Vanna's gaze lingered on this record for a few seconds. As an inquisitor, she could smell something worthy of attention in these short words.

Heretical sacrifices suddenly appeared among ordinary residents. The targets of sacrifice were invalid beings. The sacrifices did not meet the requirements of the ritual at all, but in the end they really attracted the attention of extraordinary forces. There was a small-scale mental disorder, and no follow-up investigation...

Fanna suddenly remembered something, put down the file in her hand, and hurriedly opened a record she had just seen.

Also in 1889, a little earlier, an armed attack occurred in a street-side store in the downtown area. This was originally the responsibility of the Public Security Bureau and should not have appeared in the church archives, but subsequent investigations proved that the armed attacker was a "customer" who suddenly suffered a mental disorder in the store. The suspect insisted that he saw a blasphemous shadow on the store window and "fought back" with a knife to escape the "invisible pursuit."

In the subsequent investigation, the church found traces of heretical worship in the basement of the store. However, the sacrificial symbols on the scene were confusing and difficult to distinguish, and could not point to any valid existence. Through interrogation, it was learned that the store owner who performed sacrificial activities privately did not understand the mysterious rituals at all, and his random sacrifices were under the guidance of "unknown".

It was the same random sacrificial ritual that was theoretically impossible to be effective, it also caused mental disorder in a small area, and there were no further investigation conclusions.

Vanna frowned slightly. These two incidents seemed to have nothing to do with the factory leak or the erased fire eleven years ago, and they did not correspond in time at all. This was not the focus of her investigation today, but the fact that two similar heretical cult incidents appeared in such recent records touched her nerves as an inquisitor.

After a moment, she put down the two files in her hands and continued to look for subsequent files on the bookshelf. This time, she paid special attention and took the initiative to look for records of events that might be related to heresy.

After an unknown amount of time, she suddenly stopped.

The third record, still before the "factory leak" accident, occurred at the edge of the upper city. A maid working in a rich family suddenly went crazy, seriously injured three servants and the male owner of the house, and then locked herself in the warehouse. When the church guards and sheriffs arrived and broke into the warehouse, the maid had already committed suicide.

A sacrificial symbol carved by the deceased with a dagger before his death was found in the warehouse, and traces of heretical sacrifice were found in the deceased's room - pointing to another invalid existence, and the sacrificial process did not conform to any regulations, but the invalid sacrificial activity in this record did not drive others crazy, but drove the sacrificer himself crazy.

This is the third one already...

If Vanna was only slightly concerned when she saw the first two records, then when she saw the third record, the expression on her face became completely serious.

She quickly arranged the recorded information in her mind, analyzing it based on when and where it occurred.

The events occurred very scattered, independent of each other in time and unrelated in location, and theoretically there was no intersection between the parties involved.

Moreover, they have nothing to do with the factory where the leak occurred eleven years ago, and no trace of the Solar Heretic was found in the subsequent investigation.

Fanna calmed down and continued to look through the subsequent files. Before long, she found the information about the leak at the factory.

It was a major event with a wide-ranging impact, and the number of heretics captured subsequently was almost the highest in the past two or three decades. Therefore, the whole incident was recorded in a separate file. The thick file book was quite heavy and also included a large number of pictures and interrogation reports.

It didn't take Fanna long to read through the entire contents of the file.

Because she had seen the contents many times before in other places. In the past few years, she had reviewed the relevant documents of this old case more than once.

It seems that even in the archives deep inside the church, there is no more information about the factory leak accident eleven years ago.

Fanna put the leaked files from the factory back. She searched for a while and suddenly found something:

After that "factory leak" accident, there have been no records of cases similar to the three previous "cult" cases.

The factory leak occurred in the middle of the year, and there was still a full six months to go.

This gave Vanna a feeling that all those "should have been ineffective but were effective" heretical cult incidents had occurred before the factory leak, and the factory accident became a node, and all the heretical cults came to an abrupt end after that...

Of course, this can also be explained by common sense: after the factory leak accident, the church and the authorities arrested thousands of cultists. This large-scale arrest operation cleared out the heretical forces in the city-state, so it is normal that no more heretical worship incidents occurred in the following six months.

But for some reason, she always felt that the logic behind these seemingly unrelated events should not be so simple.

She stopped beside the large bookshelf, and after thinking quietly for a long time, she returned to the starting point, pulled out the first file on "heresy", and thought as she flipped through it.

These events were too scattered and were buried in a pile of messy disaster records. If she hadn't suddenly decided to sort them out today and hadn't planted the idea of ​​"something suspicious is going on" in her mind in advance, she probably wouldn't have noticed anything unusual when she first got the information - but something was unusual, and once she noticed it, that feeling of disobedience and awkwardness began to take root in her heart like a seed, making it difficult for her to ignore the warning in her intuition.

Just as Vanna was carefully looking through the information, a sound of slow footsteps suddenly came from nearby, along with a faint smell of engine oil mixed with incense.

Vanna looked up and saw the old priest who was in charge of the archives walking towards her.

He walked with a limp, and it was obvious that not only his right hand was injured, but his legs and feet were also injured.

"There aren't many people in the archives at this time, so I came over to take a look," the old priest said with a smile, "Did you find the information you were looking for?"

Fanna exhaled softly and put the file in her hand back to its place: "I found some information, but I didn't find the answer I wanted."

"Answer?" The old priest was a little curious. "What kind of answer do you want?"

"...How long have you been here?" Vanna did not answer directly, but suddenly asked a seemingly irrelevant question.

"Ah, that's a long time, let me think... almost twenty years," the old priest laughed, "I've been here ever since one of my hands and one of my legs were blown off by a homemade bomb made by those heretical lunatics."

Fanna thought for a moment and asked curiously, "Is this place so deserted on weekdays? Will anyone else come here to check these files like me?"

"It's usually very quiet most of the time - there are people who come to look up the archives, but not many," the old priest smiled, "Books are people's memories of the world, and this archive is the deepest part of that memory - stored here are 'old cases' that have been dealt with, or 'confidential files' that have been judged not to be made public. After they were sealed, they were buried deep in time along with past history.

"Countless new things happen in the city-state every day. Everyone is busy moving towards tomorrow, so there is no time to come back and look through these sealed files. Moreover..."

The old priest paused here, raised his head, and looked quietly at the books that were almost stacked up to the dome. After a long time, he spoke softly.

"Moreover... the sealed files are sometimes not just a record of the past. There may also be some 'history' itself sealed in those pages. The past, present, and future of our world are all built on unstable foundations. Flipping through too many things in this archive is not good for your physical and mental health."

"...This sounds a bit like the warnings of the Firebringers."

"Yes, the Firebringers like to warn about this. They guard history and are always worried that something will spread from ancient times and pollute the foundation of our world. They are overly sensitive in this regard, so much so that some people even think that the end preachers who preach the 'Doomsday Pollution Theory' are the fallen Firebringers..."

The old priest smiled and shook his head as he spoke: "When I was young, I had close contacts with several friends from the Firebringer sect, and I naturally heard a lot of their theories. Although they are different from the teachings of the Storm Goddess, after all, we are all righteous gods, and some of their theories are worth referring to."

For some reason, while listening to the old man's story, Vanna's mood gradually calmed down. She had some respect for this senior who had dedicated most of his life to the church. At this moment, she didn't mind chatting with the old man for a few more words, so she asked casually: "Are you still in touch with those friends now?"

"No contact," the old man shook his head slowly. "One morning, I suddenly realized that I didn't know their names, so they must have been martyred..."