After Shaun had broken all ten fingers of the Albanian, he had been given all the information he needed.
"Keep him in custody for now, I have some business at noon, I'll come over when it's done and take him to his boss." Looking at the Albanian who was trembling and nearly deflated, Shaun said to Izzy.
"No problem." Izzy said with a nod.
Shaun went and washed his hands, went back to the gold shop in front of him and grabbed his umbrella and walked back down the street.
It was only a ten minute walk from here to the place where he had agreed to meet Lola, Shaun had plenty of time on his hands and he walked leisurely over to the place, opening the paper Izzy had given him as he went.
On the paper was written a sentence: "Someone received a text message on a mobile phone from a Vatican investigator before he died:There is a defection within the Church."
"It's not a long sentence, but it's too much information." Shaun pondered the words written on the paper as he put his hand out into the rain, letting the rain dampen the piece of paper sufficiently to blur the words into a mess of rotten confetti. Bit by bit along the way as he walked, he threw the confetti into a rubbish bin on the side of the road.
"If I had the ability granted by the Secret Stone of Fire I wouldn't have to go through so much trouble, right? A ringing finger solves the problem." Shaun thought without regret.
Soon Shaun reached his destination:Maternushaus.It was a modern style red brick building, a hotel open to the public with a commendable breakfast. Visitors can book a room on the website, but cannot find the word Hotel anywhere on the exterior of the hotel.
It is also the conference centre and library of the Diocese of Cologne, named after Mternus, the first bishop in the history of the Diocese of Cologne.
It was also one of the hotels that the Church usually arranged for the agents of the Spirit of Valour, and Shaun reckoned that Lola was staying here.
Shaun looked at the time and came a little early, so he sat in the lobby and casually picked up a magazine and flipped through it, his mind thinking about what was written on the piece of paper just now.
"The message sent by the Vatican investigator before he was killed indicated that it was the information he considered most important. He sensed danger and sent the message to someone he trusted, who is also critical to ask Izzy later."
"If this information is true, then the death of the investigator is related to the mutineers within this church. Then there's a chance that the information that Lola and I got from the church could be tampered with, and we'll need to verify it ourselves a second time."
In the middle of thinking, Shaun's shoulder was suddenly tapped. The one who could tap Shaun's shoulder without his defence was Lola here.
"This lady you have some spare time, is it bad to make a noise and shout at me." Shaun belted out and looked up as Lola kept her cool demeanour and looked at him.
Greeting him, Shaun decided not to tell Lola the information given by Izzy for now. There wouldn't be any problem with the character of the person associated by the secret stone, but Shaun didn't know Lola well enough to know how this young lady's character was, and was afraid that she would reveal her flaws and scare the snakes when talking to the church side.
Shaun followed Lola into a small conference room, there was already a person inside, who was looking at the distant Cologne Cathedral through the window with his back to them. Hearing them enter, the man turned round the table to meet them.
"Hello again, Mr Shaun. I'm glad to hear you've come to Cologne as well. Lady Lola and I have already met. This time I am in charge of investigating this murder of Vatican investigators on behalf of the Lord Bishop. It was also my idea to ask for help from the Spirit World." The man extended his hand to shake each of the two men.
He was the Cologne diocesan priest, Father Heinrich. Schwartz, whom Shaun had dealt with a year ago when he came to Cologne to carry out his commission. This was a German man in his fifties, with hair that was already visibly balding, a slightly blonde figure, and wearing a black priest's regular clothes, revealing a clean white Roman collar.
Shaun was polite with him as well.
"Well, Mr Schwartz, please come and give Shaun the basic information about the case, and we'll discuss it together afterwards." Lola said.
"With great pleasure." Schwartz said, and then gave Shaun a rundown of how the case began:
A month ago in Cologne, in a fifth century ruin that was being excavated, the staff unearthed a short sword. The smithing level of this short sword belonged to the top level of the fourth and fifth centuries in Europe, and it must have been worn by an extraordinary European nobleman at that time. Moreover, the blade of the short sword was narrower and thinner than that of ordinary short swords, and it seemed to have been made for women who were weak. The short sword was in extremely good condition after it was unearthed, and the degree of corrosion caused by rust was very low.
"So it can be clearly seen that there is a blood mark on the blade that has darkened." Speaking of this, a trace of excitement swept across Schwartz's face.
Shaun summarised the information quickly in his head: "Fifth century ruins, female nobles, short sword, blood mark."
"Could it be St Ursula's saber?" Shaun asked tentatively.
Schwartz nodded: "This is also the result of our preliminary identification by the Cologne Church, Saint Ursula may have committed suicide with this sword.
If this is true, Cologne has received another holy relic. For further confirmation, we notified the Vatican about it, so the Vatican sent an investigator, Father Giovanni, to Cologne to identify the short sword."
"Father Giovanni is an expert in medieval European history and has been a Vatican investigator for thirty years. He first identified the relics and was overjoyed to see the short sword and immediately brought it to the studio we had arranged for him to study."
"After Mr Giovanni had studied it for three days, suddenly the man and the sword disappeared together."
