Chapter 331 — The Letter of Investiture
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 3
"Uncle? Uncle, why have you gone quiet again? Uncle, are you woolgathering again?"
Gaosong, his mind wandering far afield, was interrupted by a crisp voice at his side. He turned and saw Patty standing beside him, head tilted back, staring straight at him, her big eyes brimming with curiosity.
"Just thinking about a few things," Gaolan said, then smiled and shook his head. "By the way—that Sister Selina who usually looks after you, how did the two of you meet?"
He knew this was likely the most dangerous question he would ask today.
The so-called "Sister Selina" was almost certainly the Selina Gerfen of years past. Given little Patty's cheerful nature and her closeness to "Sister Selina," she would very likely mention him to Selina Gerfen afterward—mention the "strange questions" he had asked. Would Selina Gerfen grow suspicious? Would she realize that some unknown Dreamer was taking an interest in her?
After a quick weighing of risks, Gaoyang concluded the risk was acceptable.
His identity was not exposed; he was now a perfectly normal Dreamer active within the mind network. So Selina Gerfen had no reason to feel any particular vigilance or attention toward him. And for a perfectly normal Dreamer, incidentally asking Patty why she knew a great figure in the church was hardly an unusual thing.
And even if Selina Gerfen did take an interest in him, there was nothing to worry about should she try to track him down. The mind network at present had no mature address-tracing or user-management technology; even the church's upper echelons could only lock onto nearby congregants through the crude method of scanning for resonant brainwaves. So Selina Gerfen could never pin down Gaoyang.
And if one day the Dreamers did establish a mature address-tracing and user-management system... then Gaoyang would have even less to worry about, because that system would be his own work, riddled with backdoors.
So after a most solemn weighing of the matter, he asked the question in a seemingly casual tone.
Patty thought nothing of it at all. Happily she answered, "When I first came here, it was Sister Selina who looked after me! She said she was my 'guide'!"
Gaoyang frowned. "Guide? Guide to what?"
"I don't really understand either," Patty said, swinging her head about. "Sister Selina said I have a very special gift, so I need someone to teach me, so that I can become a very useful person in the future... But she hasn't taught me anything."
A very special gift? Had the Dreamers brought this little girl into the network because they saw some talent in her?
So this Patty really wasn't an ordinary Longnight cultist after all...
Gaoyang then asked the girl a few more questions—how she had first entered the network, who had introduced or guided her—but Patty seemed quite muddled about it all. She appeared entirely unable to recall the process by which she had first entered this network.
Either her memory of that matter had been tampered with, or she had been secretly guided into the network by someone—or several someones—without ever knowing it.
Either way, Gaoyang decided he had best not pursue this line of questioning any further: if Patty's memory really had been tampered with by the Dreamers, then the more he asked, the greater the chance of arousing suspicion.
After bidding Patty farewell, Gaoyang left the Dreamers' mind network.
He opened his eyes, and—well, this time he did not see Amber's faceplate planted right in front of him.
What he saw were the faces of both Rebecca and Amber.
Xuanmai Zong's sudden awakening gave Rebecca such a fright that the roe-deer spirit leapt two meters back on the spot, a cry bursting from her mouth: "Wah! The Ancestor's awake!"