Chapter 468

Gazing at the corridor where only a faint crimson moonlight filtered in from the left and right, Franca merged into the shadows and crept toward the stairwell.

She even suspected that perhaps Charles hadn't found her and had simply requested the help of Ms. "Magician," who had directly teleported Gardner Martin away from a distance; otherwise, how could he have suddenly vanished without her noticing a thing?

On the third floor of the gray-white villa, there was not a single sound. Franca listened carefully for a while, and a feeling welled up that she was the only person left in the entire building; the butler, manservants, maids, gardeners, and cooks all seemed to have evaporated into thin air.

She cautiously arrived in front of the valet's room directly facing the stairwell, extended her right palm, and silently turned the handle.

Relying on "Dark Vision," Franca saw at a glance that two people were lying on the bed, embracing each other, covered by the same thin quilt.

Almost simultaneously, Franca's pupils suddenly dilated.

Both of those people had no heads; their necks were in a state of cuddling, and the severed ends were covered in blood!

In this instant, Franca was first startled, then immediately recalled Charles's description of Olsen, the "Supervisor" of the "Iron and Blood Cross Order," and suspected that Gardner's valet and his lover had also experienced a similar situation—their heads had "come alive" and left their bodies on their own.

She did not carefully examine the man and woman, closed the door with an inaudible sound, and merged into the thick shadows of the stairwell.

She wanted to see if the others in this building had also encountered a similar fate.

Just as she descended to the first-floor hall, Franca's gaze suddenly froze:

The suits of armor and pieces of weaponry that had originally been placed here were all gone!

A major anomaly really has occurred... Damn it, how did I not feel a thing? Franca had originally been quite confident in her abilities, experience, and reactions, but at this moment, she couldn't help but feel a bit shaken.

The next second, she saw the door to the first-floor washroom open, and a maid wearing an old nightgown walked out.

The maid shook the water from her hands and walked slowly back toward the servants' quarters, her head position empty and bare, leaving only a neck stained with bright red blood.

Franca, hiding in the shadows, cast her gaze toward the window again; the two guards patrolling past had also lost their heads, and their shadows reflected on the glass looked like elongated and magnified beer bottles.

Having roughly confirmed the situation at 11 Spring Street, Franca no longer hesitated and quickly crept out of the villa.

She intended to report to Ms. "Judgment" immediately and then use that statue of the "Primordial Witch" to inform Blanche Solon and the "Black Witch" Clarice of the anomaly here.

The latter had to perform a ritual, and Franca was worried that attempting it within this bizarre building would trigger unnecessary changes and bring unpredictable dangers, so she decided to leave the abnormal environment before taking corresponding measures.

In the dark night, inside the empty house, this "Witch of Pleasure" hid in the shadows, exited the building from the side, and circled toward the front lawn.

…………

Beneath Trier, "Flame" Danitz blasted open the stone door with a punch.

Behind it was a very small mine tunnel, with three extinguished classical oil lamps—one high and two low—embedded in the stone wall.

Near the middle of the mine tunnel, stairs leading downward had been dug; in the glow of the firelight, the bottom was dark, as if it had no end.

Danitz withdrew his fist, turned his body to the side, and signaled the nearly twenty sailors following him to enter the mine tunnel and work in cooperation.

Inside, there were "Hunters" responsible for observing the environment and finding hidden traps and inconspicuous traces; "Seers" using coin flips and spinning crystal pendants to confirm the direction of pursuit and the level of danger; and mid-sequence "Sailors" waiting to support teammates and handle accidents...

Under such coordination, Danitz's team quickly passed through the stairs and tunnels, and the view before them suddenly opened up.

They immediately saw a quarry cavity chiseled with multiple depressions, with straw mats, rags, pottery jars, and other items scattered on the ground.

Danitz scanned the area and laughed in a low voice:

"It's been turned into a hidden troop cave..."

"Not long ago, there were dozens of rebels living here."

His gaze turned toward the end of this quarry cavity, where there was a spacious tunnel, leading to who knows where.

A sailor standing next to Danitz clicked his tongue and said:

"There should be quite a few similar hidden troop caves nearby; are the main forces of the rebels led by the Carbonari all over here?"

"I'm not blind, I can see that!" "Flame" Danitz cursed, "The problem now is, where did they go? Is the riot about to start?"

…………

Market District, Golden Rooster Hotel, Room 305.

When the earthquake occurred just now, Anthony Reid had woken up.

After the escape that night, he was sensitive to all kinds of movements, just not as fearful as hearing gunfire.

Thinking of the previous discussions and the intelligence that signaled danger, he couldn't fall back asleep quickly.

Anthony Reid rolled out of bed, poured a glass of light beer, gulped it down, and eased the restlessness in his mouth and heart.

