14: Chapter 14 The Last Seal of the Secret Chamber

When Augustus Hoy was helped down from the display stand by his second son, most of the guests in the banquet hall were still immersed in polite applause, not yet having come to their senses.

But Lu Li, who was standing by the pillar in the southeast corner of the hall, had already placed his champagne glass on the waiter's tray nearby and turned to walk toward the corridor leading to the secret room area.

He didn't walk particularly fast—among a hall full of people in tailcoats and evening gowns, a young man with too hurried a pace would only attract unnecessary attention.

But every step he took landed in the gaps between heartbeats, his leather shoes making almost no sound on the Persian carpet, only the faint rustle of his cuffs rubbing against the sides of his coat.

After turning the first corner of the corridor, Lu Li took out the dark gray deerskin gloves that Dunn had given him from his inner pocket and quickly put them on.

The silver thread runes on the fingertips gave off a very slight stinging sensation when they touched his skin, like countless tiny needles piercing into the nail beds simultaneously, then quickly transformed into a dry, icy chill that spread from his fingertips to his wrists. This feeling wasn't comfortable, but at least it indicated that the seal rune had been activated.

The secret room area was in the wing of the old mansion directly behind the banquet hall, separated from the main banquet hall by a heavy oak door.

There was no seal on the door—the servants of the Hoi Family probably thought that blocking the annual banquet guests from the wing was enough—but the light seeping from under the door crack was not the warm yellow of gas lamps, but a ghostly green, cold light with the texture of phosphorus fire.

Lu Li recognized this luster; he had seen it many times in Old Neil's Potion Room, the light emitted only when moonstone powder oxidized in an alkaline solution.

The door to the secret room was not completely closed. Lu Li pressed the fingertips of his gloves against the door panel, gently pushed it open a crack, and slid inside sideways.

Behind the door was a stone passage much narrower than the corridor outside, with dim phosphorescent wall lamps embedded every few steps on the walls on both sides.

The light source in the lampshades was not a flame, but some kind of self-luminous mineral, soaking the entire passage in a greenish halo that made one think of the deep sea or a tomb.

The stone bricks underfoot were very old, with fine cracks in some places, and black mold growing between the bricks, emitting a smell of damp earth and rotten wood.

At the end of the passage was the bronze door Lu Li had glimpsed in the lounge. At this moment, the bronze door was already open a palm-width, and the wax seal on the door had been completely torn in two. One half was still stuck to the door frame, and the other half was dangling from the door handle.

The torn edges were very neat, not like they had been violently ripped off, but more like they had been carefully cut along the seal patterns with an extremely thin blade and then stuck back on.

Lu Li remembered the person who had been guarding the niche that Hewen had told him about. Cuffs stained with gray-green powder, originating from the same source as the spatial residue at the Textile Factory.

Then the seal on this door must have been opened more than once after being sealed.

He slid sideways through the door crack into the secret room.

The interior of the secret room was larger than Lu Li had imagined, visually estimated to be nearly one hundred square meters, with a ceiling height of nearly four meters.

The space was divided into several narrow aisles by rows of mahogany display shelves that reached the ceiling. Each row of shelves was stuffed with all kinds of antiques: rusty bronze tripods, parchment manuscripts in glass boxes, silver ritual vessels of various sizes, miniature sculptures carved from ivory, and several stone slabs that looked like fragments of tombstones.

All the items were covered in thick dust, and there wasn't even a single fingerprint on the surface of the dust. Lu Li thought to himself that the Hoy Family probably hadn't sent anyone in to inventory these collections for a long time.

But as long as someone knew the exact coordinates of this secret room and possessed some means of crossing the spatial barrier, whether or not there was a seal on this door didn't actually affect them coming in.

He found what he was looking for at the end of the aisle between the third and fourth rows of display shelves.

Crouching in the southeast corner of the secret room was a black iron safe, less than a meter high, its surface covered with dense seal runes.

A palm-sized moonstone slab was embedded in the front of the safe, currently emitting the same ghostly green faint light as outside the bronze door. The safe door was not locked—an old-fashioned padlock that had been pried open hung on the door handle, its latch completely broken.

Lu Li pulled the cabinet door open.

The inside of the cabinet was divided into upper and lower layers. The upper layer was a lead tray, which had originally contained three independently packaged items, but now the tray was empty.

The lower layer was a kraft paper package with its seal torn, already scattered. Inside the package was a crumpled piece of parchment that had been smoothed out again, with a complex twelve-pointed star formation drawn on it.

Eleven of the star's vertices had been circled with some kind of dark red liquid, and the circle at the last vertex was only half-drawn, like a sentence interrupted just as the last stroke was being written.

Next to this formation, several fragments of letters from the Antigonus period were scattered.

