65: Chapter 3 Locker A-3

Early the next morning, Lu Li went to the Underground Commercial Street.

Before leaving the house, he checked his belongings three times—the snake emblem pendant, the brooch fragment, the copper bottle of holy water, the spirituality detection needle, and the fragment of the worm of time. Every item was in its proper place.

This wasn't obsessive-compulsive disorder; it was a rule of survival. In his previous life, he always felt that carrying keys, a wallet, and a phone was enough when going out. Now, the things stuffed in his waist bag could open a small exhibition of Sealed Artifacts.

The morning at the Underground Commercial Street was much quieter than the evening. The iron gate doors of most shops on both sides of the main passageway were only half-open. A few owners were squatting at their doorways, cleaning the inner walls of glass jars with copper brushes; they only lifted their eyelids when they saw him pass by.

The cold white halo of the phosphorescent wall lamps bloomed in the damp air, stretching every passing shadow long and thin.

Lu Li walked to the end of the main passageway and turned left into the third branch alley. This branch alley was narrower than the others, and of the phosphorescent wall lamps on the walls on both sides, only the one at the very end was still lit.

Locker A-3 was embedded in the stone wall at the deepest part of the alley. The copper label on the locker door was mostly eroded by rust, but the number remained clearly legible.

He took the snake emblem pendant out of his inner pocket. The engraving on the back of the pendant shimmered with a very faint, dark silver luster under the phosphorescent light.

The spirituality lock inside the locker door emitted a very faint click—not the sound of physical springs, but a confirmation on the spiritual level. The snake emblem token had matched.

The locker door popped open a crack.

There were no potion ingredients inside. Only a letter.

Lu Li tore open the envelope and pulled out the letter paper inside. The paper was very thin, and the folds were already fraying; the handwriting was identical to the snake emblem strokes on the paper crane from Abraham.

" The powder of the Deceiver's hyoid bone has been deposited in the locker in the back alley of the second-hand bookstore on Water Pump Street, number B-7. The locker password is the last four digits of your Nighthawks identification number. From: The Client. "

He turned the letter over. There was another line of text on the back, the handwriting lighter, as if the person who wrote the letter had added it after some hesitation: " The ritual primer requires you to personally complete a deception of sufficient magnitude. At the Backlund East Borough docks, there is a porter named Old Kohler. He owes 'Bloody Hand' Barov a usurious loan that is due this Friday. Barov will send someone to the docks to find him that night. You can use this debt as the stage for your deception. "

Old Kohler.

Lu Li silently repeated the name in his heart. In the original work, Old Kohler died in a gang fight in the Backlund East Borough; the cause of death was being beaten to death by loan shark thugs while protecting his daughter.

This incident happened before Klein arrived in Backlund, so it was never mentioned in the main storyline of the original work. However, he had read about it in the plot perception of the Fate Anchor. He had only noted it down as background information at the time, never expecting that the client would know even this.

He folded the letter back up, placed it back into the envelope, and tucked the envelope into his inner pocket. Then he closed the locker door. The snake emblem mark on the pendant resonated one last time with the seal inside the locker door, and the lock core automatically reset.

The locker door was sealed shut again, and the " A-3 " on the copper label shimmered with a cold white light under the phosphorescent stone.

The back alley of the second-hand bookstore on Water Pump Street was narrower than the main alley, only wide enough for one person to squeeze through sideways. Locker B-7 was hidden behind a pile of crookedly stacked empty wooden crates in the middle of the back alley. Lu Li squatted down and entered the last four digits of his Nighthawks identification number into the combination lock on the locker door, and the lock core popped open.

Inside the locker was a small lead box, with the standard sealing runes of the Zoutland Potion Room engraved on the lid. He opened the box—inside were four sealed bottles of the Deceiver's hyoid bone powder. The labels on the bottles indicated the source, batch number, and sealing date. The source was the underground warehouse of the Backlund Diocesan Headquarters, and the sealing date was shortly after he had last left Backlund.

The client had helped him obtain the hyoid bone powder and provided the clue for the ritual primer, effectively helping him complete the final two pieces of the puzzle for his promotion to Sequence 7.

This was not charity; this was ensuring he had enough strength to survive until he reached the Antigonus Ruins.

He put the lead box into his backpack and checked the inside of the locker again. In the deepest part of the locker was a small cloth bag containing a dozen copper charm fragments, each with extremely fine Hermes script engraved on the surface.