"After another three days, the body of Mr Giovanni was found by the cleaning lady who regularly cleaned a normally unoccupied flat house in the old town." A look of horror came into Father Schwartz's eyes as he spoke.
"The body was in a bizarre state, the skin of the entire body had been stripped off and placed on the floor, and strangely, the stripped skin had no cuts other than the normal holes, as if the body and the skin each had nothing to do with each other."
"Horrifyingly, a post-mortem examination revealed that Mr Giovanni lived for at least 24 hours after his skin was stripped off before he died. The surface of the body that lost its skin was found to have some salt that had melted and some burn marks; the killer was obviously trying to force a confession about something."
Shaun sucked in a dark breath of cold air, shuddering at the slightest imagining of the scene in his mind.
"Both the short sword and the murderer are in a state of disappearance, we can't rule out that the murderer has already found the short sword and therefore disappeared."
"We suspect that this case is related to the demon's servant-magical spirit agent, so I suggested to ask for help from the Spirit World, and got the consent from the bishop and the Vatican." Father Schwartz said.
"Did Father Giovanni initiate contact with anyone before he disappeared?" Shaun asked knowingly, deciding to ask Lola about the demonic spirit agent alone in a moment.
"No contact with anyone, including the assistant assigned to him from our side of the church." Father Schwartz replied.
"Father Giovanni has an assistant?" Shaun asked.
Next to him Lola replied, "Yes, I've spoken to the chap, nothing of value."
"Did you visit Father Giovanni's studio and the flat where the body was found?" Shaun asked Lola, who nodded and shook her head again, meaning that she had checked and had no luck.
Shaun trusted Lola's conclusions, Lola certainly had more experience than himself.
"Father Schwartz, please recall who had contact with Father Giovanni and visited his workshop during the three days he was working on the shortsword before he disappeared?" Shaun asked.
Father Schwartz recalled, took the paper and pen on the conference table, wrote down a few names, and handed them to Shaun: "These four people have been to the studio before Father Giovanni's disappearance, including me."
Shaun took the paper and thanked him, then said, "I will start the investigation immediately. We will also enter the Spirit World for help if necessary. We'll keep in touch at all times." Shaun stood up while passing Lola a wink.
"Of course, if you need to mobilise the police force or anything else please feel free to let me know. Here's my card with my phone number and email address." Father Schwartz handed Shaun his card.
Shaun and Lola walked out of the Maternushaus and the rain had stopped.
The two walked to nearby Victoria Street before Shaun said to Lola, "One of my informants told me that Father Giovanni sent a text message to someone before he was killed that read:There's been a mutiny within the Church."
Lola was a little surprised, looked at Shaun and said: "You're very resourceful, I've been here for a week and I didn't get this clue."
Shaun smiled slightly: "Making friends easily is also considered one of my abilities."
Laura mused: "So the church side is hiding this, or they don't even know about it."
Shaun said: "I feel that not knowing is more likely." Said he, raising the four names Father Schwartz had just written. "That traitor should be in those four."
Laura asked, "Who did Father Giovanni text to?"
Shaun said, "Let's go to my informant right now and ask for that name. Would you be interested in working with me to take down a drug cartel?"
Lola said disdainfully, "The secular forces can solve things on their own without our interference."
Shaun laughed: "That's the price for exchanging information with my informant. And the Spirit World doesn't have hard and fast rules about this, does it?"
"Forget it if you're not interested. But I told you such an important clue, now tell me what's going on with the Demon Spirit Agent?" Lola said: "Demon Spirit Agents are actually an existence much older than our agents in the Spirit World, except that they were previously known as Demon Servants, or Demon Apostles or something like that, people who sell their souls to the devil in exchange for certain abilities, and then are driven by the devil."
Shaun thought to himself: "No wonder the Dwarf Elves they don't know about Demon Spirit Agents, next time ask them for clues about Demon Servants."
Lola went on to say: "The establishment of the Spirit World was to avoid events as destructive to human civilisation as World War II. In fact, the war between light and darkness had already been going on for tens of thousands of years before the establishment of the Spirit World. It's just that with the advancement of social civilisation, there are fewer and fewer devil worshippers, so now the Spirit World has the absolute upper hand."
"But the ugly and crazy side of human nature still drives some people to worship demons, especially those that have actually existed, such as some war maniacs, serial killers, and so on. Demon spirits are scarce in the spirit world and can't establish boundaries, so it's hard to locate them. The relative number of demonic spirit agents is also small, but each one is very destructive, and the abilities gained from demons are scary and weird."
Speaking here, Lola stopped and looked at a corner of the road and asked Shaun: "Is that your friend too?"
Shaun followed Lola's gaze, only to see that behind a flowerbed on the roadside, Toren was scowling at him.
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St Ursula was a Christian saint from the fifth century A.D. who was killed by pagans in Cologne while leading eleven thousand virgins on a pilgrimage back to the Holy Land. The eleven black tears on the Cologne coat of arms represent these 11,000 virgins. Cologne has the Church of St Ursula.