There was still over an hour left before the 【Moon Gate】 closed.
After Elias left the Society of Freemen, he didn't even have time to feel the newly acquired bearer checks more than twice before heading straight for the Grey Bridge Pawnshop.
Fortunately, the pawnshop was not far away, and the grayish-blue spiritual lamp at the entrance was still lit.
When he pushed the door open and went inside, the brass bell hanging on the doorframe only rang for half a second before falling silent, as if someone had choked it by the neck.
The shopkeeper behind the counter, with a nearly finished cigarette dangling from his mouth, looked up at him.
“Redeeming something?”
Elias slapped the pawn ticket onto the counter.
“The 【reflection pearl of the mirror-shadow gray clam】, one thousand four hundred gold crowns.”
“It doesn't permanently forfeit until four days from now. You sure came quickly.”
“My greatest virtue is that I don't like letting good things spend the night in someone else's house.”
The shopkeeper sneered. He first checked the blood seal of transfer on the back of the ticket, then pressed a bronze contract-verification stamp onto the paper.
The dark-red patterns originally hidden in the paper slowly emerged, eventually linking with the pawnshop's Grey Bridge mark.
“The blood seal is fine.”
“Where's the money?”
The smile on Elias's face immediately faded a bit.
One thousand four hundred gold crowns.
If this sum of money were in Hope County, it would have been enough to let his family step right into the gentry, and they could even pre-arrange how their neighbors would curse them as capitalists in the future.
Now, it could only be exchanged for a single pearl on a counter.
He counted out the bearer checks one by one. With each check he counted, he felt as if a piece of flesh was being carved from his heart.
After verifying the amount, the shopkeeper retrieved a gray metal box from a triple-locked safe under the counter.
When the lid opened, a thumb-sized grayish-white pearl lay quietly on the black velvet.
The surface of the pearl did not reflect the light overhead; it only held the darkness from before the safe had been opened.
Elias activated 【Moon Vision】.
Dense spiritual lines overlapped layer by layer inside the pearl, like countless offset mirrors.
The pawn mark had already been removed, and the pearl itself was free of pollution.
“It's the real deal.”
The shopkeeper took a running alchemical pocket watch from his pocket and placed it in front of the reflection pearl.
Beneath the watch cover, several miniature gears were slowly interlocking with a faint blue spiritual glow.
After a few breaths, the shopkeeper suddenly stopped the watch and flipped it to the other side of the desk.
Yet what was reflected in the reflection pearl was still the position of the gears from several breaths ago, with the brightness of every single spiritual circuit perfectly identical.
“It can preserve a complete spiritual image of the target from the previous moment.”
The shopkeeper relit his cigarette.
“Space sorcerers use it to anchor secondary coordinates.”
“Alchemical craftsmen use it to compare the circuits of equipment before and after damage, to see which loop went wrong first.”
“Young man, you got a good deal.”
“I spent one thousand four hundred.”
Elias closed the box and stuffed it into his Gluttonous Stomach, his heart aching at the expense.
With the redemption fee paid, the cash remaining in his hands was exactly one thousand eight hundred gold crowns.
He did not stay to chat with the shopkeeper.
The hands on the pocket watch were still ticking, and the 【Moon Gate】 wouldn't extend its hours for free just because he had spent a fortune and needed a sympathetic ear.
On the way to the Arcane Black Market, Elias once again went over the Scale Three recipe left by Dr. Mester in his mind.
The reflection pearl of the mirror-shadow gray clam was now in his possession.
The moon silver powder had already been obtained from Jack.
There were also readily available moonlight stones on the island; he only needed to wait until the full moon to process them as required by the recipe.
The hyoid bone powder and dream ash were the rewards Ms. Cecil had promised to provide him.
The only things that truly lacked a clear source were a thoroughly purified severed otherworldly claw and three silver-glow raven tear crystals.
The Arcane Black Market was still in its usual state where day and night could not be distinguished.
