Chapter 224: Flyer

*Dang! Dang! Dang! *

At six o'clock, Lu Mian turned over and sat up, pulling open the curtains.

Soft light shone into the room, making the environment that had been dead silent all night become vivid again.

Lu Mian rubbed his face, washed up simply, and solved his personal problems.

He changed into a set of clothes, went down all the way, left the Golden Rooster Hotel, detoured to White Coat Street, and entered the safe house he had rented.

Lu Mian then flipped through Aurora's witchcraft notes, hoping to discover problems he hadn't noticed before after having new information.

The things recorded in Aurora's witchcraft notes are mainly divided into three types:

First, common occult knowledge, including the names of all pathways, the situation of some sequences, the basics of ritual magic, the role of symbolic elements, the pronunciation and meaning of several supernatural languages, etc.;

Second, specific applications of occult knowledge and her own abilities. This has a lot of thinking, many spells recorded or bought, and precautions against curses, etc.;

Third, fragmented, unsystematic, and relatively strange knowledge and anecdotes. Some of these come from the indoctrination of the "Hidden Sage," and some originate from exchanges between internal members of the "Curly-Haired Baboons Research Society."

These three types of content aren't classified and recorded in different notebooks but exist in an interlaced manner according to the order in which Aurora obtained them, in chronological order.

For Lu Mian, the most difficult is the second type. Spells like "Illumination," "Weeding," "Exorcism," "Soul Summoning," "Lightning," "Wind Creation," "Hand of Force," etc., are all difficult to understand. After all, he currently hasn't fully mastered all basic occult knowledge and lacks the support of supernatural abilities to cast spells.

By comparison, for the content related to ritual magic, after becoming a "Tonsured Monk," he found it much easier to understand, learn, and master.

Lu Mian also noticed that his sister didn't write the "Law of Conservation of Beyonder Characteristics" and other underlying rules into the notes.

However, this is also very normal. The number of similar laws is small, easy to remember, and difficult to forget, so there's no need to record them additionally.

After flipping through for nearly a whole morning, Lu Mian didn't find anything worth suspecting, but instead accumulated a pile of questions that needed to be asked to others.

He exhaled slowly, folded the few pages of paper recording the difficulties, stuffed them into his pocket, and left this safe house.

On the way to Market Avenue, Lu Mian saw several polling stations. Police in uniform and heavily armed gendarmes tried their best to maintain order, letting people standing in long lines put their ballots into wooden boxes one by one.

Although he had obtained a new identity certificate from Gardner Martin, transformed into Charles Dubois who had lived in the Market District for nearly two years, and possessed the right to vote, Lu Mian didn't register at all and didn't want to get involved in the parliamentary election.

After walking for a distance, a newsboy ran over and threw a stack of white paper he was holding into mid-air with a *swish*.

Lu Mian saw many pedestrians pick up those white papers and read them very seriously, and he also bent down to pick up a copy that was right beside his feet.

On that white paper were printed several rows of Intis text, with simple grammar and easy to understand:

"Hugues Artois is a traitor!

"In the war against the Loen Kingdom a few years ago, he abandoned his troops and fled, making many people's fathers, brothers, younger brothers, husbands, and sons never return!

"His participation in the parliamentary election received secret support from the Loen Kingdom!"

After reading it, Lu Mian couldn't help but say "Yo."

He remembered that on Hugues Artois's promotional poster, his military service experience was emphasized. He had grown to a major before leaving the army and entering politics, starting from being a parliamentary assistant secretary.

"Is this a candidate starting their final effort because the vote count result yesterday wasn't ideal?" While Lu Mian was thinking, several men suspected of being gang thugs came over, confiscating the flyers in the pedestrians' hands, using both beatings and scolding, while the police nearby seemed not to have seen it.

Lu Mian raised his head and glanced, recognizing one of them:

That was a member of the Poison Sting Gang who had been to the Golden Rooster Hotel with Margot and Wilson before.

"Bastard, is this something you can look at?"

"You leper, give me the thing in your hand!

"Son of a bitch, do you want me to do it?"

Those few members of the Poison Sting Gang came all the way to Lu Mian. They were about to snatch the flyer like just now, when they suddenly saw that short hair that was gold mixed with black.

Lu Mian showed a smile.

Charles! Those few Poison Sting Gang members turned their bodies reflexively, trying to run away wildly.

Lu Mian kicked the buttocks of one of the gang thugs, kicking him so he lost his balance and fell forward to the ground.

"Why, don't you recognize your grandfather anymore?" He cursed, watching the fallen Poison Sting Gang member crawl away in an extremely embarrassed manner, without chasing.

Lu Mian threw away the flyer in his hand and walked back to the Breeze Dance Hall like a stroll.

As soon as he entered, Louis brought Sakota over and said:

"Boss, Charlie resigned from the waiter job last night and only wanted one week's salary."

"I know." Lu Mian responded calmly.

Louis still remembered the night before last when the boss took Charlie away and came back to find him, and Charlie resigned and left soon after. This made him feel that there must be some secrets hidden in this, but he didn't dare to ask.

Lu Mian glanced at Louis, walked toward the second-floor cafe, and asked casually:

"How old are you this year?"

"27." Louis didn't understand why the boss cared about this.

Lu Mian didn't think much and asked as soon as he thought of it:

"Are you married? Do you have children?"

"Not yet." Louis smiled with slight embarrassment. "I plan to wait until I'm a bit more mature before getting married."

