21: Chapter 21 An Afternoon on Zotland Street

The results of the spirituality check were all out by that evening. Old Neil packed the four test reports into a manila envelope and delivered them in person to Dunn's desk. Klein, Lu Li, Leonard, and Daly—the four who had participated in the operation in The Dark Channel—all showed normal spiritual states. In the remarks section of Klein's report, Old Neil had written a line: "The spiritual baseline is extremely stable. It is recommended to archive this sample as a reference standard for Beyonders of the same Sequence."

After reading the reports, Dunn signed each one and locked the envelope in the cast-iron safe in the corner. He turned and said something to Old Neil, who nodded, walked out of the office with the empty blood-collection tube tray under his arm, and closed the door behind him.

In the corridor, Lu Li was leaning against the wall outside the archives room, holding the duty roster that had just been archived. Seeing Old Neil come out of the office, he stood up straight. Old Neil nodded slightly to him, gestured with his chin toward the lounge at the end of the corridor, and then headed straight back to the Potion Room.

The door to the lounge was half-ajar, revealing the warm yellow light of a gas lamp and the aroma of freshly brewed black tea. Lu Li pushed the door open and saw Klein sitting on the old sofa by the window. On the coffee table in front of him lay two open files—one was "Action Record of the Underground Channel Secret Room" written by Lu Li himself, and the other was "Field Investigation Report of the Iron Cross Street Underground Channel Secret Room" written by Klein. The two reports were placed side side, with certain paragraphs lightly underlined in pencil. The pencil marks were very faint, as if the person who drew them wasn't sure if these paragraphs were worth marking, but couldn't help doing so anyway.

On the coffee table sat a freshly brewed pot of black tea, two teacups, and a plate of digestive biscuits retrieved from the lounge cabinet. A thin wisp of white steam rose from the teapot's spout, swirling in the halo of the gas lamp.

"Have a seat." Klein looked up and pointed to the chair opposite him. "The tea is freshly brewed. Rozanne's Marquis Black Tea—not stolen this time, Rozanne gave it to me willingly. She said the successful completion of the spirituality check is worth celebrating."

Lu Li sat down in the opposite chair and took a sip from his teacup. It was indeed good tea, at just the right temperature, with a beautiful amber color. He set down his cup, his gaze falling on the two underlined reports on the coffee table.

"What did you underline in my report?"

"A few details." Klein turned both reports to face Lu Li and tapped one of the underlined paragraphs with his fingertip. "You mentioned in the Underground Channel Secret Room report that a whisper of some 'unknown language' came from deep within the crack at the center of the magic circle. At the same location, I only recorded abnormal spiritual fluctuations and didn't hear any sound. I want to confirm—what was the content of the whispers you heard?"

Lu Li set down his teacup and remained silent for a moment. His gaze drifted between the two reports on the coffee table before settling back on Klein's face. Klein's expression was calm, even more relaxed than usual, with a faint, barely perceptible smile at the corner of his mouth. However, Lu Li noticed that the hand resting on Klein's knee was gently tapping his knuckle with his index finger—a habitual movement of Klein's when he was thinking deeply, the same posture he used when flipping through fourth epoch documents in the university library.

"It was counting," Lu Li said. "From one to twelve. After counting to twelve, it asked me a question."

"What did it say?"

"'Have you seen my missing finger?'"

The gas lamp in the lounge suddenly flickered. A gust of wind swept past outside, causing the blinds to sway gently, casting a row of flickering striped shadows across the coffee table. Klein's hand holding the teacup froze in midair. The calm expression on his face didn't crack, but Lu Li noticed that his fingertips lingered on the rim of the cup for an extra half-second when he put it down.

"That cultist in the interrogation room kept repeating 'It's still watching me,'" Klein said, setting down his teacup and crossing his fingers over his knees, his tone still measured and analytical. "Dunn thought he was describing the fear of being monitored. But what you heard were specific words—it was counting, it was asking you questions. This isn't indiscriminate mental pollution. It is looking for something, and it can distinguish its targets."

"Yes. The first word it spoke to me wasn't a generic term; it directly called out my Pathway—'Thief'."

