46: Chapter 46: The Twilight

The door of the Potion Room closed softly behind him.

Old Neil's footsteps receded slowly down the corridor, the rhythmic tapping of his cane falling heavily into the deep end of the basement.

Lu Li locked the door and pulled the blackout curtains shut.

He extinguished all the lights in the room, leaving only the smallest phosphorescent stone lamp on the workbench, then took a piece of black cloth and gently covered the lamp.

Thick Darkness surged from the four walls, swallowing the entire room, leaving him unable to see his own hand in front of his face.

He stood quietly for a moment, letting his eyes fully adapt to the Darkness.

The Prometheus's spirituality perception spread and extended accordingly.

The cool night breeze seeping through the window cracks, the residual heat slowly dissipating from the distiller, the heat continuously radiating from the cast-iron shell of the safe... all subtle temperature traces were infinitely magnified in his perception, becoming incomparably clear.

Lu Li raised his hand and opened the heavy leaden seal box.

The jiaowei rested quietly in the center of the base.

Inside the furnace, that cluster of silver-white flames was hidden in the Darkness, not leaking a single ray of light, yet it circulated a stable and uniform warmth, like a miniature star sleeping in the Darkness, breathing slowly.

He took out the jiaowei, placed it gently on the workbench, and fished out the small silver knife from his waist pouch.

The blade was as thin as a cicada's wing, and the tip cut through the pitch-black environment with a streak of cold, biting light.

The tip of the blade gently pricked his fingertip.

A drop of bright red blood landed steadily on the surface of the furnace.

The blood drop paused briefly on the metal surface, and the next instant, it was completely absorbed by the furnace.

The moment it devoured the blood, the silver-white flames underwent a sudden transformation, the color shifting layer by layer, from silver-white to a pale gilded gold, then settling into a rich, deep amber.

The form of the flames was reshaped accordingly.

The originally scattered and swaying amorphous flames slowly gathered and condensed, finally turning into a regular, ancient ring of fire.

It was a symbol purely formed of fire, the patterns simple and primitive, exactly the same as the mark he had seen countless times on pendants and brooches—a snake-shaped ring with its tail in its mouth.

Immediately after, the flames began to write.

A line of regular Hermes script slowly appeared inside the furnace.

The handwriting was smooth and steady, each letter ending with a faint upward curve, the strokes identical to the inscription on the back of the pendant.

"Open with blood on the night of the full moon. Repayment condition: return the owed finger, or an item of equal value."

Between the words, the four characters "item of equal value" were particularly bright, persisting far longer than the rest of the text.

Lu Li stared intently at this line of flaming text, his thoughts heavy.

What Roselle had mortgaged back then was the promotion qualification for a Sequence 2 Angel of the Door Pathway.

In the equivalent exchange rules of the spirituality world, collateral accrues interest over time; the longer the delay, the more terrifying the cost of repayment.

And the highest-grade Beyonder item he currently held was merely a characteristic fragment of a Sequence 7: Swindler of the Marauder Pathway, which was far from enough to even cover the accumulated interest.

The furnace flames trembled slightly, and the final line of text slowly emerged at the bottom.

"Bring the token to the Antigonus Ruins, and on the night of the full moon, open the seal with blood."

The latter half of this sentence was homologous in structure to the "When the moon is full, the door shall open" on the title page of the imitation notebook.

The only difference was that the initiative to open the seal had never rested with the timing, but with the person holding the token.

After the text fully appeared, the flames silently retracted, returning to their initial, quiet, silver-white appearance.

Inside the furnace, silence returned once more.

Lu Li put the jiaowei back into the seal box and locked it carefully.

He sat quietly in the Darkness for a long time before raising his hand to pull open the curtains.

Bright moonlight poured in, coating the seal box on the table with a layer of cold, silvery radiance.

The next evening.

The Nighthawks meeting room, all members assembled.

Dunn spread a telegram flat on the table, tapped his finger on the encrypted translation, and spoke in a deep voice.

"A notice of assistance has been received from the Backlund Diocese Headquarters."

"Last week, a theft of Beyonder materials occurred in the Underground Commercial Street of Backlund. The stolen items were a batch of Antigonus period document fragments recently transported from the Southern Continent, as well as three bottles of sealed Deceiver hyoid bone powder."

"The incident occurred in the middle of the night; there was no residual spirituality at the scene, nor were there any signs of forced entry. The warehouse manager noticed nothing throughout the entire time; the only anomaly was that the next morning, all the seal talismans were found to be completely ineffective."

"There is currently only one clue: in a side alley next to the warehouse, someone heard extremely light footsteps. The rhythm was steady, unhurried, but when the patrol team arrived, the alley was empty."

Old Neil tapped his cane on the floor, producing a dull thud.

"Document fragments paired with hyoid bone powder is definitely not an ordinary theft. The only use for the two combined is to concoct high-Sequence potions of the Marauder Pathway."

"And look at the modus operandi—stealthy infiltration, silent breaking of seals, leaving no trace of spirituality. It was either a top-tier secret organization, or a high-level Beyonder who possesses special abilities."

