Chapter 19: The Secret Room and the Old Book
Lin Wei stood solemnly outside the attic, waiting for the reports from the Tulip Guards and the security team. Ferlo lingered behind him, repeatedly wiping sweat from his brow. Watching the figure of this sixteen-year-old youth before him, Ferlo could not suppress the growing fear in his heart.
The mayor who had dominated Coutu Town for decades, along with his astonishingly beautiful niece, had both fallen by Lin Wei’s hand. The death of Elena, in particular, made Ferlo find Lin Wei all the more terrifying. In the prime of his youth, confronted with a woman of such beauty, he had killed her without hesitation. If it had been him, he could never have brought himself to do it.
“Sir!”
A Tulip Guard rushed out, his steps hurried and his expression grave.
Lin Wei folded his arms across his chest, frowning slightly. “Speak.”
“In the third basement level of the attic, we discovered a rather strange door. We suspect it may be a hidden chamber, but the door… we can’t open it.”
The Tulip Guard reported honestly.
A smile flickered across Lin Wei’s face. “Excellent.”
Led by the guard, Lin Wei arrived before the so-called “strange door.” The door looked to be made of steel, gleaming with a metallic sheen, completely out of place compared to the mottled walls around it.
Lin Wei’s brow furrowed further as he asked the guard beside him, “What’s so strange about this door?”
He scrutinized the door, but saw nothing particularly odd.
“Sir, please allow me to demonstrate.”
The guard moved ahead of Lin Wei, stepped up to the metal door, and rapped it lightly twice with his knuckle.
“Hm?!” Lin Wei’s pupils contracted slightly.
Though the guard had knocked, not the faintest sound could be heard.
Lin Wei strode forward, pushing the guard aside. He balled his fist and hammered hard on the metal door himself.
Still, the chamber remained utterly silent.
Lin Wei exhaled a cool breath. “Interesting.”
He turned to the guard, his eyes glinting coldly. “Leave. Speak to no one of what you’ve seen here. Otherwise, I’ll take you for a Sword and Flower informant… and kill you.”
The guard shuddered under Lin Wei’s gaze. “Understood, sir.”
He slipped away quickly, leaving Lin Wei alone on the third basement level.
Lin Wei gently stroked the metal door and issued a mental command to his chip: “Core, analyze this metal door.”
“Ding!”
“Unknown magnetic field detected—analysis failed!”
Lin Wei was not surprised. He had already expected this result; the intelligent core was always ineffective when it came to anything involving witchcraft.
“If I want to solve this problem, I’ll have to rely on the mysterious power of a sorcerer,” Lin Wei mused.
“What secret lies behind this door?” Lin Wei grinned wolfishly, drew back his fist, and struck!
Bang!
A deep fist-mark dented the metal door.
He struck again.
Bang!
The door dented further, but showed not a trace of shattering.
“What a nuisance,” Lin Wei muttered. “But my goal is to get inside, not to smash the door to bits.”
This time, his fist struck not the door, but the battered wall nearby.
Crash!
The wall suddenly collapsed, bricks tumbling away in a heap.
When the dust cleared, Lin Wei could finally see what lay beyond the metal door.
Just as the Tulip Guard had guessed, there was a hidden chamber behind it.
Lin Wei scanned the room cautiously, then hunched down and squeezed through the broken wall.
The contents of the chamber looked ancient, as if they had survived for centuries. On the left stood a bookshelf, its wood blackened with age, almost empty except for two thick tomes on the highest shelf. To the right was a desk upon which lay an open notebook, a quill, and a bottle of ink.
Above the desk, a cabinet was nailed to the wall—a lock dangled from it, but it was not fastened.
Lin Wei stepped forward and carefully opened the cabinet.
Inside sat two jars of unknown liquid, each containing a peculiar object.
“They’re those seeds!”
Lin Wei’s gaze sharpened at once—he recognized them as the strange, bloodsucking seeds Elena had thrown at him earlier.
He ignored them for now and continued scanning the room.
“It seems that’s all there is…”
After searching thoroughly, he found no new clues.
He picked up the open notebook from the desk first.
“A diary? The author is Elena.”
He skimmed through the elegant handwriting, flipping quickly through page after page. The words flew past his eyes, but he paused at nothing—until suddenly, his fingers froze mid-turn.
“What’s this…”
A look of surprise and delight appeared on Lin Wei’s face.
“Though I possess the talent to become a sorcerer, I have never acquired a sorcerer’s Meditation Book. Even with the experience my teacher imparted, I could only explore in silence, hoping for success… My teacher died, perishing in pursuit of meditation techniques. The path to becoming a sorcerer has only left me more lost. I want to retreat, but the honor of Sword and Flower is something I must defend… At last, I have succeeded! Though I lack the Meditation Book, I have devised a tool to substitute for the triggering of sorcerous power…”
A long moment passed.
Lin Wei slowly closed Elena’s diary, deep in thought. “My earlier suspicions were correct—Elena was never a true sorcerer, nor even an apprentice as the count described. She merely forced herself to imitate the workings of a sorcerer’s power through her extraordinary talent… A true genius.”
Yet Lin Wei felt regret—the diary contained no record of how this imitation had been accomplished. Elena had taken her secret to the grave.
His gaze shifted to the two thick old books on the shelf—the only remaining sources from which he might unearth a sorcerer’s secret. The seeds, although bizarre, offered him no answers.
Lin Wei approached and took down the book on the edge.
The cover was so yellowed with age as to be unrecognizable; he could just make out the image of a garden faintly embossed on it.
He ran his fingers lightly over the paper—there seemed nothing unusual about it, though it felt smoother than ordinary paper.
Opening the cover, a slew of unfamiliar characters filled Lin Wei’s sight. At first glance, they appeared twisted and strange, but upon closer inspection, there was an ineffable sense of beauty to them.
“Hmm? These are the common characters of Starlink Continent!”
A thrill ran through him. Lin Wei had a premonition that a brand new gateway was about to open before him.