Priest Andrew

"Ah... Lu Yuan... are you still human?"

Mo Shui spoke, thoroughly dazed, the runes on his body flashing on and off.

It took Mo Shui a long while to recover his senses.

"Your sanity is outrageous! I've never seen so much sanity in a low-level Transcendent!"

"You're not some Eerie in human form, are you?"

Mo Shui looked wary, but after twitching his tiny nose a few times, he truly couldn't smell any Eerie aura.

"Talent."

Lu Yuan silently spat out a single word.

"Hm?" Looking at Lu Yuan's utterly serious expression, Mo Shui suddenly felt an odd urge to punch him.

"Do you know I nearly died just now? Guiding you to construct that mental barrier almost sucked me dry!"

"Never again!"

"There's a huge gap between your sanity and mine?" Lu Yuan caught the implication in Mo Shui's words.

"Of course not! Even if you have a lot of sanity, you're still worlds apart from this Book Spirit!"

"It's just that your sanity is a little strange. It was hard for me to mobilize, and you seem to have already mastered part of the technique. Otherwise, even if I were drained dry, I couldn't have completed it."

Mo Shui spoke with a frown.

"I see." Lu Yuan said nothing more.

It seemed Mo Shui's move came with quite a few restrictions. This time had been a coincidence as well, and it had even required mobilizing his own sanity...

Lu Yuan had no desire to let this little thing discover his secret.

By evening, Mary brought Mina back.

When she returned, Mina had already taken a bath and changed into a new set of clothes. Her little face looked rosy and plump.

"Remember to come play with Sister Mary later."

Only after giving her instructions did Mary leave.

At that time, Brent returned from outside with steaming bread and vegetable soup.

Under the dim yellow light.

Mina sat on a little stool, nibbling at softened bread in tiny bites, her face full of contentment.

After wolfing down his meal, Brent began bustling about, tidying the room again.

Mo Shui sat by the table, occasionally taking out a ball of black light and swallowing it.

After eating, Lu Yuan took out Deep Sea Creature Guide: From Egg to Adult again and leaned against the sofa, flipping through it.

That brief warmth seemed to shut the cold, damp Grim Port outside the window away, until the following morning.

[Sanity III: 2/74 (See the III up front? That means this is experience points)]

As promised, the Strange Dream once again took away a point of Lu Yuan's sanity limit, and his dream returned to facing the sea directly.

By then, the fog over Grim Port had dispersed.

From outside came the occasional clatter of passing carriages.

Until a series of remarkably rhythmic knocks shattered the clinic's peace.

Lu Yuan rose, set down the newspaper Brent had brought him, and opened the door.

There were no customers outside.

Instead, a group of people stood there in white robes trimmed with gold.

At their head was a middle-aged Priest holding a Scripture that emitted a faint glow. Behind him stood two burly men with solemn expressions.

People from the Church.

"Good morning, lost lamb. I am Priest Andrew. Please forgive my uninvited visit; these two are Deacons who follow me."

Priest Andrew gave a slight bow, but there was a trace of arrogance in his tone.

"Angel has sensed that there is a child here. To keep her from being tempted by evil, we need to take her back to the Church."

"There is no child here that you're looking for." Lu Yuan gripped the doorknob, his expression calm.

"If Angel says there is, then there is."

Priest Andrew smiled and gently opened the Scripture in his hands.

"Bzzzz—"

In that instant, Lu Yuan's pupils abruptly contracted.

It vanished.

The sounds of carriages in the street, cicadas, wind... all sound vanished in an instant.

The entire clinic seemed to have been abandoned by the world.

[Warning: The environment you are in has changed. Silence Barrier has enveloped you.]

Lu Yuan looked at the gray-white prompt and instantly understood everything.

Everything here had been sealed off. Even the surrounding Hidden Sentries would have no idea what was happening here.

And by the time the Hidden Sentries noticed something was wrong, these Church people would likely have long since fled.

"The Authority bestowed upon me by Angel. I hope Doctor Lu can sense the power within it."

The smile on Priest Andrew's face did not change as he lightly traced a finger across the Scripture.

"Angel Grants Us Armor."

Golden light instantly enveloped the Deacons behind him.

A layer of golden radiance rose over the surface of their skin. Their muscles swelled, and beneath those seemingly ordinary robes, explosive strength instantly filled their bodies.

"Angel Grants Us Speed."

Another beam of azure light descended.

At the same time, the two Deacons moved. Empowered by the azure radiance, they were as fast as two Afterimages. With howling wind in their wake, they pounced on Lu Yuan from the left and right in a pincer attack.

"The Church's methods really are nauseating..."

Lu Yuan watched them charge at him, his gaze icy.

"Then let me experience Angel's blessing."

The next moment, Lu Yuan lightly pressed the dark gold Pocket Watch with his thumb.

Click.

[Acceleration (Activated)]

[Sanity... -1... -1]

The world instantly slowed in Lu Yuan's eyes.

The savage charges of the two Deacons now looked like laughable slow motion.

Lu Yuan reached into his coat with his right hand and drew Flame, the Enchanted Revolver.

For the Church's shameless conduct, Lu Yuan intended to teach them a profound lesson this time.

Was his clinic a trash bin? Could anyone come and go as they pleased?

"Bang! Bang!"

Two bursts of orange-red flame blossomed from the muzzle.

The silver-plated Alchemical Bullets spun through the air with shrill screeches that tore through the air, blasting precisely into the two Deacons' joints.

"Clang—crack!"

The first sound was the ringing collision of the bullets striking the golden light.

What followed was the shattering of the Blessed Shields and the snap of breaking bones.

The Church's blessings at this level truly did not have weak defensive power. Ordinary blades and swords would likely have struggled to break through them.

Unfortunately for them, they faced an enchanted large-caliber Revolver, a weapon born to kill Eerie creatures.

"Aah!!"

The Deacons, who had been charging forward with unstoppable momentum, had blood mist explode from their knees. The tremendous impact made them lose their balance at once, and like wild dogs with broken legs, they crashed heavily to the floor and slid several meters forward.

Priest Andrew was clearly stunned by the sight before him.

"Damn it! Get up, for Angel's glory!"

Andrew's brows knitted as he shouted sharply.

The two Deacons on the ground endured the searing pain and actually tried to support themselves with their hands to pounce again.

"Bang! Bang!"

Two more gunshots rang out.

Lu Yuan remained expressionless.

This time, the bullets struck precisely into the two Deacons' wrists.

All four limbs were crippled.

This time, the two Deacons completely lost the ability to move. They could only groan in agony as blood dyed the floor red.

Lu Yuan lowered the barrel of his gun, wisps of smoke curling upward.