Chapter Seventy-Six: The Traveler Immersed in Darkness (Sixth Update)

Human eyes and perception are easily deceived. Memory, too, is fallible.

Once, the man who called himself an intelligence broker named Willy removed the fake mustache he used as a disguise, washed away the last traces of makeup from his face with clear water, and in just a few moments—the master of the Hao Genli Manor, the renowned merchant Seherfal from the lower districts, vanished like a phantom from the mirror in the bathing chamber. In his place appeared the face of a young man, not particularly outstanding, but certainly pleasant to look at.

He seemed to be about twenty-six or twenty-seven, with pale blue eyes as calm as a winter lake. His dark brown hair, freed from styling gel, fell loosely over his forehead, lending him a certain boyish charm. If not for his otherwise ordinary appearance, the unique serenity of his bearing and the clear gaze tinged with melancholy would have been enough to make him a favorite among women—a man whose quiet allure lay in his temperament.

"Wilson."

A gentle knock came at the door of the bathing chamber, followed by an aged voice from outside.

The intelligence broker paused briefly in his movements, but his expression remained unchanged. He simply dried himself with a towel, put on a ghastly white mask that was featureless save for hollow spaces at the eyes and mouth, and let his deep blue eyes spin within the mask's unnaturally long eye sockets. His pale lips curled slightly beneath the mask's wide, grotesque mouth. Tilting his head, for just an instant in the shifting light, the mask in the mirror seemed to sneer with an eerie, sinister smile.

"An emergency meeting?" he asked as he opened the door, glancing at his watch. The hour and minute hands formed a perfect one-hundred-eighty-degree angle.

Six o'clock sharp.

"No, it is a summons from Lord Ignati," replied the old man outside—or perhaps calling him a man was not quite right. Though he bore the appearance of a human, fitting the definition of "old," his lower body, reminiscent of the legendary djinn of ancient myth, made it clear that the word "human" was a misnomer.

He was... a Messenger.

A being that wandered the depths of the Deepest Night—a curiosity, a fragment of something stranger still.

More precisely, he was but one part of a curiosity dwelling in the farthest reaches of the Deepest Night.

Obadiah. Obadiah’s Castle.

In the Deepest Night, countless bizarre entities existed beyond human understanding or logic, defying the laws of the orderly world. Lost travelers in the darkness often referred to these utterly incomprehensible things as curiosities—the word itself was neutral, neither praise nor condemnation. Some curiosities were beneficial to humans, even helping them unconditionally; others, like pure chaos, harbored deep malice toward all things. They were as varied as they were inscrutable.

Obadiah belonged to the more neutral kind.

It was a living castle.

Obadiah’s Castle.

Ignati had given it this name. According to the old man, such curiosities were not uncommon in the Deepest Night. The travelers seeking Prometheus were not made of iron and stone—they needed food, rest, and all the bodily needs of ordinary people. Without these curiosities to serve as waystations, no one could venture far into the malevolent Deepest Night.

But none of this concerned him.

He gathered his scattered thoughts and looked at the curiosity manifesting as an old man before him.

"Take me," he commanded, without a trace of courtesy.

"As you wish."

The old man answered in a deep, hoarse voice. With a soft whoosh, his shriveled form suddenly burst apart, a crimson torrent surging forth. In an instant, the intelligence broker who had once appeared at the side of the Glorious One as Willy felt his pupils consumed, overtaken by scarlet flames.

And then, in the next moment—

"Master Wilson," the aged voice roused the young man’s dulled senses. The curiosity, now once more in the guise of an old man, stepped aside with a perfectly formal gesture of invitation. "Welcome to Obadiah’s Castle."

Willy—no, Wilson—gave no reply. It would have been utterly pointless; as part of Obadiah the Castle, the old man possessed logic but no true personality.

Wilson simply followed the direction indicated.

Obadiah was nothing like the castles humans imagined. It was not a lifeless structure fixed to the earth, but a living creature with a soul and will of its own. Nor did it have a definite form in the outside world; its vast body existed in a place it called the "Interstice"—the space between things. But when one applied this concept to a curiosity as immense as a castle, one had to wonder whether the definitions of "interstice" truly aligned.

Most striking of all, however, was that the castle’s interior was not a static, dead space, but a living labyrinth.

Without guidance, one could not take a single step.

But with guidance, one could move with ease.

The shadowy corridors flickered past. At the corridor’s end, Wilson paused, his gaze lingering on an ornate door before gently pushing open what appeared to be a massive stone portal.