He felt that although he had gotten rid of the fate of a bottom-level gang thug and became the bodyguard of a leader, not having to worry about being beaten to death on the street at any time, such a life was still dangerous.

He didn't want to just get married and have children, only to benefit other men.

Lu Mian nodded:

"You should consider your future more. Another Louis I know already has several children."

Louis brushed it off, feeling that the boss had no topic today but was chatting forcibly, as if to prove something.

…………

Fors didn't have lunch with Gardner Martin and returned to 3 White Coat Street before 12 o'clock.

She saw the door of the guest bedroom tightly closed, felt slightly confused, twisted the handle, and pushed it open.

Jenna was wearing pajamas and pajama pants, hugging the quilt, sleeping soundly on her side.

Noticing the movement, she rubbed her eyes, sat up slowly, and looked at the door.

"Still sleeping?" Fors asked with a smile.

Not having to go to the Old Pigeon Cage to learn acting recently, so you're indulging yourself?

Jenna gathered her brownish-yellow hair and muttered:

"It's all Charles's fault, tossing until midnight."

"..." Fors's smile stiffened on her face.

Jenna continued:

"I don't know what happened to him last night. His mood and state weren't right. I was afraid he would have an accident, so I kept following him. I waited until he entered the Golden Rooster Hotel and slept on the bed before I came back to rest."

Fors breathed a sigh of relief and said with concern:

"Tell me specifically."

Jenna started from when she finished singing and came out of the Breeze Dance Hall, saw Lu Mian sitting on the roadside getting rained on, until he used a "method" others couldn't imagine to help Gabriel win the opportunity to sign the script contract, and finally said:

"Damn it, it was almost three o'clock at that time, and he was only willing to return to the room to sleep. I was exhausted!"

Fors listened quietly and said with some worry:

"His state is quite rare..."

Speaking of this, Fors stopped suddenly.

She remembered that Lu Mian was still receiving treatment from a psychiatrist regularly. That state might be his truest appearance.

"He should have been stimulated by something last night. I'll go find him later to ask." After saying Lu Mian was a relative, Fors no longer hid the fact that she had a relatively close relationship with Lu Mian in front of Jenna.

Jenna nodded:

"Be careful when you speak, don't stimulate him."

…………

Breeze Dance Hall second floor, in Lu Mian's office.

He saw Fors, who had come over "invisibly."

"I heard from Jenna that something happened to you last night?" Fors, wearing a white lady's shirt and black trousers, asked bluntly. "Did you see that Madame Pualis?"

During lunch with Jenna, she had roughly guessed what might have stimulated Lu Mian and caused his mental illness to explode.

Hearing Fors's question, Lu Mian seemed to have lost all his strength, and his whole body slumped on the swivel chair.

After ten seconds, he exhaled and said:

"Yeah, I learned some truth. It's hard to accept, but I have to accept it."

Seeing that he wasn't willing to explain in detail, Fors didn't ask further and nodded gently:

"Is there anything you need my help with?"

Lu Mian sat up straight and said without politeness:

"Two things. One is that I have many occult difficulties to ask you about; the second is the Poison Sting Gang problem.

"I told you before that after the election ends and Hugues Artois becomes a member of parliament, 'Black Scorpion' Luo Jie and the others will obtain new gifts. By then, we will all be in danger. Should we raid 126 Market Avenue tonight before the election results come out to eliminate the hidden danger?"

Fors thought for a while and said:

"According to your description, the 'Warlock' has a very strong home-field advantage. Even if we use our trump cards, we can only say there's a certain hope of finishing off 'Black Scorpion' Luo Jie and the others. This is still assuming there's nothing else in his house.

"But if we don't act now, they will be even harder to deal with after obtaining the new round of gifts..."

She hesitated, unable to make up her mind for a while.

…………

126 Market Avenue, inside that three-story building with a garden.

"Black Scorpion" Luo Jie looked at his subordinate who went to inquire at the Market District Parliamentary Election Committee and asked with anticipation:

"How is the situation?"

The subordinate said excitedly:

"Mr. Hugues Artois is leading by a large margin!"

"Black Scorpion" Luo Jie showed a smile. After the subordinate left, he turned his head and said to "Bald" Harman and "Dwarf Candlestick" Castina:

"Be patient, just be patient until tomorrow night.

"Within these 24 hours, no matter what happens, you cannot leave here!"

Is that so? If there's a fire, explosion, or earthquake, we have to wait here to die? Lu Mian criticized inwardly, and then turned his head to "Bald" Harman and "Dwarf Candlestick" Castina:

"Then, after we obtain the gifts, we don't have to endure it anymore. That bastard Charles must die!"

ps: The previous chapter used an allusion. Two writers in Paris sneaked into a theater manager's house, tied him up, and made him listen to their play. The manager decided to take on the play after hearing the third line of dialogue. The manager's reaction purely respects reality.

In addition, I am very satisfied with what I wrote in the previous chapter. The state of repression, confusion, emptiness, wanting to explode but having nowhere to exert force, doing whatever comes to mind, and doing whatever others do was fully presented.

Also, Lu Mian's personality is very different from Klein's. He is a person on the edge of darkness. He will have many bad and boundary-crossing behaviors. Sometimes he will do good things, but many times he is very cold. You can dislike this person, but it's boring to use this to accuse him.

I was originally coding, but my state was affected and I couldn't finish writing. Just right, I'll take half a day off tomorrow and resume updating at seven tomorrow night, haha.