Ryan took a deep breath.
That feeling was indeed no ordinary physical attack, nor was it occult pollution or mental interference.
Rather, it was a spine-chilling sense of “familiarity.”
It was as if the flesh sanctuary possessed the original engineering blueprints of this body. It knew exactly what this physical form lacked, and was attempting to use its colossal, violent extraordinary power to force Ryan back into the mold prescribed by those blueprints.
“So... it wasn't trying to kill or consume me just now.”
“It wanted to ‘fix’ you.”
The Gentleman of Knock uttered that disgusting word.
Ryan looked up. “Fix me?”
“In the conceptual rules of the sanctuary, the current you is merely a defective piece that went astray, missing its core component.”
The Gentleman of Knock's tone was exceptionally calm. “Therefore, what just happened was actually a failed forced calibration. If 【Edge】 and I hadn't stepped in to pull you out in time, your sense of self would have been completely erased by that calibration.”
Ryan said nothing, the veins on the back of his hands bulging.
This explanation was far more unsettling than a simple case of "an enemy seizing possession" or "an evil god devouring him."
Because the other party did not view him as an independent, hostile life form at all, nor did it even consider him a threat to guard against.
In the eyes of the sanctuary, he was nothing more than an unfinished machine.
“Then why... was my 【Lantern】 able to stop its rewrite?” Ryan asked again.
“Because your consciousness is already complete.”
The Gentleman of Knock looked at him, a complex glint flashing in his eyes. “The current ‘Ryan’ is a real individual possessing independent reason. The 【Lantern】 protects your self and your memories. However, the 【Lantern】 can only play a defensive role; it can prevent the rewrite, but it cannot fill the natural void deep within your flesh for you.”
Ryan slowly clenched his fists, his knuckles letting out an overburdened creak.
“So I need the 【Heart】.”
“To be precise,” the Gentleman of Knock corrected, “you need a complete extraordinary medium of the 【Heart】 and its corresponding ritual. This will allow the 【Grail】 to have a truly stable foundation of life, while the 【Lantern】 maintains your sense of self. Only when the three form a closed loop will your body cease to remain in this dangerous state of being vulnerable to a rewrite at any moment.”
A long silence descended upon the farmhouse once more.
The firelight illuminated Ryan's cold, grim face. Having sorted out everything, he did not dwell on the meaningless past, but asked the most critical question directly:
“Who can perform this ritual?”
The Gentleman of Knock did not answer immediately.
He slowly reached out and tossed a piece of dry firewood into the hearth.
The flames suddenly flared up, brightly illuminating the entire dilapidated farmhouse.
“Simon.”
Ryan's gaze narrowed slightly. This name had appeared in previous clues, but now that it came from the Gentleman of Knock's mouth, its significance was entirely different.
“Go find Simon,” the Gentleman of Knock said, looking at Ryan. “He holds the most core technical details of that experiment from back then. He can perform this ritual.”
“It is not to recover any past memories, nor is it to explain some vague truth about your origins.”
“It is for the most pure, realistic thing—to have him use the power of the 【Heart】 to help you fill the missing part at the very foundation of your body.”
Ryan leaned against the ruined stone wall, letting out a long breath of turbid air.
Things became incredibly clear at this moment.
He did not need to investigate whether he was a monster created in a test tube, nor did he need to seek some so-called revelation of his origins, and he certainly did not need to forcibly challenge that terrifying flesh sanctuary for the sake of revenge.
He only needed to do one thing now: fix his currently collapsing body, so that he could truly live as a “complete human being.”
“Where is he?”
The Gentleman of Knock's answer was extremely direct: “New Salem, South Pacific.”
Ryan nodded, asking for no further details.
Outside the door, the night wind howled, blowing across the vast, dark South American grassland.
Ryan looked down at his chest.
The flesh there was intact, his heartbeat strong.
But he knew now that something was still missing there—something that could allow this body, shaped by the 【Grail】, to truly break free from its shackles and become an absolutely independent life.
The next morning, a thin mist shrouded the grassland.
The Gentleman of Knock and 【Edge】 stood in the morning light, preparing to depart.
They had no intention of accompanying Ryan to the South Pacific. For them, the mission of rescuing Ryan and telling him the truth was complete; they still had their own shadows to clear away.
The Gentleman of Knock adjusted his black wooden cane and left his final warning:
“Go to New Salem, find Simon, and have him complete the 【Heart】 ritual for you.”
“Once it is done... whether you stay or leave is up to you. Only then should you decide whether to return and face that sanctuary.”
A distortion in space appeared once more as a pitch-black rift in the void opened in the morning mist.
Without a word, 【Edge】 gripped his hilt with a reverse hand and stepped into the rift first.
Standing at the edge of the rift, the Gentleman of Knock turned back to take one last deep look at Ryan's resolute face, his tone uncharacteristically solemn:
“And... before completing the ritual, do not let the sanctuary or any high-rank 【Grail】 power touch your body a second time.”
“Next time, you won't get another chance to be pulled out.”
Boom.
The rift closed completely, and the sound of tearing air faded into silence.
