"Tick-tock."
Cold water droplets splashed onto the girl’s neck, causing Xie Sita to shiver abruptly. She quickly opened her eyes and stood up. When she saw the surroundings, she frowned imdiately.
This is really bad...
At this mont, Xie Sita and Mianmu Zuoniao were not in their shabby double suite in the small town, but in a very obvious underground cave. It was surrounded by tides, and the moist vapor hit them in the face, making the entire cave appear extrely cold. Under the dim firelight, one could see only a few pieces of straw scattered on the ground, and at this mont, Mianmu Zuoniao was sleeping soundly not far beside her.
"Yo."
At this mont, Duanmu Huai’s voice suddenly sounded, and then Xie Sita saw his massive figure appear on the opposite side of the dungeon’s bars, waving at her cheerfully.
"Did you sleep well?"
"Very well, how long did I sleep?"
"Five hours."
"I see... Can you tell what’s going on?"
"It’s simple. These people didn’t sleep at night, ran to the hotel, and then the front desk clerk used a spare key to open the door and brought you, unconscious, here."
Duanmu Huai spread his hands.
"So, was I clear enough?"
"Too clear, I’m a bit suspicious."
Xie Sita frowned discontentedly.
"First of all, to prevent this from happening, I had already moved a table to block the door before sleeping and set a trap behind the door, so it would wake us if they broke in. I consider myself quite alert, and that kid isn’t an easy target either."
"Oh, maybe they thought the drug in your food worked."
"That’s impossible."
Xie Sita shook her head again.
"Although we did order room service for als, it was just to mislead them. The past two days, we’ve only been drinking the bottled water we brought and eating the bread we bought ourselves... You should know this well too, since you were with us when we prepared the food."
"Yeah, I know."
Duanmu Huai nodded.
"So, an explanation?"
"Alright."
Duanmu Huai spread his hands again.
"I knocked you out, then restored the things blocking the door to let them in. After all, you see... it ended like this, so why complicate things? I don’t like wasting ti. Isn’t this going smoothly? You’re successfully locked up, and those guys are excitedly preparing for the ritual. You’re good, I’m good, everyone being good is the real good... "
"You...?"
Xie Sita was genuinely surprised by Duanmu Huai’s answer. She widened her eyes slightly, imagining his 2.8-ter-tall figure squeezing into a narrow double room and running around with a table...
"How did you get in? Don’t tell you climbed in through the window."
"Trade secret."
Of course, Duanmu Huai wouldn’t tell Xie Sita that he had actually been by their side these past two days, even following them into the bathroom.
"Anyway, speaking of which, where are we?"
Xie Sita didn’t seem inclined to get caught up in such trivial matters, so she decisively changed the topic.
"Under the church—this is pretty standard. It’s like cultists don’t feel capable unless they’ve dug a hole under a church."
"That church, huh."
Hearing Duanmu Huai’s answer, Xie Sita frowned, quickly recalling the church building they had seen in the small town during their "trip." It stood on a hillside at the edge of the city. Originally, Xie Sita wanted to "visit" it, but was persuaded by a local guard to turn back, being told the church was closed due to being in a state of disrepair, leaving Xie Sita to regretfully retreat.
"Didn’t expect to end up in a church this way... anything discovered?"
"You’d be surprised. Right next door, there’s a super sci-fi laboratory that looks completely out of place in this creepy place."
Indeed, the entire small town seed like ancient design, with nothing but electric lights and wired telephones for communication. Yet beneath this church, there was a very modern laboratory. This reminded Duanmu Huai of an old Western-style house and the enormous hive facility beneath it.
Do villains aspiring to destroy the world all like this mix of old and new?
As for what was being researched here, Duanmu Huai had already learned through shadow scanning investigation.
"They’re trying to find a reasonable and feasible way to summon an existence from outer space."
To be honest, even Duanmu Huai was baffled when he first learned of this information, unsure what to say.
The world was never short of organizations, groups, and individuals attempting to explore the universe and contact extraterrestrial life. However, the Universe Light Organization’s approach was indeed rather unorthodox, leaving Duanmu Huai unsure of how to evaluate it.
Their theory was this: if the records in those grimoires were accurate, humans could connect and summon extraterrestrial or different space intelligence through certain rituals, and even negotiate with them, it would suggest there’s an unknown pattern to these rituals. If this pattern were scientifically analyzed, perhaps technology could replicate the effects of the ritual.
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