Old White lay on the ground, a dagger plunged into his chest, blood gurgling out and soaking his neat vest.
His eyes were wide open, already devoid of life.
Two men in ordinary worker’s clothing but with fierce gazes stood nearby; one was wiping blood from the dagger, while the other quickly searched the counter and drawers.
“Old man, you chose the hard way!
Wouldn’t it have been easier just to hand it over?” The man wiping the dagger spat.
“Stop talking and look!
The mirror must be in the back room, the Bishop is pressing us!” The searching man’s tone was anxious.
They quickly rushed into the back room.
Columbina’s spiritual body hurriedly floated higher to avoid them.
The two of them spotted the mirror on the workbench at a glance, and one immediately grabbed it, stuffing it into a canvas bag they carried.
They rummaged around a bit more, sweeping some small items that looked valuable or potentially useful into the bag as well.
Columbina floated to the side, quietly watching the scene.
Regarding Old White’s death, he felt a trace of regret and silence.
This old man had taken decent care of Sandrone, but he was clearly caught in a more dangerous vortex.
mirror?
Does it refer to this mirror?
Just then, he noticed a fist-sized, hazy halo of light with constantly shifting faint colors slowly emerging from Old White’s corpse, as if it were a condensation of some essence of his life.
This thing emitted an aura similar to the glimmers on previous items but more concentrated.
One of the men took out a small metal box engraved with runes, opened the lid, and made a beckoning motion toward Old White’s corpse.
That halo of light drifted slowly into the box, and the lid closed with a “click.”
The man carefully tucked the box into an inner pocket.
“Go!”
The two quickly cleared away any obvious traces they might have left, and carrying their bulging bags, they hurried out of the shop, closing the door behind them.
Silence returned to the shop, leaving only the gradually cooling corpse and scattered items.
Columbina floated above the corpse, curiously looking at where the halo had just appeared.
She could feel that there was still a trace of something similar.
She reached out a finger to touch that residual sensation.
A weak suction came through, slightly stronger than when she had absorbed the essence of items before.
[Primogem +80]
A prompt surfaced.
That residual sensation completely vanished.
“This is…
human essence?”
Columbina withdrew his hand, lost in thought.
She could absorb things from items, and she could also absorb something left behind after a person died.
Only, why could Sandrone see him, while these two Murderers seemed unable to see her spiritual body?
She shook his head, no longer dwelling on it.
The priority now was to follow those two, see where they were going, and find out who that Bishop was.
Besides, she had just made a small fortune—320 Primogems!
Columbina’s spiritual body followed behind the two hurried men like a silent wisp of smoke, passing through increasingly remote streets and finally arriving at a nearly forgotten old district on the outskirts of the city.
A detached two-story residence with exterior walls covered in withered vines and windows boarded up with wood crouched like a sick beast.
The man knocked a specific rhythm on the heavy wooden door.
The door opened a crack, and the two slipped inside.
Columbina didn’t hesitate; his spiritual body pressed lightly against the crack in the door and flowed in like mercury at the very last second before it closed.
It was darker inside than outside, lit only by a few dim yellow Gas Lamps, and the air was stagnant.
A thin and tall figure wearing a deep purple hooded robe stood with his back to the door in the center of the empty living room.
Even without seeing his face, that cold aura made one extremely uncomfortable.
“Lord Bishop, we have the item.”
The man presenting the mirror spoke with a tone of flattery and an imperceptible tremble, placing the canvas bag on the floor and carefully taking out the silver mirror and the small metal box that held Old White’s residual halo.
The person called the Bishop slowly turned around.
Only the lower half of his face could be seen under the shadow of the hood—his skin was an unhealthy pale, and his lips were thin and dark.
She didn’t reach for the mirror first; instead, he extended a finger with a long, sharp nail and pointed it through the air at the two men who had delivered the goods.
“You…
brought unclean eyes with you.”
The Bishop’s voice was hoarse and slimy, like a snake crawling over dry leaves.
The two men’s faces instantly turned deathly pale, wanting to beg for mercy or explain, but the sounds were stuck in their throats.
Their bodies visibly shriveled up, skin clinging tightly to bone, eyes bulging, and all color draining away; within a few short seconds, they turned into two mummies frozen in postures of terror, collapsing to the floor.
Hiding in the shadows of a corner pressed against the ceiling, Columbina’s spiritual body trembled slightly.
“Silencing them so decisively?
Not even planning to pay the Reward?
What a black-hearted boss.”
He complained inwardly while further concealing his presence, though the other party didn’t seem to have discovered him directly.
Only then did the Bishop slowly bend down and pick up the silver mirror.
His withered fingers stroked the mirror frame, and a low chuckle escaped his throat: “mirror of the empty moon…
rumored to be able to glimpse true moonlight and connect to the hidden…
that old appraiser really had some skill to actually find it.
Pity he couldn’t enjoy it.”
He tucked the small box away, not even glancing at the mummies on the floor, and walked straight toward the deeper part of the house, cradling the mirror.
He pushed open a secret door disguised as a bookshelf, behind which was a stone staircase leading downward.
A cold, damp breath rushed toward him.
Columbina hesitated for a moment, but curiosity eventually won out.
She maintained his distance and floated down soundlessly.
At the end of the passage was a small secret room.
The statue worshipped on the altar made Columbina feel a strong sense of discomfort even as a spiritual body—it wasn’t any known human form, but a twisted, coiled mass, an abstract sculpture that seemed to be kneaded together from countless blood vessels and wriggling matter, its surface shimmering with a wet, dark red luster.
Just looking at it, one could almost hear a slimy wriggling sound.
On the base of the statue were carved twisted words: mother of blood.
“Evil god worship?”
Columbina felt his skin crawl; this thing clearly wasn’t from any decent path, losing more SAN points than those from the Abyss Order.
She began to seriously consider whether he should run away immediately.
She focused his thoughts on the [Return] option on the system interface, ready to slip away at any moment.
The Bishop, however, had already respectfully placed the mirror of the empty moon before that nauseating statue.
She knelt on the ground and began to chant long, tongue-twisting incantations in a fanatical and trembling tone.
As she chanted, the air in the secret room began to thicken, the symbols on the walls lit up one by one with a crimson glow, and the mother of blood statue on the altar vibrated slightly, its surface oozing wisps of blood-red mist that seemed alive.
These mists grew more numerous and dense, carrying a strong aura of filth, slowly surging toward the mirror in the center of the altar.
Columbina’s finger was already hovering over the [Return] button.
But at the moment that crimson mist touched the mirror’s surface—
Ding!
Ding!
Ding!
Ding!…
A series of dense, crisp system notification sounds, as pleasant as gold coins falling into a bag, rang out in his consciousness at a speed that almost flooded the screen!
Columbina: “…?”
He subconsciously looked at the Primogem count display.
That number was jumping wildly at an unprecedented speed!
1000…
1500…
2200…
3000…!
The thick blood-red mist seemed to have become the mirror’s sweetest nourishment, being continuously sucked in.
The mirror surface itself began to emit an abnormal, chaotic luster of interwoven dark red and silver-white, even making a faint “creak” as if it were overwhelmed.
Fine cracks began to appear among the exquisite carved patterns on the mirror frame!
“This is charging it with evil god power; it’s going to explode if it’s overcharged!”
Columbina immediately understood the situation.
The mirror was passively absorbing these filthy energies and converting them into system Primogems, but the mirror body itself seemed unable to withstand the impact of such a quantity.
Shattering could happen in the next second.
To run, or not to run?
Primogem count: 4500…
5000…
6000…!