Today was Monday. Since he went to the Prophet Association early in the morning, Xia De didn't have time to pick up his gift.
As Luvia and Iluna were both there, Xia De suggested picking up this week's gift in front of them.
He had Iluna hold the cat tightly to prevent it from jumping into the box again, then Xia De reached his hand into the metal box.
It had been more than two months since he obtained this sage-level relic, and apart from the banknote printing plate which brought him some surprises, most of the gifts were dispensable.
And this time, Xia De's luck finally arrived.
“Oh!”
He suddenly widened his eyes because his fingers touched a key at the bottom of the box, and he immediately perceived that it was a relic.
“Finally! Finally! My luck recently has been quite good. First, I got the 【Corpse Mirror】 in Mi Fort, and now I’ve actually received another gift!”
Trying to control not to show an overly exaggerated expression on his face, Xia De took out the somewhat cold, black-iron colored large key. The key itself was as long as Xia De's palm, and its teeth were small squares; this type of key was commonly used for large locks in the Old Continent.
The metal surface had almost imperceptible engravings, which were slender ancient letters like earthworms. Translated, their meaning was:
【The only lock that cannot be opened is the heart lock of maidens.】
“Is this it? So, a relic can really be taken out of the god's gift box.”
Luvia commented from the side.
“What is this?”
Xia De asked curiously. Iluna, who was well-informed in the church, also recognized it:
“The Poet Grade 【omnipotent key】?”
“Yes, a universal key, a one-time relic, with an unknown quantity and unknown origin. Its characteristic is simple: it unconditionally opens a lock.”
Luvia nodded to Xia De:
“Yes, it’s very similar to your 【Key of the Door】. But the advantage of this relic is that it doesn’t consume the user’s spirit; even opening a Mystic Lock has no consumption. Moreover, holding this key can enhance one’s ability to see through illusions. Its disadvantages, besides being one-time use, also include the spatial instability that comes with it.”
Luvia thought for a moment:
“A Ring術士 holding this key is more likely to encounter accidents in areas that are already spatially unstable than others. A small example: taking this key to Middlesburg increases the likelihood of being accidentally drawn into the Life and Death Gap.”
“That’s really a shame. You two can have it. I already have the 【Door Key】, so I don’t need this.”
Xia De placed the key on the table. Although he didn't need this key, Xia De was still very happy to get a relic.
The purple-eyed Diviner and the seventeen-year-old Lu Wei Ya of Long Hair exchanged glances.
“Keep it with you.”
Iluna spoke proactively:
“I'm also going to Middlesburg in a few days, and I don't want Xia De to go to the Life and Death Gap again to rescue me.”
“Alright then, I’ll find an opportunity to compensate Xia De.”
Luvia put away the key, then asked Xia De:
“So, Boy, what kind of task did god give you this week?”
She and Iluna both laughed. The "take a gift" characteristic of the gift box could only be triggered by children, so Luvia comparing Xia De to a "Boy" was indeed amusing.
“Very simple, at least simpler than last week’s task of swinging a knife 100 times each of the three days. It seems the difficulty of the weekly task is unrelated to the value of the gift—give your pet a bath once.”
Xia De said.
“Meow?”
Mia, who was held by Iluna, suddenly poked her head out. Her large amber eyes looked at Xia De, and her head tilt was very cute, so Xia De smiled and took the cat from Iluna’s arms:
“The weather is just about to get colder. I’ll give her another bath after autumn. I often hear people say it’s best not to bathe cats too frequently, so I’ll bathe her this time, and then I won’t have to bathe her again in winter.”
Because of this idea, on Tuesday morning, which was the first day of the withered leaf month, the tenth month of this year, Xia De and Mia fell into a “dispute” that erupted over bathing.
The winner of this dispute was, of course, Xia De. He first lured the cat into the bathroom, where hot water had been prepared, with food. After closing the door, he engaged in a chase in the narrow space with Mia and emerged victorious.
No matter how agile a cat was, in front of Xia De, who possessed spatial movement abilities, it could only be defeated.
Even though it had seen the sea and had been bathed before, when Xia De put it into the bathtub, Mia still let out a “scream.”
But it only screamed once, then the cat looked around in confusion. Seeing that the warm water caused no harm to it, it suddenly became obedient, rubbing against Xia De’s hand while letting him wash it, without even resisting during the process.
Although this cat sometimes seemed very smart, it was, after all, just a cat.
After bathing the cat, Xia De did not immediately go to Middlesburg. Instead, taking advantage of it being Monday, he took the dried Mia and handled his monthly bills, taxes, and advertising fees in Tobesk, and also collected this month's salary from MI6.
