Demon Bible

Chapter 220: Where Is She?

When it came to Cici Marie, people only remembered her arrogance and her tragic fate.

After committing her crimes, she had broken out of the Church's supervised prison. By the time she was recaptured, her mind had completely shattered.

After that, she seemed to have been tossed into the prison cells and left there without another sound.

Logically speaking, if a family member had lost their mind, the Dartmenerly family could have invoked the privilege of noble leniency. They could have applied to bring Cici Marie back to the family estate, substituting house arrest for imprisonment.

But Dartmenerly never came for her, so Cici Marie naturally remained incarcerated by the Church.

And then...

"Where is she?" Isabella stood in front of the cell, questioning the warden.

The trainee priest rubbed his nose awkwardly, utterly at a loss for words.

Cici Marie had vanished from her cell.

Furthermore, judging by the state of the cell, it had been empty for quite some time.Yet, despite such an obvious disappearance, not a single report had been filed during this entire period. It was as if everyone working in the prison had turned a blind eye to the matter.

All of her inmate records were perfectly in order, but upon inspection, the person herself was simply gone.

"Where did she go?" Isabella demanded, forcefully suppressing her rising anger.

However, the only answer she received was that nobody knew.

Isabella then launched a detailed investigation, only to find herself laughing out of sheer fury at what she uncovered.

This sort of prisoner disappearance was not an isolated incident; there were numerous identical cases.

Nobles did indeed possess certain privileges. If they committed a minor offense—such as accidentally killing a commoner—they were technically subject to punishment, but they could rely on their privileges for immunity.

For example, they could confine themselves to their homes for a month or pay a single gold coin to avoid any real penalties.

But even utilizing these privileges felt undignified to them, as it required publicly invoking their family's name.

As a result, the phenomenon of fake imprisonment had emerged.

They served time in name only. In reality, they would show up in the cell for a single day at most, only to quietly slip away under the cover of night.

As long as they kept a low profile for a while, there would be absolutely no issues.

Simply put, the nobles clearly had privileges, yet they disdained the loss of face that came with officially exercising them.

So, they took their privileges a step further, bribing the Church's prison to turn a blind eye to their covert escapes.

Because this kind of thing happened so frequently, the guards had an unspoken rule: as long as the prisoner was a noble and someone slipped them money with a request to take care of someone...

...then that very night, a convenient lapse in security would occur.

Cici Marie's case was exactly the same.

A short time after she was brought back, someone delivered the money, and on a particular night, she was quietly led away.

"So, during this process, someone must have made contact with you. Out with it, who was it?" Isabella demanded, waiting for their answer.

For the Church prison to operate this scheme for so long without any major issues, the system had to possess a rigorous verification process.

Without proper verification, anyone aware of the loophole could just walk in and take away whichever prisoner they pleased.

"We saw the seal of the Dartmenerly family," one of the men confessed, squirming under Isabella's piercing gaze before finally revealing the crucial information. "Because it's illegal, the noble members almost never show up themselves. They send an associate carrying a family seal that outsiders could never get their hands on. We only let them go when we see the seal."

"So you are fully aware that it is illegal." Isabella felt the crushing weight of her responsibilities. The rot within the Church was not confined to the Redemption Department alone; every single department was plagued with deep-seated corruption.

Twelve hundred years ago, during the Great Earth Catastrophe, humanity migrated to survive on the backs of the Floating Whales. The original landscape of coexisting polytheism had transformed into a sweeping monopoly of one Divine Religion, which was one of the root causes of this decay.

Over the years, the God of Precepts' complete apathy toward the Church was another major contributing factor.

Taking a deep breath, Isabella gathered her people and marched straight to the Dartmenerly family's estate.

The widespread destruction previously caused by the battle between Dartmenerly and Nemus had long since been repaired.

When Isabella arrived at the Dartmenerly estate, the patriarch happened to have some free time.

Upon seeing the patriarch, Isabella did not hesitate and directly stated her purpose.

"What? I never ordered anyone to bring Cici back." Dartmenerly was utterly confused; he had genuinely never issued such a command.

Dartmenerly quickly questioned his subordinates, confirming that no one else had acted on their own initiative either.

Besides, even if someone had acted independently, there was no way Cici Marie could have been brought back and hidden from him. He would have known about it.

Therefore, either someone had impersonated the Dartmenerly family to bail her out, or certain individuals within the family coveted Cici Marie and had secretly smuggled her out to keep her hidden elsewhere.

This was entirely possible. After all, Dartmenerly's desire to refine Cici Marie into a humanoid Golden Elixir was no secret to certain members of the family.

Isabella, on the other hand, had a clearer perspective than Dartmenerly. She could sense the general flow of emotions. While Dartmenerly had summoned many family members who might have been capable of such an act, the overwhelming emotion radiating from them upon hearing Cici Marie's name was sheer bewilderment.

Since that was the case, the majority of these people could be cleared of suspicion.

"Then, Patriarch Dartmenerly, aside from yourself, who else has access to the family seal and the ability to take it off the premises?" A noble seal like this did not merely symbolize the family's honor; many of the family's assets and interests required its stamp to be mobilized.

As such, it was not only incredibly difficult to forge, but rarely did anyone have the clearance to touch it.

"In the entire family, there are only about five or six people." Dartmenerly was remarkably cooperative with Isabella's questioning at this moment.

He had already realized that if Cici Marie's disappearance had little to do with his own family, then the likelihood of it being connected to Nemus grew exponentially.

The deeper Isabella investigated, the more serious Nemus's problems would become.

Furthermore, there was a chance he could win Isabella over as an ally to deal with Nemus together.

Soon, everyone who could have possibly accessed the seal during that timeframe received Dartmenerly's orders to return to the estate for questioning.

However, after an entire round of interrogations, not a single person showed any obvious signs of guilt.

At most, some of them had used the seal to embezzle a little personal profit—typical family parasites—but none of their actions involved Cici Marie.

"Is there anyone else who hasn't arrived?" Isabella asked.

"There is one more person!" Dartmenerly thought for a moment and actually recalled one other individual who had access to the seal.

"Nels's maternal uncle—Bain!"

Previously, Bain had stood steadfastly in the Dartmenerly family's camp. He cared nothing for the lives of his sister or his nephew, completely obsessed with clinging to the Dartmenerly family's coattails.

And he had actually succeeded in his social climbing. Bain possessed quite a bit of business acumen and was responsible for managing many of the properties under the Dartmenerly name, which meant he too had access to the family seal.