Elias walked around the materials section twice before spotting a glimmer of silver in a wooden tray lined with black velvet.
It was a transparent crystal the size of a grain of rice, with a drop of silver liquid suspended inside that never seemed to fall.
“A silver-glow raven tear crystal?”
“One hundred and eighty gold crowns.”
The stall owner didn't even raise his head.
“Can you make it cheaper?”
“One hundred and eighty-five.”
“Why is your price going up instead?”
“Because you're delaying my rest.”
“You...”
Elias stared at him for two seconds. Confirming that the man was not joking, he had no choice but to hand over the one hundred and eighty gold crowns.
Bargaining in a black market only to have it turn into a reverse auction was certainly an eye-opening experience for him.
The silver-glow raven tear crystal was sealed into a silver-rimmed glass tube.
Elias used 【Moon Vision】 to confirm that the internal moon phase circuit was correct before putting it away.
Unfortunately, the recipe required three.
The single crystal before him only reduced his deficit from three to two.
Continuing forward, another stall owner pulled out a grayish-black severed claw from under the counter.
The severed claw was about half a foot long, its surface covered in white scars left by burning and purification. A cleansing mark commonly used by the Church of Alchemy and Craftsmen was carved into the severed end.
“A thoroughly purified severed otherworldly claw.”
The stall owner quoted the price.
“One thousand one hundred gold crowns.”
This price made Elias's eyelids twitch.
But as long as the item was truly up to standard, it wasn't unacceptable.
After all, if the price was high, he could always find a way to earn more. But if something went wrong when he drank the potion, he might not get another chance to make money.
He didn't touch the severed claw. He simply activated 【Moon Vision】 and inspected it inch by inch through the spirit-sealing glass.
There was nothing wrong with the purification marks on the surface of the claw, and its outer spirituality was clean to the point of near-dead silence.
However, when his gaze penetrated deep into the crevices of the bone, some dark-green spirituality as thin as strands of hair was still slowly squirming.
Once the claw was ground into the potion, they would be released along with it.
“You call this thoroughly purified?”
Elias looked up and asked.
The stall owner glanced at the severed claw.
“That's just a residual shadow. It won't affect its use in alchemy.”
“Buying materials and getting otherworldly pollution as a free bonus? Is your after-sales service going to collect my corpse?”
“I can make it a hundred cheaper.”
“Get lost.”
Elias cursed in his pure hometown dialect and turned away decisively.
He left behind a completely bewildered stall owner.
Even the stall owner himself might not know which layer of the spirit world the otherworldly spirituality came from.
To put it mildly, it was an impurity; to put it harshly, who knew what evil god's feet it had once rubbed against?
Spending a thousand gold crowns to buy a mystery-box-style pollution was a luxury he was not wealthy enough to afford.
By the time he left the black market, there was less than half an hour left before the 【Moon Gate】 closed.
Elias didn't browse any further and headed straight for Warehouse Forty-Seven on the East Bank.
In the warehouse, that moonlight ring still hung quietly behind the wooden crates.
Jack was already waiting on the other side, looking a bit anxious. Seeing Elias appear, he immediately waved.
“Sir, hurry!”
“I know.”
Elias bent down and stepped through the ring of light. The moment his feet touched the island reef, the moonlight behind him rapidly retracted.
Jack cut the connection, and the 【Moon Gate】 instantly vanished, leaving only the night sea breeze sweeping over the reef.
After returning to the wooden cabin, Elias laid out the reflection pearl, the silver-glow raven tear crystal, the moon silver powder, and the moonlight stone waiting for the full moon on the table one by one.
The four items differed in size, and their prices were each more unreasonable than the last. Yet gathered on the worn-out dining table, they finally made that long-standing recipe look like something that could actually be completed.
The hyoid bone powder and dream ash would be provided by Ms. Cecil.
Of the seven types of materials, five were already in hand or had a definite source.
