When evening arrived.
The Black Sail party had already left Duguli and was nearing the edge of Cast Province, where they settled for the night at an inn along the way.
This place was nothing like the Great Wetland.
The standards of the inn were extremely high, and the decor was much nicer, not to mention the food—restaurants without real skill wouldn’t dare to open—their fare was practically a delicacy compared to the swamp’s chaotic hotpot and fried insects.
Inside the resting quarters,
Liszt was making posthumous arrangements.
"If I die, the position of Captain should go to Fen, and my money... well,"
Liszt hesitated for a moment, considering whether to include Sharon, "just give it all to Dreya."
He spoke with utmost seriousness, as she was, after all, his first wife.
In Yunxi City, one must be fully alert; it was not the time for slip-ups, the quicker the resolution, the better.
"Isn’t that bad luck to talk about?" Nᴇw ɴovel chaptᴇrs are published on NoveI(F)ire.net
Morison didn’t take it seriously, defying the supposed curse, which could be most lethal.
"Or maybe... Mika, you should give it a try."
Liszt suggested to Mika to be the one to face the danger.
Perhaps it would be better to let Lu Chen test the waters with the sword, but Liszt wasn’t sure if it would be instant death for him too, and if Lu Chen died, it would be immoral.
"Are you trying to send me to meet Lord Guan? No interest, but I did find some ’phoenixes’ in this inn,"
Mika spoke calmly, stroking his chin, depressed that there were so many women in the world that he couldn’t add to his ’collection.’
Liszt was dumbfounded by his response. I might be dying, and you’re still focused on women? As my first partner, don’t you have even a shred of camaraderie, you bastard?
"You’re a true brother."
Liszt stopped hesitating, opened the Sword Box, and his hand trembled slightly as he reached for the sword handle.
Liszt steeled his heart and placed his right hand on the Junlin Sword he had just acquired.
The sword seemed alive, emitting a strange hum.
And then it went straight into Liszt’s right hand.
It was as if his body possessed a Junlin Sword.
This time, Liszt didn’t faint; it was as though he had developed a resistance.
Even Morison let out a cry of alarm because Liszt had suddenly disappeared right then and there, vanishing without a trace, evaporated from this world, yet his presence could still be felt—faint fluctuations of his aura, as if existing in a crevice between here and somewhere else.
Mika frowned deeply, convinced that Liszt had been cursed to a violent death by the Evil Curse Device!
But just two seconds later,
Liszt reappeared with a whirl of pitch-black and blood-red smoke seeping out of him, as if from the Netherworld, in strand after strand, resembling a visit to an Otherworldly Space.
His face was pale, his lips lacked any color, and sweat soaked through his clothes.
Morison asked, extremely curious about the situation.
Liszt didn’t answer, instead, he lifted his head and looked around dazedly.
A dream? A hallucination?
He finally faintly recalled the dream from four years ago, the content matched this experience exactly—an indistinct figure, murmuring with a deep and penetrating voice from an infinitely distant place, calling out to him.
But this time, it was clearer, more vivid.
Liszt’s mind stirred, and fresh blood seeped from the palm of his right hand. As the blood flowed, he tightly grasped the Junlin Sword with its dark red hilt in his hand.
He felt quite weak at the moment, and when he regained his composure, he realized that the hand holding the sword was not his own but a misty arm wreathed in blood-red tendrils of red smoke.
Behind Liszt stood a Blood-red Ghost Shadow wearing armor, holding the sword for him and mimicking Liszt’s movements. The ghostly figure was over two meters tall, faintly visible, seemingly from the Netherworld.
Four days later, at noon.
The sunlight was blinding. The golden glow submerged the sky, and the undulating hills were all covered with reeds, whose suitable soil and climate allowed them to grow densely and vigorously.
They clumped and stretched unbroken, like white clouds rippling in the wind, which was why the name was given.
This city was not a commercial one but purely a consumer city, known for its picturesque scenery and the fourth largest lake in Aran.
It could be described as a resort, thriving with tourism.
The city was crowded and bustling. To avoid drawing attention, Fen and his companions, after scouting the area, chose a relatively large town on the outskirts as their base. Home to a few hundred households, it was the ideal stronghold, close to the railway—less than thirty miles away—and convenient to buy horses from local herders.
Rein, having succumbed to the ill effects of the Great Wetland, and after days and nights of travel upon arriving in Aran, his body developed a series of ailments and he had to see a physician. However, Morison was not there.
The town’s doctor, unlicensed, was second-rate, so Rein had to go to the city to see a proper doctor.
"Your heartbeat sounds very weak," said the doctor, using his stethoscope to examine Rein’s heart thoroughly.
"What a quack, try the other side," retorted Rein, taking a puff of his cigarette while being examined.
Rein left the clinic, having received no prescription except for a shot in his arm and advice to eat more fruit.
The Western Continent lacked the concept of public healthcare, having only private clinics, and major clinics existed only in major cities. The most renowned experts were those who graduated from the Northern Prison, but ordinary people couldn’t afford them.
New Pharmacology and New Trauma Science were only just getting started and had not yet developed into independent medical colleges, existing only as branches of Alchemy and Magic Potions in universities.
As a tourist city, Yunxi City’s land was exorbitantly priced, but in other aspects, it lagged far behind metropolises like Duguli.
Rein hadn’t bathed in nearly a month. His hair, greasy and matted, looked like that of a drowned dog, which bore no resemblance to his image in the Warrant.
The portrait on the Warrant depicted a shockingly ghastly werewolf with bared teeth and a terrifyingly open maw of blood, while Rein himself looked like a vagabond.
Yunxi City was located in the southwestern part of Aran.
It wasn’t far from Rein’s hometown, the Chenfeng Plateau. After traversing a few functional microstates and bypassing Ji Weng, one could get there.
In Yunxi City, Rein could see others of his werewolf kind, which added to his gloom.
The Starving Wolf Adventure Group was all werewolves from the Chenfeng Plateau.
Without uncovering the truth of the matter and capturing the other deputy leader, Rein had no face to return home. The situation now was that he had killed all his fellow villagers, including the group leader, and fled overseas with a huge sum of money.
"Damn," Rein cursed, puffing on his cigarette and gazing absently at the azure sky above.
Before he knew it, he found himself near the local church of the Eternal Sect in Yunxi City.
He noticed something unusual.
Outside the solemn and sacred church, a pirate was skulking around the corner, eyeing shadily, surveilling an adventurer who was speaking with a woman with light golden short hair.
The girl was really pretty, her eyes sparkling, a dream girl for any homebody.
Rein approached to inquire about the situation, now was not the time for tailing, damn it.
"What the hell are you doing here?" he scolded the pirate.
"The Captain sent me..." The pirate was completely baffled.
"Surprise, Liszt and the others have already come?" Rein thought they were fast. It was just the fifteenth of the month, and the first trial operation hadn’t even begun. Those cavemen working on the train had such low efficiency.
"They arrived this morning." The pirate answered honestly.