Chapter 139: The Disappeared

Professor Maynard and Kraft left their seats together, carrying a sobering tea to find Petrie. Out of concern for a colleague, Lin Deng joined them.

The three carried a single lantern candlestick toward the corridor leading back.

Pouring liquid into an unconscious person is somewhat dangerous and unnecessary unless under special circumstances, so everyone had chosen to first bring the drunken Petrie indoors to rest, waiting for him to recover on his own.

Thick clouds from the passing rain still hung, blocking the faint glow of the half-moon; the side hall and corridor were filled with empty darkness. They stepped slowly up the stairs in sequence, circling around tables and chairs buried in the shadows, echoes returning from the far end of the space, as if following step by step.

【To be honest, I've been using Huanyuan App to read and keep up with updates lately—it switches sources, has multiple voice options, and works on both Android and iOS.】

"We didn't light a candle for Petrie. I hope he doesn't bump into anything when he wakes up and looks for his shoes," Maynard said, holding the candlestick ahead to break the silence that had merged with the environment. "One, two, three—third room. I remember it's here."

He paused to listen, then politely knocked to announce their arrival.

In the quiet, dark atmosphere, everything felt distant. From the distant hall's music, only the piercing flute notes pierced through, intermittent in the damp, humid corridor, like bubbles bursting at the end of a leaking airway.

For no particular reason, Kraft simply felt it—and the silent knock echoed like the dull, muffled thud of percussion over a consolidated air cavity.

"Have you smelled anything?" he sniffed, feeling a trigger in his memory, yet a fine dust-like component made his nose, accustomed to post-rain air, uncomfortable.

Professor Lin Deng of the Jiepou Sect reflexively lifted his sleeve to check himself, sniffing from cuff to front hem—his practiced motion was almost pitiful. He quickly ruled out the possibility of odor from his dissection subject: "Not me. I bathed before coming today; this robe was washed by my wife—it's clean."

"I didn't smell anything. Is it alcohol?"

After a long inhale, Maynard detected no scent matching Kraft's. The rain had washed the airborne dust clean; if there was any odor at all, it was likely only the faint fragrance of plants.

That dust-like sensation passed quickly, similar to the grainy air that rushes out when opening a long-unused attic—it vanished soon after.

A signal in the senses that does not change with respiration is proof it does not originate from the olfactory sense.

"Let me hold the candlestick—it's heavy."

Taking the pure copper candlestick from Maynard was easy. Kraft weighed it in his hand, reassured by its solid heft, then stepped forward and pushed the two scholars aside. If anything appeared before them, throwing this thing would be a decent option.

The door was, of course, unlocked. He gripped the handle warily, shielding the candlestick before him, and slowly pushed open the thick door panel.

Kraft disliked this action—subconsciously, it symbolized leaving a comfortable, known environment and placing himself into the unknown, where anything could await on the other side. Yet such situations kept recurring, and someone had to open the door.

The odor absent to the nose faded, replaced by the unsettling sensations that had troubled him—now intensified along his left arm bracing the door, like dry lips suddenly touching water, awakening anew, speaking in words of pulsing pain between muscle fibers and shifting, alternating illusions of cold and heat—conveying information beyond the comprehension of normal organs.

【Listen】

But not with his ears. Faint chewing sounds, tough or hard substances merging, something thin—perhaps fabric—torn and spat out, uncontainable metal falling, sinking into a thick, viscous, furry layer covering the floor—imprecisely, because it came indirectly from a shielded spiritual sense, like fragments leaking through the fingers covering sightless eyes.

An external instinct from spirit and stone urged consciousness, urgently demanding the spiritual sense, like needing to open one's eyes after sensing intrusion into a safe zone, rather than stubbornly refusing to use an organ already present.

The depths called, in its own way, silently urging the connected to use its gift—to break the oldest, strongest source of human fear, and deepen the bond. Resistance required willpower equal to refusing to open one's eyes upon waking or to swallowing when stopping eating.

"No." Kraft suppressed the subtle, fear-like signals stirring within his physical senses. He did not know what result further deepening this bond would bring—but it could not be worse than the twisted chaos that had spread across half the floor, and no one guaranteed the next loss of control would stop.

"What?" Maynard asked. He had noticed Kraft pause for several seconds, muttering to himself.

"Nothing."

Light spilled in as the door turned, sweeping over the interior: a small barrel, a round table, and an empty bed.

Entering the candlelit room, exposed rafters overhead supported this cramped space; the dark furniture's age might equal that of the building itself. After all, this was not meant for daily living—only as a private retreat for guests who became unruly or had other needs during banquets.

The room's interior was considerably drier than outside, yet far from dusty enough to stir airborne particles—making those who sensed it more certain that some non-worldly presence had visited here.

"He left?"

There was no hiding place here; the single small window was set high above head height, barely allowing one to stand on a table and peer out. Maynard followed Kraft inside, and the room instantly felt too small to maneuver.

The impression of a human shape on the bed caught his attention—it was precisely where they had placed Petrie. The sheets were not disheveled as with other drunkards; instead, they remained unnaturally neat, even without the indentation of someone sitting on the edge. The flickering candlelight cast this scene, contradicting his logical reasoning.

Something resting in the shadow beneath the bed tripped him—he stumbled, kicked it, and it flew against the wall and bounced back. Maynard bent to pick it up: a pointed leather boot with a wooden sole, a popular style from Dunling, which they had themselves helped remove from its owner's feet and placed by the bed not long ago.

"Guard!"

Less than ten minutes later, Kraft saw Martin again—only two hours since they'd last met. The man still wore his banquet attire, and a small red mark now marred his face.

He pushed past the full-armored guards. The corridor was now filled with members of the medical college and searchers armed with torches and weapons—they had sealed every exit from the hall, combed every inch of this corridor with no other exits, trying to find the surgeon from Dunling—but found nothing.

A living man had vanished like evaporated alcohol, leaving behind only a pair of boots proving he had not walked out on his own.

Martin squeezed awkwardly beside Kraft, while Maynard recounted the events to the venue supervisor: "He drank that cup and collapsed—not drunk, more like unconscious—so we brought him here. But that doesn't make sense; we all drank from the same pot..."

"The assassin's flask," he interrupted Maynard, his expression dark and shifting. He tossed the object to the supervisor. "Two inner chambers. How did this get in?"

A silver flask with a floral clasp on the handle. Kraft remembered it—the feel of it in his hand, a small amount of liquid sloshing inside.

【The best wine has already been divided among us】

"Damn it! So close!" Kraft realized he had missed the chance to act—no matter how vivid his memory, it could not replace the moment he should have connected the thought when Professor Fernand said those words.

An event entangling human design with deep forces was slipping away silently—worse than the belladonna that had nearly killed him.

"If you've truly secured every possible exit, I think I can help you identify at least one accomplice."

"No need," Martin refused Kraft's help, glaring at the supervisor with a predatory stare. The voluminous banquet attire on his frame even overshadowed the gleaming armored man. "I just came from the kitchen—he locked himself in the storage room after returning."

"You caught him?"

"He vanished—just like here."