Jeremy pondered deeply.
He calmed his mind and began to turn over every memory puzzle piece.
It took a grueling five minutes for the entire root cause of the tragedy to finally be connected into a complete picture.
The Duchess had indeed contracted a grave illness, becoming bedridden right after giving birth to the original owner.
As for the incident of the original owner’s older brother going missing... If his memory served him right, the tragedy originated when the original owner was only five years old. Due to the negligence of the escort knight order, hostile forces embedded within the estate seized the opportunity to kidnap him.
The fourteen-year-old older brother, while rushing to rescue his younger brother, engaged in a fierce battle with the group of assassins. In the end, he fell down a bottomless cliff, disappearing without a trace.
This heinous incident, when considered thoroughly, was the fault of the Duke’s estate’s lax defense system. What the hell did it have to do with a five-year-old child obediently playing indoors?
As for the fatal injury that plunged the Lord Duke into a coma, it was because he was struck by a wicked curse while battling the Demon army on the frontline battlefield. This matter had absolutely no connection to the original owner whatsoever.
That brat Amber actually dared to distort the truth, picking exactly these heartbreaking upheavals to rub salt into a child’s mind?
Could it be...
Exactly because of being brainwashed with these insults from such a young age, the original owner truly embraced the title of "jinx," gradually rejecting all approaches, turning himself into a gloomy, solitary individual with an extremely twisted personality?
Jeremy’s mind was in turmoil. When he withdrew his train of deduction, he discovered this small body had automatically begun to move.
The original owner silently swallowed an entire vial of healing potion, standing rooted to the spot waiting until the wound on his forehead completely closed and wiping clean all bloodstains, before silently walking outside.
Facing the concerned inquiries of the maids, the six-year-old boy merely responded with the most perfectly formulaic words, absolutely not revealing even a sliver of the grievance he had to bear.
A surge of extremely complex emotion welled up from the bottom of Jeremy’s heart.
Was this damn thing called raising the spiritual power threshold? This was clearly a training exercise to raise the limit of pressure endurance and emotional callousness.
But... he could empathize.
Jeremy understood what kind of shattered psychology a child of only six years old ultimately had to use to face all the unreasonable hatred of this world.
He lowered his eyes slightly. Perhaps, this was the most perfect defense mechanism the original owner’s brain could establish at that time. Not crying for help, not bothering anyone, swallowing all the bitterness and resentment down his stomach himself. Being a silent child, not attracting trouble, nor causing trouble for others.
Let alone the original owner, even Jeremy in his previous life had once harbored the illusion that: as long as he withdrew himself like that, he could stably live a peaceful life.
But ridiculously, the cruel laws of the survival world continuously dealt him bloody lessons, proving that it was a suicidal path.
The illusion shifted. Returning to the freezing space of Duke Valmont’s estate, this place still radiated an atmosphere as silent as a grave.
The sickly mother moved to live in a suburban villa to recuperate, still daily yearning for the return of her eldest son while ignoring the existence of her youngest. The authoritative father bearing heavy injuries was still lying unconscious under the magic tower’s treatment.
Jeremy just existed inside the illusion like that, playing the role of a parasitic soul, watching the lonely original owner boy eat meals, study by himself, attend classes, and then return to an empty room... an endless repeating cycle.
A life so dull and suffocating that it strangled the human mind.
What caused Jeremy’s blood pressure to spike even higher was the fact that the original owner occasionally had to swallow the suppression and implicit disdain of the wicked butler; or the fact that he had to strictly follow royal rules to attend banquets, only to be publicly humiliated by that brat Crown Prince Amber in front of a crowd of aristocrats.
It didn’t stop there; even at the primary academy, simply because of Amber’s blatant hatred, the original owner was alienated by the entire clique of aristocratic youths, and they even resorted to school bullying against a child incapable of fighting back.
It felt exactly as if this entire world were teaming up to abandon the boy, forcing human willpower into absolute helplessness.
The tears falling in the dark night grew more numerous, but the words escaping his mouth grew sparser. Until the very end, the tears dried up completely. And explanations and justifications also completely disappeared from the original owner’s living dictionary.
Time within the illusion seemed to have an invisible force pressing a fast-forward button many times over. Jeremy just used the status of an invisible observer, accompanying that enduring boy for four long years.
From the age of six stepping into the ten-year mark. This was no longer just reading and understanding the past through a few fragmented lines of memory, but the process of witnessing firsthand the darkest, most pathetic stretch of the original owner’s life journey.
Later on, the Duke awoke from his long coma, and the Madam’s illness gradually took a positive turn. The domineering butler was also dismissed and executed for the crime of embezzlement and colluding with outside forces.
The personnel system in the estate underwent a complete overhaul, and the parents also felt guilty, wanting to make up for the love they had missed for their youngest son over the years. The original owner also went from the youngest son to the only son of the Valmont family.
It seemed everything was shifting toward a brighter trajectory.
But paradoxically, the original owner became increasingly distant, freezing all emotions toward this home, toward the very people sharing his bloodline.
Human personality requires time to form. And four long years... nearly one thousand five hundred days of living in humiliation and isolation, was more than enough to completely warp a soul.