The grassland regained its morning tranquility, damp dew hanging on the tips of the grass, refracting the rising sun.
Standing in the morning light, Ryan watched the spot where the two had vanished, then turned around to calmly pack his black leather case and plant specimen folder.
Lucia stood to the side, wearing a small backpack. The panic in her eyes had faded, replaced by her usual quiet composure as she asked softly:
“Teacher, where are we going now?”
Ryan raised his head, his gaze sweeping across the vast grassland toward the boundless southern sea.
“To New Salem.”
“To find Simon.”
The morning mist, like thick wool, flowed quietly through the low-lying areas of the Pampas. The spatial rift torn open by the Gentleman of Knock and 【Edge】 when they departed had long since closed, and the tooth-gritting friction in the air had dissipated, leaving behind only the pungent smell of ozone and the burnt odor of scorched grass.
Ryan squatted in the wet grass, his hands resting flat on his knees.
“Teacher...” Lucia called softly.
The girl stood a few paces away, clutching her heavy leather luggage bag. The morning dew had dampened the hem of her skirt, and her face remained pale, but the almost uncontrollable chaos and despair in her eyes had mostly faded after her long sleep.
Ryan opened his eyes and stood up.
“I've checked; we can still walk.” Ryan's voice was completely flat, as if discussing the weather. “Let's leave here before the morning wind scatters our tracks.”
The two walked east along the barren horse path at the edge of the grassland. Without the interference of the sanctuary's massive gravitational pull, the South American wilderness once again revealed its original vast and cold countenance.
Three days later, they arrived at a small port town in eastern Argentina.
The place was filled with battered cargo ships from all over the world, vagrants smelling of fish, and tattooed fish-salting workers. Ryan used his remaining gold pound coins to purchase two cargo ship tickets to New Salem in the South Pacific. He also replenished their clean drinking water and dried beef, and bought a few unbound blank specimen books from the town's grocery store.
He changed back into his slightly worn, brown coarse-cloth hunting attire, put on his wide-brimmed hat, and properly concealed the 【Echoing Lantern】 and his extraordinary armaments in the secret compartment of his leather case. As he walked along the slippery wooden planks of the dock, no one gave him a second glance—he was merely a somewhat down-and-out, perhaps even slightly eccentric, British botanist traveling with his young, quiet assistant.
The cargo ship, the "Far Star", slowly departed the port amid the sound of its morning whistle, leaving the shadow of the South American continent—filled with violence and stench—completely behind in the towering waves.
The Pacific voyage was long and monotonous.
The seawater gradually shifted from its initial grayish-brown to a nearly deep azure. Day after day, there was only the pattering sound of the sea breeze whipping the rigging and the dull, heavy rumble of the steam engine deep within the hold.
During the voyage, Ryan maintained an almost rigorous routine.
Every morning, he would carry a folding wooden chair to sit in the shade of the cargo ship's aft deck. With a monocular telescope in hand, he observed the giant clumps of kelp that occasionally drifted past, or the marine plant spores migrating with the ocean currents. He drew highly detailed plant structures in his specimen book with a pencil, the sound of the lead scratching across the paper steady and constant.
At first, Lucia spent most of her time sleeping in the cabin. The marks left deep within her soul by the sanctuary required time to heal, but by the second week, she began to leave the cabin frequently.
She was no longer constantly on edge as she had been in South America, the panic in her eyes replaced by a grounded tranquility.
In the afternoon, when the sunlight was at its best, Lucia would sit beside Ryan, quietly helping him organize the dried seaweed specimens, or using tiny tweezers to paste delicate plant organs onto cardstock.
“Teacher, the veins of this seaweed are reticulate,” Lucia said, pointing at a specimen, her voice having regained its former clarity.
Ryan did not look up, his pencil tip never stopping. “Those are air bladder structures, used to maintain buoyancy in the ocean currents. Remember its form; once we reach New Salem, the plants on the island will have similar evolutionary traits.”
“Okay,” Lucia nodded, carefully pressing the specimen flat.
Looking at the girl's focused expression, Ryan's gaze softened slightly.
Yet late at night, when nothing but the roar of waves slapping the hull remained in the cabin, Ryan would sit alone in his narrow hammock, watching the cold moon reflected on the sea outside the window.
He was analyzing his own body.
The 【Lantern】 granted him unparalleled rationality and insight, allowing him to precisely calculate the trajectory of every blade strike and the weakness of every enemy. The 【Grail】 granted him overwhelmingly powerful physical vitality and defense, enabling him to survive even when facing fatal blows.
But these two were like fire and water.
Without a third force to coordinate them, every time he channeled the power of the 【Grail】, the 【Lantern】 in his mind had to allocate a significant portion of its spirituality to suppress the inherent madness of the 【Grail】. This was an extremely dangerous internal attrition.
When facing truly top-tier experts, or a high-rank source of the 【Grail】 like the flesh sanctuary, this internal attrition became a fatal weakness. The opponent wouldn't even need to breach his defenses; they would only need to activate the 【Grail】 within him, and he would collapse from the inside out.
The Gentleman of Knock had not lied to him.
