26: Chapter 26 Daily Life and Role-Playing

Three days after all three anchors were purified, a winter rain fell on Tingen City without warning.

Lu Li stood by the window of the lounge on the second floor of the Blackthorn Security Company, holding a cup of cold Marquis Black Tea, watching the rain trickle down the windowpane.

He had been on the night shift for four consecutive days. Yesterday evening, Dunn used his captain's authority to forcibly grant him a day and a half of leave, and wrote a note in the remarks column of the leave form: "Forbidden from stepping into the archives, Potion Room, Chanis Gate, or any work-related areas."

He had originally planned to sleep all day, but his biological clock woke him up on time at six in the morning.

He was the only one in the lounge. Leonard's poetry book was face-down on the sofa, with the crease from when it was used as an eye mask still visible on the spine. Rozanne's Marquis Black Tea had been locked in the bottom layer of the third filing cabinet in the archives—after Leonard's last tea-stealing incident was exposed, Rozanne had changed the location of all her tea stashes.

Lu Li rummaged through the cupboard, found the tin of ordinary Ceylon black tea, and brewed himself a fresh cup. Outside the window, the sound of rain was pattering, and the entire Tingen City was shrouded in a gray mist.

When Klein pushed the door open, Lu Li was trying to toast two slices of bread with the decrepit toaster in the lounge. The toaster's spring had long since failed, so the toast wouldn't pop up; it required manual supervision.

"It's about to burn." Klein sat down on the sofa and pulled a file out of his briefcase.

Lu Li rescued the toast from the toaster and placed it on a plate on the coffee table. "Aren't you off today?"

"The captain asked me to review the pollution decay data of the Textile Factory site." Klein opened the file, which contained a hand-drawn pollution distribution map. "By the way, take this—Old Neil said you mentioned wanting to find information on the acting method for the Marauder Pathway last time. He searched the archives for a long time and only found this simplified version. The detailed version is in the general archives of the Saint Selena Cathedral and requires bishop-level authority to access."

Lu Li took the papers and flipped through a few pages. The content of the simplified version was very general—the core of acting for Sequence 9 of the Marauder Pathway is "to complete a complete theft without being noticed," and the digestion progress is directly proportional to the spirituality intensity of the target and the level of secrecy during the theft process.

Attached to the back was a set of acting insights written by a deceased predecessor of the Marauder Pathway, with sloppy handwriting but very sincere content.

"'The key to theft lies in changing the ownership relationship of an item—not just a physical transfer, but also ensuring the ownership relationship at the spiritual level is transferred as well. If the person you stole from doesn't even realize the item is missing, the transfer of ownership will not encounter any spiritual resistance, and the digestion efficiency will be at its highest.'" Lu Li read this passage aloud, then closed the document. "So the best way to act for the Marauder Pathway is not to steal valuable things, but to steal things that others wouldn't even notice were missing."

"For example?"

"For example, Leonard's biscuits. He will think he finished eating them."

Klein looked up from the file. "He will indeed think he finished them. But you'd better digest the acting before he finds out—otherwise, he will purposely misspell your name when he writes his patrol report next time."

Lu Li laughed, folded the document, and put it in his pocket. The rain outside the window had gradually lessened, and the bell tower of the Saint Selena Cathedral struck the hour.

In the afternoon, Lu Li went to the East Borough.

It wasn't because of a mission—Dunn's leave ban was still in effect—but because he needed to verify a detail mentioned in the acting method.

That document said that the acting of a Marauder is not limited to physical theft; "information" and "aura" can also be objects of theft. He wanted to try it out.

The East Borough flea market was still bustling in the rain. Under the tarpaulin sheds were all kinds of miscellaneous items—old books, copperware, faded lace tablecloths, and pocket watches that one didn't know if they still worked.

Lu Li squatted in front of a stall selling old books, casually flipped open a copy of "Outline of Loen's Modern History", and while the stall owner turned to greet another customer, he probed a wisp of extremely thin spirituality between the pages. A moment later, he withdrew his spirituality and stood up to leave.

Klein was waiting for him at the entrance of a bakery on the street corner of the East Borough. "What did you just do?"

"Stole a typo from that book. Page 37 printed '1345' as '134', and the stall owner probably never opened that page." Lu Li put his hands in his trench coat pockets, his pace light. "The digestion progress advanced by about five percent. It's faster than stealing physical objects, but far less effective than stealing Beyonder items."

"The ownership relationship of Beyonder items is more complex, and the difficulty of theft is higher. You cannot go and steal a Sealed Artifact—that level of ownership transfer will trigger a spiritual alarm."

"I don't need a Sealed Artifact. Ordinary Beyonder items are enough." Lu Li thought for a moment. "Is that Antigonus copper comb Leonard bought at the flea market still in the evidence locker?"

"Yes. But the comb has already been purified by Old Neil, and now it's just an ordinary antique."

"Ordinary antiques don't have spiritual ownership. Only before purification—at that time, the comb still had the bloodline imprint of the Antigonus Family, and the ownership relationship was still connected to the old man who sold the comb."

Klein tilted his head to look at him. "You intend to use the acting method to consume that layer of residual ownership? Although that comb was his, the imprint on it was tested by Old Neil before purification—the pollution concentration was very low, and the ownership relationship was only a thin layer."