Moreover... that was the most important stage for building a child’s foundational personality.
Starting with submissive silence, transitioning into stillness like stagnant water, and ending with an emotional shell that was erratic and stubbornly crazy.
The memories Jeremy had assimilated originally only reflected the one-sided perspective, feelings, and thought process of the original owner, therefore many events were purely one-dimensional, lacking the complete big picture.
He originally intended to borrow this rare opportunity to gather more data on the true attitudes of those relatives, but unfortunately, the illusion suddenly developed cracks here, then shattered and dissipated into tens of thousands of starlight fragments.
Opening his eyes again, Jeremy discovered his consciousness had returned to the space of his own pitch-black soul sea.
The phantom, tightly bound by the Soul Devourer chain, constricted to the point its blurry form seemed about to dissipate, was howling and questioning him:
"You damn dog! Why... why didn’t you get lost?! Those memories were clearly agonizing enough to mince a soul, weren’t they?!"
It had squeezed out its last bit of strength to maintain the illusion, thinking it would swallow its prey’s consciousness, yet the result was that this freakish human remained completely unscathed, his mind even frighteningly lucid!
Jeremy leisurely pulled his leg out of the dark mire. His slender hand still gripped the end of the chain that had hog-tied the demon before he lost consciousness. He flicked his wrist slightly, his tone nonchalantly cold: "Actually, if you let me get stuck in there a bit longer, who knows, I might have truly gotten lost. Come on, quickly channel your energy and recreate that illusion segment that was cut off just now."
The stark white demon bared its jagged jaws, so infuriated its body distorted and warped:
"Are you insane?! Do you think running an illusion doesn’t consume magic power?! Better to just act like a music player then! Moreover, even if I squeeze out my life to recreate it, it’s not damn certain I can accurately restore the exact memory segment you were watching!"
Hearing the blunt refusal, Jeremy’s expression instantly darkened, completely losing his interest.
He brushed off the illusory mud and stood up straight from the cold, dark ground. Taking long strides closer, his hand grabbed the phantom’s neck without any hesitation, casually spitting out each word:
"I lowered my barrier to let you invade my body because I wanted to borrow the pressure to break through my spiritual power threshold. As a result, you showed me a piece of garbage, haphazardly cut tragic movie, leaving me with nothing but a pile of irritation. So tell me... shouldn’t you be crushed to pieces right now?"
"?"
The phantom was utterly terrified, immediately abandoning its arrogant, cunning attitude from moments ago, flipping its face faster than flipping a book:
"No no no! Big Boss, I don’t want my soul to scatter! I beg you to raise your hand high and strike gently, spare the miserable life of this pitiful ghost... sob... boo hoo hoo."
The outward appearance of this phantom looked quite similar to those rain-praying dolls hung outside porches, only different in that it had grown arms and clear facial features. There were even two streaks of bright red blood on its pale cheeks. The awkward part was, because its size was shrunk down to a mini version, looking closely, not only did it not scare people, but it also bore an innocence that bordered on ridiculous.
Jeremy lightly tugged the chain’s end, the corner of his lips curling into a cold smile: "I never do things that yield no benefit. Moreover, give me a reason why I should release an evil demon that intended to snatch my body?"
The little demon trembled violently, frantically screaming a rebuttal in its heart: [It was clearly you who opened the door yourself to invite me in! Moreover, even if I really did manage to control your garbage body, I wouldn’t damn well want to stay for a lifetime, at most I’d use it for a few days and then bolt!]
Despite hurling insults tens of thousands of times in its heart, facing the overwhelming murderous intent of the human before it, it absolutely did not dare to open its mouth to blabber half a word.
Its mind spun rapidly, squeezing its memory under the threat of death. Finally, it managed to dig out a piece of life-saving, valuable information.
The phantom stammered: "I... I know an earth-shattering secret of this forest! To you humans, that thing is absolutely a priceless treasure. As long as you spare me, I promise to offer all the information to you!"
Priceless treasure?
Jeremy’s golden eyes flashed slightly. He loosened his grip slightly, retracting the Soul Devourer chain: "Let’s hear it."
A map drawn with pale magic power immediately appeared in mid-air. The demon carefully used its stubby fingertip to point to a blazing red coordinate located deep within the center of the forest:
"I guarantee with my life, the value of this cave, on this entire middle-of-nowhere deserted island, there is damn well nowhere that compares."
Jeremy cast a sharp glance over it. Thanks to this map, he was astonished to realize the area of this deserted island was many times larger than his initial judgment. However... where the blazing red coordinate was displayed, analyzed from the surrounding topographical structure, it was entirely a steep cliff with no way back.
"This treasure you’re boasting about... don’t tell me it’s located deep inside that damn cliff?"
The phantom nodded frantically: "Exactly! Rumor has it there is a level-nine mutated magic beast guarding inside; precisely because of this, for hundreds of years, not a single creature has dared to wander close to steal the item."
Jeremy fell into absolute silence.
Because the unlucky or foolish ones who dared to show their faces there had all been chewed to the bone by the level-nine magic beast?
That was what it meant, right?