The Sewers

Before leaving the temporary hiding cave, Duncan first tore some rags from a nearby corpse and wrapped them around himself.

This wasn't because he couldn't stand the chill of the cave, but rather to at least partially cover his wide-open chest—though the hole in his chest hadn't affected Duncan's "survival" in the slightest, as someone fundamentally normal at heart, walking around with a draft straight through him was far too eerie. Wrapping something around himself at least provided a bit of psychological comfort and reduced the strange sensation of a "cross-breeze."

Duncan also considered the possibility of suddenly running into someone else while moving through this underground space—by common sense, having a large hole in one's chest probably wouldn't be conducive to striking up a conversation with strangers...

And so, after roughly tending to his "wound," Duncan cautiously left the damp, gloomy cave. He entered a passage connected to the cave and slowly made his way deeper.

This temporarily occupied body was far from "convenient." Not only did the fatal chest wound affect his mobility, but Duncan could also clearly feel how frail this body was. Its overly thin limbs couldn't even walk quickly, completely incomparable to the "Ghost Captain's" powerful, superhuman physique.

Duncan couldn't see the full appearance of his current body, but judging from what he could observe, he guessed it belonged to a youth—a teenager weakened by severe, long-term malnutrition. Though a powerful ghost captain's soul now controlled this body, it seemed that strength on the soul level couldn't break through the physical limits imposed by this feeble vessel.

Unfortunately, he had no choice for now. Duncan could only control this barely functional body as he slowly explored the deep passage ahead. He knew that, given this temporary body's condition, any crisis would leave him helpless. All he could do was pray this shell would last a little longer.

The passage was deep, damp, and dark, yet it seemed to have hidden ventilation shafts—a faint current of air constantly flowed nearby. At intervals, torches or oil lamps hung on the walls, proving that people had been active here.

After walking a long distance along the passage, Duncan suddenly found the path opening up ahead. Man-made structures began to appear in his sight—he saw a fork at the end of the passage. The roads connected to the fork had smooth walls and tall semicircular vaulted ceilings. The brick-paved ground was pitch-black and damp, with two waterways running along either side, filled with nauseating sewage.

On the walls flanking the road, he could also see openings that looked like drainage pipes. Sewage flowed from some of these outlets into the waterways below, heading into the darker distance.

"...A sewer?"

Duncan quickly realized that what lay before him was clearly a large-scale sewer system. The place where many bodies had been hidden earlier seemed to be a natural cave structure connected to this sewer.

A massive sewer, a natural cave linked to it, and concealed corpses.

Countless conjectures flashed through Duncan's mind in an instant. As various speculations arose, he carefully observed the details of this "sewer" before him.

Large in scale, well-constructed, with main supports seemingly made of reinforced concrete—it could even serve as some kind of underground shelter if necessary.

To build something of this magnitude, the city above this sewer must be considerable in size, and its various technologies would have to be developed to a certain level.

Technology couldn't exist in isolation. Behind every engineering product lay the simultaneous support of countless related industries and technologies. Even just a sewer could reveal to Duncan the level of construction, planning, materials, maintenance, and the corresponding living standards of its residents.

This was enough to provide Duncan, currently severely lacking in intelligence, with some valuable information from the civilized world.

Duncan walked forward along the sewer. He had only gone a short distance when he suddenly stopped, his gaze falling on the nearby wall.

Embedded in the wall was a lamp—a glass-enclosed fixture, covered by a sturdy-looking metal cage.

Compared to the torches and oil lamps in the cave earlier, this wall-mounted lamp was clearly brighter. Inside the frosted glass shell, a steady, bright flame burned, its light illuminating a considerable stretch of the sewer.

Duncan leaned in for a closer look. For him now, anything from outside the Lost Homeland, especially modern civilized creations, held great fascination.

After observing for a while, Duncan finally figured out what this light source was—a gas lamp.

But this gas lamp seemed different from those he had seen in records. Aside from stylistic differences, the most obvious was a set of slender symbols on the glass shade.

These symbols appeared to have been added during the lamp's production, curving in a way reminiscent of hieroglyphs. Duncan didn't recognize them, but he immediately thought of the mysterious runes he had seen on that mechanical ship and on Alice's "coffin."

Though the content differed, they shared a similar... "aura."

Something sacred, ritualistic.

Duncan stepped back. He looked deeper into the sewer and saw gas lamps burning brightly at intervals along the walls.

For an underground facility that almost no one would visit except for necessary maintenance, the lighting here seemed almost excessive. And each gas lamp's shell likely bore similar mysterious "runes."

This gave Duncan a feeling—as if these densely placed gas lamps were actually fighting against something in this dark, uninhabited underground. The "human civilized world" they represented was resisting something.

Duncan walked forward along the path lit by the gas lamps, his gaze scanning the walls, ground, and vaulted ceiling for any valuable clues. Suddenly, the corner of his eye caught something unusual.

He stopped between two gas lamps, in a relatively dim section of the sewer. Looking up at an angle, he saw, high on the wall near the sewer's vault, something painted in dark red pigment.

Duncan squinted, struggling to make it out for a long moment before finally discerning the rough lines of the image—he saw countless hands reaching toward the sky, as if worshipping something. In the direction those hands clustered, a sphere hung high, radiating brilliant light.

Below this scene of worship and adoration was a line of crooked text. The strokes trembled, as if filled with intense fervor and anticipation. The letters weren't from any language on Earth, yet Duncan naturally understood—

"The False Sun will eventually fall; the true Sun God shall rise from blood and fire! All life's vitality returns to the sun; all order returns to the sun!"

Duncan stood quietly in the sewer, gazing up at the dimmest boundary zone between the gas lamps' light, at those dark red graffiti, at that sun seemingly soaked in blood, radiant and fervently worshipped.

As if staring for a long time into another world.

He watched for a long while, until a sudden noise came from deeper in the sewer—several footsteps reached Duncan's ears.

He snapped his head toward the sound and saw several figures in robes approaching from ahead. Their heads and faces were shrouded in the shadows of their hoods, like sinister apparitions emerging from the depths of this filthy sewer.

Duncan didn't hide—in fact, this straight stretch of sewer had almost nowhere to hide, and his inconvenient temporary body couldn't pull off advanced maneuvers like "blind-spot positioning." So after a brief thought, he simply stood boldly in the middle of the sewer, calmly watching those highly suspicious hooded figures approaching.

Since this body couldn't run and was destined to be a disposable consumable, he might as well trade it for some intelligence.

The next moment, the hooded figures emerging from the sewer's depths noticed Duncan's presence.

(Oh crap!)