Lu Li used the dim light filtering into the alley to make out the text on one of them— " Enhanced Spatial Perception ". This was an auxiliary practice charm for the Apprentice Pathway Sequence 9, more advanced than the kind he had bought on the black market; it was an authentic item that could briefly activate spatial sensing abilities.

This was not a potion ingredient either, but it was a great help for his Sequence 9 proficiency practice. The client was clearly very aware of what his secondary Pathway was.

He packed away the cloth bag as well, closed the locker door, and backed out of the back alley. By the time he returned to his apartment, it was already dark.

He locked the lead box into the compartment of his suitcase under the bed, placed it side-by-side with the jiaowei sealed box, and updated the ingredient list on the Sequence 7 recipe page of his notebook.

The main ingredients were all prepared, the auxiliary ingredients were all prepared, and the target for the ritual primer was confirmed—this Friday night, East Borough docks, Old Kohler. There were three days left until Friday.

For the next three days, Lu Li devoted most of his energy to practicing the Apprentice Pathway Sequence 9. The map he had bought from Old Eye's second-hand book stall marked all known Beyonder activity areas in the East Borough, and he went to the Dock District every evening to scout the location.

Old Kohler was a bottom-tier porter at the East Borough docks, in his forties, his wife had passed away early, and he lived alone with his twelve-year-old daughter in the shabbiest row of shacks in the Dock District.

His creditor, "Bloody Hand" Barov, was a famous gang leader in the East Borough, with dozens of thugs under him, at least two of whom were low-Sequence Beyonders—one was a Sequence 9 Hunter, and the other was a Sequence 8 Black Market Brawler.

On Friday evening, Barov's men would appear at the entrance of Warehouse No. 3 at the docks on time to collect Old Kohler's bones to pay off the interest.

Lu Li needed to set up the stage for the "deception" before that day arrived. But there was one thing he hadn't figured out—the client had written Old Kohler's name on the back of the letter, but hadn't written who the person sent by Barov would be.

If he wanted to complete the Swindler ritual on Friday night, he had to know which of those two low-Sequence Beyonders under Barov would actually come.

He went to Water Pump Street again on Friday afternoon. Abraham was in the shop organizing stock; seeing him enter, he just pointed to the teacup on the table, signaling him to pour it himself.

Lu Li sat down opposite the folding table and placed the deactivated paper crane on the table.

" I received the letter in Locker A-3. I also got the hyoid bone powder. There was a line of text on the back of the letter mentioning a porter named Old Kohler at the East Borough docks, as well as 'Bloody Hand' Barov. I need to know which of the two low-Sequence Beyonders under Barov will appear at the docks on Friday night. "

Abraham was silent for a moment.

He opened the ledger and pulled out a note with simple symbols drawn in pencil.

The handwriting on the note was very light, reading: " Dock District Night Assignment—Warehouse No. 3, Friday evening, Target: Old Kohler, Executor: 'Hound'. "

" Hound is a nickname, a Sequence 9 Hunter; no one cares about his real name. He has been collecting usurious loans for Barov for nearly three years, and he never leaves anyone alive when he acts. His range of spiritual perception is wider than that of a normal Sequence 9, and he can track targets by scent. This is a standard ability of the Hunter Pathway Sequence 9—being particularly sensitive to the smell of blood. "

" What about the other one? "

" The Black Market Brawler, Sequence 8. He usually doesn't participate in trivial matters like debt collection. Only Hound should be going to the docks on Friday night. "

Abraham pushed the note over, " This information is free. Consider it a return gift for you helping me clear out the locker last time. "

Lu Li folded the note and put it into his pocket. Only Hound. Sequence 9, one Sequence lower than him.

The absolute suppression of Prometheus over Sequence 9 was enough for him to complete this deception in the dark. But the Swindler ritual did not require killing; it required "personally completing a deception of sufficient magnitude"—he needed to deceive Hound, making Hound believe he had completed the debt collection mission, while in reality, Old Kohler had already escaped safely.

As he walked out of the shop, he began to build the specific framework for the deception in his mind.

The core of a Swindler is not combat, but information asymmetry. He needed to set up the stage in Warehouse No. 3 in advance, take Old Kohler away before Hound arrived, and then use the embers of spiritual flames to create a fake target with the scent of Old Kohler's blood, making Hound's scent tracking mistakenly believe that the target had already been beaten to a pulp in the warehouse.

When Hound walked into the warehouse, he would only see a pool of forged blood and a few broken pieces of old wood—the prey had already flown away.