With the thought of “something must have happened” in mind, Sue started browsing through different websites for news about the docks area. There was no news. All she could find were a few posts on some old and crappy forum about seeing explosions in the water, suspecting some local gang members were fighting in the area.

Sue sighed as she closed a browser tab and moved onto another. She was in fact not surprised about there being no news. It was just quite frustrating that she might need to find out some other way. She knew she could probably try to turn to Chef Tang, now that she had made the connection already. But she did not have much worthwhile intelligence to trade.

Maybe, just maybe, she needed to go dive into the box sent to Gloria by Gyuu Park - he was a clergyman with access, so he must have decided to send it to Gloria in hopes of preserving some secrets and important information. But for this many days, Gloria had stayed mostly in her room without much of a life or routine. Gloria would definitely understand, but she could not help but feel, things were getting bad, and someday her friend needed to snap out of it and carry on.

Having found nothing informative on the internet, Sue decided to knock on Gloria’s door, not only to check on her friend, but also to deliver her some tea and snacks - she had been in her room all day again.

“Come in.” Gloria responded, with a clear voice.

“Hey, Gloria. I want to bring you some tea and snacks - takoyaki, fried donuts, but I can’t find any pot stickers…” Sue came in here with the tea cup in one hand and paper bags in the other.

“No problem. No problem.” Gloria was sitting on her bed and shaking her head: “I - I wanna say - thank you for taking care of me these past few days.”

“Don’t - don’t mention it.” Sue smiled, nodded and put everything on her bedside table: “How are you feeling?”

“Shitty.” Gloria wiped her eyes: “I wasted these days. I want to get back to what we were doing. I - I want to figure out why.”

“I’m with you.”

“... we clearly stumbled onto something, or at least Gyuu Park did.” Gloria looked Sue in the eyes: “I - I can’t really ask you of this, so I just want to - ”

“I’ve bought a pocket knife, a few canisters of pepper spray, and I’m planning to take on some self defense classes.” Sue shrugged: “You don’t have to ask. I want to help.”

“Thank you.” Gloria stood up and held Sue deep in her arms: “I don’t know what I do to deserve - ”

“Hold that thought.” Sue chuckled and pulled out her phone - it was from none other than Sifu Tae Kuo.

“Speaker.” Gloria chuckled as she let go of Sue and wiped her eyes.

“Hi Sifu Kuo, what’s new?” Sue answered: “You’re on speaker and I’m here with Gloria.”

“Oh! Hi! ” The Sifu’s voice sounded surprised and happy: “Glad you’re doing better, Gloria. And I have some - some not bad news. Not so bad, not so bad.”

“Thanks for the concern, Sifu. Hope you’re doing well.” Gloria responded: “Don’t worry, just lay it on us.”

“Okay - here’s the news.” Tae Kuo cleared his throat: “Here’s the thing - I’ve just talked with people from the The Association of Local Churches. They are trying to arrange for the selection of the next clergyman or clergywoman for the Fragrant Chrysanthemum Temple. They don’t have anyone yet, mostly because all of the administrators from the association and the bigger churches are still busy with something. And probably thanks to the same reason, they’re not planning to do anything to us for invoking that pact and taking things from the Kshiti Temple.”

“That’s … indeed a not so bad news.” Gloria sighed: “But - what is keeping these people busy? What happened?”

“That we still don’t know yet clearly. I’ve only heard a few things, and some warnings about watchers needing to keep track of all personnel closely and carefully.” Tae Kuo answered: “It is definitely big enough for this tight-lippedness, and people on the higher ups positions are kinda worried.”

“Okay, but you HAVE heard something, right?” Sue asked.

“Yes.” Tae Kuo sighed: “It appears that there are some practitioners missing, including monks and taoists. These were not the administrators or service people in the temples and coffin homes. They are actual practitioners mostly in hiding, or just staying inside their respective temples practicing and meditating and almost never going out. I think you should know what this means, if this rumor is true.”

Gloria and Sue looked into each other’s eyes, then Gloria coughed and asked: “I - I think I have some thoughts, but - what do you think we should know?”

Tae Kuo went silent, then for a moment he spoke with a low but still clear voice: “I should probably not tell you this. But since you are, in fact, involved with everything, and have done much more than the average clergy person, I’d say it’s beyond reasonable to share this information with you.”

“Okay, which is?”

“These folks, though they are mostly rarely seen and exposed to the world, are still important pillars to the system of temples, churches, for they are most knowledgeable in the scriptures, in the traditional ways, and a lot of times can wield the most spiritual power with them. Their missing would be - devastating to say the least. And, and the strange thing is - there is almost no benefit in kidnapping them.”

Gloria scratched her head. Sue’s eyes opened wide, and before Tae Kuo could continue, she asked: “Pillars, you say?”

“That’s - that’s not what I meant.” Tae Kuo stammered, then he immediately asked: “Wait - how do you know this?”

“Don’t mind, me, I’ll tell you next time we meet. What else do you wish to tell us?” Sue let out a long sigh and asked.

“Alright, alright.” Tae Kuo sounded like he’s both impressed and a little worried: “The next thing is - I heard the community watch is stepping in on this matter. But I don’t know to what extent. So, just wanna tell you to watch out.”