After using "Pacify" on himself once, he intended to force himself to sleep for a while longer.

At this moment, he heard a thumping sound at the hotel entrance.

Who is coming back in the middle of the night? It feels a bit urgent... Anthony Reid listened for a while, always feeling that some problem was brewing in the dark.

Not long after, there were footsteps coming up, all the way to his door.

Anthony Reid immediately opened the door and looked into the dim corridor.

He saw a middle-aged man wearing gray-blue worker overalls, a flat cap, and a face full of impatience.

This was an informant he had developed at the docks.

"What happened?" Anthony Reid asked with a steady attitude and a soft voice.

The informant, having been pacified, was no longer urgent or nervous; he cautiously looked left and right and said in a lowered voice:

"There will be a major strike at the docks tomorrow, and it's said that weapons will also be distributed."

"Distributing weapons..." In Anthony Reid's mind, items representing the chaos in Trier—"barricades," "Molotov cocktails," "smoke grenades," "rifles," and "two-wheeled carts"—instantly appeared.

In Trier, because the citizens had a strong spirit of resistance and were adept at parades and fighting, similar things were not too strange; they would happen once every two or three years, sometimes even two or three times a year, with the only difference being the scale. But at a critical time when a terrifying disaster was about to arrive, a major strike with such weapon distribution suddenly occurring made Anthony Reid unable to help but think of the possibility that this was premeditated and a part of the disaster.

This intelligence broker took out a gold louis and said to the informant:

"Your intelligence is very important."

"Find an excuse not to go to the docks tomorrow and hide at home."

The informant instinctively bit the shiny gold louis, happily bid farewell to Anthony Reid, and left the Golden Rooster Hotel.

Anthony did not delay time, quickly descended to the second floor, and arrived in front of Lu Mian's room.

He knocked on the wooden door of 207 with moderate force, but as the sound echoed, there was not a single movement inside, dead silent as if it had long been uninhabited.

Anthony Reid stopped his actions and frowned slightly.

…………

In the world within the painting, the sun to the west shone on Sijie, and the sky was still bright.

Lu Mian and Jenna passed by one broken gas street lamp after another, sprinting toward Market Avenue.

They didn't know when "Room 7," where the Voisin Sanson family lived, would discover that the two had teleported here, so they had to reach the black hole representing the Breeze Dance Hall before the other party could lock onto them again.

That way, even if other plans failed or there wasn't enough time to complete them, they still had a final choice—enter that black hole, try their luck, and see where they would appear.

*Thump, thump, thump*, after Lu Mian ran for a distance and saw Market Avenue in sight, he immediately grabbed Jenna's shoulders, letting crimson flames emerge from his body, covering both of them and evolving into a huge fireball.

The fireball shot forward with extreme speed.

Lu Mian forcibly carried Jenna, crossed a distance of seven or eight meters, and flew toward the intersection of Sijie and Market Avenue.

During this process, Jenna was not like Lu Mian, who was almost unaffected by the flames; her hair and skin felt the burning pain, but she did not struggle violently, only curled her body, creating frost to resist the crimson flow of fire and alleviate the pain.

In the blink of an eye, the two landed on the edge of Market Avenue.

Here, one could look out from afar at the area where the "Breeze Dance Hall" was located, and look at that patch of deep black darkness.

This allowed Lu Mian to no longer need to seek coordinates and could directly lock onto the destination.

What you see is what you get!

The black mark on his right shoulder lit up with a ghostly glow once again.

"Spirit World Traversal"!

Lu Mian and Jenna's figures flashed and appeared beside that deep blackness.

Just at this moment, a crystal-like wall protruded before the two.

It extended upward, shrouding the entire area where the Breeze Dance Hall was located, shaped like a transparent pot lid.

Lu Mian and Jenna subconsciously looked up and saw two figures in mid-air:

One was a young woman wearing a blue beret, wearing a tucked-in white shirt and dark trousers, with an open beige vest, covered in paint, with short orange hair and yellow eyes that were both deep and ethereal, as if hiding a world;

The other was a man in his thirties, with clothes similar to the woman, but wearing a pair of red trousers on his lower body, with soft facial lines, lighter eyebrows, and blue eyes that were equally detached and drifting.

He was also holding a thick paintbrush and a palette with more than half the paint used.

Behind both of these people was a pair of transparent, wing-like membranes resembling dragonfly wings, flapping gently, helping them hover in the air.

"Painter"? Those "Fairies"? Lu Mian and Jenna instantly had a guess.

The man looked at Lu Mian, revealed a surprised expression, and said in a voice that seemed to come from afar:

"Welcome back to the 'Inn,' Room 1."

Room 1... Lu Mian's gaze suddenly froze.

Room 1? Jenna, in her shock, couldn't help but turn her head to look at her companion beside her.

(End of chapter)