84: Chapter 22: The Painter

15 Mingde Street, Sherlock Moriarty's detective agency.

This week, the agency welcomed a particularly unusual client.

The man was in his early thirties, dressed in an old shirt mottled with various paints.

His hair was messy and unkempt, his eye sockets deeply sunken, and his eyes were bloodshot—it was clear he had not slept for days.

He clutched a frame wrapped in layers of kraft paper to his chest, taking a seat on the wooden chair opposite Sherlock.

After a full two minutes of silence, the painter finally spoke in a dry, hoarse voice.

"My name is Matthew Edwin, and I live in the artist apartments on the edge of the East Borough."

"Two months ago, I accepted a portrait commission."

"The client was a man I met by chance at the Old Wharf. He paid a deposit in advance and requested that I go to a designated location every week to paint. Each time I finished, he would collect the painting in person."

"The painting is still unfinished, but I can no longer continue."

"It is not exhaustion; it is my inspiration, which is being slowly siphoned away from the canvas by him."

"Every time I finish a painting session, my mind feels inexplicably hollow, and my concentration worsens. I want to terminate the commission, but I cannot find any trace of him."

Sherlock nodded slightly, reached out to take the frame, and unwrapped the outer layer of kraft paper.

A half-finished portrait came into view.

The person in the painting wore a dark gray cloak, their facial features blurred and hazy, except for a pair of eyes that were rendered in extreme detail.

Deep within the pupils, a faint, nearly transparent silvery-white halo floated.

Sherlock activated his spirituality to scan the canvas.

Within the layers of paint, trace amounts of fine spiritual dust were mixed in.

The components and characteristics matched perfectly with the residual spirituality of the Sea of Wraith tide that he had previously collected from the stone piers at the Old Wharf.

"You said the other party is stealing your inspiration; what exactly does that feel like?" Sherlock asked in a deep voice, laying the painting flat.

Matthew pressed his temples, his expression weary and terrified.

"Every time I put pen to paper, his features on the canvas change on their own."

"It is not that I am mistaken; after one night, the painted features will automatically blur and dissolve, reverting to vague patches of color. I can only repeatedly redraw those eyes."

"Every time I finish retouching the eyes, I lose a little bit of something."

"It is hard to describe concretely, as if a specific memory of mine is being forcibly cut and stripped away by an invisible force."

Sherlock picked up his pen to record this, continuing to ask for details about their meeting.

Matthew recalled that he first met the other party several months ago at dusk, at the end of the pier at the third berth of the Old Wharf.

That berth was precisely where the ghost ship was known to dock.

Thereafter, the weekly painting location was fixed at an abandoned warehouse near the wharf.

The client always arrived early, sitting quietly in the shadows, remaining motionless and silent the entire time.

When the painting was finished, the other party would collect it and pay the deposit for the next session.

They had painted nearly ten times, and at first, he only felt mentally exhausted, but it was not until the paint began to mutate on its own that he realized something was wrong.

Sherlock closed his leather notebook and gave his reply in a steady tone.

"I will accept the commission. The fee is twelve shillings, with half paid in advance."

"I will go to the Old Wharf to investigate. Before that, you are forbidden from drawing any portraits, especially from depicting human eyes."

"If the client appears again, do not speak to him; come to the agency to find me immediately."

Matthew nodded in agreement, put down the frame, and pushed the door open to leave.

Sherlock was left alone in the room.

He placed the painting on his desk and unleashed his spirituality for a deep investigation.

The spiritual dust from the Sea of Wraith was unevenly attached to the surface of the canvas, and all the particles were drawn by an invisible force, converging entirely toward the pupils of the figure in the painting.

This was by no means natural paint smudging.

This painting was a specially crafted spiritual beacon.

Through the eyes in the painting, the other party was reverse-extracting the painter's memory fragments.

Sherlock instantly thought of the iron rule of the ghost ship that Lu Li had told him about earlier.

To board the ghost ship, the fare was a memory.

The captain would collect the passenger's most cherished memory as the price of passage.

Matthew's weekly painting was essentially him paying the fare regularly.

The scattered memory fragments were being gradually recovered by the existence in the Sea of Wraith through the channel of the painting.

However, the model in the painting was definitely not the captain of the ghost ship.

The captain had no physical form, could not leave the Sea of Wraith for long, and certainly would not spend weeks sitting in a warehouse acting as a human model.

This person was merely an agent collecting the fare on behalf of the captain.

The torn boat ticket of Old John, the memories stripped from the painter, the lingering fog and shadows at the Old Wharf...

All clues pointed to the same truth.

Within the Sea of Wraith, someone was behind on their fare.

The captain was laying out plans in many places to collect the debt.

At the same time, at the apartment in the River Bay District.

Lu Li sat at his desk, organizing all the intelligence he had gathered over the past few months.

Inside the cloth bag at his waist, the fragment of the worm of time pulsed rhythmically, gentle and steady.

Since the resonance after the establishment of the Tarot Club, the Fate Anchor on his chest had fallen silent, with no further disturbances.

He had paused accepting orders from the black market for a full week.

Old Eye had sent word that the group of respectable gentlemen's secretaries who were investigating the identity of the "Traveler" had withdrawn from the Mingde Street area.

Either they had lost patience after finding nothing, or the municipal reconstruction work at the Old Wharf had compressed their range of activity.

Abraham had also completed the transaction, reselling the fragment of the spatial perception charm that Vera had handed over.

The transaction price was nearly half higher than the market rate, and the money obtained was enough to support his rent and daily expenses for several weeks.

Besides this, Vera from the Secret Order had passed along a piece of secret information through Old Eye's bookstore.

The serpentine identification report from the Geological Research Institute had been officially finalized.

The serpentine patterns inside the ore were highly consistent with the engraving system of the fourth epoch Antigonus Family.

However, there were dissenting opinions within the identification committee.

Some scholars determined that the era when the patterns were formed was earlier than the peak of the Antigonus Family, linking them to an ancient seal from the early fourth epoch.

The report was sealed within the Secret Order and would never be made public.

Those who held skeptical views were ordered to provide supporting evidence within a deadline.

Lu Li picked up his pen and added a small note under the [Secret Order Serpentine] entry in his notebook.

Immediately afterward, he reviewed his progress in digesting the Sequence 7: Swindler potion.

Since his promotion, he had relied on black market intelligence trading, special commissions from the Secret Order, and the serial case of the wharf ore to complete a large amount of practical acting.

The core of the Swindler was the weight and value of the deception carried.

Every round of maneuvering, deception, and information games in Backlund during this time had solidified his acting compatibility.

The potion had already been completely digested.

He turned to the page dedicated to recording the materials for his promotion.

The formula framework for Sequence 6: Cryptologist was taken from the old booklet gifted by Old Eye.

Core main materials: memory fragments of a Secret Order member, and a rubbing of an ancient charm analysis.

Most of the auxiliary materials could be purchased directly in the underground black market.

The trigger for the promotion ritual: personally uncovering a hidden truth that had been deliberately buried.

The details needed to be verified and perfected, but the preparations for promotion had a clear direction.

Lu Li got up, checked the copper bottle of holy water and the silver needle for spiritual detection one by one, locked the apartment doors and windows, and set off for Water Pump Street.

When passing by the pier at the Old Wharf, his footsteps paused slightly.

At the end of the pier, the silvery-white mist left behind by the Sea of Wraith was still slowly dissipating.

On the surface of the Hoi River, a faint silvery halo, originating from the same source as the eyes of the person in the painting, rippled outward.

On the weathered and faded wharf reconstruction notice board nearby, someone had casually sketched a minimalist ghost ship pattern with white chalk.