Agatha walked down the deserted streets, and the familiar city-state now seemed to be filled with an eerie atmosphere of silence, and between the shadows of the surrounding buildings, behind the closed doors and windows, there seemed to be a pair of prying eyes.

She's looking for an exit to this "exotic land", or the culprit who has trapped herself.

Every place that seems to be in harmony could be a rift that intersects with the real world, but so far she has not found such a rift in this strange "frost city-state".

Only one thing she can be sure of is that she has touched the shadow that has always shrouded the city-state - whether it is a mistake or a deliberate attempt by the mastermind behind the scenes, she has successfully crossed the "barrier" that has always blocked her vision.

This paradoxical place with frost must have been the source of the frequent strange situations in the city-state during this time.

The sound of wheels running over the stone pavement could be heard from a distance, and the faint sound of car bells and doors opening and closing drifted into my ears.

Agatha looked up in the direction from which the sound had come from, but all she could see was empty streets—but farther away, she did see shadows of cars and horses flashing past the intersections, and saw figures that looked like pedestrians hurrying across them.

There are "people" in this city, but many times all you can see are distant apparitions, where you can hear the voices of the residents, but it is often impossible to pinpoint the source of the sound.

It's like a bizarre, distorted dream.

Agatha's figure crossed another intersection before coming to a halt in the shadows of the building.

Blind exploration is just a waste of physical strength and time, and she needs to be careful to judge the situation around her.

She closed her eyes and let her perception spread around her, carefully sifting through the various information in her environment—sounds, smells, the direction of the wind, and ...... The temperature of a living person.

After a moment, Agatha looked up in a certain direction, and took a step in that direction—her eyes still closed, but she seemed to be able to see her surroundings as accurately as she avoided all obstacles in the way, and she walked through the alleys, past junctions and alleys, and walked for an unknown amount of time before she stopped in front of a building on a corner.

Agatha opened her eyes and saw a small restaurant with bright lights and buzzing people.

The voice is very real, and there is the breath of a living person in it.

Agatha took up her mind and pushed open the door of the restaurant.

The bell rang, the door opened, and the scene inside the restaurant came into Agatha's eyes—at this moment, she was in a trance, and even suspected that she had left the strange "foreign land" and returned to the normal real world.

The restaurant is brightly lit, full of diners and waiters busy between tables and counters, and the reception staff is busy behind the counter, with the crisp sound of knives and forks colliding with cups and plates, and the sound of people talking about the weather, work and prices.

In the next second, however, Agatha noticed the obvious dissonance - although the diners were eating at the table, the cups and plates in front of them were empty, and although the clerk was busy behind the counter, he was just walking around and wiping the same cup in his hand repeatedly.

Everyone is like a puppet with a programme, just repeating the life actions that a normal person should have, just ...... They imitate it vividly.

Agatha frowned, the atmosphere seemed even more eerie than the empty streets outside, but instead of turning away, she stepped into the store.

The more weird the place, the more it shows that you have found the right direction.

As Agatha took her first step, the lively conversation in the restaurant suddenly stopped.

All the diners who were talking closed their mouths at the same time, but their faces still had the expressions they had just chatted with, and their hands were still eating - in the huge space, the voices disappeared and only a cup and plate collided with knives and forks

Hit the monotonous sound.

Agatha took a second step, and the sound of cups and plates clattering with knives and forks died down—everyone in the restaurant stopped, as if suddenly cut off from energy, and stood still at the square tables.

Agatha took a third step forward, and everyone in the restaurant put down their knives and forks, and they got up like zombies, turned their heads expressionlessly, and dozens of eyes fell on her with a hollow look.

Agatha looked at the counter in front of her, and the clerk who had been wiping the same cup finally stopped, but unlike the zombie-like hollow and stiff "diners" around her, the clerk slowly raised her head and looked at Agatha with a faint smile on her face.

The smile was even a little friendly.

"Hello, Miss Gatekeeper," said the clerk, a fairly good-looking young man with short blond hair, dressed in a crisp white shirt and black jacket, and speaking politely, as if he were really entertaining guests, "I'm glad you're here, I wonder what you think of this delightful city?"

"Looks like you're the culprit of all this," Agatha looked calmly at the blonde "clerk" in front of her, "It's a little easier to find you than I thought.

"Maybe it's not as easy as you think," the blonde laughed, "Something?" Dirty water with poison? Or bread made of earth? Or······ An empty bowl? What we have here is."

Agatha didn't mean to answer, just casually raised her cane and waved it in the air.

The blonde young man behind the counter was instantly wrapped in layers of pale flames that appeared out of thin air, and the skin bag was burned to ashes by the gatekeeper's "cremation" ability almost in a few breaths, leaving only the gray-white ashes scattered in the wind and landed on the counter.

However, the expression on Agatha's face did not change in the slightest, for she sensed that the young man had no longer breath of a living person in his body before the flames were ignited.

A strange creeping sound of sticky substance came from the side, Agatha turned her head, and saw a stiff standing "eater" at the table not far away suddenly trembling, and the next second, the person's body melted like wax, and the black mud substance surged and deformed on its surface, and within a few breaths, the diner changed into a blonde young man in a white shirt and black jacket.

"What an unfriendly way of greeting," the blonde young man flicked the dust off his clothes and looked at Agatha with some helplessness, "Miss Gatekeeper, do you think this will solve me—do you think I'm going to expose my body to such a dangerous place?"

"I know you're not here," Agatha said with a blank face, "but at least it will stop you from making noise for a while."

"Alright, well, it seems that you are not in the mood to chat—you are a boring woman, by comparison

Now, that Professor Malson was a lot more interesting at the last moments," the blonde shrugged, "but that's okay, as long as it allows you to stay here honestly for a while, I don't mind if you're a boring prisoner."

The moment she heard the words "Professor Melson", Agatha's expression changed slightly, and she thought of the vanished Dagger Island, the series of explosions that occurred on the island just before the disappearance of Dagger Island, as mentioned in the report—and then she noticed the information revealed in the last few words of the other party.

"What do you mean by your last words?" She stared at the blonde young man in front of her and said in a cold tone.

"It's nothing, it's just that you're here for a while," the blond-haired young man laughed happily, "You don't have to worry, as soon as the situation is ___, another one will return there, and she will gather the guards like you, and then put together a report based on the actual situation of the sewage treatment center" Rest assured, she will report it truthfully, including the contamination of the treatment center and the replacement of personnel, and then, as you normally do, she will return to the cathedral to report and talk to the Bishop Ivan, Then, she'll make her rounds of the city-state, continuing to deal with the problems facing the city, and continuing with the investigations you weren't able to complete······ Nothing will be delayed."

Agatha's face finally turned completely cold to her

Staring at the blonde young man in front of him: "You even made a 'fake,?! of the gatekeepers."

"Is this hard?" The blonde young man slowly retracted the smile on his face, looked at Agatha with a slight sarcasm, and said, "Of course, she doesn't have your strength, but other than that, she's flawless, even more perfect than any previous copy - do you know how perfect it is? She...... I don't even know I'm a fake."

Agatha's face was as pale as frost, and the knuckles of her clenched cane turned slightly pale: "A fake can't hide it from the cathedral—there are countless pairs of astute eyes there."

"Countless pairs of astute eyes—mortal eyes, you may be overestimating your colleagues," said the blonde young man, calmly meeting Agatha's cold gaze, "and when it comes to fakes, do you really think there is any difference between you and others and what you call 'fakes'?"

He laughed again, and slowly raised his hands, as if a preacher saint were revealing the truth of the world: "Miss Gatekeeper, there was no forgery in the first place, or ······ We're all fakes, that's the truth."