During the daytime, near the port area of East Tivian, at a certain intersection, the originally bustling yet orderly street was now in chaos. A runaway carriage, speeding with almost no deceleration, rushed onto the sidewalk and crashed into the roadside. The carriage overturned, the horses neighed, and a streetlamp was nearly knocked over by the overturned carriage. A storefront was destroyed, people nearby were injured, and onlookers quickly gathered towards the scene. Police in the distance blew sharp whistles as they rushed over.
Just as everyone's attention at the scene was drawn to the accident, John's focus was not there. Standing by the roadside, he looked at the carriage before him with some astonishment. Although the coachman enthusiastically invited him to board, after experiencing the various dangerous moments just now, he didn't dare to agree immediately. It wasn't until he saw the meaningless scratches on the carriage door twist into familiar characters in a way he recognized.
'Get in the carriage...'
Looking at the mysterious text before him that only he seemed to be able to see, John swallowed a mouthful of saliva. After a moment of inner struggle, he chose to open the door and step into the compartment of the hired carriage. Although he still couldn't figure out where these mysterious words came from, so far, almost every single one of them had saved his life. In this environment full of dangers, where something seemed to want his life, all he could do now was trust these mysterious words; they were still John's last resort.
After getting into the carriage compartment, John quickly closed the door and sat down. The coachman, sitting outside the front compartment, quickly asked.
"This Mr., where are you going, Captain?"
"North City, Poplar Crossroads."
"Okay, please sit tight." After asking the destination, the coachman in front quickly hitched the horses and drove the carriage straight forward. As the carriage started, a slightly sinister smile appeared on his lips, but this expression was not noticed by John inside the compartment.
After settling into the carriage compartment, John's anxious heart did not settle. He looked left and right at the scenes constantly flashing past outside the windows, worried that some crisis might suddenly strike. Only after seeing that nothing happened did he secretly breathe a sigh of relief.
After relaxing slightly, John began to ponder how to figure out the current situation. He suddenly thought, since this carriage had the textual information that saved his life, perhaps the owner of this carriage was related to those words, and might even be the writer.
Thinking of this, John immediately felt a desire to communicate with the coachman who was driving. He wanted to ask the coachman some probing questions, to see what he knew. What kind of danger was he currently in? Did he understand the current situation?
John was thinking this, and just as he was about to put his thoughts into action, raising his head to look forward and prepare to speak, he discovered a familiar scene.
Before John's eyes, on the wooden partition opposite him in the compartment, the originally old and ordinary scratches suddenly began to move on their own. Just like the situation on the carriage door before, they autonomously rearranged themselves, forming new sentences.
"Do not talk to the coachman, he is not someone helping you. There is a pen under your cushion, use it to draw this mark in a hidden spot on your hand, and then wait patiently for a turning point inside here."
'Not someone helping me...'
Seeing the new characters that appeared in the carriage compartment, John's heart suddenly turned cold. He thought, if the coachman wasn't someone helping him, why did the text guide him to get in the carriage? Wasn't this harming him?
All of a sudden, John's heart became extremely confused and anxious again. However, the current situation did not allow him to actively seek answers to the questions. Since he had already gotten into this carriage as the text instructed, now he could only continue to follow the text.
John followed the text's prompt and reached his hand under the cushion he was sitting on. Sure enough, he felt a small pen. Then he looked at the so-called symbol that the strange text had shown him. The symbol was located below the sentences; it was an inverted pentagram symbol with a cup and an eye-like pattern in the center.
After carefully examining the symbol provided by the strange text, John silently memorized it and drew an identical one on the inside of his left sleeve on his arm. Then he put the pen away, sat down in his seat, and let out a long breath. While using deep breaths to relieve his tension, he also began the long wait.
This waiting period was quite agonizing for John. As he watched the street scenes constantly flashing past outside the carriage window beside him, he waited for the so-called 'turning point' to arrive after drawing the symbol as the text in the carriage had instructed. Waiting idly in such a situation where he couldn't grasp the specifics and couldn't foresee the future made him extremely anxious.
In this situation, John had no other choice but to silently pray in his heart that everything would be safe and sound.
Time passed minute by minute. The carriage John was riding in, while constantly moving forward, gradually approached the edge of East District. After crossing countless streets and alleys, John suddenly found that the street scene outside the window opened up. The rows of buildings that had lined the streets disappeared, replaced by a wide river flowing with water.
It turned out that the hired carriage John was riding in had already reached the bank of the Moonflow River in Tivian. It was now driving across a river bridge towards the other side of the river, aiming for the City on the opposite bank.
'Strange... do I need to cross the Moonflow River to get to Poplar Crossroads?'
Looking at the ships sailing on the wide river surface before him, John couldn't help but think with slightly furrowed brows. And just as his confusion remained unresolved, a sudden change occurred at the scene.