"It is the client." Lu Li spoke up at the right moment.

Dunn turned to look at him.

"Abraham informed me earlier that the client has suspended all purchasing transactions, but the ordered materials had already been stored in a locker in the Underground Commercial Street."

Lu Li analyzed clearly and logically.

"Now that the materials have been stolen, there are only two possibilities. Either the client retrieved them personally, or someone intercepted the procurement list and snatched this batch of supplies in advance. In any case, these key materials have already fallen into someone else's hands."

Leonard, who was sitting to the side, suddenly straightened his body, shedding his usual casualness, his expression solemn.

"I was returning from patrolling Iron Cross Street last night and took a shortcut through the East Road of the old Textile Factory, where I noticed an unusual disturbance."

He opened the patrol notebook he carried with him and read out the recorded contents.

"That alley is already remote and quiet; even stray cats rarely appear after nightfall. But when I reached the middle of the alley, I heard a low humming sound coming from the base of the wall."

"The sound was extremely faint, like a tuning fork resonating embedded in a stone crack, and it lasted for nearly two minutes. I initially thought it was the vibration of old sewer pipes, but after walking a few more steps forward, the strange noise suddenly disappeared."

"Did you activate your Spirit Vision at the time?" Dunn asked immediately.

"I did."

Leonard nodded, his tone firm.

"There was nothing unusual within the Spirit Vision field of view. But when I walked past the spot where the strange noise disappeared, I stepped on a piece of torn paper embedded in the gap between the stone bricks. Only a corner of the paper was visible, the edges charred black, clearly scorched by high heat."

Old Neil took the torn paper and examined it carefully against the light.

On the remaining surface of the paper, a thin, curved ink mark was clearly visible, with the characteristic upward hook at the end of the stroke.

"It's the edge of a snake emblem."

"This fragment comes from a snake emblem paper crane. Its appearance here is enough to prove that three days ago, someone activated a snake-shaped token in the area of the Textile Factory ruins."

The meeting room fell into silence instantly.

The steady footsteps in the empty alley, the inexplicably ineffective seal talismans, the charred and incomplete snake emblem paper crane...

Scattered clues intertwined, layer by layer, verifying each other, and finally pointing to the same secret truth.

After the meeting adjourned, Old Neil did not return to the Potion Room.

He leaned on his cane, walked slowly to the seal maintenance room outside the Chanis Gate, and pushed open the heavy iron door.

The four walls of the room were embedded with dense seal rune stone slabs. Each slab was connected to hair-thin spirituality sensing lines, and all lines eventually converged in the center, connecting to an old copper monitoring instrument.

On the instrument's dial, more than ten needles swayed steadily and slightly, but one needle in particular had a range of motion far exceeding the others, nearly double.

This needle corresponded to the seventh sensing node of the outer ring—the location happened to be exactly underground at the East Road of the old Textile Factory, overlapping perfectly with the alley entrance where Leonard had noticed the anomaly last night.

Old Neil tapped his fingertips against the shell of the copper instrument, his voice low.

"Before Ince Zangwill defected, the last thing he was responsible for maintaining was the seventh sensing node of the outer ring. He could navigate every blade of grass and every stone in this alley with his eyes closed."

Daly, standing beside him, raised her hand, hovering her palm over the corresponding rune stone slab, and slowly closed her eyes.

The Spirit Medium's slender spiritual tentacles spread out from her fingertips, seeping into the seal patterns of the stone slab thread by thread.

In her spiritual vision, the dense rune lines flowed with a faint blue light, like blood flowing slowly in sleeping blood vessels.

The blue light of normal nodes flowed layer by layer from the outside in; every time it completed a cycle, it gathered and accumulated power in the core, then diffused and repeated.

But the blue light of the runes at the seventh node was completely chaotic.

The light did not gather inward; instead, it continued to backflow and overflow outward.

A moment later, Daly withdrew her palm and opened her eyes, the faint blue afterglow of the Spirit Medium state still lingering in the depths of her pupils.

Old Neil asked in a deep voice, "What did you see?"

"Spirituality backflow."

Daly said, her tone solemn, slowly revealing the key point.

"Someone is on the outside of the seal, repeatedly stimulating the node with same-frequency spiritual pulses, forcibly breaking its dormant state to create reverse resonance."

"Once the backflow continues to break through the critical value, the person on the outside will be able to completely break open this seal node."

"Can we trace the source in reverse?" Old Neil asked.

"No."

Daly shook her head gently.

"The practitioner is extremely cautious and had already torn apart and scattered their own spiritual characteristics in advance, dividing them into dozens of tiny fragments and scattering them in all directions, specifically to avoid Spirit Medium tracking."

She paused for a moment, lowering her voice to add.

"But one thing is certain."

"Regardless of how the other party conceals it, the aftershocks of the node backflow dissipated on their own after lasting only two minutes. This was not continuous human manipulation, but a passive trigger—it must have been the moment that person stepped into the seal's sensing range, the node automatically generated an stress response to their unique spiritual characteristics."