Lu Li carefully picked up one of the fragments with his gloved fingertips. The edges of the fragment were charred and curled, stained with a layer of dark brown, old stains, but the handwriting written in Hermes script on the letter was still clearly legible.

It wasn't printed text; it was handwriting. The lines where the ink seeped into the parchment were extremely fine, sharper than any writing tool from the late Fourth Epoch. The owner of the handwriting had clearly received very precise writing training, with each letter's ending stroke carrying a slightly upward-curving hook.

Lu Li recognized this handwriting.

It matched perfectly with the handwriting on the Antigonus notebook that Welch had stolen. In other words, these letter fragments didn't just have the same content as the notebook—they were written by the same person.

The person who wrote the notebook. The existence who was sealed in the Fourth Epoch. The Snake of Fate, the ancestor of Antigonus.

"You are looking for these things."

A voice came from the direction of the secret room entrance. It wasn't a question, but a statement. The tone was steady, the wording elegant, and the pronunciation of every syllable was as precise as if reading a diplomatic note.

Lu Li turned around, placed the letter fragments back on the kraft paper package, and then let his hands hang naturally at his sides, revealing the full appearance of the deerskin gloves.

The man in the tailcoat was standing inside the bronze door of the secret room, and the door behind him had already been closed by him from the inside.

The green light from the phosphorescent wall lamps hit his profile, adding a layer of almost inhuman, cold, and hard texture to his already well-defined features.

He had no weapons in his hands, but his stance itself was a declaration—his heels were slightly off the ground, his center of gravity was on the balls of his feet, and his hands were folded in front of him. Both index fingers wore silver rings engraved with miniature runes, and the runes flickered with an imperceptible dark red light under the green light.

"The Hoy Family wouldn't take these things out for auction themselves," Lu Li said. "At least they wouldn't hide letter fragments and a formation in a pried-open safe. So you are that 'generous client'."

"In a way, you could say that." He nodded slightly, the movement very small but very precise, as if responding to a less-than-important court question. "I entrusted the Hoy Family to exhibit that silver ritual vessel to test how many people in this city could still recognize it. As for this formation—it doesn't belong to anyone. It's just a tool; the person who completes it won't own it, they will only become a part of it."

"That is what those cultists at the Textile Factory are doing."

"Cultists?" The corners of his mouth lifted slightly, revealing a cold, joyless smile. "I have nothing to do with those low-level believers who slaughter homeless people in abandoned factories. They are just flies that gathered spontaneously after smelling the scent of blood. They think they are sacrificing themselves for some noble goal, but in reality, they are just helping me test-run the nodes needed for the formation. The ritual at the Textile Factory was a necessary experiment. I have already obtained the experimental results. The data provided by those twelve corpses is enough for me to precisely calibrate the final strike tonight."

He took a step forward and took a very thin silver knife from the inner pocket of his tailcoat. The blade was as thin as a cicada's wing, glowing with a cold light under the green light. The tip of the blade was already stained with a layer of dried dark red substance—not blood, but the residue of solidified spirituality fluid.

He pointed the knife at the safe behind Lu Li, his movements casual and elegant, like a painter pointing a brush at the last blank space on a canvas.

"You can take the rest of the things in the safe. Those letter fragments are useless to me now. But the formation—no. The half-drawn circle at the end of the formation requires something that is inside the Chanis Gate, not in the Hoi Family, otherwise I wouldn't be talking to you here."

"The Chanis Gate is not something you can open with just one silver ritual vessel."

"Is that so?" He said these two words in an almost gentle tone, then shook his head.

He flipped the silver knife in his hand and used the hilt to gently tap the silver ring on his left index finger.

The miniature runes on the ring lit up with a layer of gloomy red light, and the green phosphorescent wall lamps in the entire secret room flickered simultaneously, as if some power stronger than the phosphorescent stone had suddenly drawn a small portion of light from every corner of this space.

In that instant, Lu Li's pupils captured an extremely subtle detail—the scar on the back of his left hand suddenly deepened for a moment, as if a little fresh blood had been re-injected into a blood groove.

Not an ordinary wound. It was a seal. The twelfth anchor point carved using his own body as a medium.

Lu Li's heart sank abruptly. The sacrifices at the Textile Factory and the stolen documents were just a prelude; the true core sacrifice was himself.

He used himself as the twelfth seal, bypassing all the hard requirements for the purity of Antigonus bloodline, allowing the Spirit Descent Ritual to be directly activated within his body.

"I spent nearly twenty years collecting relics of the Antigonus Family, from the late Fourth Epoch to the mid-Fifth Epoch, every clue, every Sealed Artifact, every page of manuscript. I once thought that finding these would be enough to complete the ritual. But later I discovered that information can be collected, but bloodlines cannot be replicated."

