Kraus walked very quickly.
It took less than ten seconds to get from the meeting room to the ground floor, without a single word of nonsense.
Lu Yuan followed behind him, passing through corridors and heading down the stairs.
The young man at the front desk saw the vice director's expression, opened his mouth to speak, but didn't dare make a sound.
At the entrance, Raymond was already there.
He must have received the news as well.
Karl was standing beside him; both of them looked grim.
Kraus didn't stop, heading straight outside.
"Where?"
"North Ward, the street near our outpost." Raymond matched his pace. "Hoguer's people arrived first and have already cordoned it off."
North Ward.
It was in the direction of one of the three Ascension Society strongholds Hoguer had marked on the map earlier.
Lu Yuan recalled this detail but said nothing.
The four of them left the branch office and walked briskly north along the streets of the outer city.
The afternoon sun shone on the gravel road, and an occasional carriage passed by.
No one knew what had happened up ahead.
The buildings grew shorter and older.
Pedestrians became scarcer.
They could see the cordoned-off line from a distance.
Several Nightwatchers stood at both ends of the street, holding thick hemp ropes to prevent anyone from approaching.
Hoguer stood inside the rope, arms crossed, his face ashen.
Seeing Kraus approach, he took a couple of steps forward to meet him.
"He's inside."
His voice was kept very low.
"The situation is more serious than reported."
Kraus didn't respond; he bent down to duck under the rope and walked inside.
Lu Yuan followed him in.
Then he saw the trail.
A dark mark extended from deep within the street, intermittent and winding, stretching all the way to a spot not far ahead.
It wasn't blood.
It was a substance solidified on the surface of the stone slabs, its color somewhere between greyish-white and an indescribable hue.
At first glance, it looked like the residue of some dried liquid, but it didn't look like anything a known liquid should.
There was a faint sense of flow on the surface of that substance.
It wasn't moving, but it looked as if it were.
The color seemed to shift slightly with the viewing angle; even though it was completely dry, it gave the illusion of still being alive.
Everyone present saw it.
No one approached.
Hoguer followed them, adding a low sentence.
"A street vendor in the North Ward first discovered it at dawn this morning. He followed the trail and walked a few steps closer. Before he could even reach out his hand, a stray cat touched the edge of the trail first."
He paused.
"The cat died on the spot."
Kraus's footsteps faltered for a beat, but he didn't look back.
Hoguer continued.
"There's one more thing. The two people on patrol last night should have passed through this street according to the schedule. But looking back afterward, they both claimed they took the neighboring alley."
His tone was somewhat strange.
"They never usually go that way, and they couldn't explain why they did."
Lu Yuan shifted his gaze from the trail and glanced at Hoguer.
The trail widened in several places.
The crawling person had stopped at those spots, struggled, and then continued forward.
One spot was particularly wide, with the surrounding gravel pushed aside and messy scratch marks left on the ground.
It looked as if the person lying on the ground had tried their best to stand up but failed.
And so, they continued to crawl.
At the end of the trail, less than thirty paces from the gate of the Nightwatchers outpost, a mass lay slumped on the road.
As Lu Yuan approached, the first thing he noticed was the right hand.
The body was prone on the ground, the right arm reaching forward, fingers splayed and dug deep into the cracks between the stone slabs.
The fingernails were all broken.
The fingertips were worn down to the white bone, the broken surfaces gleaming pale in the sunlight.
Several deep gouges had been carved into the stone.
The direction of the fingers pointed straight toward the Nightwatchers outpost.
He was crawling.
He had been crawling until the moment he died.
Lu Yuan's gaze moved from the right hand to the body.
This corpse no longer looked human.
It wasn't a deformity caused by external trauma or decay; the structure itself had changed.
The skin had become translucent, allowing a faint glimpse of the tissues beneath, but those tissues were not muscle or bone.
They were something flowing.
They were like text, dense and intricately intertwined, filling every inch of space under the translucent skin.
Those patterns were still moving.
Slowly, at a speed visible to the naked eye, they spread from the torso of the corpse to the limbs and then dissipated.
It was as if a tide were gradually receding from the sea.
Knowledge was receding bit by bit from this shell.
Where the patterns passed, the translucent skin began to crack.
Fine fissures expanded from the torso to the limbs, and a dark liquid seeped from the cracks, sharing the same origin as the trail on the stone slabs.
In the area from the left shoulder to the chest, the tissue had split into several pieces from within, the edges curling back to reveal those dissipating patterns beneath.
The face was almost unrecognizable.
The contours of the features had been eroded away by the patterns, leaving only a blurred, translucent oval.
