Chapter 992 — Miracle

"She has arrived," said a slightly hoarse voice from Beyla's body, which was in essence composed of wooden structures. "Aren't you going to see her?"

The middle-aged man standing behind Beyla was silent for two seconds before he broke the silence with complicated emotions: "...I do not know how to face her."

"You will have to face her sooner or later," Beyla said slowly. "She will stay here for a long time, and you cannot run from this forever."

Bard tugged at the corner of his mouth: "...And who is responsible for the situation I am in now?"

"...We agreed not to bring that up."

Bard smiled silently and shook his head gently. "No matter what, the generals at the front and the grand administrators of the Supreme Governing Council have truly given me a difficult problem... When I first learned the news, my mind went blank, and even now I still feel as if I am dreaming."

"I can imagine—you were in the middle of your monitoring work when someone suddenly called you out and told you that your daughter had become one of the first prisoners of war and would be sent to Fort Sorin within days. Just imagining it, I know how chaotic your feelings must have been," Beyla said, her somewhat stiff and rigid tone carrying a faint trace of mockery. "Aren't you worried? I heard she was badly wounded."

Bard was silent for a moment before saying in a low voice: "She is a soldier. Some things are her duty."

"She is a soldier, but you are her father. Her duty and your worry do not conflict," Beyla shook her head and turned to face Bard Wendell. "Go see her once you have finished what you are doing. You will have to face her sooner or later. I believe that with these few days to prepare, you have also considered how you should meet your daughter."

"...This really is not like you," Bard glanced at the former "Hierarch of the Myriad Silence." "In the more than ten years I have known you, 'Lady Beyla' has always been the embodiment of harshness, cunning, and danger."

Beyla did not respond, and Bard did not mind. He merely shook his head and brought up another matter: "I came to you to report a situation."

"A situation? What situation?"

"These are records left by the monitoring team recently," Bard handed over a stack of documents. "We still have not traced that signal, but we have discovered some other traces. They may be of some value."

Beyla did not actually need "eyes" to read the materials Bard had brought, but she still reached out and took the papers, placing them carefully before her—life, after all, needed a sense of ritual, and a plant was no exception. Her "gaze" swept over the tables and accounts on them, and her expression gradually turned serious.

She was not, in fact, an expert in arcane-net communications, signal theory, or cryptography, but ever since she had successfully extracted geometric figures from that mysterious signal, her value in this field had drawn the attention of her superiors. Now, whenever the monitoring team uncovered a worthwhile lead, they submitted it to the higher research department and always made certain to send her a copy as well.

"These randomly appearing faint noise waves aren't normal fluctuations in the arcane net... is that what you mean?" Beiyila waved the document in her hand and looked at Bade.

"Precisely—we've already compared all the waveforms, and those noise waves genuinely should not be appearing in the arcane net."

"These noise waves are very faint, and hopelessly chaotic—completely undecipherable. Even the 'dot-trace method' I discovered earlier is useless here," Beiyila said, pinching her chin. "What's your read on it?"

"We now suspect that the signal has actually been broadcasting without interruption all along, blanketing our receivers every minute of every day, and that these noise waves are the traces it leaves behind. But for some reason, this signal is severely disrupted and weakened most of the time, so we cannot decipher its contents at all—in fact, before we increased the sensitivity of our receivers, we never even noticed its existence," Bade said slowly, laying out his own thoughts and those of his colleagues. "Following that line of reasoning, the several times we suddenly received the signal before were not the signal suddenly 'appearing'—rather, something that generates interference and shielding effects had briefly developed a gap..."

Beiyila's face was incapable of forming overly vivid expressions, but within her subtle shifts of feature a hint of gravity still surfaced: "That sounds... a little unsettling. Have the materials already been submitted to the Imperial Capital?"

"They've been sent over. Master Kamail replied personally that he will treat the matter with due seriousness, and that he will also coordinate the work teams at the monitoring stations in Shilin City, Winterhold, and Luan, attempting to find evidence of these noise waves in each location," Bade nodded. "If this noise is discovered everywhere, then our conjecture will be further confirmed."

Beiyila was silent for a moment; only after more than ten seconds of thought did she give a slight nod.

"If there's nothing else here, I'll be on my way back," Bade said to Beiyila. "The monitoring station is still waiting for my reply."

Beiyila murmured an acknowledgment, and Bade turned and walked toward the lift not far off—but he had taken only a few steps when Beiyila suddenly called him back: "Wait."

"Is there something else?"

"An Luo Wendel has already been moved to the west wing of the old castle," Beiyila said, watching Bade's retreating back. "That will be her exclusive 'convalescent quarter.' If you wish to visit her, both Margarita and I can help arrange it."

With his back to Beiyila, Bade neither answered nor left. He simply stood there in place for a long while, and in the end he gave only a slight nod before continuing on toward the lift.