Elias waited in the alley of the Arcane Black Market for less than five minutes before three knocks echoed from the wall behind him once more.
As the third knock faded, a narrow black line cracked open between the brick joints.
A strange messenger dressed in a faded postman uniform stepped out, the silver signpost beneath its hood slowly rotating.
It reached directly into its old mailbag, pulled out a confirmation document and three bearer checks, and handed them to Elias.
Elias first checked the spiritual signature on the document, then held the three checks up one by one against the dim alchemical lamp at the alley entrance.
The anti-counterfeiting watermarks were intact, the bank's wax seal showed no signs of reheating, and the total amount was exactly one thousand two hundred gold crowns.
“Not bad. A decent little profit.”
He spoke nonchalantly, but his hands neatly stacked the three checks and quickly slipped them into the inner pocket of his trench coat.
For his first job as a free investigator, the reward he earned in a single night was almost equivalent to several years' salary for an ordinary lighthouse keeper.
As expected, money meant nothing to transcendents.
The messenger did not leave.
The silver signpost beneath its hood still pointed at Elias, rotating in a slow circle.
“What are you looking at?”
Elias immediately covered the inner pocket containing the checks.
“Didn't I just pay the postage?!”
“There's no tip.”
The signpost paused for a moment.
The messenger turned around and walked straight back into the rift.
“You need to get rid of this bad habit, seriously!”
Elias didn't forget to shout after its retreating back.
Elias pulled out his pocket watch and took a look.
There was only one hour and three minutes left before the 【Moon Gate】 closed.
He snapped the watch cover shut and immediately walked out of the alley.
The people from the Ascetic Society were very likely still looking for “John Constantine.”
He certainly couldn't walk into the same shop with the same face and buy an entire Scale One potion recipe's worth of ingredients from start to finish.
The merchants in the black market might lack professional ethics, but they certainly possessed the business acumen to sell their customers' secrets.
Thus, Elias decided to buy the items separately.
His first stop was an alchemy equipment shop.
The shop was not large, its walls hung with brass clamps, crucibles, and various glassware.
The air was thick with the scent of acid, lamp oil, and metallic powder. Breathing it in for too long made one wonder if their lungs would accidentally be refined into some sort of material.
Elias slid his list onto the counter.
“A measuring cup resistant to spiritual corrosion, a pure silver stirring rod, a dropper, and two spirit-sealing bottles.”
The shopkeeper glanced at it.
“Which tier do you want?”
“I want the cheapest.”
Elias raised a finger and added,
“But it can't suddenly explode while I'm stirring.”
The shopkeeper fell silent for a moment.
“Sir, those two conditions usually cannot be met at the same time.”
“Then let's set 'not blowing up the customer' as the absolute minimum standard.”
“Just not blowing you up?”
“Preferably without causing permanent disability, too.”
The shopkeeper retrieved a wooden box from beneath the counter and pushed it toward him.
“Then it can only be moderately cheap.”
Elias inspected each item one by one.
The spiritual graduation lines on the measuring cup were unbroken, and the pure silver stirring rod was free of excessive impurities that would react with the potion.
Although the stopper of the spirit-sealing bottle wasn't particularly elegant, it at least didn't leak when closed.
They would do.
As for aesthetics, once the potion was in his stomach, it wasn't as if his gut would host a glassware exhibition.
The last time he brewed a potion, he had used the ancient equipment left behind by Old Ed.
The stains on the cup's walls couldn't be scraped clean no matter how hard he tried, and the stirring rod looked like it had just been dug up from some grave.
As a result, the flavor of that final potion was so complex it made him suspicious.
Thinking back on it now, for him to have successfully promoted, the Moon Lord must have taken on quite a bit of work beyond standard food safety supervision.
At the thought of Old Ed, Elias's movements slowed by half a beat.
His mind remained quiet.
No one jumped out to scold him for ruining the equipment, nor did anyone mock him for wasting money.
“Sir?”
The shopkeeper tapped on the counter.
Elias snapped out of his daze and closed the wooden box.
“Just these.”
After paying, he carried the wooden box and turned into another street in the black market.
The stalls here were packed even tighter, the hanging alchemical lamps casting shifting patterns of light and shadow through various awnings.
Elias bypassed two groups of people and stopped in front of a stall filled with low-level supernatural materials.
“Mist-pattern moth wing powder.”
The stallholder took out a thumb-sized glass bottle.
Off-white powder settled at the bottom of the bottle, swirling gently with his movements like ordinary moth powder.
“Thirty-two gold crowns.”
Elias did not haggle. He merely nodded toward the corner of the stall.
“Lend me your moonlight stone for a second.”
The stallholder glanced at him, but still pushed over a stone glowing with a soft, clear light.
Elias poured out a small amount of powder and brought the moonlight stone close.
The scattered powder slowly shifted, gathering itself after a few breaths to form an eye with blurry edges.
The eye lasted for only a moment before dispersing once more.
It matched the records in the 《Velen Supernatural Encyclopedia》.