The only way to resolve this fatal weakness was not to search for some vague memories, nor to seek revenge against his creators from back then, but the most realistic action—
Find Simon, and complete the 【Heart】.
To completely connect this physical vessel, crafted by the 【Grail】, to the true core of life.
Four weeks later, the whistle of the "Far Star" pierced through the thin morning mist.
At the end of the long, blue horizon, an isolated island covered in dark brown volcanic rock and dense tropical vegetation slowly revealed its silhouette.
South Pacific, New Salem.
New Salem was an isolated island completely disconnected from the Old World.
Here, there was no thick fog mixed with coal smoke and occult embers like in London, no political maneuvering stretching into the shadows between great nations, and no heavily guarded, surveillance-riddled occult church monitoring.
The small town snaked along a crescent-shaped bay, its houses mostly built of rough black stone and discarded ship timbers. Damp, salty air formed tiny salt frost in the cracks of the wooden walls, and the scent of grilled fish mingled with the sour-sweet aroma of fermented coconuts in the breeze.
Following the clues given by the Gentleman of Knock, Ryan took Lucia to the quiet local official archive of New Salem.
This low building, constructed of black stone, stood in the most remote corner of the town, with several seagulls basking in the sun on the roof. The backyard connected to a quiet canal and a rocky coastal area. Sunlight filtered through the sparse clouds, shimmering on the surface of the water.
A middle-aged man wearing a loud floral shirt with his trousers rolled up sat on a small wooden stool. He held a bamboo fishing rod in his hand, and beside him sat a half-empty flask of whiskey and a small plastic bucket that wasn't even filled with water.
Hearing footsteps in the backyard, Simon did not even turn his head, merely waving his hand impatiently. “The archive is doing an inventory today. No inquiries accepted. If you want to borrow books, wait until next week—”
“Simon,” Ryan called out.
The fishing rod in Simon's hand jerked violently, the fragile bamboo pole nearly slipping from his grasp into the water.
He turned his head in surprise, pushing up the sunglasses on his forehead to reveal a sharp yet thoroughly lazy and weathered face. Seeing Ryan standing a few paces away, along with Lucia, who carried a heavy specimen bag and looked timid, Simon's lips twitched a few times.
“Yo,” Simon said, adjusting the cigarette holder between his teeth as he raised an eyebrow. “Still breathing, are we?”
Ryan walked over, casting a glance at Simon's empty bucket, which didn't even hold a single minnow. “You look disappointed.”
“Not at all,” Simon said, pulling over a vacant folding chair and sweeping away the dirty fishing net on it with a clatter. “I just feel like the money spent on materials back then wasn't wasted. But as you can see, I'm busy here. The catch that was about to bite just got scared off by you.”
He wedged the fishing rod into a crevice in the rocks, stood up, brushed the sand off his trousers, and gestured for the two to follow.
Simon led them through a corridor piled with expired newspapers and moldy albums, pushing open the iron door to the archive's basement.
To their surprise, there was no smell of dusty paper here; instead, it was arranged like an extremely precise extraordinary laboratory. Cold brass instruments hummed in the corners, and reagent bottles held settled spiritual mediums of various aspects.
Simon cast aside his previous laziness from the shore. He walked up to Ryan and gestured for him to stand still.
Simon pressed his hand against Ryan's chest, his fingers slightly splayed. An exceptionally pure, crimson spirituality that flowed like boiling blood slowly seeped in—this was the orthodox and abundant 【Heart】 aspect.
The crimson spirituality traveled between Ryan's flesh and bones, weaving between the cold white defensive line of the 【Lantern】 and the black blood tide of the 【Grail】.
After a moment, Simon withdrew his hand and smacked his lips, his tone as relaxed as if he had just diagnosed a minor cold:
“Alright, it's exactly as I thought. That sanctuary in South America didn't go crazy; its assessment was spot on.”
Ryan adjusted his breathing. “What do you mean?”
“This isn't some curse or origin mystery at all; it's purely a technical defect,” Simon said, exhaling a puff of smoke in a crisp tone. “Back then in London, everyone was on a tight schedule. The 【Grail】 molded the physical framework for you, and the 【Lantern】 illuminated your consciousness and reason. But at the very final step, they didn't have time to install the 【Heart】's life cycle for you.”
He gestured with both hands. “The 【Grail】 is the shell, the 【Lantern】 is the soul, and the 【Heart】 that links them together is missing in the middle.”
Simon slapped Ryan on the shoulder, producing a dull thud. “You can jump and fight now because your own foundation is tough, plus the 【Lantern】 has been helping you suppress the 【Grail】 with all its might. But the sanctuary is a product of a high-rank 【Grail】. The moment it sensed you, it felt that this body of yours was an unfinished, defective product. That's why it mobilized its origin, trying to forcibly ‘calibrate’ and rewrite you.”
“Can it be completed?”
“No shit, why else would you come to me?” Simon waved his hand. “My 【Heart】 aspect happens to be able to help you fill this link in your body. However, the materials will take a day or two to prepare. No use rushing. Come on, I'll take you two to look around the town first, try the unique grilled sea fish here, and take this little girl to catch crabs on the beach!”
Rate on N.U.
