78: Chapter 16: Esoteric Buddhist Practice

Five days after the full moon, the overcast rain in Backlund had slightly subsided, and damp winds swept the dust of East Borough through the streets and alleys.

At a black market intelligence stall, Lu Li accepted a rather peculiar commission.

The client was a young lady wearing thin-rimmed round glasses; she possessed a quiet temperament and worked as an administrator at a private ancient book library in River Bay District.

Her commission was simple yet permeated with strangeness: recently, the library had frequently suffered from inexplicable night intrusions, yet all the door and window locks remained intact, with no signs of forced entry on the windows, and not a single ancient book, rare edition, or valuable collection on display had gone missing.

The only anomaly was the underground storage room, specifically used for stacking old periodicals, which had been carefully rummaged through several times; the intruder's target was extremely clear, seemingly searching only for bound volumes of old newspapers from a specific year.

"I have reported this to the police." The lady spoke in a flat tone, devoid of any fluctuation. "After the police officers investigated, they concluded it was an internal mishap and deemed it unnecessary to open a case, so they hastily closed the matter."

She did not believe this conclusion and had subsequently sought out two private investigators.

The first investigator spent the whole night staking out the library but returned empty-handed the next day, claiming to have seen nothing unusual throughout the night and voluntarily returned the commission fee.

The second one was even more absurd; he left in a rush less than two hours after stepping into the library, stating bluntly that the heavy scent of old books in the library gave him a splitting headache and made it impossible for him to stay.

Her expression remained calm as she spoke, showing no signs of anxiety or resentment. However, a faint glimmer flashed in Lu Li's eyes as the Swindler Pathway's information perception quietly activated, and he precisely captured a subtle flaw—her fingertips, resting on the counter, unconsciously and very lightly tapped the wooden surface twice.

This was an extremely restrained emotional fluctuation, meaning this seemingly honest administrator had deliberately concealed key information.

"Your specific request." Lu Li said in a calm tone, without any unnecessary probing.

The lady raised her eyes, adjusted the glasses on the bridge of her nose, and spoke slowly: "Find out the identity and purpose of the intruder, and why they are solely obsessed with the underground storage room. The fee is six shillings, with half paid in advance."

She paused slightly, adding a seemingly well-intentioned reminder: "If you are also affected by the aura in the library, you may terminate the commission at any time; there is no need to worry."

As she finished speaking, a palm-sized bronze badge was gently pushed to the center of the counter.

On the badge, a spirit snake was coiled around, with two tiny garnets embedded in the snake's eyes, dark in color and antique in texture. The pattern style was highly similar to the Antigonus snake emblem Lu Li had encountered in the past, but with one complete difference—the snake body was coiled clockwise, rather than the characteristic counter-clockwise pattern of the Antigonus Family.

"Secret Order."

Lu Li instantly confirmed the answer in his heart.

In the appendix of the secret organization codex left behind by Old Eye, this specific emblem was clearly recorded.

This secret organization, rooted in the shadows of the continent, served no gods and worshipped no authorities, holding only knowledge as its ultimate belief. It held the complete advancement formula for the Scholar of Yore Pathway and monopolized a vast amount of lost fourth epoch Outer Deity literature and incomplete historical materials.

He pinched the badge and flipped it over; the dense Hermes script engraved on the back came into view. The characters were ancient and concise, containing only five short words— "To seek knowledge is salvation."

This perfectly matched the core philosophy of the Secret Order.

A glimmer of deep thought flashed in Lu Li's eyes.

It was by no means a coincidence.

He had spent months dealing with the Antigonus snake emblem token in Tingen City, and his traces in the black market and intelligence circles had long been left behind.

The Secret Order had been deeply involved in underground intelligence networks for years and must have long since uncovered his past experiences. This time, proactively issuing a commission through an ordinary person was by no means a simple search for people or items; it was more like a contact attempt with probing intent.

Lu Li remained composed, pushed the badge back to the other side, and calmly accepted the commission.

Night fell, and twilight completely enveloped Backlund, with rows of dim yellow gas streetlights lighting up the streets of River Bay District.

