6: Chapter 6 The Nameless Pact Above the Gray Fog

Three days after the briefing on the Welch apartment burglary was submitted, Dunn Smith announced news at the routine meeting that left everyone silent for a moment.

"Welch is dead."

There were only five people in the meeting room: Dunn, Daly, Leonard, Old Neil, and Lu Li.

The gas lamps on the walls stretched everyone's shadows long, casting them against the opposite wall like a row of silent silhouettes.

Outside the window, Tingen City was shrouded in a layer of grey drizzle. The raindrops were so fine they were almost invisible, leaving only intermittent water streaks on the glass.

"When did it happen?" Leonard was the first to speak. His usual careless tone had completely vanished, replaced by a suppressed sense of tension.

"Last night." Dunn placed a thin file on the table. "His butler discovered he hadn't come out for breakfast this morning. When he opened the bedroom door with a spare key, he no longer had any vital signs."

"The undercover protection personnel sent by the Church found no signs of intrusion. The bedroom doors and windows were intact, and there were no signs of a struggle inside."

Dunn paused before continuing, "Preliminary judgment suggests the cause of death was sudden heart failure. However, during the spiritual examination, the Nighthawks detected trace amounts of Beyonder characteristic contamination in his body. It does not belong to any known Pathway and is undergoing further analysis."

"Sudden heart failure?" Old Neil put down his pencil and looked up from the corner. "How old was he? Twenty-three? Twenty-four?"

"Twenty-four. His medical records show no history of heart disease." Dunn opened the file, his brow furrowing deeper. "In the last few days before he died, he was constantly asking his classmate—the one named Klein—about the source of the notebook. But Klein said he had only seen the notebook once and hadn't read it in detail. According to our background investigation, Klein currently possesses no Beyonder characteristics."

Daly's voice was very soft, as if she were listing a long string of related events, but her voice dropped at the end: "In other words, the only thing he did was translate that notebook from the Antigonus Family, had the same dream for seven days, and then passed away without any external force intervention."

Her tone carried the unease of a professional intuition being triggered.

"Yes." Dunn closed the file. "From now on, this case is upgraded to a Level 3 anomalous event and listed as a priority investigation Sequence for the Nighthawks. All relevant personnel—including everyone Welch had contact with before his death—will be placed under surveillance."

"Including that Klein?" Leonard placed the half-wiped test tube on the rack and looked up at Dunn.

"Klein is the last person to receive a letter from Welch and is the only person who knew of the existence of the Antigonus notebook but was not visited by the thief. This identity alone warrants special attention."

The meeting ended in silence. Daly gathered the old newspapers from the file rack, Leonard picked up the half-wiped test tube again, and Old Neil's pencil continued to scratch on the paper.

Lu Li was the last to leave the meeting room. He looked back at Dunn at the door. Dunn was standing by the window, his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, watching the rain outside. One hand was rubbing his brow, as if trying to crush a thought that wasn't easy to dispel.

After returning to the Potion Room, Lu Li sat at his workbench, toying with an empty test tube. Watching the rain get heavier outside the window, the same information turned over and over in his mind.

The cause of Welch's death was not detailed in the original work. But one thing was certain—the contamination on the Antigonus notebook would erode an ordinary person's mental defenses in the shortest possible time. Welch had seven days of dreams, and on the eighth night, he never woke up again.

Lu Li went to attend Welch's funeral.

That afternoon, the sky was still grey. A few scattered members of the Welch family stood in the cemetery, none of them speaking. Klein stood at the edge of the crowd, holding a black umbrella, his head slightly lowered. He looked even quieter than Lu Li had imagined. His gaze fell on the tombstone, as if remembering something, or perhaps thinking about something.

But Lu Li could sense that Klein's quietness was not entirely weighed down by grief. It was more of a calm, almost professional observation, as if he couldn't completely stop analyzing even when his own classmate was being buried.

Lu Li thought to himself, that was the reflex of a natural-born Beyonder in an ignorant state, and also the subconscious construction of defensive barriers when the future Fool stood before death for the first time.

When Klein walked out of the cemetery gate, Lu Li followed at a distance of a dozen steps, without calling out to him.

That night, Lu Li woke up suddenly from his sleep.

He hadn't been dreaming, nor had he heard any sound. It was as if something had gently plucked at the depths of his consciousness. He sat up and reached under his pillow, touching the Marauder characteristic fragment—it was very quiet, without any abnormal vibrations.

But the fluctuation remained.

It had no source, no direction, and was not at any coordinate in this room. It came from a higher place. That location did not exist on any map of the material world, but every Beyonder had heard its name.

Sefirah Castle.

Lu Li put on his coat in the dark, without lighting a lamp. The gas lamps in the hallway had long since gone out, leaving only a faint night light in the stairwell, casting an orange-yellow highlight on the stair railing. He walked along the hallway to the hall and pushed open the door to the rooftop.

The night wind on the rooftop was cold, the clouds were very low, and the Moon was not visible. The entire Tingen City contracted into a grey, dim outline under the dark clouds, with only a few street lamps shining on and off in the wind and rain.

That sensation was becoming clearer now. It was like an extremely thin silk thread, descending from an infinite distance above the crown of his head, passing through his skull and flesh, and gently touching a region in the depths of Lu Li's consciousness that had not yet fully awakened.

