Chapter 2505

Xia De had not failed to investigate the third-floor broom closet the waiter mentioned after turning into a cat that morning, but there had been no results. After finishing his lunch at noon, he returned to the hallway in his cat form and, taking advantage of the fact that no one was around, opened the locked broom closet and hid inside.

Brooms, mops, buckets, gloves, cabinets, trash cans—there was nothing particularly noteworthy in the slightly cramped broom closet. Standing inside, Xia De closed his eyes and sensed carefully, but found no traces of abnormal elements.

Darkvision helped him see every corner of the place; he even checked every scratch on the walls, yet still found no strange traces:

"Echo of Blood."

His eyes blinked; there were some bloodstains on the rag kept in the cabinet, but it looked like something the cleaner had accidentally gotten on it.

"Echo of the Past."

The first echo was of guests in the hallway discussing a symphony called "Sonata in the Woods."

The second echo was of the cleaner who had opened the broom closet, complaining in a low voice about cleaning up a drunkard's vomit on the first floor just now.

The third echo was—

"Apples, apples, fresh apples! Who wants fresh apples!"

"Hmm?"

Xia De, who had closed his eyes to sharpen his hearing, opened them abruptly. The third echo was clearly the hawking of a street vendor, and the accent was definitely from the Vista region.

The sound was incredibly clear, not like it was coming from the street through half a hallway and a window. And the direction the sound came from was clearly the cabinet inside the broom closet.

The wooden cabinet looked very old, and it tilted to the right as a whole. Xia De guessed that it was broken furniture from a guest room that had been put here for reuse.

The upper layer of the cabinet had glass windows, inside which were tools like gloves and brushes that the cleaner would use. The lower layer was a double-door solid wood panel; Xia De had checked it just now, and it was empty inside.

The source of the hawking was the lower layer of the cabinet, but when Xia De opened it again, there was still nothing inside.

Xia De hadn't noticed it just now, but now that he suspected there was a problem here, he thought of the contradiction:

"Why are there no spiderwebs here?"

There were spiderwebs in the corners of the broom closet; the upper glass cabinet probably didn't have any because it was frequently opened and used. But since the lower cabinet didn't store anything, there was no reason for there to be no spiderwebs.

And when Xia De wiped the bottom board of the lower layer of the cabinet with his hand, all he wiped up was a thin layer of dust:

"This place has been cleaned, within at most a week."

But other than that, Xia De saw no other traces nearby, so the current situation was that he knew the lower layer of this seemingly normal cabinet was problematic, and the door to the lower layer had already opened for him:

"So, should I crawl in, close the door, and try it from inside?"

This seemed to be the only thing he could do now, but given that even Miss Danister had gone missing, Xia De wouldn't be foolish enough to take risks casually.

However, considering that it seemed troublesome to go home now to inform Luweiya or Dorothea about what he was doing and then come back, Xia De fished the flute toy out of his pocket.

After casting a silence spell, he blew the flute. The fluttering red butterfly shadows immediately lit up the broom closet, and Helen and Grace appeared together by Xia De's side.

Of course, because the space here was too cramped, they were hugging Xia De directly.

"Oh, sir, are you wanting to try it in the broom closet?"

Helen in the black dress giggled, while the steadier sister, Grace, looked around and asked Xia De:

"Sir, have you arrived in a new city again?"

"Yes, the City of Music—Vista City."

He briefly explained the reason he had come here, and only then did he state what he was about to do:

"The clue the diviner found most likely points to this cabinet. In a moment, I will crawl inside. If you find anything wrong, open the cabinet immediately and get me out.

If I disappear, wait until evening. If I still haven't appeared by then, go to Tobesk and find the diviner. Of course, the possibility of me going missing is very low, and even if I do go missing, there is no need to worry."

After all, he still had two drops of divinity now.

"Sir, we can..."

"No, you cannot."

Xia De held Helen's mouth:

"This matter is highly likely related to time. Although you are strong, your time resistance is far from as high as mine."

As he spoke, he also took out a normal time key:

"Today is the time for me to use the time key. If I really encounter any danger, I can still go to the past to take shelter."

Grace and Helen knew just how capable Xia De was, so although they were a bit worried, they were soon persuaded by him.

Confirming that he was prepared, Xia De bent down and struggled to crawl into the cabinet. Grace and Helen helped him close the door from the outside and then asked:

"Sir, how does it feel now?"