The private ancient book library stood in a quiet part of the block, a typical old Backlund brick-and-wood building. The blue brick walls were covered with faint mottled traces, a faded bronze sign hung on the front door, and the inside of all window frames was reinforced with dense anti-theft iron grilles, so the security could not be considered lax.

The administrator escorted Lu Li to the entrance of the underground storage room, handed over the key, and then turned and left without any lingering.

The storage room was small, with floor-to-ceiling cast-iron bookshelves standing against the four walls, densely packed with decades of old periodicals, bound newspaper volumes, and yellowed files.

The air was filled with the decay of old paper, the slight acridity of oxidized ink, and a trace of extremely thin, imperceptible spiritual dust that ordinary people could not detect.

Lu Li leaned over, his gaze falling on the floor covered in a thin layer of dust.

Layers of new and old footprints were intertwined, covering the traces of many days. Among them, one set of footprints had clear and complete patterns; there were no hard imprints from leather shoes, but rather the traces of soft-soled canvas shoes. The shoe size was slender and small, most likely belonging to a female.

This set of footprints was highly concentrated between the third and fourth bookshelves, where they had repeatedly wandered and stayed the longest; without a doubt, these were the traces left by the night intruder.

He took out a standard spiritual detection needle from the hidden pocket at his waist, gripped the end, and lifted it gently.

The moment the needle tip approached the third bookshelf, a very faint, almost invisible dark green fluorescent light suddenly lit up.

The fluorescence was weak but precise; it was the trace amount of spiritual dust remaining in the old literature, which the detection needle accurately captured and signaled.

"Not an ordinary person."

Lu Li instantly determined the identity of the intruder.

Breaking through reinforced iron grilles without damage, not triggering any mechanisms or locks, and repeatedly infiltrating without leaving a trace—only the Lock Picking ability of the Apprentice Pathway could achieve such extreme secrecy. Combined with the thinness of the spiritual residue and the proficiency of the ability usage, the opponent's strength was around Sequence 8; she was a low-rank Apprentice Beyonder.

He returned to the library's front hall to verify the clues with the administrator.

Facing the inquiry, the administrator carefully recalled and provided key information: in the past month, a mysterious woman with a hood covering her face had indeed specifically borrowed bound volumes of old newspapers from the third bookshelf. The person used a forged reader's ID card, and the name and identity were both fake, but she remembered the handwritten signature on the registration book vividly.

Lu Li took the yellowed borrowing registration book, his gaze sweeping over the line of handwriting that was deliberately disguised yet hid habitual writing strokes.

The Swindler's information theft ability activated silently. Without the need for interrogation or probing, the opponent's deliberately hidden identity characteristics, ability attribution, and action purpose all turned into clear clues, falling into his cognition.

He took a pencil and neatly noted next to the signature: [Apprentice Pathway, Sequence 8, Secret Order member, specifically searching for fourth epoch-related old newspaper archives from a specific year].

This was another improvement in his ability from repeatedly accepting black market intelligence commissions recently.

The digestion of the Swindler potion never required a shocking scam achieved overnight. Countless low-intensity information prying, detail capturing, identity deduction, and secret disguising, accumulated bit by bit, steadily solidifying the acting progress.

To this day, his ability had become increasingly proficient, capable of silently stealing key information without alerting the other party's spiritual vigilance or triggering Beyonder resistance, even when facing low-Sequence Beyonders.

"What kind of materials are stored on the third bookshelf?" Lu Li asked softly.

"It is the backup bound volume of the 'Backlund Historical Archives Compilation'," the administrator replied truthfully. "It contains microfilm archives of local mainstream newspapers from the past fifty years, mostly historical records, reports on past events, and antique transaction records."

The files that the intruder repeatedly rummaged through were all concentrated in the same specific year range.

The moment he saw that year, Lu Li's mind tightened slightly.

It was the very year Old Eye assisted Elliott Hoy in proofreading and forging the encrypted information on the title page of the Antigonus Family notebook.

The clues connected instantly.