After dealing with these, he took the cat to have lunch. By the time Xia De entered the urban area of Middlesburg, it was already three in the afternoon.
Fortunately, he didn't have anything important to do today. He just wanted to help Leia count the goods in the warehouse at 19 Punjab Avenue to determine how much the local “rats” had stolen.
Punjab Avenue is a downtown street, adjacent to St. Cara Avenue and Perfume Street, and is mostly home to the offices of multinational trade groups. It is usually bustling, and on the first day of October, it was even more crowded with people coming and going, as merchants from various countries wanted to finalize important commodity transactions before winter arrived.
Numbers 10 to 20 on Punjab Avenue are all warehouses, but when Xia De arrived, he first looked not at number 19, but at number 18, which had a red door plate.
The intelligence received by Gray Gloves indicated that the goods would arrive at warehouse number 18 on the last day of last month, which was yesterday. And if Xia De's guess was correct, the agent who was supposed to receive the goods had already died on the fourth floor of Sicar Inn last week.
Among the trio receiving the goods, the one who knew the address was shot dead, and the one responsible for security committed suicide at the local police station. Only Professor Higgins was still alive and was suspected of having stolen the pen, which no longer contained any intelligence, on the night the gunman committed suicide.
“Theoretically, the goods are most likely still here. That linguistics professor, under normal circumstances, would have no possibility of knowing this address.”
Xia De stared at the door plate of number 18 for a while, then reached out and tapped the large door of number 19. The lock opened automatically. He looked left and right; although the street was crowded, no one paid attention to him, so he lowered his hat with his right hand and slipped inside.
Warehouses located in the city center are generally not very large. Of course, considering land utilization, they would naturally not have only one floor. Besides the main entrance on Punjab Avenue for pedestrians, there was also a large door on the other side for transporting goods, but that door was now locked from the inside with rusty hinges, so Xia De didn't have to worry about anyone entering from the other side.
Leia must have rented this place for some reason, and on the surface, it was stacked with some repair parts for steam engines.
The interior of the warehouse had little decoration, just a leveled floor and painted walls. The air was filled with a very distinct smell of oil, and the boxes of metal parts were the source of the oil smell.
“Leia told me to check the third floor.”
There was a lifting platform between the second and third floors and the first floor, powered by a steam engine, and it was very convenient to use. Standing on it and stepping on the protrusion in the middle would start the lift. However, starting the steam engine power source required a special key, and the key was not present now.
Of course, this thing also made a lot of noise, so Xia De didn't use his Miracle of unlocking to operate it. Instead, he chose to open the iron door of the stairwell and then walked up the stairs to the upper floors.
He also didn't forget to lock the door behind him.
The second floor was lined with shelves, also containing scattered steam engine parts. The walls even had some outdated diagrams of small steam engine breakdowns, with specific dimensions and alloy types marked.
Xia De stood by the wall and watched for a while, then opened the iron door of the stairwell again and went to the third floor.
The layout of the third floor was similar to the first, also with wooden crates. Xia De found a crowbar by the wall, pried open the boards nailed down, and saw straw inside, and nestled within the straw was a steam and gunpowder hybrid machine gun.
The black metal gun body, scope, magazine, steam chamber, and other small parts were disassembled and placed to the side. This was controlled military hardware that Outsiders could only read about in books, a formidable weapon of war in this era.
“Oh, Leia actually does arms dealing, and cross-border arms dealing at that. Who is she selling to?”
Xia De whispered to himself, but he wasn't very surprised. After all, Leia and Aurora could even partner to open a shipyard to build some ships with “military potential but which she wouldn't modify,” so selling a few boxes of military hardware wasn't unimaginable:
“Arms dealing seems very profitable.”
Muttering to himself, he pulled out his notebook toy from his pocket. After restoring it, he counted the number of cargo boxes and recorded them. Occasionally, he would pry open one or two of them to confirm that they contained those kingdom-controlled military weapons.
It took Xia De almost an hour to finish this task.
He carefully returned the way he came, trying not to make too much noise. Fortunately, Xia De’s luck was good; he didn't attract anyone's attention until he slipped out of the number nineteen warehouse.
Lowering his hat, he walked down the steps, along the wall towards the street corner, thinking of returning to Tobesk immediately to tell Leia the results. But because he was walking with his head down, after only a few steps, he accidentally bumped into the shoulder of a stranger walking in the opposite direction.
PS: Besides the two major kingdoms of the Old Continent, there are also a series of small principalities, so Leia is not necessarily selling Delarion's military hardware to Carson Rick.