"I'm thinking if it would be more convenient if I turned into a cat now; it's too cramped here."

"Then sir, after this is over, can you let me hug you in your cat form?"

This sounded like Helen speaking; Xia De could even imagine the expression on Grace's face as she looked at her sister with helpless eyes.

Next, Xia De began chatting with the sisters through the cabinet door panel. They hadn't seen each other since last week, so there wasn't much fresh news to share; they just had Grace and Helen tell Xia De about their understanding of Creekwood.

The sisters had never been here in the "Vista City era," but they had each set foot here in the "Creekwood" era.

They both knew about the current "Golden Music Hall." When Xia De mentioned that the hall was rebuilt from the ruins of an ancient temple, Grace said in a disjointed voice:

"I know the temple ruins on that hill; I passed by there over five hundred years ago. At that time, only the main structural frame of the ruins remained. I didn't expect that after..."

Grace's voice became increasingly blurred, as if she were running far away while speaking, until finally her voice disappeared completely.

Grace outside the cabinet didn't feel there was anything wrong with her voice, and after she finished speaking, she noticed Xia De didn't reply, so she signaled Helen to open the cabinet.

There was no one inside.

While Grace's voice was gradually becoming blurred, Xia De inside the cabinet also realized that the anomaly had finally appeared.

However, he did not immediately push open the cabinet door; he was waiting.

There were no whispers of elements that were obvious relative to the other three types of elements around him, which meant this matter had nothing to do with relics. When Grace's voice disappeared completely and Xia De could no longer sense the sisters outside the cabinet, he understood that he must have succeeded.

"Tell me the time now."

【Present World, Sixth Era, General Calendar 1698, Month of Sowing, 15th.】

"Spring 156 years ago? I traveled through time just like that? I didn't feel a thing."

【Strictly speaking, you didn't completely travel through time; you just arrived at a point where two times intersect. Using this method to truly travel through time belongs to 'serious violations,' and you selectively resisted the crossing.】

"I see..."

Xia De wasn't very surprised, but when he tried to push open the cabinet door in front of him, he found that what was in front of him wasn't smooth wood, but rough wood with a curved surface.

His eyes blinked, and then he discovered that at some point, the surroundings had become completely different from before:

"This isn't the inside of a cabinet; this is a tree hollow?! That's right, in 1698, this cabinet was still a tree!"

Xia De reached forward, and flames ignited on his fingers. The flames touched the inner surface of the tree hollow in front of him, trying to burn out an opening, but the moment his hand touched the wood, the wood was actually pushed open.

Grace and Helen stood outside the cabinet, tilting their heads as they looked at Xia De curled up inside. Xia De withdrew his fingers.

【Present World, Sixth Era, General Calendar 1854, Month of Harvest, 19th, Friday.】

【The cabinet's special effect has disappeared; you have returned.】

"Hmm... I disappeared just now, didn't I?"

He asked the sisters outside the door, and the fifteen or sixteen-year-old girls nodded together:

"Yes, for about half a minute. And before we noticed your aura disappear, we didn't find anything at all. This is indeed the power of time, but it is very unstable."

"Then did you notice anything when I came back?"

"No, neither."

Xia De thought for a moment:

"One more time."

Helen helped Xia De close the cabinet door again. Xia De briefly described what had just happened through the door panel and then continued chatting with the sisters, only this time he waited for a full two hours and nothing happened.

The twins didn't mind "wasting time"; this kind of date, although strange, was indeed a date. Xia De had no choice but to crawl out of the cabinet and summarize the current situation:

"This cabinet can indeed achieve a certain degree of time connection, but this connection is unstable. Sometimes only sound can cross time, and sometimes it can carry things inside across time."

"So, the lady you are looking for disappeared when the passage was at its most stable?"

Grace asked. This was indeed very likely, but Xia De had a more terrifying thought:

"I once heard the sound of selling apples here, but the moment I disappeared just now, the external environment was clearly a forest."

In other words, the 'past' that this cabinet connects to might not be just one; it's even possible that every connection to past time is random. I don't know which time the lady I'm looking for is in; of course, that's assuming she really went to the past through here."

Since the "present" can hear the past time, perhaps the "past" can also hear the present, so Xia De did not mention Miss Danister's name or other private information.

Grace also looked at the cabinet in the darkness:

"The principle of this time travel is still unclear. Although it is confirmed that this cabinet caused everything, we had better not move its position casually."