It Must Be That Kid!

"Did you ever take a photo with one of the keepers?"

Elias suddenly asked out of the blue.

"Cough!"

Old Crowley nearly choked on his cheap tobacco upon hearing this.

"I've taken photos with plenty of keepers!" Old Crowley barked irritably.

"I've been drifting at sea for over twenty years. I've transported at least eighty keepers, if not a hundred."

The old man tilted his head in thought, a hint of nostalgia for the old days flickering in his eyes.

"Especially two or three years ago, when those camera things first became popular in Hastings Port."

"The young clerks from the foreign firms at the docks were always carrying those heavy black boxes that looked like coffins, pressing the shutter for anyone they could find."

Crowley widened his eyes, looking at Elias.

"Tell me, wouldn't you be curious if you were in my shoes?"

"Not at all," Elias answered bluntly and honestly.

As a modern transmigrator accustomed to all sorts of smartphones and high-definition cameras...

He truly couldn't feel any sense of awe toward an antique that required magnesium powder and forced people to hold a stiff expression for ages.

"Tsk."

Crowley made a sound of annoyance.

The old sea dog looked at him askance, feeling that the kid was just putting on an act.

The young transcendents of today truly had no respect for modern high technology.

"Back in the day, if you wanted to leave behind an image, it was a luxurious mystical engineering project."

The old captain leaned back against the sofa, unable to help but feel sentimental.

"Everyone had to close their eyes and use their spirituality to extract memory fragments, then feed them into a specialized spirit-revealing instrument."

"Not only was the consumption massive, but the slightest mistake could lead to memory loss."

"Who would have thought that nowadays, you can leave an image just by relying on a black box and a piece of glass coated in chemicals?"

The old man shook his head, lamenting how times had changed.

High technology was stripping away the sense of mystery from transcendents step by step.

"So, that family has followed the photo across half the Velen Continent just to find you."

Elias forcibly brought the conversation back to the main topic.

He hadn't come here to listen to the old man give a seminar on the history of technological development.

"Find me for what?"

Crowley seemed somewhat puzzled, a hint of confusion flashing in his cloudy eyes.

"Don't play dumb!"

Elias was truly fed up with the old man's thick skin and selective amnesia.

"Have there been few deaths on that lighthouse island?"

"In the last two or three years alone, you've personally sent more keepers to that island than I can count on both hands—keepers of whom not even a bone remains."

"Her brother died on the island, and as his sister, she followed the only clue you left behind to this place. Isn't this karmic retribution perfectly reasonable?"

Even if this guy didn't know the deep-seated conspiracies of the Wayland Shipping Company...

The number of dead people he had seen with his own eyes and transported personally over the years was enough to pile into a small mountain.

"That's true..."

Old Crowley, knowing he was in the wrong, awkwardly stroked his large white beard.

He smacked his lips and turned to look at the half-demon bartender standing respectfully at the door.

"Bring her here," Crowley instructed Bloodsong.

Watching Bloodsong bow in acknowledgment and turn to walk out the door, Elias suddenly frowned.

"That girl is just an ordinary person."

"She's as fragile as a piece of papyrus."

"You're just going to bring her into a transcendent's gathering place? Aren't you afraid I'll turn around and report you to the Seventh Agency?"

"Report you for forcibly involving an ordinary citizen in a malicious supernatural security incident?"

"Then go ahead and report me."

Old Crowley seemed completely unfazed.

He had the posture of a dead pig that didn't fear boiling water.

He even turned his head arrogantly to look at Ms. Sophia sitting beside him.

"Just remember to bail me out if I end up getting locked up."

Sophia's hand holding the crystal glass paused slightly.

She rolled her eyes at the old scoundrel, not saying a word.

"What the hell?"

While the two Resurrectionists were exchanging glances...

Deep in Elias's mind, Old Ed began to grumble.

"How come these guys... sound like they have official backing?"

The old man cried out in his mind.

"Listen to that tone. Going to the Seventh Agency's lockup is like going for afternoon tea."

"Have the underground secret organizations of today already developed to such a foul level of collusion with the authorities?"

"Old man, times have changed,"

Elias responded somewhat speechlessly through their mental link.

"Is it possible that underground secret organizations always have some level of ambiguous collusion with the authorities?"

"Who knows?" Old Ed replied matter-of-factly.

"All my life, I only dealt with monsters in the sea and pirates in the open!"

"I never had any dealings with these underground secret organizations hiding in the gutters!"

The old man snorted.

In reality...

The worldly greed in Old Crowley's eyes gradually faded.

"To be honest, kid."

The old captain's voice sounded somewhat low at this moment.

"Those whose family members died here, and who choose not to forget but instead dare to investigate all the way here single-handedly..."