The Aurora Order was obsessed with the spiritual pulses of the snake emblem token and the residual power of the ruins' seal; the Antigonus legacy was entangled with fourth epoch secrets; and now, the Secret Order had also entered the game, following the traces.

They avoided the token body that everyone was fighting for and took a different path, attempting to dig up the original record of a fourth epoch literature auction through the old newspaper reports of that year, tracing the original source of the snake emblem token.

Lu Li closed the registration book, returned it to the administrator, and walked slowly out of the library gate.

The night was deep, and the gas streetlights across the street flickered, with light and shadow intertwining and swaying on the ground. He stood in the evening wind at the doorway, thoroughly re-organizing and deducing all the fragmented clues from the recent period.

Elliott Hoy, the previous keeper of the snake emblem token, who had handled the forgery and tampering of the encrypted notebook twenty years ago; the Aurora Order, relying on the secret spiritual supply source of the black sail ship at Storm Cape, continuously sent secret blood sacrifice pulses to the remaining spare runes in the world; the Secret Order, mobilizing low-level Beyonders, dug deep into old newspaper archives from decades ago, investigating the secret past events of fourth epoch literature auctions.

The three major secret forces, spanning twenty years of time, finally converged precisely at the same node—the original source of the Antigonus snake emblem token.

Lu Li lowered his eyes, his fingertips curled slightly, his heart clear.

Everyone in the outside world thought the snake emblem token was still in his hands, and that the entanglement of the ruins' debt had not yet ended.

No one knew that the token had long been lost, the jiaowei had completely perished, and he had already personally settled all karmic consequences and cleared all debts in the underground ruins.

The ruins' seal had closed, and the debt entanglement was completely cleared.

This was his unique secret advantage.

The Aurora Order did not know the seal was locked and still vainly targeted the old runes; the Secret Order did not know the karma had ended and was still obsessively tracing the source; all the forces' predictions and layouts remained in the old game, only he stood outside the game, seeing the whole picture of the changes.

On the way back to the East Borough apartment, the evening wind blew through the alleys, blowing away the scent of old paper and dust from his body.

Back at his residence, Lu Li lit the kerosene lamp on the table, took out his private notebook, and used his unique, minimalist code to record the clues related to the Secret Order one by one.

He calmly weighed the pros and cons and quickly decided what to prioritize.

There was no need to dig deep into the Secret Order line for now. The other party's search for old newspapers was just to fill in historical gaps and trace past events; there was no direct conflict with the movements of the Aurora Order remnants he was currently tracking, and it would not interfere with his core layout.

But that Sequence 8 Apprentice Pathway Secret Order member was worth noting.

The Secret Order held the core intelligence and advancement resources for the Scholar of Yore Pathway; if needed in the future, this person would be an excellent breakthrough point to contact the Secret Order and exchange intelligence, and they would surely appear again.

Closing the notebook, Lu Li sat at the table and carefully took stock of all the material inventory stored at his waist.

Ghost Candle fragments and pure Spirit World dust—two types of rare auxiliary materials were already prepared.

He was only one core main material away from gathering the advancement formula for the Apprentice Pathway Sequence 9.

The black market merchant Abraham, whom he had contacted earlier, sent word that next week would be the turning point.

Every year at this time in Backlund, the Underground Commercial Street would receive a batch of Beyonder materials from the Southern Continent; the goods were complex and niche, and often, a small amount of exclusive materials for the low-rank Apprentice Pathway would be included. As long as nothing unexpected happened, he would be able to fill all the gaps next week and complete the pre-advancement preparations.

In the coming days, his plan was clear and definite.

Continue to accept black market intelligence commissions to stabilize his income source and maintain daily expenses and material reserves; simultaneously keep a close eye on the scattered movements of the Aurora Order remnants and integrate the fragmented intelligence transmitted back by Abraham to piece together their complete layout.

He marked the to-do items one by one on the front page of his notebook, then collected his thoughts and began his daily practice of Swindler information perception and secret theft.

The kerosene lamp's light flickered, reflecting on the youth's calm profile.

In the undercurrent-surging Backlund, the game of the three forces was intertwined, but he had already jumped out of the old game, quietly waiting for the opportunity to make his next move.