39: Chapter 39 Paper Cranes

After returning from the Underground Commercial Street, Lu Li placed the inert paper crane on the table and examined it under the phosphorescent stone lamp for an entire night.

The folding technique of the paper crane was old-fashioned, with a wingspan of about four fingers wide. The paper had yellowed, and there were several extremely fine creases along the edges, clearly having been repeatedly unfolded and refolded.

The strokes of the snake ring were extremely thin; it was not drawn with ink, nor with a fountain pen—it had been etched onto the paper using some kind of extremely fine, hard tool dipped in spiritual ink.

The depth and texture of the scratches were identical to the engraving technique on the silver sacrificial vessels of the Antigonus Family that he had seen in the Hoi Family's secret room.

He turned the paper crane over and found a second snake emblem on the inside of the wing.

The location was very concealed, hidden in the shadows of the creases; it was impossible to see without unfolding the wings.

This snake emblem was smaller than the one on the eye, with simpler strokes, but the curvature of the hook at the end of the stroke was exactly the same.

Drawn by the same person.

Furthermore, this person had drawn the snake emblem to the point where it required no thought—the strokes were smooth, the pressure even, without any trace of hesitation or correction.

Early the next morning, Lu Li brought the paper crane to the archives of the Backlund diocesan headquarters.

The archives were located at the end of the second-floor corridor of the headquarters. It was a rectangular hall three times the size of the Potion Room, with walls lined with cast-iron filing cabinets reaching the ceiling, and two rows of slanted reading desks in the center.

The administrator was a tall, thin woman wearing gold-rimmed glasses. She took his Nighthawks credentials, glanced at them, and handed him an archive retrieval registration form and a pair of white cotton gloves.

"Archives related to fourth epoch documents are in cabinets three through seven. The classified index for snake emblems, Sealed Artifact marks, and noble family crests is in the card catalog cabinet at the entrance."

Lu Li stood in front of the card catalog cabinet for nearly two hours.

He flipped through every archive card related to the Antigonus Family from beginning to end, from the compilation of fourth epoch noble family crests to the general overview of modern Beyonder organization symbols, carefully comparing every snake-shaped mark on each card.

The main family crest of the Antigonus Family was a snake with its tail in its mouth, its body coiled into a ring, with two garnets embedded in the position of the snake's eyes.

The snake emblem on the paper crane was a simplified version of this main family crest—the garnets were removed, the snake scale patterns were simplified, and only the core ring structure and the characteristic hook at the end of the stroke were retained.

This simplification technique was not arbitrary.

It was a secondary mark used by branch families or vassal families of the Antigonus Family, used to replace the identity emblem in situations where the main family crest was inconvenient to display.

The archive cards recorded that this secondary mark was last officially used in the late fourth epoch, inherited by a branch family that had since died out—the Moir Family.

Moir.

This surname made Lu Li stand before the filing cabinet for a moment longer.

He had not seen anyone with the surname Moir in Tingen, nor had he read this surname in any of the Nighthawks' files.

But he recalled another matter: on the guest list for the Hoy Family's annual sacrifice, there was a crossed-out seat—that was supposed to be the Moir Family's seat.

The old butler of the Hoi Family had mentioned it to him at the annual banquet, saying that the last baron of the Moir Family had passed away from illness a few years ago, leaving no heirs.

If the Moir Family were descendants of a branch of the Antigonus Family, and Baron Moir had left no heirs, then the bloodline of the Antigonus Family had been completely severed.

He put the archive cards back into the drawer and turned to leave the archives.

That night, Lu Li sat at his apartment desk, unfolded the paper crane again, and gently traced the strokes of the snake ring with his fingertip.

The moment it touched the snake emblem, the Fate Anchor emitted an extremely faint low hum—not a warning, but a reaction closer to "confirmation," identical to the feeling he had when his memories were stirred by the will of the Snake of Fate in the Underground Channel Secret Room.

He refolded the paper crane, placed it in his inner pocket, and took out the blank spiritual order record sheet, placing it on the table.

Abraham said this paper could be activated with spirituality to receive the residual spiritual images from the previous paper crane in the same batch.

He pressed his fingertip to the edge of the paper and slowly injected his Sequence 8 spirituality into the blue fluorescent mark.

The fluorescence lit up, and a line of extremely faint writing appeared in the center of the paper, lasting less than twenty seconds before it began to dissipate.

The content of the writing was not a list of new materials to order—it was a message written in standard Hermes script: "Old Eye's old bookstore, tomorrow evening. Bring the paper crane."

The signature of the message was a simple drawing of a snake ring.

Lu Li stared at that snake emblem for a long time.

Old Eye had not told him why they were meeting at the old bookstore, nor had he explained through what channel this message was transmitted to the order record sheet.

