Chapter 247: Long Dress, Book, and Painting

This banquet had none of Xia De's acquaintances, so he didn't linger, and walked straight into the restaurant that had originally been on the second floor, glass in hand.

This was the larger of the auction halls for tonight's charity auction. Ten items made up one session, with a fifteen-minute break between sessions, and right now it happened to be the break after a session had ended. The moment Xia De stepped through the door, a middle-aged woman in a female clerk's uniform came up to greet him:

"You are Mr. Hamilton, here on behalf of Miss Jia Lin Na to attend the next session of the auction?"

She asked softly. Xia De nodded, knowing that the ordinary person before him had also been arranged here in advance by Miss Jia Lin Na. The duchess was worried that since Xia De had never attended an auction like this before, something might go wrong.

The auction procedure was very simple: guests reserved a session in advance, and upon arriving at the restaurant on time, they would receive a wooden number paddle. Once the auction began, the paddle could be used to place bids. Before the auction started, there was time to view the ten items in that session.

"That person..."

As Xia De took the number paddle from the woman's hand, she said softly.

"At your three o'clock, black formal wear, gold buttons, small mustache, wearing a black top hat."

She lowered her voice, confirmed no one was nearby, and reminded him softly:

"The ring is on his finger."

Xia De nodded, then naturally parted ways with the woman. He looked down at his number paddle—the thing had even been lacquered, looking like a tool borrowed from the auction house.

At three o'clock, the man standing before the wall looking at an oil painting was tonight's target. Real name Steve Event, true identity a cultist who worshipped the 【Lord of the Blood Feast】. During the transfer of the 【Ring of Transformation】 by the Church of Peace, it was accidentally stolen, and the one who stole the ring was naturally the undercover the church had planted among the cultists.

The ring itself had not stayed in the hands of that estimable Mr. Undercover, but was being prepared by the cultists to be returned to 【Quicksilver Blood】. Returning such an important relic naturally could not happen in a dangerous occasion like today, so the ring was kept by the sect's Ring Sorcerer—that being Steve Event.

He was actually a woman, and had been wanted for years by the Zhengshen Sect. Using the ring's power to transform into a man was the only way to appear in public.

But the witches bearing the curse had a sensitivity to gender beyond all expectation. Miss Jia Lin Na very easily determined whose hand the ring was in. According to her:

"When a man uses the ring to become a woman, it still gives me a very strong sense of disgust. And when a woman uses the ring to become a man, that sense of disgust still exists. The former is like seeing a rotting corpse, the latter like seeing rotting excrement. The disguise of the 【Ring of Transformation】 is useless against me."

And so it was not that Miss Jia Lin Na could steal intelligence from inside the cult—it was purely that the use of the 【Ring of Transformation】 let her know who the target was.

Xia De looked around, then took his number paddle and went to the floor-to-ceiling windows of the banquet hall to observe the next session's auction items. His real intention, however, was to approach Steve Event.

Of course, Xia De would not rashly strike up conversation with a stranger. Seeing the target standing beside the third auction item, he first walked over to the first auction item and pretended to examine it.

The first item in the next session was a dark red long dress hung on a wooden rack. Although the dress itself was very pretty, and those jeweled buttons and decorations were tempting, the garment was older than Xia De's current body. This was a formal long dress worn by the queen of the generation before last; she had once worn this dress to attend the banquet on April 3, 1819 of the Common Era alongside the then-King of Delarion, and the king's speech at that banquet was considered the opening of the thirty-year full-scale war between the two great human kingdoms of the Old Continent.

The historical value of this dress was probably something, but Xia De couldn't figure out how a starting price of 80 pounds had been arrived at.

Just as a noblewoman also came to look at the dress, he turned to view the second auction item.

The second auction item was a handwritten old book, placed in a glass cabinet by the window. The title was written on the cover in cursive letters: "Complete Collection of Ancient Fairy Tales of Delarion," but because of its age, no matter how carefully preserved, the ink had already faded considerably.

From the brief introduction posted on the glass cabinet, this book was already sixty years old, and had been a childhood reading of Duke Maihar Mo Posang, who lived half a century ago. For people in 1863, it was an old book in quite good condition.

At that time the Mo Posang family still held the ducal title, and so had ample wealth; the scribe of the manuscript was a famous writer of that era, who had left behind the essay collection "Summer Nights Collection," which was still very famous even in the present day. Miss Lu Yi Sha's award-winning work "A Midsummer Night's Wish" was said to have drawn its inspiration from this very essay collection.

"Starting price 30 pounds, I knew every item in this auction would be bid up above estimate."

Xia De said this deliberately, his voice neither too loud nor too soft, but ensuring Mr. Event standing nearby could hear.

After finishing looking at the old book, he then looked at the third auction item. It was an oil painting hung on the wall, the colors of the oil paint so gaudy as to be irritating. The painting was called "Harvest Fields," depicting autumn rice paddies in gold, yellow, and red.

The painter had invested considerable emotion into the work, so much so that Xia De took one look at the painting and immediately felt a creeping sense of dread from those wild colors, yet could not say where this feeling came from.

"This must be the charm of art."

Xia De said aloud, glancing to the side. Mr. Event was staring intently at the painting and said nothing, so Xia De looked again at the placard marked with the starting price:

"Tsk tsk, 160 pounds."

"Strictly speaking, that price is not actually high."

The middle-aged "man" finally spoke. He squinted at the painting on the wall, his expression somewhat enraptured:

"An artist's thoughts can be conveyed through their work, and the painter of this piece has perfectly expressed his own anxiety, unease, and panic using warm tones rather than cold ones—this is absolutely a breakthrough. Although this painting only fetched 174 pounds at the Beaufort auction house five years ago, its own artistic value is far higher than those so-called Chouxiang Sect paintings. (Note)"

Fortunately, everyone present was a rich person who didn't really understand art; if words like these were spoken at an art academy or a gallery, it would have caused an uproar long ago.

"In that case, sir, you have a deep understanding of oil painting?"

Xia De asked, seizing the moment. Event nodded, still looking at the oil painting, but had now struck up conversation with Xia De:

"I am not from Delarion. In my homeland, I actually work in the collection and preservation of art."

This line of work in this world seemed to easily breed lunatics and cultists and other mentally abnormal people—an alternative "high-risk occupation."