"A thin layer is enough. The acting of a Marauder doesn't need to steal valuable things, just needs to be stolen cleanly." Lu Li broke the half of the digestive biscuit he had stuffed into his pocket while toasting bread into two halves and handed one half to Klein. "And after digesting this comb, my Sequence 9 should be able to advance to near completion. Then I can start preparing the potion formula for Sequence 8."

Klein took the biscuit. "You already have the formula for Sequence 8?"

"The Sequence 8 of Marauder is called 'Prometheus'."

Lu Li took a bite of the biscuit. "The main ingredients are the tail bone powder of an adult fire lizard, the juice of Shadow Grass, and one more thing—'a fire stolen in the Darkness'. The hardest part of this formula isn't the materials, but the ritual conditions. 'A fire stolen in the Darkness' means that this fire must be stolen from a specific target in a situation with absolutely no light, and the target must be a Beyonder with a higher Sequence than yourself. Given the resources currently accessible in Tingen, the most realistic method is to find a fire-attribute Sealed Artifact as the fire source, and then use the Marauder's ability to steal the fire in a completely dark environment. But there is nothing that meets the criteria on the Tingen Nighthawks' list of Sealed Artifacts."

"What did Old Neil say?"

"He said that an old fire-attribute Sealed Artifact was indeed sealed on the periphery of Chanis Gate, codenamed 'jiaowei'. The Sequence isn't high, but it was transferred to Backlund by the church headquarters a few years ago. Now, to get a fire source, we either wait for the headquarters' transfer process to complete, or find it on the black market ourselves." Lu Li finished the last bite of the biscuit and patted the crumbs off his hands. "Leonard is more familiar with the black market than I am. We can ask him next time we patrol."

"Leonard's ability to identify flea market goods—didn't you say he bought the Antigonus copper comb as an ordinary antique last time?"

"That's different. He bought the copper comb because the old man looked nervous, and he thought he had picked up a bargain." Lu Li finished his tea and stood up from the sofa. "And he did pick up a bargain—the comb was later appraised by Old Neil as a Grade 3 Sealed Artifact. He spent 3 pounds, which would be worth at least 30 pounds at market price."

Klein was silent for a moment, then pulled another document from his briefcase and pushed it onto the coffee table. "This is the seal stability report for Chanis Gate that Old Neil just finished. After the three anchors were purified, the spiritual pressure of the seal dropped by nearly 30% within 72 hours. Currently, all secondary seal nodes have returned to normal. He suggests that Dunn include the anchor purification process in the standard operating procedures for daily maintenance of Chanis Gate at the next captain's meeting—the signature is 'Potion Room and Lu Li'."

"The divination calibration you did in that process accounted for at least half the workload."

"But the anchor coordinates and concentration calibration were deduced by you from the copper plate of Ince." Klein leaned back on the sofa. "Half for each person, no need to argue about the order of signatures."

Lu Li read the report from beginning to end. Old Neil's handwriting was as precise and stingy as always; every piece of data was marked with the measurement time and environmental conditions, and safety precautions were attached to every operational process.

The seal stability report itself was very short, but a line of text was circled in red ink in the remarks column at the end: "The three personnel who assisted in the calibration during the anchor purification process—Potion Room, Lu Li, Klein—are hereby listed in the Backup Team for Chanis Gate seal maintenance. Training period is three weeks, see the attachment for training content."

"Backup Team?" Lu Li put the report back on the coffee table.

"It means that once Old Neil needs time off or goes on field duty, the two of us are responsible for covering his shift."

Klein put the file away. "Three weeks of training, starting from the most basic identification of seal runes. Daly said she was also in the Backup Team back then, and started doing night inspections in the third week of training."

"Night inspections for the Backup Team are much more comfortable than field patrols—indoor work, hot tea, no need to get rained on."

Leonard emerged from the corridor at some point, half of his body hanging on the door frame of the lounge, with the red mark from the poetry book still on his face. He was clearly just waking up from a nap, and his tone was still slurred, but his ears had accurately captured the words "Backup Team". "Dunn shoved me into the Backup Team back then too. I was kicked out by Old Neil in the second week of training because I fell asleep in the seal maintenance room. His exact words at the time were—'Your spiritual perception is keen, but your sleeping posture takes up too much space.' Since then, I have never been qualified to enter Chanis Gate again."

"That probably wasn't a question of how long you slept." Lu Li said.

"Of course not. It's because sleeping in the maintenance room is indeed easy to break the equipment; the monitoring instruments on Old Neil's side have a row of particularly fragile needles."

Klein didn't expose him, just poured a cup of black tea from the teapot and pushed it to the edge of the coffee table.

Leonard picked it up and took a big gulp, sinking comfortably into the sofa. "Anyway, the Backup Team is a good job. Old Neil's classes are much more interesting than Dunn's safety lectures—when he talks about seal runes, he draws a lot of arrows on the blackboard, each pointing to the key node where some ancient evil object is sealed. Listening to his class is like listening to someone who has stayed in Chanis Gate for fifteen years telling you how to press an Outer Deity back into their chair."