Klein tapped his fingers lightly on his knee twice. "The layer of scales you mentioned in your report—Old Neil analyzed the sample. Its structure is similar to the shell of a deep-sea tube worm, but the molecular arrangement doesn't fit the crystal lattice of any known mineral. Such a thing shouldn't appear in Tingen's underground drainage system. What is its source?"

"The bloodline imprint of the Antigonus Family." Lu Li set his teacup back on the coffee table, lowering his voice to a level only the two of them could hear. "Those scales didn't grow from the magic circle; they grew from inside that cultist. It cut in from the rune on his right hand, eroding backward along his spiritual Pathways, using his life force as nourishment. If we hadn't suppressed the rune with holy water at the time, the scales would have covered his entire body within minutes—not killing him, but replacing him."

"Replacing?"

"Converting his flesh and blood into a material more suitable for that thing to 'inhabit'."

Klein fell silent for a moment, then picked up the teapot to refill Lu Li's cup. His hand was very steady, and not a single drop of tea spilled onto the coffee table. But Lu Li noticed that after refilling the tea, Klein didn't put the teapot down immediately. Instead, he held it in midair for an extra half-second, as if digesting the information he had just heard.

"The night you entered Chanis Gate," Klein put the teapot back, leaned against the sofa, and spoke in a slower, more deliberate tone than before, "I sensed a fluctuation in the corridor. The frequency of that fluctuation highly matched the spiritual characteristics of the Marauder Pathway in your body, but its intensity far exceeded the spiritual output a Sequence 9 should have. At the time, I thought it was an abnormal resonance caused by the sealing pressure. But later, I thought about it carefully—it wasn't resonance. It was something on you that doesn't belong to the Marauder Pathway, actively releasing a spiritual pulse at the peak of the sealing pressure. The characteristics of that pulse did not match the energy signature of any of the 22 Pathways."

Lu Li's hand holding the teacup froze in midair. He didn't reply, but simply stared quietly into Klein's eyes. In those deep brown eyes, there was no hostility, no probing, only an extremely focused observation, filled with scholarly prudence.

"I've checked the Nighthawks' internal compilation of Beyonder mutation cases," Klein continued, "and didn't find any records similar to your situation. So, I can only make a hypothesis—the source of this pulse is not a Sealed Artifact, nor a Pathway ability, but a part of your own spirit body. Some sort of auxiliary structure embedded within your spirit body, formed under special circumstances."

Lu Li fell silent for a moment, then placed his teacup on the coffee table and leaned back in his chair. Outside the window, the bell tower of Saint Selena Cathedral chimed the hour, the sound spreading through the night, deep and distant. He listened to the bell chime its last stroke before speaking.

"Since I was a child, I've had a special talent. It's not a Beyonder power, but more like a... intuition. Sometimes I can sense danger in advance, and sometimes I can vaguely know the location of something. This feeling comes and goes, and it's beyond my control." He took a sip of tea, his tone as calm as usual. "What do the Nighthawks call this kind of situation?"

"spiritual intuition." A hint of understanding showed in Klein's voice. "It is recorded in the Nighthawks' internal training manual—some people who are naturally spiritually sensitive will exhibit beyond-normal intuitive reactions under specific conditions. This doesn't belong to any Pathway ability, nor does it form a part of a Beyonder characteristic. However, the intensity is usually very weak, and it wouldn't reverse-output a spiritual pulse at the peak of sealing pressure like you did that night."

"Perhaps because I was too close to Chanis Gate," Lu Li said. "The sealing pressure pushed this intuition to a much stronger level than usual."

Klein looked at him, a tiny, almost imperceptible gleam flashing in his deep brown eyes, as if a certain hypothesis had been confirmed. But he didn't press further. He simply picked up a digestive biscuit from the saucer, broke it in half, and placed one half beside Lu Li's teacup.

