By the bedside, Lale was carefully straightening Oga’s blanket. He was already asleep.
When a light knock sounded, Miss Maid pushed the door open and ca in, carrying so clothes, which she set down.
Lale glanced at them and opened her mouth slightly.
This woman… had changed outfits again. How many tis did she change clothes in a single night?
After putting the clothes down, Miss Maid nodded with a smile, turned around, and left without saying a word. Lale hesitated for a mont, then hurried after her.
“Wait…”
At the door, Lale gently closed it and lowered her voice.
“Is sothing the matter, Miss Lale?” You Ye asked calmly.
“Um… uh…” Lale stamred for a while before softly saying, “Thank you… for letting us stay here for the night…”
“If you want to thank soone, wouldn’t it be better to thank them in person?”
Lale opened her mouth and looked up, eting Miss Maid’s half-smiling expression.
…
Inside the room, in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, Luo Qiu sat with a light blanket over his legs. Only a reading lamp beside him was lit.
The book he was reading ca from the suite’s study, a collection of essays on British folk tales.
When You Ye brought Lale in, Boss Luo happened to be reading the story of Mordred’s rebellion.
“Is there sothing you need, Miss Lale?” Luo Qiu closed the book, stood up, and casually set the blanket aside.
“Miss Lale would like to personally thank you, Master,” You Ye said softly at his side.
Luo Qiu looked at the beastkin girl and noticed her animal ears trembling slightly with nervousness. He said, “Do you like tea, Miss Lale?”
“Huh?”
Luo Qiu smiled. “The tea our Miss Maid makes is very good… You Ye.”
With a snap of his fingers, a tea set quietly appeared on a small round table in the corner of the study. Lale was slightly startled, and even more surprised to see that the tea set was familiar—it was the kind commonly used in her holand.
“Fruit tea or black tea?” Miss Maid asked with a smile. “The kitchen has plenty of fresh fruit, and even so freshly picked cherries.”
“I… black tea is fine!” Lale waved her hands quickly. “There’s really no need to go to so much trouble!”
“Please, have a seat, Miss Lale.” Luo Qiu pulled out a chair and made an inviting gesture.
Lale’s steps beca stiff. She had never experienced such courtesy. Growing up on a farm, the people who took care of her and Oga had always been casual and outspoken.
They sang and danced around bonfires, drank heartily during harvest season, and the scent of hops always mingled with Lale’s fragrance in the evening breeze.
“Are you… thinking of your family?”
Lale barely rembered how she sat down, or how she drifted into those mories. The question pulled her back to reality.
“I don’t have a family,” Lale said instinctively, then bit her lip. “Aside from Oga, I have no family.”
As she spoke, she watched the beautiful woman who called herself a maid brew the tea. The technique was exactly from her holand.
“How many spoonfuls of sugar?”
“Four…”
Miss Maid acknowledged clearly, lifting the lace at her sleeve with her left hand and adding sugar cubes with her right. Lale suddenly felt like the ugly duckling from a fairy tale in front of these two.
“Have you decided how to leave?” Luo Qiu asked.
Lale snapped out of her thoughts and quickly said, “Tomorrow morning, I’ll take Oga and leave. We won’t trouble you anymore…”
“I already told you—the paynt for finding your brother has been taken,” Luo Qiu said patiently. “Do you rember the contract you signed? It has returned to . Your life has also been shortened by one month… You’re still young, so you wouldn’t feel it. Beastkin live longer than ordinary people, so you’d feel it even less.”
“I’m mixed-blood,” Lale blurted out. “My lifespan is about the sa as a normal human’s…”
She imdiately regretted saying it, afraid he might beco curious about her background.
“If you want to leave, it may be a bit troubleso for you,” Luo Qiu said, not pressing the issue. “You were captured by beastkin traffickers and have no identification. Ordinary transportation may not work.”
Lale let out a breath of relief and hurriedly said, “It’s fine. We can sneak into a freight car on a train. That way we won’t have to go through so many checks. We used to—um.”
She quickly pressed her lips together and lowered her head.
After a mont’s thought, Luo Qiu turned his palm upward. A set of docunts appeared, along with a mobile phone. He slid them toward Lale. “Here’s a titable for tomorrow’s undersea tunnel train. This phone has translation software. I hope it helps with your journey ho.”
Lale had suffered plenty from language barriers. She knew about modern technology and had thought of translation apps, but penniless in a foreign land, she would have had to resort to illegal ans to get them.
The docunts and phone were a huge help. She was already used to this mysterious magician producing things out of thin air. Since childhood, she had heard that magicians possessed all kinds of wondrous powers.
“Why…” she began.
“Consider it a bit of… self-satisfaction,” Luo Qiu said.
…
She didn’t rember how she left the study. Only that the magician’s smile was gentle, and the maid’s black tea was sweet and fragrant.
Back in the room, Oga was still fast asleep.
Lale sat by the bed. Though utterly exhausted, she forced herself to stay awake, using the docunts and phone to plan their departure the next day.
…
In the study, Luo Qiu returned to his seat and resud reading. Miss Maid sat on the carpet at his feet, curled against his legs like a cat.
Her skirt spread out in a round shape, like a rose.
“Master, are you really letting them go like this?” Miss Maid looked up.
Luo Qiu looked down, his fingers lightly touching her face. “Before leaving, I wrote myself a sentence… For a while, unless I truly can’t resist it, I’ll try doing things that might be unprofitable, just to get through this phase.”
He raised his left hand. On his wrist was a string of agarwood prayer beads.
“Like charity?” Miss Maid asked.
