Chapter 171: Eyeball

Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha, head lowered, was reading through the documents by the faint light in her hand and seemed entirely unaware of the situation behind her, while behind the man with the short knife, the figure of Doctor Shi Nai De, who should have already left the room, appeared:

"Is it because we came too quickly? You're far too easy to fool."

The rumbling thunder finally crashed at this moment.

In the study, which had returned to darkness after the lightning, Doctor Shi Nai De seized the knife-wielder's wrist, and Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha, who had been looking down a moment ago, spun around sharply and drove a flaming fist into the attacker's abdomen, just as she had struck the fish-man that night when the relic had gone out of control.

A muffled thud, and sparks of flame flew. The stranger's left hand blocked Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha's right. Then, with an impossible motion, he leaped straight up from the spot, broke free of the doctor's grip, and clung to the ceiling like a gecko.

After a quick assessment of the situation, the figure had no intention of fighting the two of them. He swiftly left the pool of light cast by the gas desk lamp on the desk, then darted straight out of the study and plunged headfirst into the silver mist filling the corridor. This kind of narrow, confined terrain was perfect for Xia De's illusion arts.

Xia De was likewise standing in that silver mist, watching the figure that had darted in first scramble about for a while, then cautiously come to a halt. It was a medium-built man with yellow hair and an eyepatch over his left eye. Knife in his right hand, he stood in the silver mist, cautiously waiting for the illusion-artist's attack.

But Xia De knew his own limits well and had no desire whatsoever to fight a ring-mage whose level was certainly higher than his own in close quarters. Seeing the knife-wielder stop, he dispersed the silver mist, and Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha, who had long been ready, came charging in with a massive ring of fate floating behind her.

A glowing rope descended from above, looping toward the man's neck. But he merely slashed upward with his knife and somehow cut the rope clean through. And before Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha could make her next move, the man flicked his blade tip, letting the eyepatch over his left eye slide off.

Behind the eyepatch, a terrifying blue eyeball rolling wildly made Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha instinctively retreat backward, and she shouted in warning:

"Relic! Demon Eye!"

That eye seemed to spin out of control in its socket, the whites flaring up in great patches. Seeing Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha retreat with her eyes shut, the knife-wielder immediately turned his head to look at Xia De.

The completely unprepared Xia De met that gaze. His azure eyes were nothing like Doctor Shi Nai De's blue ones. The madness that leaked from that terrifying eye was like the frenzy of the last survivor on the eve of the world's destruction.

Lightning flashed outside the window once more. The white light illuminated the two who were staring at each other, and also let Xia De see clearly the middle-aged face of his opponent—that weathered look surely held many stories.

And Xia De, who was meeting the Demon Eye's gaze... felt absolutely nothing.

"What?"

The knife-wielder froze for a moment. It was precisely this small lapse that let Doctor Shi Nai De grab the back of his head from behind. The doctor's voice, amid the ambient sound of raindrops pattering against the window, was unusually gentle, and the palm pressed against the enemy's occiput glowed with a black light:

"Sleep."

The knife-wielder struggled to look at Xia De, his normal right eye repeatedly opening and closing, reminding the outlander of his classmates back home during math class. He finally did fall asleep, but when the doctor held him, that left eye remained open, the blue eyeball spinning wildly in its socket—the Demon Eye looked as though it had nothing at all to do with the body.

The rain masked the brief scuffle in the corridor. The doctor nimbly laid the man down on the corridor floor, pulled up his clothes to cover his face—mainly to hide that constantly moving Demon Eye.

Looking up at the two of them:

"Writer, detective, give me twenty minutes. I'll go take a look inside his dream."

When they went out on operations, the doctor had instructed them not to use each other's names.

"Does it need to take that long?"

Xia De asked, bending down to pick up the short knife from the man's hand. Much to his regret, although the short knife was finely crafted, it was only an ordinary weapon.

"He's a ring-mage, so of course it takes a bit longer. If smoke starts pouring off me, it means his ability to manipulate dreams is stronger than mine—remember to wake me up."

Saying so, the doctor pressed both hands against the covered head, and his whole body held the bent-over posture without moving at all, like a perfect wax figure.

Whatever Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha's take on the scene was, Xia De for his part found the sight extremely strange.

As for the killer not having left, Doctor Shi Nai De had inferred it after examining the windowsill and noticing the clue that part of the sill was somehow not wet, while Xia De had discovered fresh bloodstains after approaching the windowsill.

The knife-wielder might have heard them talking upstairs and learned that one of them could see bloodstains. But he certainly hadn't expected that even though his shoes had been tossed out the window and his knife rinsed in the rain, the blood traces from the killing that clung to his clothes—traces invisible to the naked eye—could still be seen.

One had to remember that Xia De could even pick up bloodstains from a hundred years ago, let alone fresh ones.

That was why, later on, Xia De rashly left the doorway and the doctor carelessly followed, leading to Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha being attacked. This wasn't the three of them working in perfect sync—it was that, as they walked, the doctor was simultaneously writing in the air with glowing fingers, roughly laying out this plan.

