12: Chapter 12 Before the Annual Sacrifice

The invitation for the Hoy Family's annual festival arrived at the front desk of the Blackthorn Security Company one day before the expected date.

The invitation itself was quite telling. It was made of thick, dark gray cardstock with the Hoy Family crest embossed in gold—a snake coiled into a ring, biting its own tail, with two tiny garnets embedded in the snake's eyes, shimmering with a dark red glow in the light.

This crest bore a subtle resemblance in composition to the "Snake of Fate" totem of the Antigonus Family; it was not a coincidence, but a bloodline mark left behind by the intermarriages and oaths of allegiance among the nobles of the Fourth Epoch.

Rozanne held the corner of the invitation between two fingers, as if she were handling an unknown Sealed Artifact that required quarantine and testing. She examined it back and forth several times before spreading it out on the reception desk and looking up at Dunn, who had just walked down the stairs.

"The Hoy Family has invited the Nighthawks squad to send someone to attend tomorrow's annual festival banquet. The invitation specifically notes: 'We look forward to your side sending a young member who is knowledgeable about family history to attend, in order to enhance the generational friendship between the Church and local prominent families.' " She paused. "It's written very politely, but the words 'knowledgeable about family history' are bolded."

"They want to show goodwill toward us." Dunn took the invitation, his gaze lingering on the bolded line for a moment. "Or rather, they want us to act as some sort of guarantee at the annual festival. After Ince defected, the Hoy Family, as his former sponsor, was placed on the association list during the internal review. They need the Church's attendance to clear their suspicions."

"Then are we sending someone?"

"We must go." Dunn placed the invitation on the table and tapped his fingertip twice on the garnet snake eyes. "The Hoy annual festival gathers almost all the old nobles and antique collectors in Tingen City. If the cultists intend to complete the engraving of the final few sigils or the transfer of bloodlines at the annual festival, that occasion would be their best cover. We need someone on-site. The problem is—"

His gaze swept past Rozanne and scanned the reception hall. Leonard was on duty at the East Borough docks, Daly had gone to the Saint Selena Cathedral to assist with Sealed Artifact testing, and Old Neil was guarding the perimeter of the Chanis Gate, never leaving his post.

Only Lu Li was leaning in the corner of the reception hall, organizing last week's archives of abnormal incidents. A small crumb of breakfast bread was still stuck to the cover of the folder in his hand.

"Lu Li." Dunn nodded at him. "Come with me to the conference room."

In the conference room, Dunn pushed the invitation in front of Lu Li and then took a kraft paper envelope labeled "Confidential · Internal Review Association Archives" from the filing cabinet, extracting several pages of stapled investigation summaries from it.

"The Hoy Family's annual festival is, on the surface, a social event among nobles, but in reality, it is an exclusive antique appreciation meeting. On the night of the annual festival, the Hoi Family will showcase all the antique treasures their family has collected over the past year to all guests, many of which are relics from the late Fourth Epoch. By tradition, there will be an internal auction after the exhibition, which only specially invited guests can attend."

"Has Ince attended the internal auction before?" Lu Li asked.

"He has. At least six times." Dunn flipped to one of the pages in the investigation summary. "This is the annual festival guest list we obtained from the Hoi Family when investigating Ince's defection. From 1343 to 1348, Ince Zangwill attended every Hoy annual festival under the identity of 'Church Historical Consultant,' and he participated in the final internal auction every single time."

He pointed his finger at a few lines on the list. "This is the interesting part. He didn't buy paintings, sculptures, or antique furniture. All the bids he placed were concentrated on one type of item: documents, utensils, and sealed fragments bearing the crest of the Antigonus Family."

Dunn flipped the investigation summary to the last page. That page featured a black-and-white photograph of the traces left at the scene after the Hoi Family's secret chamber was robbed—a pried-open lead storage box with a line of very small Hermes script engraved on the inside of the lid, which could barely be identified after magnification: "Ring of the snake, key of blood, when the moon is full, the door opens of its own accord."

"This is the Hoi Family's stolen storage box." Dunn said. "The Hoi Family refuses to say what was originally inside the box. However, they are willing to let us enter the room adjacent to the secret chamber on the night of the annual festival to observe—on the condition that we cannot carry any Sealed Artifacts, cannot perform any form of spiritual probing, and can only be present in the capacity of 'guests'."

"So, what identity will I go with tomorrow night?"

"A newly appointed archive researcher for the Nighthawks, specializing in Fourth Epoch noble genealogy." Dunn took a silver badge from the drawer; the front bore the holy emblem of the Evernight Goddess, and the back had a line of small text—"Institute of Church History and Genealogy · Trainee Researcher."

