Chapter 582: Borrowing
In a comfortable suite of a hotel in Adria, Dorothy sat by the window, intently reading the words Bev replied to her in the book “Navigation of the Literary Sea.” She couldn’t help but think:
“Modifying the symbol of the temple and replacing the main deity… So there’s such an operation… Indeed, among the cults I’ve seen before, some have done similar things, like the Eight Pinnacle Nest, which has been replacing the faith in the Mirror Moon Goddess with their own Spider Queen all over Prit.”
“If those guys from the Eight Pinnacle Nest can do it, then so can I. Modifying a temple is much simpler than building one from scratch. This is indeed a feasible method.”
Dorothy thought to herself, and after thinking, she silently made a decision. She wrote directly in the “Navigation of the Literary Sea”:
“How much does your method cost? Tell me.”
“This isn’t too much; it’s only nine hundred pounds. Plus, this content is quite short. If you’re sure to buy it, I can write it down here for you, and you can pay at the usual place later,” Bev quickly responded in writing. Dorothy hummed in response and immediately wrote back.
“Pay after delivery? That’s quite rare for you.”
“It’s just a deal under a thousand pounds; I don’t need to be so meticulous. Besides, you often say you’re a regular customer, right?” Bev responded to Dorothy. Dorothy nodded silently and wrote again.
“Alright, if that’s the case, then please write the content down now. I’ll go pay later.”
“Wait a moment,” Bev wrote, her words pausing briefly before continuing on a new line and rapidly spreading downwards at a speed faster than modern printers. In an instant, it filled an entire page. When Dorothy turned to the second page, she saw the words still rapidly spreading from top to bottom until they finally filled two pages.
“Done, the content is complete. Enjoy it slowly. Remember to pay afterward,” Bev’s normal dialogue appeared after the secret transmission. Dorothy immediately wrote back:
“Mm, okay, thank you.”
After greeting Bev, Dorothy began to read the newly bought secret transmission quickly. In no time, she had finished reading it all. However, after digesting the new secret transmission, she couldn’t help but frown slightly.
After learning the temporary main deity replacement ritual, Dorothy found that the difficulty wasn’t too high for her, and she could accomplish it with her current conditions. The key was the requirement for the temple being replaced. Dorothy felt troubled at this point, starting to worry about choosing the target temple.
Originally, when Bev mentioned using another deity’s temple to hold the divine protection ceremony, Dorothy immediately started to think about suitable candidates. After much consideration, she realized she had almost no choice.
Firstly, while the temples of the Radiant Church were the most numerous, they were also the hardest to approach. All dioceses had archbishops guarding them, making it extremely difficult to perform covert actions under the Red Tier “Lamp.” Even if successful, she could be charged with blasphemy and hunted down by the church. Therefore, Dorothy never considered targeting the church.
Outside the Radiant Church, Dorothy thought of the Shamanism’s Wild Offering grounds. However, from what she learned from Uta, the Wild Offering grounds were extremely sacred sites for the indigenous tribes of the New World. Not only were they guarded by specialized tribes, but they were also protected by the strongest Wilderness Spirits. In emergencies, neighboring tribes could be called for reinforcements. Even the colonizers from the Main Continent dared not easily invade. Performing a desecration ritual there would be very dangerous.
Moreover, regardless of whether the final ritual succeeded or failed, Dorothy’s relationship with Shamanism might become very strained, leaving her without support from the Tupa tribe. Similarly, if she wanted the Little Foxes to lend her the butterfly deity’s temple for the replacement, they might want to reclaim the Illusion Scale Incense Cage, making it hard for her to get their help in the future.
Among other cults outside Shamanism, Radiant Church, and Butterfly Religion, Dorothy had no ideas. Firstly, their temples were guarded by the Red Tier, making them hard to tamper with, and she didn’t know where their temples were. Finding them alone was impossible, let alone performing rituals.
Therefore, Dorothy initially thought her only option was the Enlightenment Mark Temple in Adis. First, the Judge of Heaven had long disappeared, and apart from her own disguised society, there was no other known belief in His sect. Using His temple for the replacement ritual wouldn’t cause trouble. Secondly, Adis was within Adus territory, in the remote Northern Ufeiga region. The ruler of Adus, Shadi, had a bit of a connection with her, making it safe to act on his land. Before carefully reading the secret transmission on the replacement ritual, the Enlightenment Mark Temple was almost her best choice.