And the most crucial part of the plan was that Xia De, the weakest of them, wouldn't be taken out by a "gaze-kill." Looking at it now, their luck was quite good.

"If I'm not mistaken, this factory owner Mr. Ponton must have embezzled the money that 【Quicksilver Blood】 had entrusted to him, which is why he invited such a disaster upon himself tonight."

Seeing the doctor enter the dream smoothly, the now-relaxed Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha stood beside Xia De and said softly, her shoes making almost no sound at all on the floor.

The rain outside the window had lessened somewhat; the most dangerous part of the storm was over.

"I guessed the same thing—otherwise there's no explaining those expensive silver pieces and jewelry. And the fact that Mr. Ponton was checking the accounts right before he died is itself suspicious; presumably the killer forced him to take out the account books for verification. It's just that I didn't expect an ordinary person would dare to embezzle gold pounds from a ring-mage organization..."

Xia De let out a small sigh, then felt the matter wasn't really all that unbelievable:

"Greed always makes people act irrationally."

"That's a very true saying, which is exactly why ring-mages should be all the more cautious. Oh, Xia De, do you still have a water bottle on you? About this big."

Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha gestured again.

"Of course."

He handed the bottle over. The blonde Miss shook it, found it was full, and handed it back to Xia De:

"Take that eye out and put it in the bottle."

"What? Take it out?"

Xia De asked while looking down, then brought his right hand together, fingers aligned, and made an inelegant grabbing-downward motion:

"Like this?"

"Yes. Stick your fingers into the eye socket and pull the eyeball out."

Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha followed suit, bringing the fingers of her right hand together in a downward-grabbing motion, and patiently explained to Xia De:

"That eye is a Demon Eye, a special type of 【Relic】. From the look of it, the Demon Eye hasn't fully fused with his body, so I suspect it can be pulled out easily. The eye's effect doesn't seem to work on you, which is why I'm having you do it."

"Alright then."

Xia De crouched down amid the sound of raindrops tapping the glass, lifted the cloth covering the man's head, and once again saw the blue eyeball spinning wildly in the man's left socket.

In his pursuit of learning the arcane arts, he had done more than one incredible thing in this world, so although a mental barrier still lingered, he reached out, inserted his fingers into the left eye socket, and "pulled" the left eye out. The motion was even simpler than turning the gas lamp at home.

The eyeball was extremely slick. After taking it out, Xia De immediately dropped it into the bottle. Once the blue Demon Eye hit the water, it kept spinning at high speed, but within barely a dozen seconds it went still. The pupil in the eyeball lost its luster, as though it had "died."

"An eye can be a relic too?"

He finally asked, standing up, stuffing the stopper in, and handing the bottle to Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha. She shook the bottle hard, and only after seeing that the eye inside really wasn't moving at all did she relax, then handed the bottle back to Xia De to hold for now.

"If fish scales can be relics, why can't an eye?"

Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha countered, then smiled:

"Speaking of which, since I've promised to be your teacher, I naturally have to take responsibility. Let me tell you now about Demon Eyes. First, the danger rating for all Demon Eyes is at minimum Secret-Keeper class (Level 3), because a Demon Eye must be implanted into a human body, which makes it extremely prone to losing control. Although I don't know what this particular eyeball does, it's probably Secret-Keeper class—the doctor should be able to get the details out of him in a bit."

"This is a Secret-Keeper class relic?"

Xia De had not forgotten how valuable the previous Keeper-level artifact he had touched, the 【Yin Corpse Bone】, had been.

"Artifacts of the Demon Eye type are rare; they can be directly transplanted onto a Ring Ringed Ringed Shushi, nearly directly enhancing the Ring Ringed Ringed Shushi. Most Demon Eyes have severe side effects, but correspondingly, they are all very powerful. However, transplanting a Demon Eye is not like swapping parts on a universal steam engine, where you can just plug and unplug at will; this requires complex and precise surgery."

Xia De looked at the man lying down:

"I think the one who performed the surgery on him was certainly no good doctor."

Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha shook her head. Although she was speaking to Xia De, her eyes constantly watched both ends of the corridor and the corpse lying prone in the room, preventing other accidents from occurring:

"A Demon Eye is not something anyone can use; there is also the concept of compatibility among them. A few years ago, the Sesexis High Medical College, one of the three Great Thaumaturgy Academies, published several excellent papers discussing the relationship between Demon Eye compatibility and Ring Mages. This man, I fear, had low compatibility with this eye; forcing its use caused the eye itself to act as if it were out of the body's control."

The blonde Miss very unladylike lifted her leg and kicked the man lying down. Of course, the force was light, to avoid disturbing the doctor who had entered the dream:

"Once the doctor extracts enough information, we will kill him right here. This kind of person is truly terrible..."

Xia De understood her thoughts and fully supported such a course of action. He sniffed the dampness in the air, then raised his eyes to look out the corridor window; the rainy night had no pedestrians:

"Of course, those who kill must be prepared to be killed. We cannot manage the economic disputes between the Blood of Mercury and the Panton family, but the maid killed downstairs was ultimately innocent."