“You know your stuff?”
The stallholder was somewhat surprised.
“Just a little, just a little.”
Elias tucked the bottle away, paid immediately, and left.
He pushed through the crowded street ahead, using a few drunken freemen as cover to adjust his derby hat.
By the time he emerged on the other side, his face had become narrow and long, and his hair had changed from dark gold to an unremarkable brown.
His clothes remained the same, yet he now looked like just another ordinary transcendent who had come to the black market to try his luck.
The third shop was located deeper within the black market.
The dream lotus dew was contained in a narrow-necked bottle, with an asking price of one hundred and forty gold crowns.
This time, Elias was still in no hurry to pay.
“Bring a silver platter.”
The clerk dripped the dew onto the silver platter.
The transparent liquid spread across the bottom of the platter. Under the alchemical lamp, three overlapping crescents refracted within it.
The crescents shifted as the silver platter tilted, but they never dispersed into halos.
It was the real deal.
Ordinary sleeping grass juice could only project a blurry halo.
Some unscrupulous merchants would mix in a bit of dream lotus root juice, gambling that the customer wouldn't test it on the spot before returning home.
Elias confirmed it was genuine, paid the one hundred and forty gold crowns, and stowed the narrow-necked bottle inside his Gluttonous Stomach.
Mist-pattern moth wing powder obtained.
Dream lotus dew secured.
He already had the glow-amber powder, and the spirit-element wine could be obtained from Jack.
Next, he only needed to raise that sea mirage until it shed its membrane, and the ingredients for this Scale One potion would finally be complete.
Having just received one thousand two hundred gold crowns only to spend a portion of it immediately, Elias surprisingly felt no sting.
Money was just a string of numbers when kept on one's person.
Only when transformed into something that could save his life or aid his promotion did it fulfill its most glorious mission in this world.
He checked his pocket watch once more, picked up his newly purchased equipment, and walked toward the nearest exit of the black market.
As he passed an old bookstore, a sentence suddenly drifted out from inside.
“When the beasts do not return to their places, the earth remains silent; only when all twelve voices sound shall the homeless find their way.”
Elias's foot, which had already crossed the shop's threshold, froze in mid-air.
The homeless.
Find their way?
The way home?!
The noisy chatter of the black market suddenly seemed to recede.
Before his eyes flashed a lit dining table, a bubbling split hot pot, and his mother's face as she stood by the door looking at him.
“Come back early.”
Those words were so soft.
Yet they made his fingers instantly tighten around the handle of the wooden box.
A few breaths later, he lowered his foot back to the ground, not turning around immediately.
The Twelve Beasts.
Before Galahad Midnight's fragmented memory faded, he had also desperately urged him to find the “twelve... veins.”
Afterward, he had always interpreted those words as the Twelve Earth Veins, and even suspected they were related to the Peak Horse.
But this was merely a similarity between two fragmented phrases.
It wasn't proof.
Much less could it prove that this proverb of unknown origin could truly send someone who didn't belong here back home.
But he couldn't bring himself to pretend he hadn't heard it.
Elias turned and stepped back to the bookstore entrance.
The shop was packed with yellowed old books and scrolls, with an oil lamp illuminating the counter.
The bookstore owner stood inside, facing a man dressed in a dark travel coat.
The man held a transcribed page in his hand, his expression rather grim.
“Who delivered this paper?”
“I can't say.”
“Then where are my notes now?”
“I don't know either.”
The bookseller spread his hands.
“The other party only came to inquire about the price, asking who would be willing to pay a high price for this kind of Eastern region expedition record.”
“Hey, sir.”
Elias tapped the doorframe and pointed to the paper in the man's hand.
“That proverb just now.”
“Read it again.”
The man warily folded the transcribed page and slipped it into the inner pocket of his coat.
“Sir, this doesn't seem to concern you.”
“It didn't.”
Elias stood at the doorway and looked at him.
“But now, it sounds like it might.”
The man re-evaluated him, then glanced at the wooden box of alchemy equipment in his hand.
“Have you seen a similar record?”
“Not really.”
Elias's tone didn't change in the slightest.
“But I have a friend who seems to know a bit about this.”
“If you or your friend is an investigator, I've already registered a commission with the Society of Freemen.”
The man said.
Elias didn't ask about the contents of the notes first.
“What's the reward?”
“Four hundred for the investigation fee, and another one thousand four hundred upon recovering the notes.”
Excellent.
Academia had suddenly become far more worthy of respect.
“The commission number?”
“Seven-nine-three.”
Elias silently memorized the number.
The pocket watch in his breast pocket was still ticking.
If he returned to the Society of Freemen now, he likely wouldn't make it back before the 【Moon Gate】 closed.
He would have to pursue this clue tomorrow night instead.
The man looked at him.
“Do you plan to take it?”
Elias lowered the brim of his hat.
“If no one has taken it by tomorrow night, someone who is very short on cash might just develop a bit of academic interest in this book.”
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