However, after Dorothy read the secret transmission and understood the details of the replacement ritual, she immediately felt a chill in her heart.
According to the secret transmission provided by Bev, the temple being temporarily replaced had several requirements. First, it shouldn’t be severely damaged, and some key structural points must be preserved. As Bev had previously mentioned, this temple must be original, never having been replaced before. The replacement ritual cannot work twice in the same temple. A temple whose main deity has been replaced can only be returned to its original state through a return-of-faith ritual. Whether before or after the return, the temple cannot be replaced again. Simply put, the replacement ritual can only be used once in a temple.
The key was the second point: the replacement ritual’s target could only be an original temple. However, the Enlightenment Mark Temple in Adis was not original. Its main deity had been changed long ago. In the Third Era, the main deity was changed from the Judge of Heaven to the King of Light. Later, in the early Fourth Era, it was changed to the High Lord by the Radiant Upper Church. After the compromise with the Radiant Church, it was changed to the Savior of Radiance and began worshipping the Three Saints. Recently, they tried to remove the Three Saints and invite them back.
In short, the main deity of the Enlightenment Mark Temple had been altered long ago. Initially, Dorothy thought the hidden spaces in the temple were concealed areas that hadn’t been changed, but after reading the secret transmission, she realized it wasn’t like that. The key part of the replacement ritual was the exterior, not the interior. The hidden space in the Enlightenment Mark Temple was the control center for the library and city defense system, strictly speaking, unrelated to the religious system. The main part of the religious system was outside and had been completely altered, which Dorothy couldn’t use.
“This makes things troublesome…”
Looking at the secret transmission copied by Bev, Dorothy rubbed her temples, feeling troubled. Without the Enlightenment Mark Temple, she had no immediate choices left. Other temples she knew couldn’t be touched, and the Enlightenment Mark Temple didn’t meet the requirements. She didn’t know what to do.
“Can I really save up to build my own temple? How long would that take? Or maybe focus on archaeological endeavors and search for the ruins of a fallen ancient deity’s temple? That’s also a significant project that can’t be completed in a short time…”
Dorothy continued to ponder, and after thinking for a long time without coming up with any solutions, she contacted Bev again via the “Navigation of the Literary Sea,” asking if she could borrow the temple of the Construct Core for the replacement. Bev immediately agreed as long as Dorothy could afford the fee. But when Dorothy saw the specific fee requirements, she immediately gave up on the idea, thinking it would be better to save money and build her own temple.
Finally, after pondering all morning without much result, Dorothy temporarily gave up thinking and decided to handle the matter at hand first.
Dorothy first sent her zombie puppet to deliver the money for the secret transmission to the local Artisan Guild, then extracted the spirituality from the two newly purchased secret transmissions. Due to the comprehensive content of these transmissions, Dorothy obtained all types of spirituality during the extraction.
First, in the secret transmission for the divine protection ritual, Dorothy acquired 4 points of each type of spirituality, and 6 points of “Enlightenment.” In the secret transmission for the replacement ritual, Dorothy acquired 2 points of each type of spirituality, and 4 points of “Enlightenment.”
In summary, Dorothy’s current spirituality status was:
11 Cups, 16 Stones, 50 Shadows, 17 Lamps, 31 Silences, 50 Enlightenments.
Although she spent 2100 pounds, Dorothy’s spiritual gains were substantial, and she also obtained crucial intelligence. Overall, it was worth it.
However, after spending so much money, Dorothy was left with only around 500 pounds in cash. After receiving Edward’s secret transmission, she felt she could make the “Cup” meet the promotion criteria, leaving only the “Lamp” and “Stone” unmet. She estimated she needed two to three more secret transmissions, and with her 500 pounds, she could only buy one. She needed to find a way to earn more money.
Compared to the difficulty of finding a temple, money was a minor issue. With a little effort, she could gather enough. Currently, Dorothy’s urgent task was to find a temple suitable for the replacement ritual, which was her top priority.