"What do you want with me?" He raised an eyebrow, paying no mind to the pure white chamber beyond the door—a stark contrast to the darkness outside. His pale blue eyes reflected only the image of a decrepit old man, a loathsome victim of demonization. "Old man?"

"You are being watched." Ignati set down his cup, his muddy gaze unreadable, his deep voice even and unhurried. "Michelangelo and the Killer of the Misty Night have already begun negotiating the terms of their cooperation—and you, you will be the killer’s proof of good faith."

"The killer?" Wilson found a seat opposite the old man. "The Dark Guild and Michelangelo working together? Old man, did word of your plan leak out?"

He regarded the old man with a scrutinizing gaze.

"The Dark Guild," the traveler returned from darkness snorted, "is nothing but a pack of losers who lost everything, even their undergarments. Michelangelo would have no use for them."

"What do you mean?" Wilson caught the implication immediately.

"The Dark Guild no longer exists," the old man said, shaking his head with a trace of regret. "In this, I must admit, the youngster from the Ulysses family did a remarkable job."

"They actually succeeded?"

Wilson, whether as a member of the House of the Lost or a former intelligence broker, knew well the Dark Guild’s might. From the start, he had no hope for the boy and the swordswoman’s mission.

"Yes, they succeeded," Ignati sipped his tea and set it down. "Or you could say they failed—thanks to certain manipulations, the Dark Guild’s Killer Plan saw perfect completion."

"So, the Killer of the Misty Night has been resurrected?" Wilson felt little about the killer who had thrown the lower districts into chaos a century before. He acknowledged the foe was terrifying, but before the old man, even such a killer would cause only the faintest ripple. "And now he’s joined forces with Michelangelo?"

His voice was unexpectedly calm.

"That’s right." The old man nodded, adding, "And you will be the first to suffer the consequences."

"I’m flattered," Wilson raised his head, matching the old man’s emerald gaze with the tranquil blue of his own—calm as the ocean before a storm. "Does this mean I’m in great danger?"

"Extremely," Ignati replied.

"Isn’t that exactly what you want?" The former intelligence broker’s brow rose, his words layered with complex emotion. "My dear foster father."

Foster father.

At that, the old man’s movements froze abruptly, and he fell into a long silence.

"That was never my intention," he finally sighed after two or three minutes. "If you insist on revenge, I won’t object to granting you the opportunity once the plan is complete."

"Forget it." After another long silence, the young man shrugged indifferently. "Whether your mad scheme succeeds or not, I won’t accept your charity—so, old man, take good care of your own life. Don’t let the wrath of the Glorious One or the Swordbearer tear you to pieces."

"I can’t promise that." Looking into the young man’s pale blue eyes, the traveler returned from darkness chuckled softly. "The Lord of Hemtica is no simple figure. Twenty or thirty years ago, I might have stood against him. Now… I am old."

"Such defeatist talk doesn’t suit you," Wilson shook his head. "If you dare to pursue such a mad plan, surely you have some confidence, old man."

"Some things do not require confidence," the old man paused and sighed softly, his cloudy gaze fixed on some unknowable place. He spoke in a flat, irrefutable tone, "For fate has never left humanity any choice."

"You had no choice?" The former intelligence broker sneered. "If it’s to seek out the secrets hidden in the Deepest Night, I could understand, but—"

He paused, looking at his foster father, the final authority of the House of the Lost.

"I have never understood why you would break the boundary between the lower and misty districts, let the Nameless Mist breach the Wall of Sighs, and drag all of Hemtica into unprecedented danger!"

Yet, faced with the young man’s accusation, the aged traveler simply remained silent.

In the pure white chamber, youth and age locked gazes, neither yielding an inch. Time itself seemed to pause; oppressive tension pressed down like thunderclouds on a stormy night, growing heavier with each passing moment.

At last, Ignati ended the pointless standoff.

"If you truly cross paths with the killer," he said with a sigh, his words tinged with pessimism, "perhaps seeking help from Ulysses would not be unwise."

"My affairs are none of your concern!"

Wilson shot back roughly, but his protest had no chance to take root—for even before he could finish, the traveler returned from darkness had already issued a command to the true master of this place, the curiosity known as Obadiah.

"See him out," he said.

In the next instant, crimson flames surged and swallowed the young man’s form.

And then… peace returned to the world.

"Obadiah," the old man called the curiosity’s name, "have I truly done wrong?"

Naturally—

There was no reply.