NOVEL WEB Chapter 39: Chapter 39: 9?
It was an elderly woman.
Zhou Yun couldn't tell exactly how old she was — she'd certainly lived longer than anyone in the underhive ever could.
Her silver-gray hair was carefully coiled into a spiral at the back of her head. Her eyes carried none of the usual cloudiness or dullness of age, instead glinting with a shifting kind of spirit. Her figure was a little stooped, but cleverly hidden beneath a pale blue robe. From the sleeves stretched a hand clutching a cheap black notebook with a hard cover.
On the cover of the notebook was written a complicated sequence of nine digits in ashen white ink: 387,420,489.
The numbers spiraled on the cover like a vortex, seeming to turn endlessly. But no matter how he looked, Zhou Yun couldn't make out any pattern in them.
"This is the actuary and mathematician you were talking about?" Zhou Yun turned to Rena and asked.
But Rena's eyes were hazy, as if lost in thought.
She murmured, "Madam Nama has gotten so old… Her husband died young. I wonder how she's been managing on her own…"
Rena straightened, then looked at Zhou Yun. "This is Madam Nama Karr. Her family has served for generations as the actuary for a noble's factory. She's kind, gentle, and amusing to talk to. She never remarried, and has no children… but she loves kids, often teaching math to the neighbor's little ones."
"She's a good person. The only problem is she sometimes forgets to pray to the Emperor because she gets caught up in her math. My mother scolded her for that many times…"
Her words came out like rambling, her eyes unable to hide the wistfulness.
"The 'reliable source' you mentioned — it's just you, isn't it?" Zhou Yun raised an eyebrow.
Rena nodded lightly, still gazing at the streets before her with a nostalgic look. "I used to live here. In Hive Fudia's Upper Hive, District Nine. Our family were Madam Nama's neighbors — devout Imperial Cultists. My parents served a noble's interstellar trade business."
"Then I awakened my psychic powers. And when the Black Ships were coming to Asford… my mother let me escape, from the tithe squad collecting psykers for the governor."
Her eyes grew more complicated.
After a moment's silence, she suddenly looked up at Zhou Yun. "My mother was a devout Imperial Cultist. Letting me go wasn't rebellion. She knew I was chosen by the Emperor, she knew my mission. She… she did it to let me fulfill His will!"
"You sure it wasn't just simple motherly love?" Zhou Yun cut her off calmly.
Rena froze, as though she'd never considered it before.
"Is motherly love greater than faith?" she shot back, staring at Zhou Yun. "How could faith be—"
"I don't know." Zhou Yun shook his head. "But is a father's love greater than his love for humanity?"
Rena blinked, not understanding.
And only Zhou Yun could see the winged figure in white light sigh bitterly.
"Did He love us? Me and all my brothers?" the figure said, sourness in his voice. "Even if He did, He was too busy loving humanity to love His children."
Zhou Yun glanced at him, sensing the fractured humanity hidden in his tone — though whether that humanity still belonged to the Archangel, Zhou Yun couldn't say.
He turned away, looking at Rena, who still seemed a little angry. "So what's the plan?"
"I don't want to hurt Madam Nama. And I don't want to draw too much attention," Rena said, looking at him. "If she's still in this district, it means she hasn't moved yet. Just to be sure, we'll follow her for a while, observe her movements."
She nodded toward the distant figure of Madam Nama walking toward a building.
"When she's not home, we slip inside. If I remember right, there should be a safe in her home. The records we're looking for will be inside."
She turned back to Zhou Yun, blinking. "You can handle that, right?"
"Easy." Zhou Yun replied casually.
Breaking into the home of an ordinary hive resident and taking some records from a safe? Couldn't be simpler.
But something inside him still tingled with caution.
"387,420,489…" he muttered to himself, staring at the numbers on Madam Nama's notebook.
There really didn't seem to be any pattern. Did it require some complex mathematical formula to reveal its meaning?
"What?" Rena asked, startled.
"The numbers. On her notebook cover. What do they mean?" Zhou Yun shot her a glance.
Rena frowned. "I didn't even notice those numbers. You've got a good memory."
Zhou Yun just shrugged. His memory was decent.
But what worried him was whether these numbers had some hidden numerological meaning — something tied to the Nine, perhaps.
Nine digits. Ending in nine.
Plenty of numbers had nine digits and ended in nine. That wasn't evidence by itself. But he couldn't shake his growing wariness.
"You sure this woman isn't compromised?" he asked quietly.
If she really was a servant of the Changer of Ways, Zhou Yun wouldn't hesitate to kill her on the spot. He still had that meeting with Governor Augustus Flax — and the governor wouldn't care about one more body.
"My family were devout," Rena said firmly. "If Madam Nama had had any problems back then, my mother would have reported her."
But her tone softened. "I just can't be sure she hasn't been corrupted in all these years…"
"You're not planning to just kill her over some numbers, are you?" Rena looked at him in horror. "That seems… extreme. At least find some real evidence first."
She wasn't wrong. But even so, the alarm bells in Zhou Yun's mind kept ringing. Something about all this was wrong. But turning his back and walking away might just play straight into the Changer's schemes.
For now, he decided to observe the woman, then see the governor.
If she really was corrupted, he could just report her to Augustus Flax. That man might be a corrupt bastard, but he'd never tolerate a Tzeentch cultist threatening his own home.
In Zhou Yun's memory, at least, that governor — as rotten as he was — had never fallen to Chaos.
"387,420,489…" Zhou Yun murmured again, still searching for some kind of pattern in those numbers.
(End of Chapter)
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