Crowley stared at Elias through the smoke.

"Their outcomes are usually only one of two."

"Either they get killed during the investigation and become an anonymous corpse in a mass grave."

"Or, they cross the threshold in despair and become transcendents just like us."

The old man took the pipe out of his mouth and spoke one word at a time.

"Aside from that, there is almost no third choice."

"'It' will never allow a mortal, after glimpsing a corner of the 'truth'..."

"To return peacefully to the mundane world and sleep without worry every night."

Hearing this...

Elias fell silent.

His hands resting on his cane tightened slightly.

Those words...

They were actually true.

This was the most cold-blooded law in classical mysticism: Knowledge is pollution.

Elias knew very well in his heart.

Given Ophelia's stubbornness and her sharp intuition as a reporter for the Landon Post...

Continuing to investigate so defenselessly...

She would eventually come into full contact with all these supernatural horrors one day in the future.

That was why...

He had thrown that charm to her.

This was the maximum restraint he could exercise as a stranger who had met her by chance.

After all...

He and she were essentially just strangers.

He was barely surviving himself; he naturally couldn't forcibly interfere with a stranger's choice of destiny.

Just as he had told Old Ed in his mind back then...

He had no right or qualification to stop a sister's small wish to find her brother.

Even if the destination of that wish was a bottomless abyss.

"Don't worry, Whitebeard."

Elias pulled out a chair and sat down naturally.

"However, do me a tiny favor later."

Elias raised an eyebrow.

"I don't want to blow my cover so soon today."

As he spoke...

He unhurriedly fished out the Spy's Derby Hat.

He placed it on his head.

As the hat settled...

A faint spiritual glow flashed by, once again veiling his face beneath a layer of illusory shadow.

He had transformed back into the cold and arrogant "Bruce Wayne."

The two Resurrectionist big shots sitting opposite him looked at each other.

Although they didn't understand what he meant by "blowing his cover"...

Seeing Elias's action...

They instantly understood what the kid was trying to convey.

He simply didn't want to expose himself in front of that mundane female reporter.

"Suit yourself," Old Crowley snorted with some disdain.

...

Meanwhile...

At the same time, just a wall away in the tavern's outer hall...

The air here remained sultry and murky.

The stench of sweat and the sour smell of alcohol fermented in the air.

BANG!!

Accompanied by this loud crash...

Wood chips flew everywhere, and several unlucky drunks nearby screamed as they were knocked over.

The noise in the hall hit the pause button in an instant.

Everyone watched, dumbfounded.

The half-demon bartender, Bloodsong, who had just been ordered downstairs to fetch someone...

At this very moment...

Was flying backward a full five meters in a comical and painful posture.

He slammed heavily into a load-bearing wall before sliding down.

"Oh! My goodness!"

Ophelia was clutching that silver metal plate tightly, her face pale with shock.

The reporter looked at the handsome bartender sprawled on the ground.

Her face was white with fear.

She was clearly terrified by the scene she had just caused.

However, her professional upbringing still drove her to hurry over and help him up.

"I'm so sorry!"

Ophelia crouched down in a flurry, her voice filled with guilt as if she were about to cry.

"I'm really sorry!"

"Just now, when you walked up behind me..."

The reporter swallowed hard, trying her best to explain:

"I... I thought you were one of those thugs who was harassing me in the hall earlier!"

The sailors and mercenaries who had been dead drunk...

Upon seeing this graceful and seemingly fragile foreign girl possess such violent means...

Instantly...

Everyone avoided her like the plague.

They didn't even dare to steal another glance at her.

The crowd began to scramble and crawl away from her.

With a swish...

Within just a few seconds, they very consciously cleared a wide circular space around Ophelia.

In the empty space, only she and the unlucky bartender remained.

Everyone lamented in their hearts: Nowadays, you really can't afford to mess with decent women.

"Hiss—"

Bloodsong lay on the floor covered in beer stains, hissing in pain.

As a Dvorin with demon blood...

His physical defense was definitely among the best for transcendents of the same rank.

Yet today?

He had been inexplicably blasted away on his own turf by an ordinary human girl with no spiritual fluctuations.

If word of this got out, how would he ever save face in the Resurrection Society again?!

"What the hell is going on?!"

Bloodsong leaned against the wall, struggling to lift his head, his face filled with the indignant despair of someone questioning their life.

He stared at the silver metal plate in Ophelia's hand.

"A repulsion charm..."

"How could this girl have a repulsion charm in her hand?!"

Bloodsong rubbed his swollen cheek.

In his mind, an image of the man in black who had asked "What is the Resurrection Society" with such a stupid look suddenly flashed.

"It must be that kid!"