallow ruins beneath the city of Ys and make their way to his private workshop?

Apart from Morgan himself, who has already flown over the white wind, everyone else who knows about this place should have been dealt with by him.

Knock, Knock?

After a brief pause, the soft knocking sounded again, as if making an attempt.

Valentine tried to pretend the room was empty, but the strong, fresh smell of tobacco from the cigars and the flickering kerosene lamp not far from the door gave him away.

“Ha…” He sighed in a very low voice, then took out a revolver from a corner of his desk, from a drawer that had been open since he entered the workshop. The revolver was also fully loaded with ammunition and ready to fire.

Valentine's revolver was simple and practical. The gun was not the flashy silver one often seen in some Western movies, but rather gray and black. A silver gun would be a sitting duck in this shallow underground environment, which was not exactly dark.

Knock, knock!

The knocking became slightly more urgent after the third time, as if the person outside was convinced that someone was inside. Valentine leaned against the wall and slowly approached the door in a roundabout manner.

The knocking was more frequent than before, but each knock wasn't very forceful. Valentine listened intently against the wall and noticed that the source of the knocking seemed to be slightly lower than the normal knocking position.

Armed?

sideways?

Squatting position?

still is……

Valentine began to feel grateful for his foresight. When he built the workshop, he designed a hidden hole in the corner of the wall where each room door was located. Several hidden mirrors, based on the periscope principle that even a child knows, faithfully exposed the appearance of any uninvited guests outside the house to the owner of the house.

Through the pre-reserved observation hole, Valentine's tense mind was quickly relieved from this unhealthy state.

After all, the observation hole provides a wide enough view, and there is no one outside the empty workshop except for the cursed ruins corridor. Who would refuse a diamond that is delivered to their door?

After adjusting his breathing and preparing his acting skills, Valentine put the revolver back into the leather sheath on his waist. As if unaware, he slightly opened the door a crack, and after a brief moment when the view in front of the door was enough to see through, he opened the door to a normal angle with an incredulous expression.

"Lord, that damned old fox Morgan didn't take you with him! How did you find this place, little Pandora?"

Outside, the frail girl tremblingly lifted the hood of her gray cloak, revealing her helpless and pitiful little face. There were tear stains on her pale cheeks, and faint blue veins were faintly visible under her almost transparent skin.

"Uncle Valentine, please save me! Mr. Morgan abandoned me, and the rest of the Society have been arrested by the Church!"