Thus, Dorothy began resting in Adria while pondering how to find a suitable temple. Since she needed to wait for Edward’s secret transmission and couldn’t go elsewhere.
On the afternoon of the day after she learned about the divine protection ritual, while reading at the city library in Adria, Dorothy suddenly sensed a subtle anomaly within the Magic Box. Upon careful perception, she discovered that her “Navigation of the Literary Sea” had a spiritual reaction, indicating someone was using the subtext of the book to contact her.
“At this moment to contact me… Who could it be?”
With a hint of curiosity, Dorothy took out the “Navigation of the Literary Sea” and opened it, flipping to the page with new text. After verifying, she was surprised to find that the one contacting her was none other than Lady Misha, the royal knight superior to Gregor from the Prit An Yin Bureau. She wrote:
“If you can see this, please respond.”
“This is… that royal knight named Misha? She’s actively contacting me now? Could she have found something about the Eight Pinnacle Nest?”
Reading the notes on the page, Dorothy wondered curiously. When she left Prit, she had given all her detective research materials on Duke Barret to her, asking her to continue the investigation. Now, half a year later, she suddenly contacted her—had there been any progress?
With this thought, Dorothy picked up her pen and wrote on the “Navigation of the Literary Sea”:
“I’ve seen it, Ms. Misha. Please speak directly. Have you made any progress with your investigation of the Eight Pinnacle Nest?”
After writing, Dorothy waited quietly. Soon, Misha’s words reappeared on the paper.
“Well, sort of… After a long period of fruitless investigation, I finally got some leads recently. Since we might need your help later, I contacted you using the method you provided, Detective sir.”
“Oh? Progress? Tell me about it.”
Dorothy responded curiously, and Misha began writing about her recent investigative experiences.
“Since you gave me all the research materials on Duke Barret, I spend time every day studying them. Due to the need to defend against poison recognition, my pace was slow. It took four or five months to roughly finish reading all those materials. True research began only two months ago.”
Reading Misha’s words, Dorothy couldn’t help but marvel at how poison recognition restricted ordinary Extraordinary Beings. Even a royal knight like Misha, who possessed abundant anti-poison methods, took four to five months to finish reading the materials provided by Dorothy.
“Although I managed to read everything eventually, I found it difficult to extract anything meaningful. Most of Duke Barret’s materials were folk stories and legends from various eras of Prit, many of which were obscure and hard to understand. I’m not a scholar with extensive knowledge, so extracting useful information was too difficult. For the first month, I gained nothing. Only in early June did things start to change.”
“When I was flipping through those materials at home, I suddenly noticed one without poison recognition: ‘The Folklore of Yewen County.’ It seemed familiar, as if I had seen it somewhere before. After recalling for a long time, I remembered that I had seen it when I was young, while studying at Crown University. Since my hometown was in Yewen County, I occasionally borrowed books related to it when I was in school. Seeing this book in Duke Barret’s research materials meant he had collected materials from the Crown University library. He borrowed this book from there. After seeing this book, I had the idea of checking the Crown University library for luck.”
“You once said your materials were partially recorded through photography by your informant from the Eight Pinnacle Nest’s destroyed documents. This means the original of this book was destroyed, so it definitely isn’t in the Crown University library. So, I went to the Crown University library and found the borrowing record of ‘The Folklore of Yewen County’ in last year’s lending register. Sure enough, it was borrowed in October last year and never returned. So, the borrower should be Duke Barret. The borrower was registered as Richard, leading me to conclude that Richard was likely Duke Barret’s pseudonym when borrowing books at Crown University.”
“After that, I stayed at the Crown University library’s archive room for a few days, reviewing all the lending records to find all the borrowing records of Richard. My idea was to read all the books he had borrowed and look for clues. However, when I reviewed these lending records, I discovered something interesting.”
“What is it?” Reading Misha’s words, Dorothy’s curiosity gradually rose. She couldn’t help but write back, and the other side answered immediately.
“It’s a note, written in handwriting that isn’t Duke Barret’s. The content is… ‘Richard, I’ve found the temple.’”
