Chapter 270: Golden Iris

The light leaking from the window gradually dimmed; the ghost was gone.

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe lit his lantern to illuminate the outer wall of Zhong Lou; the ancient eaves were crumbling, dripping murky mudwater, but the falling droplets vanished soundlessly the moment they left the lantern's glow, never reaching the ground.

Starting from the balcony, Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe slowly walked with Bai Zhi's hand in his, their backs pressed against the crumbling outer wall of Zhong Lou, windows passing overhead; when they reached the fourth window, Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe stopped.

"Why stop?" Bai Zhi looked up at the window above, her voice soft as she noted the walnut-colored wooden frame carved with golden irises: "Is this it?"

"This is it." Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe slowly rose, gripping the windowsill: "The golden iris is the family crest of the Freymistret family; behind this window is the lord's private library."

Vanessa Castle was originally designed as a war fortress—to guard the strategic pass between the Yapingningbandao and the European mainland, to defend against political assassinations by other nobles, and in earlier medieval times, the Freymistret family was tasked with suppressing peasant uprisings across the Yapingningbandao for the imperial court.

Because of this history, Duke Vanessa designed this castle with extreme emphasis on security: the lord's bedroom was buried deep within the stone walls, with no windows connecting to the outside, not even a single door leading directly inside; the only entrance was hidden somewhere within the library, a nested structure—a safe within a safe.

—This was something Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe only learned later.

And now, he also knew what Gai Zha had been searching for in the library back then.

"When we parted, Gai Zha's plan was to first lift me up the vertical shaft to the second floor, then find another route to reach the second floor himself, and somehow break into the lord's bedroom to find the Vanessa Castle blueprints."

To enter the lord's bedroom, one had to pass through the library.

"So Gai Zha had been searching the library for a hidden door to the lord's bedroom—but hadn't found it yet when I 'summoned' and took control of his body."

At the time, Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe had mindlessly summoned himself into Gai Zha's body, completely unaware of the situation, not knowing what he was looking for in the library, and died cluelessly at the hands of the ghost wandering the room with a candle—game over, wasted a life.

Fortunately, after all this circling, he had returned to the library—only this time, he was outside the window instead of inside.

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe calculated the time: from the vertical shaft to the second floor, burning the banquet hall, then walking along the eaves to this spot—he'd spent roughly half an hour to forty minutes total.

Gai Zha couldn't operate the vertical shaft's mechanism alone; he either had to take the grand corridor or find another longer route. Either way, he couldn't possibly reach the library before Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe, who took the shortcut. Worse still, after Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe burned the banquet hall, the 'things' wandering the second-floor corridors had been stirred—ascending now would be even more dangerous than when Bai Zhi came up.

"Alright… then we wait here for Gai Zha to climb to the second floor and enter the library…" Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe slowly leaned out over the windowsill, carefully observing the interior of the library.

The next moment, his pupils contracted sharply; his heart skipped a beat.

"What is it?" Bai Zhi noticed his emotional shift, concerned: "Did you see something?"

Bai Zhi stood on tiptoe on the eave, holding the oil lamp, cautiously peering half her head over the edge beside Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe. Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe raised a finger to her lips: "Shh…"

Don't make a sound.

Bai Zhi obediently fell silent, following Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe's gaze: a middle-aged man of average build stood before the library door, carefully turning the metal handle.

The man had short, russet hair unique to the Celtic lineage; between the bookshelves behind him, a candle flickered, and a decayed corpse—missing its lower half—crawled slowly forward, holding the candlestick; the orange glow spread the stench of rotting wood. Click…

The door opened—but not by the red-haired man.

The heavy door before him grew damp; its copper corners were coated in verdigris; a gaunt ghostly hand slipped slowly through the crack, and with it came the deadly light.

The ghost outside slowly pushed open the library's main door; the red-haired man released his grip and retreated quietly along the moving door, hiding himself in the triangular space between the door and the corner.

The corpse holding the brass oil lamp had only its upper half; its severed torso was rotten and decayed, emitting the stench of death.

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe stared at the ghost standing at the library door, his finger still pressed to Bai Zhi's lips—now frozen. He knew who the red-haired man was.

That was Gai Zha.

Or rather—

"... That's me." Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe whispered silently, watching his own impending death.

What's going on? Why did Gai Zha arrive at the library before him, even though he took a longer route and came up later? Why did they nearly arrive at the same time?

Drip—

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A drop of rain fell from the eave.

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe silently watched the ghost with the oil lamp slowly climb up the doorframe until it reached the top; Bai Zhi blinked, curious, whispering softly: "What's wrong? Did you notice something?"

"Time," Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe murmured. "The flow of time on the second floor of Zhong Lou differs from the first."

When he moved through the castle as Xīn Xīyà, Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe subjectively felt over four hours had passed; after Xīn Xīyà's death, he awoke on Fan Daike's airship and asked Xia Xia Yubing, who told him he'd slept about three to four hours.

When he was inside the library as Gai Zha, Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe had sketched a rough map, searched everywhere for what the body's owner was looking for, and dodged the candle-wielding ghosts—he felt he'd spent twenty to thirty minutes there, yet when he awoke, only less than three minutes had passed in reality; Xia Xia Yubing had just taken off his pants.

This time discrepancy was caused by the objective condition: time flowed at different speeds in different areas of the castle.

"Inside Vanessa Castle, the higher the elevation, the lower the temperature."

"Similarly, the higher the elevation, the slower the relative flow of time in that zone."

Temperature, elevation, and time flow rate—these three appear to be mutually proportional conditions.

This also explains why he, despite leaving first and taking the shortcut, still nearly arrived at the library at the same time as Gai Zha: from the moment he reached the second floor, the relative time between him and Gai Zha had already slowed.

(End of chapter)