Amidst a horse's loud neigh, John felt a sudden push that pressed him directly into the seat. The hired carriage beneath him suddenly accelerated without any warning, galloping forward. However, the direction the carriage was rushing towards was not straight ahead to the other side of the bridge, but diagonally towards the bridge railing!
With a loud crash, the out-of-control hired carriage deviated from its path and crashed straight into the railing on the side of the bridge. The wooden railing was directly smashed to pieces by the seemingly crazed, abnormal horses with immense force. Under the sinister smile that appeared on the coachman's lips, the mad horses dragged the large carriage straight off the bridge deck, soaring over the river surface. Then, the entire carriage plunged directly into the churning great river.
"What..."
Sitting inside the carriage compartment and experiencing this scene, John's eyes widened directly, his astonished heart leaping into his throat. In the feeling of weightlessness from falling, he couldn't help but cry out. Then, with a huge splash, the space around him involuntarily tilted and overturned. He was thrown by an impact to one side of the carriage's interior space, his body aching all over from the collision.
John gritted his teeth, enduring the pain in his body. He struggled to stand up in the overturned space, fighting to open the carriage door. However, no matter how he tried, the door seemed to be welded shut, completely impossible to open. At this moment, river water began to seep in in large amounts through the gaps in the carriage door.
Carriages of this era were basically made of wood, and even after falling into a river, they wouldn't sink so easily. However, the one John was currently in seemed somewhat different, as if something had been done to it. It immediately began to take on a large amount of water upon falling into the river. After the two mad horses struggled twice and sank into the river, the entire carriage also began to sink rapidly at a speed visible to the naked eye. People had just begun to gather around the broken section of the railing on the bridge deck to watch, and the carriage had already sunk more than half its volume.
Inside the carriage compartment, river water poured in frantically from every corner and gap. Before long, the accumulated water inside was very high, directly submerging John's waist. In this situation, John struggled desperately, using various methods to try and open the carriage door, but all were in vain.
Just as John was frantically trying to survive, he suddenly saw a figure outside the carriage window. It was none other than the coachman who had driven him there. The coachman was silently watching the panicked John through the glass from outside the window. After seeing the coachman's appearance, John immediately started shouting for help and banging on the window.
However, the coachman outside the window remained completely unmoved by the scene. He silently watched as the rising water level inside the carriage gradually submerged John's entire body, watching him become immersed in the water in despair, and then slowly suffocate during his struggle, finally losing consciousness directly. His face was ashen, and he floated limply inside the carriage, which was like a cage, while the entire carriage had almost completely sunk into the water.
After seeing that John inside the carriage was motionless, the coachman nodded silently, then quickly dived and swam away, avoiding the eyes of the onlookers on the bridge above, and swam underwater towards the shore, leaving John and the carriage to gradually sink to the bottom of the riverbed together.
Finally, the carriage, which had sunk to the riverbed, hit the bottom, stirring up a cloud of muddy sediment, just like the other discarded objects on the riverbed.
In the midst of the turbidity, within the cage of despair, John, who was already like a dead body, still floated silently in the darkness, like a corpse. And just as he seemed like he would never breathe again, his fingers suddenly twitched slightly.
Following the slight movement of his fingers, John's tightly closed eyes slowly opened, and the look of panic that had been on John's face was now completely gone. In its place was a calm composure.
After reopening his eyes, John took a deep breath, inhaling large gulps of river water into his body and then exhaling, as if he were breathing water. Then he looked at the carriage door that had trapped him inside the carriage, reached out his hand, and pushed it forcefully with a strength he hadn't possessed before, forcibly pushing open the carriage door in the water and breaking the locked lock.
After the carriage door was opened, John did not stop. He immediately swam out of the carriage, and still in a diving posture, avoiding the gazes from the shore, he swam away from the bottom of the riverbed, in the opposite direction from where the coachman had just swum.
Just as John was escaping danger underwater, on the bridge from which he had fallen and on the shore, countless people had gathered. The onlookers on the shore pointed at the location on the river surface where bubbles were constantly emerging, discussing the terrifying scene they had just witnessed with frightened expressions. Even the customers in a teahouse by the riverbank had gathered by the windows to look at the scene in the distance.
While the other customers in the teahouse were paying attention to the commotion on the river, in a corner of the room, a young girl wearing a brown waistcoat and a light yellow dress, with white long socks and Mary Jane shoes, was silently enjoying her afternoon tea, completely undisturbed by the commotion in the distance.
"In this way... you should finally be safe, Mr. Professor... temporarily safe..."
After taking another sip of black tea, Dorothy said slowly. At this moment, she was controlling John in the water to swim to a safe location and prepare to go ashore, while also enjoying the street scene outside the window. She had spent the time of an afternoon tea, and she had once again unknowingly thwarted the Eight-Pointed Nest's plot. Of course, as far as they were concerned for now, they still thought their plan was successful.