The only gaps that truly lacked a source were the purified severed otherworldly claw and the other two silver-glow raven tear crystals.
Jack stared at the reflection pearl on the table for a moment.
He raised his hand, but the reflection inside the pearl's surface only raised its hand after a brief delay.
“Sir, how much did you make tonight?”
“Two thousand one hundred and twenty gold crowns,” Elias replied.
One thousand eight hundred came from the commission, and three hundred and twenty came from those two penniless vampire nobles—not a single coin missing.
Jack's eyes lit up slightly.
“Then how much is left?”
Elias looked at the reflection pearl he had just spent one thousand four hundred to redeem, and then at the tear crystal worth one hundred and eighty gold crowns.
He wanted to calculate it.
But the moment he thought about how he was still missing two tear crystals and a severed claw that would surely cost at least a thousand, he suddenly felt that calculating it clearly would only ruin his sleep.
“Money is just passing through my world.”
“At least it visited,” Jack consoled him earnestly.
Elias was silent for a moment before putting away all the materials on the table.
“Resting tomorrow night.”
“Not going to Hastings Port?”
“No.”
Elias yawned.
“If I keep working night shifts and sleeping during the day like this, I'm going to end up training myself into a different time zone.”
The east was already turning pale like a fish's belly.
The lights on the island reef gradually dimmed, but Hastings Port, twenty nautical miles away, became bustling once again in the same morning light.
The Seventh Agency branch had never truly stopped operating, but as the morning shift investigators took over, the underground evidence room was packed with people early in the morning.
Several days had passed since the raid on the West Coast Sanatorium.
Sir Vere had led his men to pursue along the underground pipelines and main drainage channels several times, and finally brought back something this morning.
Thud!
A dismantled delivery valve landed on the evidence table, causing several glass test tubes next to it to jump simultaneously.
The valve's casing had been blackened by high temperatures, and the interface still bore tiny dents left by the gripping of the black box's mechanical feet.
“The black box disappeared after the third fork,” Sir Vere said, taking off his sewage-stained gloves, his tone very displeased.
“Further ahead is nothing but a tangled web of abandoned pipelines. We didn't catch the item, only brought this back.”
Deputy Director Taylor did not mind the smell on the valve.
He put on alchemical gloves and inserted a long, thin probe into the inside of the valve.
A white light lit up at the tip of the probe, and the charred outer layer immediately peeled away layer by layer, revealing circular wear of varying depths underneath.
“We still don't know what exactly was loaded inside the black box.”
Taylor adjusted the angle of the probe.
“But it cannot take away the wear and tear already inflicted on the metal.”
Every time the white light passed a layer of wear marks, the tail end of the probe lit up.
Once, twice, thrice...
The evidence room gradually fell silent.
Only when the forty-seventh light went out did Taylor pull out the probe.
“This pipeline system has completed at least forty-seven spiritual deliveries.”
Ms. Cecil had been standing on the other side, flipping through the patient files.
She arranged the forty-seven instances of wear in order from oldest to newest, then matched the subtle frequency of the spiritual residue from each instance with the sanatorium records one by one.
The patients' ages, physical states, and spiritual capacities were all different.
Some had only completed a single circuit expansion, some had undergone multiple potion modifications, and others had already died during the experiments.
Yet at the end of every delivery, the scale slot in the records stopped at the exact same marking.
Not one notch more, not one notch less.
“If they wanted to strengthen the patients, they should have adjusted the delivery volume according to each individual's limit of endurance.”
Ms. Cecil put down the last file.
“An ordinary person and someone who has completed three circuit expansions cannot possibly reach their limit at the exact same point.”
“They weren't strengthening the patients.”
Taylor pointed the probe at the forty-seven nearly overlapping termination lines inside the valve.
“They were testing how much spirituality could pass through a human circuit and be stably delivered to the other end.”
Sir Vere's voice grew colder bit by bit.
“These people... were merely measuring tools.”
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