Chapter 920: The Containment of Sexais's Relic

Mr. Madison and the disguised Princess Margaret arrived at the Three Cats Inn on this foggy Friday afternoon. They chose a table very close to the woman sitting alone, and the inn's maid quickly brought over drinks.

Xia De saw Mr. Madison tell the maid not to leave yet, then pointed at the woman sitting alone as if asking about her. The plainly dressed maid answered a few words, then received two small coins handed over by Princess Margaret.

"Doctor, don't prepare the ritual."

Xia De, who had just witnessed the "bean-picking" scene, kicked the doctor under the table, then raised a finger to signal him to be silent, and pointed toward the table on the other side of the courtyard.

The doctor also saw Mr. Madison and the other lady. He frowned in thought, signaled Xia De to stay quiet as well, wrote a passage in his notebook with a pen, then pushed it over to Xia De:

【Although we are all friends, they have their own operation. We shouldn't get involved in this kind of thing. If it's a matter for Sexais Higher Medical Academy, our presence would only cause unnecessary trouble.】

Xia De nodded at the doctor. That woman was clearly the target of Sexais's correspondence-circle practitioners.

He wasn't worried that Mr. Madison and Princess Margaret would stay here indefinitely. The newspaper said that tonight Princess Margaret was invited, along with Queen Diana and others, to go to the Delarion Royal Opera House to watch a Delarion opera and experience Delarion's traditional arts.

So, by a conservative estimate, Princess Margaret had to return to her manor before five o'clock.

"She's really busy—attending diplomatic events while also keeping up with her circle practitioner studies. A princess's schedule must be absolutely terrifying."

Xia De thought to himself.

To avoid being seen by Mr. Madison and Princess Margaret, Xia De and the doctor took advantage of the two being distracted and got up to move to a spot not lit by the gas lamps, leaving the sleeping accountant slumped over the original position. Drunk patrons sleeping face-down was a very common "sight" at the Three Cats Inn, so this didn't look out of place.

For the first ten minutes after Mr. Madison and the princess sat down, everything was completely normal. But at 3:17 in the afternoon, the woman holding the wine glass set down her ale again. She didn't pour herself another drink as before, or reach for anything else on the table—instead she cupped her own cheeks in both hands and lifted her head off her neck once more.

Xia De had already seen this once, but Doctor Shi Nai De, who had only heard Xia De say the woman was strange, was genuinely startled when he witnessed it himself.

【Outsider, you have come into contact with the Whisper.】

The head was lifted for less than ten seconds before being placed back on the neck. During this, another peanut rolled out from under the head. It seemed this kind of "detachable" head wasn't suited for eating legumes.

The prompt that the "Whisper" element had appeared only occurred when the head was separated. Once the head reconnected with the neck, no trace of the element could be felt at all.

Xia De looked at Doctor Shi Nai De with a taut face; the doctor's face was somewhat blurred in the shadows.

"Doctor, can you identify what that is?"

Xia De wrote in the notebook.

"Don't know."

The doctor wrote the same on paper, then reiterated that this was a matter for Sexais Higher Medical Academy, and that before the other party explicitly needed help, the two of them should not intervene.

If Xia De and Doctor Shi Nai De could see the anomaly from such a distance, of course Mr. Madison and Princess Margaret saw it too.

Xia De couldn't see their expressions, only that the two exchanged a few more words.

Then Princess Margaret stayed seated without moving, while Mr. Madison actually stood up, walked over to the woman who had picked up her glass again, leaned down and said a few words, then returned to his own table.

"This is probing—using language to determine the target's mental state, using close-range visual observation to determine whether the target's body has mutated. When encountering anomalous humanoid creatures, this is a fairly basic and primitive method of probing."

The doctor wrote in the notebook, and signaled Xia De to keep watching.

Mr. Madison sat back down across from Princess Margaret. The two whispered a few more words, then took out some things Xia De couldn't see clearly and placed them on the table.

"They're about to act. They're preparing spell-casting items. There should be containment ritual supplies too—that woman is connected to a relic!"

The doctor wrote again in the notebook. His handwriting was very neat.

"Aren't they going to lure her somewhere with no people before making a move?"

Xia De wrote in the notebook to ask. The doctor shook his head—he wasn't clear on the specifics either: M.

"Alan is a very reliable person. No need to worry."

Seeing the letters the doctor had written, Xia De immediately began to worry.

Princess Margaret and Mr. Madison didn't prepare for long. They walked together toward the woman drinking alone. The woman holding the glass looked quite confused by their arrival and turned her head to look at them.