The thread had no malice, no intent, and not even a clear sense of existence—it was just an extremely faint touch, like a person walking past another dark room, their hem just brushing the tip of someone's little finger left on the edge of a table.

Lu Li closed his eyes, focused his attention on his brow, and used his not-yet-proficient spiritual perception to capture the source of this touch.

And then, he saw it.

Grey fog.

Boundless grey fog unfolded before his "eyes." It was not a concrete image seen with the naked eye, but a more abstract, deeper spiritual vision.

Above the grey fog, a magnificent palace that was difficult to describe in words stood vaguely. The outline of the palace could not be seen clearly; it was constantly changing, as if it existed at all angles and on all timelines simultaneously, or as if it were a very ancient projection forgotten by some god who had long since died in some crevice of the Spirit World.

And in the center of the palace, there was a figure so blurry it was almost negligible.

That figure had his back to where Lu Li was, lowering his head, watching the grey fog beneath his feet slowly churning.

He hadn't noticed Lu Li's existence—Lu Li's perception was too weak; to him, it was probably just a wisp of cold wind that had drifted into the room by accident, very short, very light, and although it had attracted attention, it was not enough to be traced.

But when that person turned his head, Lu Li still took a step back. The outline of that face was not clear through the entire grey fog, but his eyes were very bright. Not the kind of light brought by a Beyonder characteristic, but a vigilant and resolute determination that only began to think independently after being thrown into a desperate situation.

Klein.

Lu Li realized that he had already ascended above the grey fog. He had already begun to explore that ancient palace belonging to the Lord of the Mysteries, only he didn't know yet that he would become the sole owner of this palace.

Lu Li withdrew his spirituality, retreated back into the reality of the rooftop, and opened his eyes. The night wind suddenly blew over, causing the hem of his coat to flutter.

A crack opened in the dark clouds overhead, and a bit of pale moonlight leaked in, shining on the iron railing of the rooftop, like laying out an extremely thin silver path.

Klein was already active above this grey fog. He had already touched the Antigonus notebook, had already joined the Nighthawks, and had unknowingly stepped onto the path he was destined to take.

And Lu Li had left a trace, extremely light and faint, on Sefirah Castle.

It was not an intrusion, not a peek, but merely "existence" itself. A subtle, ethereal resonance.

Lu Li thought, if Klein was sharp enough—and judging by his talent, he was indeed sharp enough—he would perceive some weak signal of a "kindred" that did not belong to Amon above the grey fog. He wouldn't know who the signal source was, but this vague perception would plant a seed in his subconscious: He was not alone. In this world, there was another existence "of the same origin" as him, quietly watching this grey fog from some corner.

This seed currently had no power. But when, one day in the future, Klein was besieged by Amon above Sefirah Castle, eroded by the Celestial Worthy, and threatened by Outer Deities, this seed would sprout.

It would turn into an intuition, telling him—somewhere beneath the grey fog, there was someone he could trust, someone whose fate was intertwined with his but who would not snatch his authority.

This was Lu Li's plan.

Not to fight side by side with him, but without him knowing at all, to become a shadow in the negative of his subconscious. His light was ahead, and Lu Li's footsteps were behind.

He guarded the main entrance of Sefirah Castle, while Lu Li cleaned up the hidden corners in the back alleys of the Spirit World that even Sefirah Castle couldn't be bothered to illuminate.

When the sky was slightly bright, Lu Li walked back indoors from the rooftop.

Daly happened to be coming from the hallway, carrying two cups of barley tea she had brought from the dining room, the steam curling in the morning light.

She saw Lu Li walking back from the direction of the rooftop and raised an eyebrow: "Didn't sleep last night?"

"Couldn't sleep, went to get some air." Lu Li took the barley tea she handed him and took a sip. The warm liquid slid down his throat, dispelling some of the remaining chill.

"You should pay attention to resting too." Daly didn't press him, just pointed to the direction of the Potion Room with the rim of her cup. "Old Neil is already preparing. Today is the moonstone catalysis experiment; he said you could help watch the fire."

In the Potion Room, Old Neil had already set up the equipment. The moonstone fragments were piled into a star-shaped formation, piece by piece, in the catalytic dish.

As the first ray of morning light filtered in through the frosted glass of the window, the silvery-white veins inside those fragments began to swim slowly like a school of startled fish.

Lu Li soaked his hands in cold water, stood before the catalytic furnace, and began to watch the fire.

Over the next few days, he continued to learn basic catalysis from Old Neil in the Potion Room while keeping an eye on the Nighthawks' progress reports on the Welch case.

Dunn's surveillance of Klein had already begun quietly, but for now, it was limited to peripheral observation. Dunn knew there were too many unknowns behind this matter.

And Lu Li knew the answers to these unknowns. The Antigonus notebook, the Snake of Fate, the arrival of the True Creator—these answers meant that the catastrophe in Tingen City had entered an irreversible countdown.

Welch was dead. He was the first, but he would not be the last.

Lu Li knew the list of subsequent victims better than anyone. Old Neil would die. Daly would nearly die. Dunn Smith would offer his own heart to protect Tingen. This was a fate that had already been written.

And his existence was to steal those destined-to-be-extinguished names from the cracks of fate.