After inferring from the clues in the Crown University archive that the Eight-Pointed Nest was likely already aware of John's existence and possibly preparing to act, Dorothy immediately began her countermeasures. She arrived in the Port District a day before John's arrival at the port, and then deployed her miniature Corpse Puppets here, starting a high-intensity carpet search for the Eight-Pointed Nest's traces.
Dorothy first obtained information about the ship John was on and the specific arrival time from the school, and then began to search for the Eight-Pointed Nest's traces based on this information. She conducted a comprehensive investigation of the port personnel who were on duty that day and were responsible for the relevant berthing areas, finally finding the tail responsible for scouting for the Eight-Pointed Nest, and then following the tail to find the secret team responsible for this operation.
After the people were found, the rest of the matter was much easier. Since the Eight-Pointed Nest did not want to cause a big commotion and did not want the Church and the An Yin Bureau to know that their forces had returned to Tivian, they wanted to deal with John in an unintentional "accident" like they did with Misha last time, making it a normal accident unrelated to the occult, thus avoiding detection by the official occult side.
After all, for them, the current An Yin Bureau is easy to fool, but they have no way with the Church. If the matter escalates and the Church pays attention, their subsequent actions will be hindered.
Because of the Eight-Pointed Nest's principle of not exposing themselves in this assassination, Dorothy also decided to save John without exposing herself and play along with the Eight-Pointed Nest. This time, she used some unconventional methods to save John.
Simply put, Dorothy had her Corpse Puppets use Common Sense Text quills to write Common Sense Text in various places in the port that were set to be understood only by John, thus reminding John to avoid the "accidents" that the Eight-Pointed Nest was going to set up, causing the Eight-Pointed Nest's Plan A "Hook Drop," Plan B "Chronic Poison," and Plan C "Accidental Car Accident" to all fail, finally forcing them to reluctantly adopt Plan D, the accidental drowning plan, which was exactly the plan Dorothy wanted them to adopt.
Finally, this plan was considered to have been successfully implemented in the eyes of the Eight-Pointed Nest. John got into the carriage prepared by the Eight-Pointed Nest and was driven into the river by the Eight-Pointed Nest. And Dorothy also successfully used the Common Sense Text written in the Eight-Pointed Nest's carriage beforehand to have John draw a puppet mark on himself.
After John fell into the river, he was drowned to the point of suffocation and shock. Dorothy then took advantage of this time to control John's body using the puppet mark, transmitting the effects of the Water Absorption Symbol and the Raw Consumption Symbol through spirit threads, allowing John to breathe underwater while also possessing the physique of the "Cup," making him not easily die and also able to directly open the carriage door and escape, and then use water escape to leave the scene. The Eight-Pointed Nest's people did not have the ability to absorb water and could not continuously monitor John's specific situation in such deep water. After confirming that John was unconscious, they would leave, and they would naturally mark John as dead after they left.
"Raw Consumption... Mad Banquet... Water Absorption... These 'Cup' symbols are really more practical than the last, and there's also the life-saving Sword Wielding and the initial Corpse Puppet Ring, and even the deep blue heart. I've been able to get to where I am today, the Fetal Garment Cult has contributed greatly... Thank you very much..."
After a rough mental review, Dorothy sighed in her heart. Among all the enemies she had encountered, those from the Placenta system always helped her the most, whether they were willing or not.
"After the Eight-Pointed Nest finishes this job, they should go back to report, right? It's a pity, after they returned to Tivian this time, they only have some small strongholds in the City... The real main strongholds are set outside the City, which should be to avoid the prying of the Gaze of Rank. They are much more cautious after returning this time..."
Dorothy thought to herself. She had followed the Eight-Pointed Nest's henchmen before, wanting to find their strongholds, but in the end, she found that the Eight-Pointed Nest's important strongholds were outside the City. This meant that the leader of the Eight-Pointed Nest in Tivian this time was a high-level figure of the Scarlet level. To avoid the Gaze of Rank, he had set up the stronghold far from the City. Dorothy also did not dare to follow out of the City because of the presence of that Scarlet.
The reason why Dorothy could easily suppress the Eight-Pointed Nest within the City was that her Corpse Puppets had strong reconnaissance capabilities, and Dorothy would be invincible once she gained the initiative in intelligence. But once outside the City, the Eight-Pointed Nest's Scarlet had the ability to detect Dorothy's Corpse Puppets, and even capture Dorothy's Corpse Puppets to counter-track Dorothy. To be safe, Dorothy did not dare to follow the Eight-Pointed Nest's henchmen out of the City, and thus could not find out the core intelligence of the Eight-Pointed Nest.
However, Dorothy is not in a hurry now. The overall situation in Tivian is not disadvantageous for her at the moment. Now that John. Machison is in her hands, as long as she seizes this opportunity, she can obtain the information that the Eight-Pointed Nest values most.