Several scraps of fabric were scattered near the corpse, their texture and cut being styles often worn by noble scions of the inner city.
On the stone slab not far from the right hand, there was also a twisted metal button with the emblem of a merchant association on it.
There was no need to touch it.
The scattered items were enough to confirm the identity.
Raymond stood three paces away, his face ashen, not saying a word.
Karl took half a step back.
Hoguer stood by the cordon.
Kraus knelt down.
He didn't touch the corpse; he slowly raised his left hand, hovering it above the body.
Lu Yuan noticed he was wearing a ring on his left ring finger.
He had never seen it before.
The material of the ring didn't look like metal or stone; it was a dull substance close to the hue of dead bone, with extremely dense patterns carved on its surface.
Kraus closed his eyes.
His fingers spread slightly, palm facing downward.
Lu Yuan couldn't see what he was doing, but he could feel the changes in the surroundings.
At the edge of his vision, greyish-white text jumped out:
【Target Detected: Kraus (Eerie Path Transcendent)】
【A human who has contracted an extremely rare eerie entity and yet still retains their human identity.】
Lu Yuan scanned it.
'Looks like another monster.'
Lu Yuan's expression remained unchanged as he quietly shifted half a step back.
The patterns on the surface of the ring lit up.
A layer of extremely thin grey mist spread along the ring finger to the palm, then down from the fingertips, touching the dissipating patterns on the surface of the corpse.
The moment the grey mist contacted the corpse.
The mist contracted rapidly as if it had been burned, retracting along the fingertips back into the ring.
Most of the patterns on the ring dimmed, leaving only a few flickering weakly.
Kraus opened his eyes.
He withdrew his left hand and let it rest on his knee.
It was a subconscious movement.
This vice director's heart was far from as calm as his face suggested.
Kraus stood up.
"Do not touch it."
His voice was no different than usual. But before saying those words, he paused for a beat. In that beat, his gaze swept over everyone present.
"No one is to touch it."
Lu Yuan stayed where he was, not backing away like the others.
Because at this scene, he felt another layer of things.
The aura of knowledge.
The concentration was extremely high.
Even though it was already decaying, the residual concentration far exceeded any he had encountered before, even dozens of times more than those hive students in the Polymath Tower.
At the edge of his vision, greyish-white text began to flicker.
【Unknown Knowledge Detected: Knowledge Inscription... Analysis Failed... Insufficient Knowledge... Analysis Failed...】
A series of failures followed one after another.
But immediately after.
【Forbidden Lore: Knowledge Seeker: +0.1...+0.1...+0.2...】
Lu Yuan's breath hitched for a moment.
Despite all the analyses failing, simply standing next to this corpse caused his Forbidden Lore experience to grow passively.
The decaying aura of knowledge was like a shattering mirror; the complete reflection could no longer be seen, but a small piece of the image still remained on every shard of glass.
The perception of the Knowledge Seeker was automatically absorbing these fragments.
He steadied his steps inconspicuously.
On the surface, he was observing the corpse.
In reality, he was waiting for those numbers to finish jumping.
【Sanity: -2...-1...101/120】
Sanity was being passively consumed.
This was the price.
The closer he stood, the more he absorbed, and the faster the consumption.
This was a rare opportunity.
The absorption continued, and the aura grew fainter with every passing second.
Lu Yuan stood for a few more seconds.
And within those few seconds, something else emerged from that dissipating aura.
Images.
Not complete images, but shattering fragments.
Colors churned.
A sea.
A blurred humanoid silhouette floated on the surface of the sea, its posture relaxed, as if it had walked in on its own.
There was no struggle.
Clutched in its palm was a tiny object.
It was glowing.
But in the next moment, the light changed.
The fragment was like a weight, dragging that humanoid figure down into the depths of the sea.
The humanoid began to struggle, yet was still unwilling to let go of the object in its hand, swimming upward desperately.
But the light of the fragment grew brighter, and the pulling force became heavier.
He couldn't hold on.
But he couldn't let go either.
The fragment was stuck to his palm as if it had grown into his flesh.
The humanoid was dragged into the depths, and the seawater of treacherous colors surged from all directions.
The body began to swell and twist.
The skin became transparent, and the internal bones and muscles were covered and replaced by layers of text.
He no longer looked human.
The image shattered.
The final fragment.
Darkness.
The twisted body curled up somewhere.
The fragment in the palm had shattered and burned out, leaving only ashes stuck to the skin.
But that hand began to move.
Not to stand up.
But to crawl.
The images dissipated completely here.
Lu Yuan stood in place, his expression unchanged.
