After clearing out the mutated rats in the sewers that day, Silas wasn't in the best shape, so that evening the fat pharmacist Darkwill had sent him home.
The result was that Darkwill saw his sister come to the door to greet them and was immediately stunned by her beauty.
"Long time no see, Miss Cecilia. You're as beautiful as ever."
He said, mesmerized.
"Um... thanks?"
The black-haired young woman blinked, tilting her head in confusion.
"Darkwill, cut the nonsense and get me what I ordered."
Seeing Darkwill staring intently at his sister's face, Silas's voice turned slightly cold.
He really didn't want Darkwill getting involved with his sister, especially since the guy went looking for street girls every day.
"Ahem."
The fat pharmacist's cheeks trembled violently as he snapped back to his senses.
"Here, here you go. Everything you wanted is in here."
He irritably handed over a paper bag.
"Same as before, all the treatments for common East Borough illnesses are included. Instructions and dosages are written on the bag. Three pounds total."
"Keep preparing herbs. I'll be back in a few days."
Silas counted out three gold coins and slapped them on the table, then picked up the paper bag.
This was a method he'd come up with for his investigation: disguising himself as a missionary and providing free treatment to East Borough residents.
After receiving care, the East Borough poor would lower their guard and be more willing to share information.
He could treat ordinary external injuries himself, but when it came to other diseases, he was out of his depth.
That's why he'd sought out Darkwill to help prepare medicines.
Arriving in the East Borough, Silas touched his face and altered his appearance. His sister also pulled up her hood, concealing her features.
The small alley where they usually worked was already packed with people.
Their clothes were tattered and filthy, their faces full of exhaustion and numbness. Many bore obvious wounds.
"The missionary is here!"
Seeing him, the poor immediately grew excited.
"Line up first. External injuries come in first."
Silas called out.
As he walked to the alley entrance, people excitedly and respectfully cleared a path.
Inside the alley, people had already prepared tables, chairs, and a treatment space sectioned off with cloth, just as he preferred.
Several people with obvious external injuries lined up according to the severity of their wounds, though inevitably there were arguments about who should go first.
At times like these, Silas only needed to glance at them coolly, and the invisible pressure would make them settle down.
External injuries were the easiest to treat. Usually they were workers injured by machines in factories, or people who'd been hurt in falls or hit by carriages.
Silas treated over a dozen fingers severed by machines in a row, plus several arms and leg bones broken by belts.
Of course, he still didn't heal them completely, leaving a bit of injury to prevent the effect from being too obvious and scaring them.
"It's miraculous! Thank you so much, Missionary sir!"
The injured person hugged his bandaged arm, expressing boundless gratitude.
"I'm willing to convert to your religion. Please tell me, what kind of being is the Lord you worship?"
"The Lord I worship is silent and noble. He doesn't wish for me to coerce others with favors.
When you genuinely want to worship my Lord from the bottom of your heart, I'll tell you His true name."
Silas made it up on the spot. "All right, now look at this mirror. It can check your condition."
The injured person cooperatively turned his head to see the hooded assistant beside the missionary holding up a mirror decorated with a golden frame. Inside the mirror surface was... an eye?
After making eye contact with the eye for just one second, he became dazed.
"Have there been any disappearances around you lately?"
Silas asked in a low voice.
"Don't know... workers' jobs aren't fixed, and the work is all scattered."
"I see."
Silas frowned in thought. Indeed, if you weren't paying special attention, this kind of thing would be hard to notice.
"Though... I did hear them mention before... something about young girls going missing."
"Young girls missing? Whose daughters?"
"Forgot."
Silas was speechless.
He could only let the person leave, first suggesting he forget about the questioning.
And so it went.
He finished treating external injuries, then distributed Darkwill's medicines to several patients with obvious symptoms.
These people likewise had no particularly clear leads, only vague recollections of people suddenly disappearing, or hearing about some family's child being kidnapped and sold.
It seemed one or two free clinics wouldn't be enough to find concrete information. He'd have to come back several more times in the future.
He thought to himself.
Silas didn't have enough medicine to distribute to everyone, and some people were seriously ill, beyond what a single dose of herbs could cure.
But when he ended his "free clinic," the poor still looked at him with eyes full of gratitude.
"Missionary sir, please share the gospel of your Lord with us."
They pleaded.
Gospel?
What gospel?
If I actually spread that stuff to you, you'd probably go mad on the spot.
Silas grumbled internally.
If it were an ordinary Shadow Ascetic, they'd definitely love this kind of scene, directly spreading a bunch of corrupting knowledge and digesting their potion at lightning speed.
But Silas hadn't fallen into madness to that degree yet, so he just made up some stories to fool them, then quickly left with his sister.
Because of this behavior, the potion inside him didn't get digested, but this actually served as a clearer reminder to Silas, allowing him to summarize the acting principles of the "Shadow Ascetic":
1. Hide in the shadows and practice in concealment.
2. Spread twisted doctrine to corrupt people.
He'd probably need to act it out one more time before the "Shadow Ascetic" potion would be completely digested.
But there was still a lot of undigested potion left. Or rather, too much.
Silas carefully reflected on this. The burden was so heavy he almost wanted to laugh.
He remembered that besides the Sequence 6 Rose Bishop and Sequence 5 Shepherd, he still had a bit of his Sequence 8 Listener potion that he hadn't figured out.
But given all the other massive amounts of undigested potion, that little bit left over wasn't even worth mentioning.
Speaking of which, when I dealt with that "Faceless" last time, I felt the "Rose Bishop" potion inside me digest a little too. What exactly caused that?
Silas analyzed as he walked.
Could it be because I arranged the corpse to look like a rose... surely the True Creator isn't that perversely twisted, right?
Just then, he suddenly raised his head sharply.
From the road ahead came a series of hurried footsteps.
His keen hearing detected two sets of footsteps in front, one relatively heavy, the other quite weak and unsteady.
The pursuing footsteps behind them were chaotic and disorganized.
But Silas didn't raise his head just because of the footsteps. It was also because the Shepherd's characteristics made him sense that Beyonders were approaching.
"Cecilia."
He turned his head and exchanged a look with his sister. She immediately nodded, pulling up her hood as her body melted into the shadows at the corner of the wall.
He looked in the direction of the footsteps.
He saw a woman with brown curly hair supporting a petite young girl, stumbling as they ran forward...