"Above the gray fog, I occasionally perceive some vague signals," Klein put the other half of the biscuit into his mouth, his tone as casual as a passing remark. "Sometimes it's a danger warning, sometimes it's the presence of a specific spiritual wavelength. The pulse you emitted that night at Chanis Gate, I saw it very clearly above the gray fog. Not just clearly—at that moment, the gray fog also briefly projected a scene. In the scene, you were standing in front of the main sealing anchor, your hand pressed against the crack in the stone slab, and opposite you was a middle-aged man in a tailcoat. There was a symbol I had never seen before carved on the back of his left hand."

Lu Li's teacup stopped at his lips. As he set the cup down, the ceramic clinked lightly against the saucer. "That was Roy King. He appeared as the client at the Hoy New Year Banquet, claiming to have collected Antigonus Family relics for twenty years. The mark on the back of his left hand is the twelfth rune—using his own body as a medium, he carved the final anchor of the Spirit Descent Ritual."

"He carved the rune onto himself?"

"Yes. And he doesn't rely on the purity of the Antigonus bloodline; instead, he bypassed the bloodline requirement in some way. I'm not clear on the specific method yet, but he has at least one spare rune in his possession that can be activated directly without the magic circle. Old Neil estimates he is at least Sequence 6."

Klein fell silent for a few seconds, then picked up the "Field Investigation Report of the Iron Cross Street Underground Channel Secret Room" from the coffee table, flipped to one of the pages, and quickly drew a few lines in the blank space with his pencil. Lu Li glanced sideways—Klein had drawn a simple spiritual fluctuation comparison chart. On the left was the magic circle's fluctuation curve he had recorded in the Underground Channel Secret Room, and on the right was Roy King's spiritual characteristics he had sensed above the gray fog. The two curves highly overlapped in a certain frequency band, and the overlapping position corresponded exactly to the "abnormal pulse frequency" marked by Old Neil in the key analysis report.

"This frequency isn't the spiritual fluctuation of the Sealed Artifact itself," Klein pointed to the overlap with his pencil. "It's the characteristic frequency of the Antigonus bloodline imprint. After Roy King carved himself into a rune, his spiritual characteristics resonated with that key. If Old Neil were to use the key to seal him—"

"The key's energy would be entirely concentrated on Roy King," Lu Li took over. "But Roy King himself is a rune. Sealing him with the key is equivalent to using a key to strike another key."

Both of them fell silent. The black tea on the coffee table was no longer steaming, and only a few crumbs remained in the biscuit plate. The night outside had completely settled, and the spire of Saint Selena Cathedral gleamed with a cold, white, stony luster under the moonlight.

Klein broke the silence first. He set the pencil down on the report, crossed his fingers over his knees, and spoke in a tone more formal than usual.

"I have a proposal."

"Go ahead."

"Your spiritual intuition can sense danger and the location of hidden items, while my gray fog can provide a macro perspective of spiritual fluctuations and danger warnings. Putting these two abilities together covers more blind spots than using them individually." He looked into Lu Li's eyes, his tone measured and steady, as if presenting a carefully considered proposal. "We don't need to know all of each other's secrets. We only need to share information with each other on matters involving Antigonus, Ince Zangwill, and anything that might threaten Tingen. What do you think?"

Lu Li looked at the hand Klein extended and remained silent for two seconds. He recalled the way Klein established the Tarot Club above the gray fog in the original work—without asking the members' true identities or probing into their secrets, only providing a platform and rules so everyone could get what they needed. Though the person sitting across the coffee table at this moment had not yet become the "Fool," that bone-deep caution and grand vision were already showing through his choice of words.

Lu Li reached out and shook his hand.

"Deal. But I have one condition. Your divination ability is still confidential within the Nighthawks—if you need to confirm the accuracy of a piece of information, I can be the one responsible for verifying it, so you don't have to do everything yourself."

Klein thought about it and nodded.

Both of them picked up their teacups at the same time, only to find that the tea had gone completely cold. Klein looked at the tea dregs settled at the bottom of the cup, then at the plate of digestive biscuits on the coffee table that now held only crumbs, and suddenly said something completely unrelated: "The food I cook tastes better than digestive biscuits."

Lu Li set down his teacup and gave him a serious look. "Is this considered part of our information sharing?"

"No. It's a statement of fact."