His back was already soaked in cold sweat.
At the edge of his vision, the greyish-white text jumped a few last times:
【Forbidden Lore: Knowledge Seeker: +0.1...1.1/100】
The aura had vanished.
The numbers stopped jumping.
Lu Yuan took a step back.
The movement was very natural, no different from the others keeping their distance due to instinctive discomfort.
No one noticed what he had seen or absorbed in those ten-odd seconds.
Before withdrawing his gaze, Lu Yuan noticed one last detail.
Allen's right hand was reaching forward; everyone could see that.
But the left hand was different.
The left hand was clenched into a fist, curled against his chest.
But with the perception of the Knowledge Seeker, he faintly sensed an extremely weak residue of knowledge in the palm of the left hand.
It had almost completely dissipated, with only a final trace remaining.
The texture of that trace shared the same origin as the shell in the Viscount's collection room.
It had already turned to ash.
Clearly, he had failed the so-called 'invitation'.
Lu Yuan kept this judgment in his heart and did not speak.
After Kraus issued the cordoning order, he turned to walk back.
The corpse could not be touched for now and would not be moved; it would be sealed on-site to wait for specialists, and Kraus needed to question certain people—had Bronze City really been checked?
The trail area was to be completely cordoned off, with a reverse investigation along the path.
Notify the merchant representative, but confirm the danger level first before allowing family members to approach.
As he passed Lu Yuan, his pace slowed for a moment.
"What did you see?"
The others were backing away, while only Lu Yuan had stood in place for a few extra seconds.
Kraus had noticed.
Lu Yuan deliberated for two seconds.
"The things on the corpse are dissipating." Lu Yuan continued, "With my Forbidden Lore, I just sensed something very strange, but I couldn't identify it."
He paused.
"The direction was deep into the outer city."
Kraus's gaze shifted slightly toward the southwest.
That direction was one of the Ascension Society's outer city strongholds that Hoguer had marked.
But he said nothing.
He simply nodded.
"Let's head back."
Outside the cordon, Raymond and Lu Yuan stood side by side for a while.
The street was very quiet. The setting sun shone diagonally through the gaps between the low houses.
"Rein in your abilities a bit," Raymond said.
"The contamination is very serious; be careful not to see things you shouldn't."
"I will," Lu Yuan replied in a low voice.
When he returned to the Alchemy Workshop, the sky was between light and dark.
Laurina was at the workbench with several sealed bottles in front of her; the stench of sandworm blood had faded considerably.
Hearing the door, she looked up.
Her gaze lingered on Lu Yuan's face for an instant.
Then she stood up, walked to the medicine cabinet, took out a bottle of Sanity potion, and placed it on the table.
"Drink it."
Lu Yuan uncorked it and downed it in one go.
【Sanity: +10...111/120】
He sat down by the window.
Those fragmented images still lingered in his mind. Clearly, that son of the merchant association hadn't been able to withstand it.
Moreover, he hadn't encountered that voice, nor had he been fished out.
He thought back to his own experience at the Viscount's manor.
Being pulled into the Sea of Knowledge by the shell.
That voice had said, "Not enough. You are not yet qualified."
And then it had spat him out.
So who exactly was the owner of that voice? The master of the Sea of Knowledge? What kind of existence must that be? Why would he be specifically looked after?
Lu Yuan sat in the chair for a long time until the sky was completely dark.
Laurina cleared the workbench.
"I've made a batch of new potions; they might be useful to you. Remember to take them tomorrow morning."
"Also, you look pale. Get some rest early."
Laurina turned and went upstairs after speaking.
Lu Yuan didn't move.
The bronze runes on the city walls glowed in the distance, their faint light shining through the window and casting blurred shadows on the floor.
He didn't light the oil lamp.
His gaze fell unconsciously on the windowpane.
But his peripheral vision caught something.
His silhouette was reflected in the window glass.
The faint light from the city wall runes shone through from outside, gilding that silhouette with a dark gold edge.
But beyond that edge, there was another layer of something.
It was very faint, almost imperceptible.
The shape of the shadow was changing.
It wasn't a problem with the light, nor was it the angle.
Something not belonging to him was growing from the edges of the silhouette.
The greyish-white text didn't jump out.
There were no prompts, no warnings, nothing at all.
Lu Yuan watched for a few seconds and remained silent for a moment.
Then he stood up and went upstairs.
Returning to his room, he didn't light a lamp.
He walked to the window and pulled the curtains shut.
Without light, there would be no shadow.
Regardless of what that thing was, he would have to be more careful.
Rate on N.U.