The badge was real, and the institute was a genuinely existing organization, only Lu Li had never sat at a desk there for a single day.

"Rozanne has already updated your file. Your cover identity is an academic staff member dispatched to Tingen by the Saint Selena Cathedral library to assist in the investigation of the Antigonus document theft case. Tonight, you need to stay at the Hoy annual festival under this identity for the entire night. You only have two tasks: observe whether there are any known cultist faces among all the guests, and pay attention to the flow of all items related to the Antigonus Family during the internal auction. But you are not allowed to make a move."

"Understood." Lu Li pinned the badge to his collar and looked down at it. The silver badge shimmered with a dim light under the gas lamps of the conference room, looking like a genuine academic identity marker rather than a temporarily forged cover.

Lu Li thought to himself that Dunn's preparation work in this regard was always meticulous, which was probably one of the reasons why he had been able to sit in the position of Tingen squad captain for so long.

"Also." Dunn closed the file, unhooked something from his waist, and placed it on the table. "I'm lending you this."

It was a pair of seemingly ordinary dark gray deerskin gloves, with extremely fine silver threads sewn into the fingertips, the patterns of the silver threads forming a miniature sealing rune.

The leather of the gloves was so soft that it could almost be folded into any shape on his fingers, but when Lu Li picked them up, a very slight stinging sensation came from his palm—not a physical sting, but a repulsive reaction on a spiritual level, as if the gloves themselves were warning the wearer: Do not casually touch things you shouldn't touch.

"Anti-contamination gloves, Grade 2 Sealed Artifact, codename 'Touch of Purification'." Dunn said. "It cannot help you fight, but it can automatically trigger a purification barrier when you accidentally come into contact with a contaminated object, lasting for about fifteen seconds. You will temporarily lose your sense of touch while the barrier is in effect; this is a normal phenomenon. The antiques at the annual festival are likely to contain unidentified sources of contamination, and you need this layer of protection."

"Thank you, Captain." Lu Li carefully rolled up the gloves and put them into his inner pocket.

Dunn stood up, walked to the window, and stood with his back to Lu Li, looking out at the cloudy sky outside. Winter came early in Tingen; the sky began to darken by four in the afternoon in early November. It wasn't yet time for the streetlights to be lit, and the entire city seemed to be soaked in a gray transitional liquid between day and night.

He was silent for a while, then spoke in a tone that was lighter and slower than usual.

"About Ince, I should have discovered it earlier."

"Captain—"

"Letting a traitor lurk under the noses of the Nighthawks for fifteen years—what was stolen wasn't just sealed intelligence and antique documents. It was also everyone's trust. Trust is the kind of thing that makes no sound when it's stolen; only when you need to use it do you realize your pocket is already empty."

He placed one hand on the window frame, his fingers unconsciously rubbing against the edge of the peeling paint on the wooden frame. There was no self-pity in his voice, only a calm, almost cruel, self-review.

"When Old Neil went to the Chanis Gate to reinforce the seal, when I sent you to patrol the East Borough, every decision was a gamble on whether the subordinates could return alive. This is not the standard working procedure for the Nighthawks; this is the legacy left by the traitor. I don't intend to let Ince overdraw any more."

He turned around, his gaze falling back onto Lu Li, with a layer of warmth more than before. Not much, but enough for one to feel it truly existed.

"You have already proven that your observation skills exceed my expectations. From the patrol report you submitted after returning from the Textile Factory until now, you have never missed any key details in your briefings. Tomorrow night, when you are at the Hoi Family, if there is anything wrong—" He placed a hand on Lu Li's shoulder, and the seal on his wrist emitted a barely audible low hum. "—then withdraw. No matter what antiques or secrets are outside, you must be able to get in to call it evidence."

"Understood."

When Lu Li walked out of the conference room, Daly happened to be coming from the other end of the corridor, carrying two cups of freshly brewed black tea. Her footsteps paused in front of Lu Li, her gaze sweeping over the silver badge on his collar, her eyebrows slightly raised.

"It seems you've been promoted to an 'academic' out of turn."

"Temporarily. I'm going to the Hoy Family tomorrow to mooch a dinner; if there's foie gras, I'll pack some for you."

She chuckled softly, handed a cup of black tea to Lu Li, and leaned against the wall while holding the other cup herself. The trail of heat rose slowly between the two of them; her face appeared somewhat blurry behind the steam, but her voice was much more serious than usual.