His tone was still calm, but his speaking speed was slightly faster than before, as if this topic was one of the few things he was actually willing to talk about more. "The bloodline of the Hoy Family has been diluted for too long; even they themselves have forgotten that their ancestors once had an intermarriage with Antigonus. I tested the blood of all of them, and none possessed a bloodline imprint of sufficient purity. Until I found a misfiled church medical record in the archives of the Saint Selena Cathedral—it recorded that one person's blood contained extremely rare spiritual affinity, which under specific conditions could simulate the imprint characteristics of the Antigonus bloodline."

"Ince Zangwill."

"Correct. Ince Zangwill." He put away the silver knife and returned it to his inner pocket.

"But he defected from the church after the failure at the Textile Factory and is now wanted by you Nighthawks. Appearing rashly would only expose his location."

"So he sent that Apprentice Pathway subordinate of his to steal Welch's notebook and the other eleven documents, carved the seal, and then waited for me to complete the final blood sacrifice at the annual festival. Ince is a useful but not truly loyal pawn; I knew that from the beginning. But the real dilemma now is—I need someone with an indirect connection to Antigonus to complete the final step, and your Nighthawks traitor has already lost his value."

He took off the ring on his right hand, placed it gently on the stone floor of the secret room, and then looked up, staring at Lu Li with a gaze that carried no hostility but was utterly condescending.

"My name is Roy King. You can report this name to your captain. But before that—"

He didn't finish.

The stone wall of the secret room suddenly vibrated. It wasn't the vibration of an earthquake, but a lower, more profound vibration coming from deep underground, as if something had slowly turned its body once in the bedrock directly beneath the Hoi Family residence.

A few seconds later, the vibration occurred again, with a shorter interval and greater intensity. The bronze ware on the display shelves made a slight clattering sound, and a loose stone brick fell from the ceiling, hitting the floor at the end of the aisle and shattering into several pieces.

The sound of a bell came from the direction of the Chanis Gate.

It wasn't the bell tower of the Saint Selena Cathedral ringing—the church's bell was the tolling of a bronze bell hammer striking a cast-iron bell wall, carrying a solemn, upward-rising tail when it spread across the city.

But this bell sound was so low that it seemed to come from under the water, dull, distant, long, and carrying a continuous and ominous tremor.

Every toll of the bell made the residual spirituality fluctuations in the secret room stronger, and the dust on the display shelves was stirred by an invisible airflow, forming small vortices in the green light.

The seal beneath the Saint Selena Cathedral had finally been touched.

When Roy King heard this bell sound, he finally revealed the first genuine smile of the night.

Not the elegant and distant polite smile from before, but a deeper, almost satisfied cold smile, as if slowly opening his eyes after listening to a piece of music he had long awaited but which had been late all night.

"It seems I don't need to wait for you anymore. Someone in the church has already helped me do the last step."

He placed the ring on the stone brick, stood up, straightened the collar of his tailcoat, turned around, pushed open the bronze door of the secret room, and disappeared at the end of the green-lit passage.

His pace was calm, unhurried, as he bypassed the side door of the secret room and returned to the annual banquet, like a gentleman attending a banquet waiting for the final grand finale.

Lu Li did not chase him. He took the fragment of the worm of time out of his pocket. The fragment was no longer vibrating—it was heating up, the temperature so high it was almost scalding, and the dark light on its surface was flickering at an extremely fast frequency, as if issuing some kind of warning that only its own kind could understand.

He gripped the fragment in his palm and rushed out of the secret room.

In the corridor, Hewen Moore had already hurried over from the niche.

The expression on his face was no longer the weak and respectful disguise from before, but a grave and composed calmness. He didn't look at the fragment in Lu Li's hand, but quickly reported his findings in a very short tone.

"The person who was keeping watch by the niche just now has already taken advantage of the bell ringing to go around to the back alley. I followed for a while and found that the location where he disappeared was the entrance to the sewer on Iron Cross Street, which leads to the secondary drainage channel on the outskirts of the Chanis Gate."

"So the cultists' backup plan is still at the Chanis Gate."

"Not just the cultists." Hewen looked toward the church and then at another muffled tremor that came over, and pointed his chin at Lu Li's palm. "Did that thing in your hand just suddenly get hot?"

"Yes. Homologous resonance—the one sealed behind the Chanis Gate has already started to move."

The two looked at each other for a second, without any extra conversation, and then turned and walked toward the end of the corridor at the same time.

The bell of the Saint Selena Cathedral was still tolling dully. The interval between each toll was getting shorter and shorter, as if a giant heart that had been asleep for fifteen hundred years was slowly and heavily starting to beat again deep in the bedrock.