Author: 冬瓜茶仙人 / Winter Melon Tea Immortal
Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/
Chapter 170
“Lord Khalif!” Azman had been waiting for a long time. As soon as he saw Khalif step out of the study, he hurried to greet him excitedly.
Khalif’s heavy demeanor lingered, making him appear a stark contrast to his spirited self from earlier that morning. Now, Azman’s overly high-pitched voice felt like it was making his ears ring.
No one understood the exhaustion from rapidly declining physical and mental energy better than Khalif, and no one loathed it more than he did.
That’s why he was so desperate—stimulants only provided temporary relief. The time magic researched by the Monkey family was also unstable. Different doors yielded different effects, but generally, they didn’t deviate from natural laws: the amount of energy put in relatively stabilized the effect of the time reversal. However, the current doors couldn’t be sustained for long. He could only briefly grasp time, then repeat the process of time slipping away from him.
Yesterday, he opened one such door. It maintained a short duration but had a high success rate and minimal side effects. Apart from feeling particularly fatigued afterward and needing time to recover, there was nothing to complain about.
At this moment, Khalif, who desperately needed to lie down, naturally had no friendly expression for the uninvited Azman. “Why are you here?”
“Cameron…”
“I know about Cameron,” Khalif said impatiently. “His assistant is also dead. I’ve sent five people to take over their work.”
Azman’s face turned pale. “I suspect this is a conspiracy!”
He spoke urgently, “First Adan, then Louis and Cameron. Lord Khalif, we need to take measures to stop this momentum.”
“Measures?” Khalif turned to look at him, a strange light flickering in his eyes. “Haven’t you already transferred most of the manpower here? What more do you want?”
Azman felt a chill in his heart, unsure if Khalif was displeased with his initiative, especially on the sensitive issue of manpower. But the authority had been delegated by Khalif himself. He had every right to do so.
“I am mainly concerned for your safety,” he said, toning down his anxiety and speaking with a slippery tone. “You’re the backbone of the family. We’re expendable as long as you’re safe.”
“With so many good hands surrounding us like an iron barrel, do you think those filthy slaves will charge the mansion with pickaxes?” Khalif’s dissatisfaction with Azman was clear, but he didn’t have time to deal with him. “If there are a few more fires, our business will be ruined by them. If any guests get hurt or other activities are affected, White Bridge will become a laughingstock on the continent.”
Azman hurried to clarify, “I haven’t reduced the security for the auction, but… the one who can assassinate several key figures in a short time is not an ordinary person.”
“The Wolf’s enemies have never been ordinary,” Khalif interrupted again. Although he didn’t like Louis, he had to admit that compared to someone like Azman, who only cared about his own safety and had no sense of the bigger picture, Louis was much more competent. Now that Azman was in charge, Khalif realized Azman was even more of a fool than he had shown before.
“Have the Monkeys monitor the Fox and Lion’s people. The old bag knows how to deal with them. If you’re afraid of dying,” Khalif looked down at Azman, who was a head shorter than him, with undisguised contempt, “then find a small boat and hide in Fortuna Harbor but leave your children behind. The Wolves need fresh blood, don’t they?”
Azman’s face turned deathly pale. Khalif didn’t look at him again and walked away.
The Wolves need fresh blood. This was a phrase often muttered by those dissatisfied with Khalif’s refusal to step down and his suppression of the younger generation. Although Azman had never said it himself due to his identity and position, being present in discussions where such things were said made little difference.
He had never expected that Khalif always knew!
Inside the study, Xanye had been eavesdropping on the conversation outside. She retracted her hand from the door.
Khalif didn’t spare any face for the remaining Elders, even at this critical moment. Xanye could almost conclude that he had obtained a key clue about the Holy Grail.
Unless he knew that the time reversal magic was nearly complete.
Xanye had always held back from Khalif on this matter. However, if the astrologer was omniscient, it wasn’t impossible for Khalif to get the truth from him. She had been experimenting with the magic in Khalif’s bedroom for as long as she had been with him. The initial attempts were indeed unstable because Khalif had no magical talent whatsoever. Performing the magic independently was very difficult unless a mage accompanied him—but Khalif refused to share the results with anyone. Moreover, Xanye, the magic designer, was still young. If she went back fifteen or twenty years with Khalif, she would turn into a child, which she absolutely didn’t want.
If magical talent was lacking, it had to be supplemented with soul thickness. This was Xanye’s calculated idea: extracting the life force of Khalif’s blood relatives to construct the “door”. Their souls would become part of the door’s space, greatly reducing the rejection of Khalif, the intruder. To support this idea, Khalif personally snapped the necks of two of his sons and tampered with a daughter’s carriage, causing her to die on an otherwise smooth road.