Luo Qiu smiled and lifted her chin. “Don’t corporations do charity as well?”
“Self-satisfaction?” Her eyes shimred.
“Self-actualization.” Luo Qiu lowered his head. He was beginning to like the feeling of touching those lips.
After a long while, when they parted, Luo Qiu softly said, “When I’m ready… I’ll help you retrieve the body left in Heaven.”
“Mmm…”
…
…
On an island, an ard helicopter slowly descended.
The wind whipped the clothes of the personnel directing the landing. When the helicopter finally settled and the hatch opened, a seductive woman in a purple dress stepped down, lifting her skirt.
She was alone—the psychic witch, Gillian.
At the sa ti, more than a dozen ard n appeared around her, their gun barrels unmistakably trained on her.
“I’m just here to visit a prisoner,” Gillian sighed softly. “Don’t I even get a bit of courtesy?”
At this mont, from behind the ard n, a brown-haired man in a white suit and sunglasses walked forward slowly. “Given that we’re facing the psychic witch ranked fifth on the Magicians’ Association’s wanted list, I think we’ve already been polite enough… Ms. Gillian.”
“May I say that this ranking is only so high because I’ve been falsely accused?” the witch said with a light laugh, covering her mouth.
The man in white replied calmly, “Ms. Gillian, under the instructions of Sir Perkins, you have only twenty minutes for this prison visit. After twenty minutes, whether you co out or not, we will seal the prison entrance. Please keep track of the ti.”
The witch smiled faintly. “A Grand Knight praised as the strongest beneath the Twelve Knights, and one who is blind from birth—soone who fundantally restrains . Am I really that unwelco to Mr. Lino?”
“Please.” The man in white—Lino—stepped aside.
The ard n split into two lines to let her pass. She lifted her head and looked ahead. On the small hill of the island stood a castle built of ancient stone.
Gillian walked gracefully, like a Persian cat. A trace of violet perfu drifted with the wind as she headed toward the castle on the hill, softly reciting:
—The vast gate stands in towering might,
—Round pillars of solid stone pierce the sky;
—Both divine and human strength seem equally small,
—How could such a massive stronghold be overturned like a nest?
—A fortress of steel, solemn and subli.
“What are you saying?” One of the ard n was extrely tense. He shouted sharply, his finger already halfway squeezing the trigger.
Mr. Lino raised a hand to stop him. Though blind from birth, his other senses far surpassed those of ordinary people.
“That’s a passage from Edinburgh Prison,” Lino said calmly. “In the novel, the character Butler recites it to the prison gate after being denied a visit. It’s not a spell.”
“Hm… Mr. Lino is quite sentintal as well.”
The witch glanced back with a smile. In that instant, the man who had shouted suddenly scread in terror, dropping his weapon in panic. “Snakes! Snakes!”
He wasn’t rely startled—he looked as if he had seen sothing utterly horrifying, completely losing control.
Grand Knight Lino frowned, struck the man’s neck with a sharp chop, and knocked him unconscious. Then, facing the witch, he said evenly, “Ms. Gillian, I don’t mind counting your travel ti as part of the visitation ti as well—if you enjoy lingering here.”
“I take back my praise of you.”
The witch turned around and set off again, this ti walking a little faster.
From the helipad to the castle on the hillside took just over half an hour on foot. Soon, they arrived before the castle.
Lino took out a key hanging from a chain around his neck, stepped up to the castle gate, and inserted it into the keyhole at the center.
The ancient gate slowly descended. Beyond the entrance lay pitch darkness.
“Rember, you only have twenty minutes. That person should be in the east wing tower at this hour, barring any surprises… go.”
“I strongly request that the twenty minutes start from when I et him, not from when I step inside,” Ms. Gillian said, her voice suddenly flat.
Mr. Lino acted as if he hadn’t heard. He waved his hand, and a subordinate took out an electronic tir. At Lino’s word—“Start”—the button was pressed.
“What a dull and heartless man,” the witch said resentfully. Then she lifted her skirt and walked into the castle.
Lino closed the castle gate once more and stood before it.
He took a deep breath, hands loosely clenched as if holding a sword, standing there with a grave expression.
“This is the first ti I’ve seen Mr. Lino look so solemn…”
The subordinates whispered among themselves.
“It can’t be helped. After all, the one imprisoned inside is the knight who, a century ago, nearly single-handedly crippled all of Britain’s Round Table agencies and even killed five of the Twelve—history’s most ferocious and vicious knight…”
“Can anyone really live that long?”
“So say he’s been cursed…”
…
On the spiral staircase, Ms. Gillian held an oil lamp and climbed step by step. The spiral structure had no visible end ahead, nor any sign of what lay behind—only darkness illuminated by the lamp’s glow.
After more than ten minutes, the witch finally reached the top of the tower. The door before her was ajar, unlocked.
She pushed it open.
Inside, there was only the orange glow of candlelight. Shadows swayed with the flickering fla, and a single silhouette was cast upon the bluestone wall.
Gillian took a deep breath, stared at the shadow for a mont, then turned her gaze to its source.
By the only window in the tower room sat a black-haired man. His hair was long and dark, almost reaching the floor. Both his hands and feet were shackled.
In his hands was a small book. Clearly, before the witch arrived, he had been reading by candlelight, imrsed in the world of the book.
He heard the sound and looked up.
In the mingling candlelight and moonlight, a gaunt, deathly pale face—like that of a patient in the late stages of anorexia—appeared before the witch.
She parted her lips and softly called out, “Mordred.”
(End of Chapter)
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