"That place, the Hoi Family, is all crystal chandeliers and velvet tablecloths on the surface, but the things underneath aren't necessarily any cleaner than the ruins of the Textile Factory. You need to be extra careful there."

"I will."

"Also—" Daly paused, lowering her eyes to look at the swirling tea leaves in her cup, as if she were struggling with whether or not to say it.

Then she pushed the cup to her lips and poured out the words in the moment she took a sip of tea. "Old Neil has been running back and forth between the Potion Room and the Chanis Gate for the past few days, almost never coming upstairs, and not talking much to anyone. But he asked me a question this morning: 'Do you think this person, Lu Li, is trustworthy?' "

"How did you answer him?"

"I said, 'He was able to force back an eyeline of at least Sequence 7 alone at the Textile Factory, and then come back and silently leave the most suspicious nodes for you to verify—from the first day he arrived here, he has never actively asked for any credit. There are only two types of people in this world who refuse to speak: one is out of fear, and the other is plotting something bigger.' Old Neil said he thought so too. Then he carried his potion jar down to the Chanis Gate, muttering the formula you gave him last time, as if he were reciting some minor incantation."

She looked up, her brown eyes reflecting the light of the night vigil lamp at the end of the corridor, as if she had folded all the worry from that period of time into this last sentence. "I don't know what you gave him, but he's the type of person who doesn't easily accept help from others. Being able to get him to remember a formula is rarer than giving him a holy emblem."

Lu Li held the warm teacup in his palm, lowered his eyes, thought for a beat, and then responded: "I just found that extraction note he wrote before, tried it out, and I guess I was lucky."

Daly looked at him, did not continue to press, but left a sentence that sounded more like talking to herself before turning and walking into the archives.

"Fine, maybe your good luck can last for a few more days. I've taken over the task that requires dealing with the local police tomorrow; you focus on the Hoi Family's banquet. But there is one condition—bring everything you need, and don't be like Old Neil, hiding all your trump cards in your pockets, only to find it too late to play them."

The gas lamp in the corridor flickered slightly as her figure disappeared behind the door frame.

Lu Li tilted his head back and finished the black tea; the heat remaining at the bottom of the cup conducted from his palm to his fingertips. He took the deerskin gloves out of his pocket and rubbed his fingertips along the path of the silver thread patterns.

The next evening, the sky darkened early. Lu Li changed into a formal suit that could barely be called academic—a white shirt, a dark gray vest, and a still-crisp black wool coat lent to him by Old Neil, with the silver badge on his collar polished until it shone—and arrived at the Hoi Family's mansion on foot ahead of time.

The Hoi Family was located in the noble residential area of Tingen City's West Borough, a Victorian-style three-story stone mansion. Outside the main entrance stood four Ionic stone columns, and the familiar snake-shaped family crest was carved above the lintel. The snake's eyes were lit tonight by two small phosphorescent stone lamps, emitting a ghostly green glow in the twilight.

Carriages arrived one after another on the gravel road in front of the gate, and guests in evening dress walked into the main entrance in twos and threes. Amidst the fragrance of clothes and shadows of temples, no one noticed a young scholar who had arrived on foot, wearing no bowtie, standing at the side door waiting to have his invitation verified.

Lu Li handed the invitation to the butler at the side door. The butler was a thin, tall man in his fifties with his hair combed meticulously. He carefully inspected the wax seal on the invitation—Dunn had already added a special mark in the name of the Church beforehand—and then bowed slightly, signaling Lu Li with his white-gloved hand to follow another ushering manservant.

Passing through the front hall covered with Persian carpets, turning three corners along the corridor hung with family portraits, they finally arrived at a small, windowless lounge.

A lonely crystal chandelier hung in the lounge, its light illuminating the intricate Persian patterns on the floor in minute detail.

As the manservant exited, Lu Li glanced at this lounge and the entrance to the secret chamber across the corridor.

A seal bearing the Hoi Family's wax seal was already affixed to the bronze door of the secret chamber, but there were two almost invisible scratches on the edge of the seal, as if someone had used something very thin and hard to peel it back up shortly after it was sealed.

The seal on the secret chamber had been tampered with.

Just as Lu Li was about to take a closer look, a polite and dense sound of conversation came from the direction of the living room behind him, mixed with a few names he had heard in the Nighthawks' archives. The opening reception for the annual banquet had already begun.

And beneath those sounds, the fragment of the worm of time in Lu Li's pocket began to emit a very slight, rhythmic vibration. It was not a warning, but tracking.

Someone carrying the Antigonus Family bloodline mark was gathering in some corner of this mansion.