Khalif had never married. Besides a banished son and two married daughters, only Prima remained by his side. Only Xanye knew that this young lady wasn’t a cherished jewel but a carefully maintained human-shaped fuel.
Xanye didn’t sympathize with any of them, whether the previous victims of the door or Prima. However, she did feel a bit sorry for Louis. Compared to the old man, she preferred young people with lush hair, slender waists, and long legs.
Too bad Louis wasn’t nice to anyone. If he had smiled more, she might have delayed telling Khalif about his whereabouts by a few minutes.
Xanye lit several rows of candles, surrounding herself. On the floor lay a crystal slab the size of a hardcover book. She carefully wiped it with breast milk and rose oil, then sprinkled expensive fine salt over the mirror surface to break the anti-tracking magic items on the target’s body.
“…The blazing sun, freezing moon—I am a faithful follower of the Seven Gods. Please respond to my humble call and descend upon my fingertips… His name is Louis.”
Xanye closed her eyes and finished the incantation. The smoke from the burning sage didn’t dissipate over time. Instead, it grew thicker, enveloping her completely. It seemed there were many tiny lightning bolts in the smoke, causing Xanye’s body to twitch slightly. Her hand on the crystal slab began to tremble. After a few minutes, Xanye opened her eyes and saw the salt on the crystal slab had drawn coordinates as usual. However, unlike usual, it didn’t pinpoint a location but circled two completely different areas before stopping at a place in the inner city.
Was this a success or a failure?
If the target had strong anti-tracking magic, it could indeed confuse the result. But this was the first time she had seen it circle two areas simultaneously. Xanye frowned, moved to another room, and performed the ritual again, this time for Prima. The result showed she was still in the inner city, but the range could only be narrowed down to one block.
She was also in some magically protected area, possibly a building with a blessing artifact. The Wolf and Monkey didn’t oppose visitors setting up their own protections, despite discarding them during the inner city’s construction for ease of surveillance.
This result indicated her magic ritual wasn’t wrong. Louis had probably noticed something (after all, he and Khalif had been wary of each other for a long time), and Xanye pondered for a moment before calling the maids in the corridor. The well-trained girls silently entered the room to clean up the ritual items. During this interval, Xanye quickly went to the end of the second-floor corridor to the large terrace, pretending to get some fresh air. Seeing no one around, she threw something into the tulip bushes below.
After a while, she saw a gardener with a sun hat approaching. Confirming he knew where the item was, Xanye picked up her skirt and turned away.
……
A man pushed open the door to a small building. Inside, it was dark, and the air smelled musty.
“They’re upstairs,” said the old man behind the counter, glancing at him.
The man nodded and quickly ran upstairs. There, several partitions formed a large room temporarily used as a command center.
“They’ve withdrawn most of their forces,” the man said eagerly upon entering. “Only about twenty people remain, scattered.”
“Withdrawn?” Shiloh and Hasting exchanged puzzled glances.
“Are they so confident we won’t enter the inner city?” Shiloh asked. “Who gave them that illusion?”
“The final auction is at eight tonight,” Hasting said to the man who had just entered. “Their focus will be there.”
“Then storm the venue and kill them all! Just like they did to Jason!” one of the other men in the room said angrily.
“It’s best not to confront them head-on,” Hasting said calmly. “White Bridge has a well-trained armed force. They are disciplined, and we can’t even equip each person with a weapon.”
“So what do we do?”
“Side provocations, dispersed operations,” Shiloh said, looking excited. “He’s a pessimist—don’t be too tense. The more disciplined the troops, the more they need correct command to be effective. Reliable information suggests their commander has fled, replaced by a fool.”
“All we need is determination, courage, and a reliable plan,” Shiloh said. “If you trust us.”
“You saved Jason,” the man who had just entered said solemnly. “We can tell the difference between good and bad people.”
“And even without you, we’ve had enough of this crap,” others chimed in. “We work hard, yet the inner city people treat us like animals, but we’re the true masters of White Bridge. They are the invaders!”
“We should have taken back our dignity long ago,” said an older man crouching in the corner, stroking the scar on his leg from being scalded by something thrown from a Monkey Family’s carriage years ago.
Hasting picked up a piece of wood and drew a simple symbol on the wall with its charred end.
“Our companions have prepared hiding spots throughout the inner city. This is the mark,” he said. “Places with this symbol are safe. Remember: tonight’s auction will have concentrated armed forces. We are only to create chaos. The real battleground…”
He glanced out the window before calmly saying, “Is at the docks and residential areas you’re most familiar with.”
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