From the Ship of Fools to Earl of Wugang

Many of these old-fashioned telephone booths still remain in the old town of Gulfstream. They have been preserved more for aesthetic reasons than for practical value—after all, most residents are used to landlines and pagers.

These qualities of being "outdated" and "forgotten" make them ideal carriers for certain specific communication needs.

Edmund squeezed into the phone booth, took out a coin from his pocket, inserted it, and dialed a number he knew by heart.

This number was a private communication line that Edmund Lockman had prepared for himself when he served as the "accountant" in the Deepsea Order.

The organization's financial transactions involved multiple banks and shell companies. To facilitate flexible allocation, he specifically applied for a batch of voicemail accounts as instruction relay stations, and kept two for himself.

Only he knew the password to his mailbox, and the linked transfer service connected him to the reserved contact channels of three banks.

The phone rang twice, followed by a recorded female voice: "Please dial the following number."

After hanging up, Edmund added the Gulfstream area code to the number he had just obtained and then dialed it.

"Hello, please select a service: Press 1 to leave a message, press 2 to forward to the linked account's contact channel, press 3..."

After a series of dazzling and complicated procedures, Edmund issued an instruction from a public phone booth to "release emergency cash from Lockman's private account to the designated contact point."

This system was originally designed to deal with unforeseen circumstances that the religious community might encounter.

If someone in the cult needs money urgently but cannot go to the bank in person, they can remotely initiate a withdrawal request via a pre-prepared voicemail system.

The funds will be prepared by the bank's trust department within three hours, allowing the person with the correct code to withdraw them at a designated branch.

However, Jacob and his associates always received ready-made instructions directly from Edmund and never cared about the complete process of the system.

"Instruction received. Please collect your item at the following location in two hours: Pitomont Private Trust Bank, Bayview Old Town Branch. Collection code is..."

The recording delivered a string of coded messages, which Edmund memorized before hanging up.

He pushed open the folding door of the phone booth and stepped back into the bustling streets of Bayview.

He couldn't waste the three-hour wait; he had other things to do, and the library was his first stop.

The Bayview City Public Library is located in the eastern part of Bayview City’s Old Town. Edmund went straight to the second-floor periodicals section after arriving.

The magazine racks here are arranged alphabetically, from A to Z, with hundreds of magazines and monthly publications neatly stacked.

Edmund quickly searched along the labels on the shelf and found what he was looking for in the "L" section.

"Guangming Spring," a monthly magazine marked as having been founded in 1972, has a simple and elegant design that makes it look like an internal poetry journal printed by the literature department of a university.

Edmund overheard the name during a casual, drunken conversation within the cult. An older cult member in charge of procuring extraordinary materials mentioned an interesting detail:

"If you want to know where you can buy things without registering your name, read the poems in 'The Bright Fountain'."

Edmund initially thought it was just drunkard ramblings, but later, while organizing the church's correspondence, he discovered that Jacob himself had also subscribed to the publication.

A cult leader who believes in a deep-sea evil god subscribes to a poetry monthly, but he doesn't believe it's just for the sake of being cultured.

He took the latest issue of "Guangming Spring" off the shelf and sat down at the reading table by the window to read it.

The cover features a simple line drawing: a stone-paved spring with moonlight pouring down from its mouth.

The title page is a table of contents, filled with various poem titles and author names such as "Moonlight Sonata," "Letter from Afar," and "The Sea and Silence."

It doesn't seem unusual, but these poets seem to have a penchant for gaining local fame by marking their cities.

Edmund flipped directly to the poem by the Bayview City poet, titled "The Chapter of Nature." The poem itself was rather contrived, a product of mere imagery.

But as he read line by line, some letters printed in different font sizes came to light.

"Bay", "Flow", "City", "Natural", "History", "All".

Bayview City Natural History Museum

Edmund turned to the next page and extracted the information about "music" and "department" in the same way.

In this way, he pieced together the complete address:

Bayview City Natural History Club, 27 Harding Street, Saturday afternoon at 6 p.m.

Edmund closed the publication, got up, and put it back on the shelf.

Within the cult, he learned that the supernatural underworld had its own information transmission network.

When the internet was still a rare commodity accessible to only a select few, print media was the classic channel for clandestine gatherings.

Farian's legacy includes a fragmented ritual recipe and an alchemical potion recipe; such underground trading places would surely be able to meet the material needs.

When he was within the cult, he always avoided getting involved in these supernatural matters.

This is also why he quickly rose to become one of the three core figures in charge of the Order's finances—he was the youngest, the most modern, and also the most easily underestimated.

But now, he has both the need and the confidence to make up for this lesson.

Edmund glanced at the clock; there was still an hour and a half before he could withdraw money from the bank, enough time for him to scout the place out first.

After leaving the library, Edmund walked for about twenty minutes along the route marked on the map and arrived at Harding Street.

This sparsely populated street is located on the edge of the old town, with rows of old brick and stone buildings on both sides and small shops on the ground floor that require a quiet environment to make a living.

Number 27 is a detached three-story building with a bronze plaque hanging above the door and a dark green wooden door below.

The first floor appeared to be a small museum, and Edmund could vaguely see several figures moving around inside through the window.

It looks like an ordinary nature enthusiast club, but that might explain why the disguise was successful.

He walked around the area, noted its location and surroundings, and then turned and left.

-----------------

An hour later, Edmund stood at the counter of the Pitomont Private Trust Bank in Gulfstream.

The lobby of this trust bank retains its old-fashioned style—towering domes, marble columns, employees in vests and shirts, and portraits of past bank presidents hanging on the walls.

"Good day, I need to withdraw some reserved funds," Edmund said to the young male clerk behind the counter.

"What is your pre-set code word?"

Edmund recited the coded message from the voicemail, and the clerk's expression became respectful after consulting the logbook.

He gestured for Edmund to wait a moment, then turned and walked through a wooden door behind the counter.

A few minutes later, a senior employee with gray hair came out, carrying a brown paper envelope.

"Sir, your funds are ready. As per the pre-registered instructions, cash withdrawals do not require registration of identity information. Please count the money in person."

Edmund took the envelope and opened it.

Inside were neatly arranged banknotes—twenty fifty-dollar notes and thirty one-hundred-dollar notes, totaling four thousand Verididian dollars.

This is roughly equivalent to four months' salary for an average employee, which is enough as start-up capital.