Above the eternal gray fog.
Klein sat behind the bronze long table, his body shrouded in gray fog, his temperament lofty and profound.
He materialized paper and pen and began writing divination statements, using the high-status mysticism of the gray fog to perform divination.
The content of his divination concerned a child named "Will Auceptin," suspected to be a high-sequence powerhouse of the "Monster" pathway, the "Snake of Mercury."
This morning, he and Dr. Allen had discovered Will's body in the cemetery.
After obtaining two contradictory conclusions—"Will hasn't completely died" and "the discovered body is indeed Will's"—he felt somewhat confused.
"Was the divination interfered with? No, that's not it..."
After a series of divinations and deductions, Klein felt the other party might be in some peculiar state, evading pursuit from other Snake of Mercurys of the same sequence.
"As expected, you can't disbelieve divination, but you can't completely believe it either."
He said with deep feeling.
Speaking of this, his heart suddenly stirred.
Divination results can't be completely trusted?
Last time, Silas had mentioned suspecting there were coincidental factors in encountering the Psychology Alchemists—that it had been arranged by 0-08.
His answer at the time had been "no," because he'd already performed divination above the gray fog.
It had been several days since that divination above the gray fog. What if Silas had suddenly been targeted during this recent period?
It shouldn't be that bad, right?
Klein thought with self-doubt, but his spiritual intuition prompted him to materialize a new sheet of paper. He then wrote on it:
"Silas Londor's current fate has been twisted."
When divining about Silas before, he'd been interfered with by illusory sea tide sounds.
But through experimentation, he'd discovered that as long as he didn't use dream divination to probe Silas's inner secrets and only used pendulum divination for his external circumstances, the interference would significantly decrease.
Klein quietly recited the divination statement, holding the topaz pendulum above the paper until it nearly touched the words, then entered a meditative state.
"Whoosh—"
The surrounding gray fog began to boil, as if confronting some illusory entity.
Klein felt intense pain transmitted from his brain, but this pain was still bearable. He forced himself through the splitting headache and struggled to open his eyes to look at the result:
The topaz was rotating clockwise, quickly and with considerable amplitude.
This indicated affirmation.
Silas's fate had been twisted, and very intensely!
Klein's eyes widened instantly. He thought for a few seconds, then rapidly wrote a new divination statement on the paper:
"Silas Londor is currently in a dangerous situation."
The divination result was likewise affirmative, and the topaz's movement amplitude was extremely large, indicating the danger level was very high!
This is bad!
0-08 is interfering with him!
The alarm bells in Klein's heart rang frantically. He remembered Silas saying he was going to find people from the Psychology Alchemists for treatment today.
Was there something wrong with those Psychology Alchemists people, or had Ince Zangwill noticed him?
---
The heavy snow showed no signs of ending, just continuing to fall incessantly.
Black flurries filled the world before his eyes, decorating Backlund's cityscape together with gray misty fog.
Though it was afternoon, the sky was absurdly dark. This snow began melting as soon as it hit the ground, staining everything in the world with filth.
Gas lamps had already been lit one by one, but they were only orange-red clusters, huddling in the curtain of snow, unable to provide much illumination.
"The weather is truly terrible."
Silas thought to himself, beginning to worry a bit.
"In this kind of weather, can that Psychology Alchemists expert arrive on time? If he cancels the trip, that would be troublesome..."
Looking at the dim sky outside the carriage window, he fell into a slight trance.
The day he left Tingen, it had been this dark too. The public cemetery had no gas lamps, only moonlight.
When he pushed open the coffin lid, seeing such darkness, he'd thought he'd arrived in the underworld...
Unconsciously raising his hand, his fingers seemed to recall the heaviness of the coffin lid pressing down and the roughness of the coffin lid's surface.
Hmm?
Silas suddenly froze.
But it was Cecilia who dug me out. Shouldn't she have been the one to push open the coffin lid?
"Buzz!"
Just as he felt confused by the jumbled memory, a sharp buzzing sound suddenly pierced his ears.
Caught off guard, he jerked violently before belatedly covering his ears.
It's starting again!
Silas thought resentfully.
He heard a grand voice, as if rising from beneath the earth yet also descending from the sky.
That voice seemed to come from the distant primordial past, a prayer carved into the depths of ancestral souls, the great being's holy enlightenment of humanity.
"Thou shalt repent, shalt feel pain."
"If thy right eye looks directly upon the divine and commits transgression, pluck out thy right eye.
If thy right hand points at the divine and commits blasphemy, cut off thy right hand."
"Better to lose one of thy members than have thy whole body cast into hell..."
The grand voice echoed, making Silas feel intense pain. Unable to control himself, he covered his head and curled his body.
"Shut up, shut up!"
He shouted in a low voice.
"Crash—"
The illusory sound of sea tides echoed in his mind. He actively summoned his golden finger, trying to use this method to counteract the True Creator's influence.
However, this mad voice continued echoing endlessly, as if automatically generating from the depths of his mind, resonating with his own flesh and blood.
This isn't the True Creator's ravings?
It's... it's my own?!
Something's wrong!
He jerked his head up and saw Ma'am M's phantom. The latter was pointing at the coachman ahead.
It turned out that at this moment, the carriage's direction had deviated from the road leading to Queens District and was instead heading deeper into the East Borough.
"Stop!"
Silas shouted at the coachman.
But the other party just continued driving the carriage without even turning his head.
Since boarding, not only had he not spoken, he'd barely even moved.
"I said, stop!"
Silas forced himself through the pain, waved his hand, condensed a ball of flame in his palm, and shot it at the coachman's back.
"Bang!"
The coachman's body was immediately engulfed in flames, yet he didn't let out even a single cry.
Instead, he continued driving while burning. Only when his arm was burned off did the carriage twist direction, crashing diagonally into a lamppost by the roadside and coming to a stop.
"Cecilia! Get out quickly!"
Silas shouted to his sister.
By now, if he still couldn't detect something was wrong, he'd be too foolish.
The two had just jumped from the carriage when they saw the coachman's corpse had already exploded, transforming into a pool of blood mixed with the filthy black snow. Deep within the blood, transparent radiance was forming.
A distant, ethereal chant rose accordingly:
"I came, I saw, I recorded."
In a daze, Silas seemed to see transparent, blurred pages flipping rapidly, finally settling on a particular page.
The transparent radiance gradually constructed into a door. Someone walked out from within, stepping into the muddy ground.
A black robe draped over him, as if he were about to merge into this dim environment. Under the hood, that handsome face was filled with madness and joy.
"Found you."
Mr. A said with a cold laugh.