But the snake emblem on the paper crane and the signature on the message were the same pattern, indicating that Old Eye knew of the paper crane's existence and also knew what he was investigating.

The next evening, he walked along Water Pump Street towards the bookstore.

As he passed through the cooling mist of the Backlund autumn night, he kept his hands in his trench coat pockets, his fingertips gently pressing against the refolded paper crane in his inner pocket.

The wind chime at the bookstore entrance emitted a very faint hum in the night breeze.

When Lu Li pushed the door open, Old Eye was sitting behind the counter with an old ledger opened halfway in front of him.

The paper of the ledger was yellowed and brittle, with small worm-eaten holes along the edges, but the writing on the pages remained clearly legible.

"You're here." Old Eye closed the ledger and set it aside, took off his copper-rimmed glasses and placed them on the cover of the ledger. "Did you bring the paper crane?"

Lu Li took the paper crane out of his inner pocket and placed it on the counter.

Old Eye picked up the paper crane and examined it for a moment under the phosphorescent stone lamp on the ceiling, gently tracing a circle along the strokes of the snake ring with his finger.

Then he put the paper crane back on the counter and took a tiny copper box out of the drawer.

"The folding technique of this paper crane is at least twenty years old. The aging of the paper fibers, the depth of the creases, and the oxidation of the snake emblem ink are all from the same batch as the moonstone fluorescent ink on the title page of the imitation notebook you have."

"In other words, the person who drew the snake emblem is the same person who hired for the imitation notebook."

"The alchemist of the Hoi Family?"

"No." Old Eye opened the copper box. Inside lay a tiny silver snake-shaped pendant, the style almost identical to that silver sacrificial vessel Lu Li had seen on the display table at the Hoi annual banquet, but the size was reduced by nearly ten times.

The back of the pendant was engraved with a line of extremely fine Hermes script, the font identical to the line on the title page of the imitation notebook—"Ring of the Snake, Key of the Blood."

"This pendant was discovered by Abraham when he was clearing out a client's locker. After the client took the materials for the last time, besides the final payment and a notice to suspend procurement, they left this behind."

"Abraham didn't recognize this symbol and sold it to a second-hand dealer in the Underground Commercial Street. The second-hand dealer then resold it to me—I've run an old bookstore for twenty years and have never seen such a thing circulate on the market."

"Why would he leave the pendant behind?"

"Perhaps to mark the right to use the locker. Perhaps to confirm the identity of the client—if the next person to contact him is someone holding the same pendant, it means the other party has the right to receive the remaining materials."

Old Eye placed the pendant next to the paper crane. "But he suspended the commission. He left this pendant in the locker, as if saying he no longer needed these things, but if someone could find its true owner, he wouldn't stop them."

Lu Li picked up the pendant and turned it to the back; the strokes of that line of Hermes script were identical to the line on the title page of the imitation notebook.

But he noticed a detail he hadn't seen on the imitation notebook—the letter spacing was uneven, and those few loose spots happened to allow for picking out letters from specific positions, which, when rearranged, formed a brand-new word.

This was the same word he had previously pieced together on the title page of the imitation notebook using transmitted light.

"You said last time that the line on the title page of the imitation notebook was copied from a remnant page of the original. Is there this phenomenon of uneven letter spacing on the original remnant page?"

"No."

Old Eye said decisively, "The letter spacing on that original page is completely uniform, with the distance between each letter as precise as if measured with a ruler."

"Uneven letter spacing only exists on this imitation and this pendant. On the imitation, it was my mistake in typesetting, but the engraving on this pendant is also uneven—that is not a mistake. It was intentional. The person who wrote this line deliberately hid information in the letter spacing."

Old Eye put the pendant back into the copper box and closed the lid.

Lu Li put the paper crane and the pendant back into his inner pocket.

"I'll take the pendant back to Tingen. The paper crane too. The alchemist of the Hoi Family has passed away, but Old Neil might recognize his handwriting—he was a pharmacist of your era and should have seen the order records for the Hoi Family's commissioned processing of Sealed Artifacts."

He paused at the bookstore entrance without turning back.

"Abraham told you about the locker because he knew you were investigating the snake emblem. You also told him I was investigating the identity of the client. You two are both involved in the same matter; why didn't you tell me the locker number directly?"

"Because you already have something more important than the locker number in your hand—that pendant was left in the locker by him. It wasn't abandoned; it was placed. Placing something requires time, requires intent, and requires knowing who will find this thing in the future."

Old Eye adjusted his copper-rimmed glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. "He is waiting for you. Or rather, waiting for someone who can understand the snake emblem. And among the people I know, you are currently the only one still investigating this thing."