Idrisu

"There might be something important in there. Why else would they guard it?" Su Weiyu reasonably surmised.

Xia Shou nodded in agreement.

As the saying went, the harder your enemies tried to stop you from doing something, the more certain you could be that you were on the right track!

These lunatics dressed as doctors clearly did not want them sneaking into that fortress. Perhaps the exit from the closed domain was inside?

Just then, the little ghost girl from earlier appeared at the fortress entrance again and pointed inside, seemingly urging them to enter.

Su Weiyu could no longer hold back. "I'll go take a look. They probably can't see me. Even if they can, if they're only as strong as that guy just now, I can take them all on my own."

Xia Shou did not doubt Su Weiyu's fighting ability, but he still warned her, "Be careful."

Su Weiyu nodded, then slipped out of the bushes in a crouch and nimbly vaulted into another patch. She picked up a stone and threw it toward the fortress. It struck one of the doctors squarely in the forehead.

The doctor staggered from the blow, but continued patrolling along his original route as though nothing had happened.

Watching this, Xia Shou found himself analyzing Su Weiyu's ability.

Her ability was exceptionally unusual, and its workings were unimaginably complex.

Take this moment, for instance. Anyone she attacked would unconsciously ignore her attack and rationalize the resulting injuries, regardless of whether they saw her or realized she was the attacker. Even witnesses nearby would rationalize what happened.

But anyone who saw the victim's wounds after the attack would notice something wrong. That was what had happened at the Blood Demon House. Su Weiyu had cut off all the Execution Squad members' arms, yet neither they nor anyone present had noticed anything amiss. The medical team that arrived afterward, however, immediately realized something was wrong.

Later, even the Containment Bureau had intervened, classifying Su Weiyu as an Anomalous Entity and naming her [Transparent Man].

The distinction between these two outcomes seemed to depend on other people's subconscious judgments.

As he pondered this, Xia Shou saw that Su Weiyu had already walked out into the open. Sure enough, none of the doctors saw her. She walked straight past them to the fortress entrance and tried the door, but it would not open.

Then she lashed out with a kick, striking hard at the lock. With a loud crash, the door swung open. Even this enormous commotion attracted no attention, as though a broken lock and a door opening for no reason were perfectly normal occurrences.

She stepped inside. Bookshelves crammed with books surrounded her on every side, and a spiral iron staircase in the center led to the second floor.

Su Weiyu hopped over the stacks of books on the floor and approached a bookcase. She wiped the dust from the spines and pulled out a book at random.

She opened its yellowed pages. The writing was in a script she had never seen and could not read at all, though the diagrams of magic circles and illustrations of bloody cult rituals were quite vivid.

"Looks like a book on black magic."

Su Weiyu slid it back into the bookcase, then pulled out several more and skimmed them. Each was written in a different language, and most likely none of those languages still existed in the modern world.

She climbed the rusty spiral iron stairs, which creaked beneath her feet, to the mysterious building's second floor. There, she found a mummified corpse sitting behind a desk. Various folders, kraft-paper document envelopes, and modern, factory-made notebooks and fountain pens lay on the desk.

These modern objects looked completely out of place among the ancient books and immediately caught Su Weiyu's attention. After all, she could not read the books on the shelves. The information written in these notebooks was the only thing she might be able to understand.

If someone from modern times wrote them, surely they wouldn't have used some lost, mysterious language?

Su Weiyu approached the desk and picked up the notebook in the center.

"Lucky me! It's in English!"

And she knew English! She could read it!

On the notebook's first page was written:

[Thank God. Surely God was watching over me, for the day before I was due to leave that tribe, I happened to hear another name for Idrisu-the Blood God.

I asked them in detail about their tribal legends concerning the Blood God. In their mythology, the Blood God and the Death God played the same role, and the Blood God was also regarded as the God of Life. They held blood in extraordinary reverence, viewing it as fragments of life.

The tribe's High Priest said that blood was the source of all life, and that animals' organs, bones, and muscles were all transformed from blood. He even claimed that the previous High Priest had possessed a miraculous spell that could turn blood into bone.

Although I felt he was boasting, there was no denying that he had used a ritual beyond my comprehension to transfer the persistent illness afflicting my little Enya. For once, Enya's condition began to improve.

The facts proved that rituals invoking Idrisu could indeed treat Enya's illness, but records concerning Idrisu were far too scarce.

I must find more detailed information about these rituals as soon as possible.

Fortunately, there is another piece of encouraging news. I have a lead on the Blood God, otherwise known as Idrisu!

Thank heaven for my brief fascination with archaeology. Perhaps everything inscribed on that stone tablet I excavated back then was true!

The layout and every detail of the hospital I have built now conform perfectly to the ritual's requirements. Please, let me succeed!

I do not care whether Idrisu is an evil god or the God of Life, so long as he can keep little Enya alive.

I firmly believe I will succeed! I can feel some unseen power guiding me. Everything has fallen into place so perfectly, at just the right moment. This is no coincidence, but the work of some mysterious force... perhaps Idrisu has sensed my devotion.]

After reading the first page, Su Weiyu knew this was important.

She put down the notebook, opened a document envelope beside it, and tipped the papers onto the desk.

"Good, these are all in English too! I'll take them all outside."

Outside, Xia Shou crouched in the grass and waited for a few minutes. Then he saw Su Weiyu run out of the building carrying a huge pile of things. She jogged back behind the bushes and dumped all the documents in her arms onto the ground.

"There are lots of books inside. It looks like a private library! I flipped through a few, but they were all written in scripts I didn't recognize. These documents in English were the only things I could read. The person who left these records seems to have built this hospital.

"Oh, right, there was also

"a mummified corpse inside! I think it must have been him," Su Weiyu said, briefly summing up everything she had just seen.

Xia Shou frowned. "They're in English? My English isn't very good."

"I can read them. I'll read them aloud to you. Dr. Wang can definitely read them too." Su Weiyu picked up the notebook again and began reading from the start.