What happened next was too fast for Xia De to see clearly. He only saw Mr. Madison take something out and flash it in front of the woman, while Princess Margaret walked behind the woman, seemingly trying to strangle her neck from behind with invisible, transparent cords.

It was all silent, but clearly they failed. The thing in Mr. Madison's hand suddenly caught fire, the bright flames flashing for an instant before vanishing. Princess Margaret, meanwhile, seemed to be shoved backward by a tremendous force; she kept the strangling posture, her body rigidly retreating two or three steps before she steadied herself.

Taking this chance, the woman stood up at once, then single-handedly removed her own head and waved it at Mr. Madison and Princess Margaret.

"Oh~"

The fluctuation of the Whisper element suddenly intensified. Xia De heard the doctor sigh softly, while Mr. Madison and the princess nearby were clearly under the relic's direct influence. Both of them simultaneously clutched their own necks and staggered backward; the Fourth-Circle princess even dropped straight into an empty chair.

Still, no one noticed what was happening in the corner. After driving back the two circle practitioners, the woman placed her head back on her neck and turned to run. Mr. Madison, pale-faced and staggering, chased after her, while the princess took more than ten seconds to stand up and hurried after them.

The two circle practitioners didn't dare use a circle practitioner's power in a public place, so they could only follow the woman closely, trying to find an empty corner to try again. But they didn't get the chance. The woman walking briskly at the front didn't leave this floor; she walked almost in a straight line toward where Doctor Shi Nai De and Xia De were.

As she drew closer, both Xia De and the doctor sensed something was off. But they had no chance to get up and leave. The woman passed by the sleeping Mr. James's spot, then pulled out a chair and sat down next to Xia De and the doctor.

Xia De looked at the doctor, and the doctor seemed to read his meaning:

"This is definitely not because I'm unlucky."

The doctor didn't speak aloud either, but Xia De felt he understood his expression.

Even without her head removed, Xia De could sense the chill emanating from this middle-aged woman with light makeup sitting close by, and the influence of the curse imbued with the Whisper element. The oppressive pressure on their spirits forced both Xia De and the doctor to not dare move a muscle; at the same time, both felt an itching sensation on their necks.

Xia De looked at the doctor and clearly saw a black line on the doctor's neck. Judging from the doctor's expression, a similar mark should have appeared on Xia De's neck as well.

By now Mr. Madison had caught up; his neck also had an abnormal black line. Neither Xia De nor Doctor Shi Nai De had disguised themselves, so Mr. Madison immediately recognized the two. The gentleman with his head wrapped in a kerchief slowed his steps slightly, then showed a relieved expression.

He hesitated briefly, then walked to the table, pulled out a chair and sat down across from the woman, on the side closer to Doctor Shi Nai De.

Princess Margaret, who arrived shortly after, also noticed the situation here. Xia De stayed seated without moving, thought about it and didn't put on any deliberate disguise. So the somewhat flustered princess walking over first saw Doctor Shi Nai De, whom she had met at the Lakeside Manor banquet, then let her gaze fall on Xia De's face.

For an instant, Xia De almost thought she would cry out in surprise, but the princess's mental fortitude was extremely strong. Even upon seeing something unbelievable, she still pretended to be calm, imitated Mr. Alan Madison's manner, pulled out a chair and sat down.

She sat across from the woman, on Mr. Madison's right side, the end closer to Xia De. Her neck also had a strange black line—the mark of the relic's curse.

"Let's introduce ourselves."

The woman who could remove her own head, after sitting down, seemed to freeze like a wax figure, not moving at all. Mr. Madison said with a troubled look, then complained in a low voice:

"Bill, if I'd known you were here, I absolutely wouldn't have done the relic containment here. Oh, this is Mr. Hamilton, a correspondence circle practitioner from local Saint Byron's—I've met him, he's an outstanding correspondence circle practitioner. Knight, this is a correspondence student from out of town..."

"Miss Mary."

Princess Margaret said, inwardly astonished.

"Mary" is the most frequently used name among Delarion women's names; using a name like this to introduce oneself is basically the same as telling others it's a fake name.

"Sorry, my identity is a bit sensitive."

She said apologetically to Xia De, who nodded. He didn't really mind Princess Margaret knowing he was a student of St. Bryne's—in fact, letting her find out this way was even better. The Princess now knew he was a Ring術士, but she didn't know that he knew she was also a Ring術士, nor that he knew she knew he was a Ring術士. It was a very interesting situation.

"Are you trying to say that my bad luck caused this?"

The doctor complained unhappily to Mr. Madison, tapping on the table and looking at the frozen woman. After infecting Xia De and the doctor with the curse, she hadn't made any other moves:

"Alan, what on earth is going on?"