When the old woman saw that the young priest was willing to help, she was immediately overjoyed and thanked her profusely. Then she hurried home to collect her belongings and quickly handed them over to Gallo.
The police officers on the side inevitably criticized Gallo’s actions:
"Pastor Gallo, now that this is the time, why don't we make things more complicated?"
"The old man's grandson has been missing for several days. I'm afraid it has nothing to do with this incident, right?"
What he said is true. Cases of missing persons are very common in this ghost town of Innocence City. Not long ago, there was a mysterious incident in the neighboring town of York where all the people in the town disappeared...
Although the City of Innocence appears to be prosperous on the surface, there are always undercurrents surging behind the scenes that never stop. No one can control it. Criminals like the Skull Crusher are still at large.
Countries, sects, and forces from all walks of life regard this place as a place where every inch of land must be competed for. Even undead creatures like lich have been coveting this place and want to get involved...
No one can explain why the Innocence City is so popular, maybe only the gods know?
All in all, there is nothing wrong with the idea that the sheriffs hope that Gallo will not be distracted by some chores.
However, Gallo has his own persistence:
"I have a hunch that these two things are related..."
"There is only one truth, and we cannot give up the slightest clue!"
"If possible, can you go and find out if there are any other missing cases here?"
Although the sheriffs felt that Gallo was a little too sensitive, their immediate superiors had told them to listen to Gallo's arrangements, so they had no choice but to bite the bullet and continue to inquire.
As a result of this inquiry, I learned that in this village alone, more than 20 people have disappeared one after another in the past three months, which is more than the followers of the Miya sect!
And I heard that people are missing in the neighboring villages. If the number of missing people is added up, it would probably be in the hundreds!
However, because these people did not disappear all at once, but happened one after another, with inconsistent intervals and no fixed pattern, they did not attract much attention and were treated as accidents.
After all, these villages are not far from the empire's border, and there are aliens, bandits, and cults from time to time. They are also relatively close to the ruins of the wasteland, and they are occasionally attacked by wild beasts, warcraft, and even various monsters, so occasionally a few people go missing.
Neither is a rare occurrence.
However, more than twenty people have disappeared in half a year. This number is enough to arouse alarm. Even the police officers are aware of this.
They even suspected that this anonymous letter was sent by a relative of a missing person. He might have realized something was wrong earlier and thought of the cult. After all, the cult caused the most disappearances, and the whole village believed in the cult.
It is very common that this person is afraid of being discovered and retaliated by the cult, so he chooses to write anonymous letters.
Gallo quickly asked people to find the belongings of the missing people, and then quickly led the sheriffs back to the Miya Church to ask the old bishop for help in divination.
With the belongings of the divination target, the accuracy of divination will be greatly increased.
The old bishop also immediately became busy.
However, the divination was still disturbed...
"It seems that this case is really unusual. I used personal belongings to help with divination, but in the end, I was still disturbed..."
"However, the final scope was slightly narrowed..."
The old bishop looked at the slightly smaller circle of petals on the map, and then began to divine the whereabouts of the next missing person.
He divined more than a dozen times at once, and finally narrowed the circle of petals to a barely acceptable range.
It was a forest located northwest of the city. It was a bit far away from the original destination village. It was already close to a mountain range called 'Snake Pattern'. After climbing over this mountain range, we reached the 'God's Abandoned Ruins'.
A mysterious and dangerous vast wasteland.
And the road from the Innocence City to those villages basically runs along the outer edge of this forest...
"It seems that some dangerous monster from the ruins wasteland has come to this forest, lurked down, and attacked passers-by?"
"But its appetite is not that big, and only a few people are attacked each time, so it has not attracted much attention..."
"And Lieutenant Undine must have discovered something was wrong, so he took his people and ran away to commit suicide..."
Gallo roughly guessed the whole story and then said:
"Anyway, just go and take a look and you'll find out."
He was ready to leave immediately.
The old bishop quickly warned:
"Although I don't know what kind of method was used, it can even interfere with my divination. It must be very dangerous. You must be careful!"
"And this trip is mainly about finding and rescuing people. We need more help. Don't go alone. Bring the peace officers with you."
"If you need to take action, be as low-key and secretive as possible."
Gallo naturally nodded repeatedly, agreed, and quickly called the sheriffs to set off again.
It was almost dusk at this time. Everyone had been working hard all day since early in the morning. Gallo was fine, but the others were already very tired. Now they had to risk entering a dangerous forest at night...
But in order to save the lives of colleagues, no one complained, and no one was afraid to refuse.
The Sheriff of Section 9 is really different from other Sheriffs.
So everyone spent several more hours, and in the early morning, they arrived at the area marked by the old bishop. This place was already deep in the woods. Except for Gallo's little donkey, no one else's horses could enter at all.
Come,
There was deathly silence all around, not even the tiniest chirping of insects could be heard, and the weather was not very good tonight. There was no moon in the sky, and only the torches provided some weak illumination, which made it look eerie...
If ordinary people came to a place like this, they would probably be too scared to walk.
But these police officers are not afraid at all. They are still expecting some powerful monster to emerge and fight with it for 300 rounds!
At the same time, I didn’t feel tired. Instead, I felt full of energy and wanted to run wildly in the woods...
They even had the energy to shout Undine’s name loudly:
"Lieutenant! Lieutenant, are you there?"
"Lieutenant, come out quickly! We will never laugh at you again for not having a boyfriend!"
"Lieutenant, marry me! If you don't agree, I'll take it as your acquiescence!"
Of course, this is all the result of divine spells, the third-level divine spells of the protection system, which are durable and fanatical.
Gallo actually wanted to use those heroic prayers and hymns of courage that could not be used without permission, but the old bishop told him to keep a low profile, so he could only regretfully choose these simple magic spells.