Ding! Ding! Ding!
When six o'clock struck, Lumian sat up and opened the curtains.
The soft light shone into the room, making the environment, which had been dead silent all night, lively again.
Lumian rubbed his face, washed up briefly, and solved his personal problems.
He changed his clothes, walked downstairs, left the Golden Rooster Hotel, went around to White Coat Street, and entered the rented safe house.
Lumian then looked through Aurore's witchcraft notes, hoping to discover problems that he had not noticed before after gaining new information.
The contents recorded in Aurore's Witchcraft Notes are mainly divided into three categories: the first is common sense occult knowledge, including the names of all paths, the conditions of some sequences, the foundation of ritual magic, the role of symbolic elements, the pronunciation and meaning of several supernatural languages, etc.;
The second is the specific application of occult knowledge and one's own abilities, which involves a lot of thinking, many spells recorded or purchased, and the prevention of curses;
The third type is fragmentary, unsystematic, and rather bizarre knowledge and anecdotes, some of which come from the indoctrination of hidden sages, and some from the exchanges between members of the Curly-haired Baboon Research Society.
These three types of contents were not recorded in different notebooks in different categories, but existed intertwined in the order in which Aurore obtained them and in the order of time.
For Lumian, the most difficult one is the second type, such as "illumination", "weeding", "exorcism", "soul summoning", "lightning", "wind making", "hand of force field" and other "wizard" spells, each one is more difficult to understand than the other. After all, he has neither fully mastered all the basic knowledge of mysticism nor the extraordinary ability to cast spells.
In comparison, after becoming a "mendicant monk", it was much easier for him to understand, learn and master the contents related to ritual magic.
Lumian also noticed that his sister did not write down the underlying rules such as the "Law of Conservation of Beyonder Characteristics" in her notes.
But this is normal. Similar laws are rare, easy to remember and difficult to forget, and do not need to be recorded separately.
After looking through it for nearly a whole morning, Lumian did not find anything suspicious, but he had accumulated a lot of questions that he needed to ask others.
He exhaled slowly, folded the pages of paper that recorded his problems, stuffed them into his pocket, and left the safe house.
On the way to Market Avenue, Lumian saw several polling stations. Uniformed police officers and fully armed gendarmes tried their best to maintain order, allowing people in long queues to put their ballots into wooden boxes one by one.
Although he had obtained a new ID from Gardner Martin and had become Charles Dubois, who had lived in the market district for nearly two years and had the right to vote, Lumian did not register at all because he did not want to get involved in the election of members of Congress.
After walking for a while, a newsboy came running over and threw a stack of white papers in his hand into the air.
Lumian saw many passers-by picking up the white papers and reading them carefully. He also bent down and picked up a copy that was right next to his feet.
The white paper was printed with several lines of Intis language, with simple grammar and easy to understand: "Hugues Artois is a traitor." He abandoned his troops and fled during the war with the Kingdom of Loen a few years ago, causing many people's fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons to never return.
"His participation in the parliamentary elections was secretly supported by the Kingdom of Loen."
After reading it, Lumian couldn't help but exclaim "Wow".
He remembered that Hugues Artois's propaganda posters emphasized his military service experience. He grew up to be a major before leaving the army and entering politics, starting as an assistant secretary to the Congress.
"Is this because the vote count yesterday was not satisfactory, and a candidate is making a final effort?" While Lumian was thinking, several men who looked like gangsters came over and confiscated flyers from passers-by. They beat and scolded them, and the nearby police seemed not to notice.
Lumian raised his head, took a look, and recognized one of them: he was a member of the Sting Gang, who had followed Maggot and Wilson to the Golden Rooster Inn before.
"Asshole, is this something you can watch?"
"Give me what you have in your hand, you leper!"
"You son of a bitch, do you want me to do it?"
Several members of the Sting Gang came all the way to Lumian. They were about to snatch the flyer as they did before, but suddenly they saw the short blond and black hair.
Lumian smiled.
Charles! The Sting Gang members turned around reflexively and tried to run away.
Lumian raised his foot and kicked one of the gangsters hard on the butt, causing him to lose balance and fall forward to the ground.
"What? Don't you recognize your grandpa?" He cursed and watched the fallen Sting Gang member crawl away in a very embarrassed manner without chasing after him.
Lumian threw away the flyer in his hand and strolled back to the Breeze Ballroom.
As soon as he entered the door, Louis came over with Sakota and said, "Boss, Charlie quit his job as a waiter last night and only asked for a week's salary."
"I know." Lumian responded calmly.
Louis still remembered that the boss took Charlie away and came back to find him the night before, and Charlie resigned and left soon after. This made him feel that there must be some secrets hidden in it, but he didn't dare to ask.
Lumian glanced at Louis and asked casually as he walked towards the cafe on the second floor: "How old are you?"
"27." Louis didn't understand why the boss cared about this.
Lumian barely thought about it, and asked, "Are you married? Do you have children?"
"Not yet." Louis smiled awkwardly, "I plan to get married when I'm more mature."
He felt that although he had escaped the fate of being a low-level gangster thug and became the boss's bodyguard, he didn't have to worry about being beaten to death on the street at any time, but such a life was still dangerous.
He doesn't want to be taken advantage of by another man right after getting married and having a child.
Lumian nodded and said, "You need to think more about your future. Another Louis I know already has several children."
Louis said a few perfunctory words, feeling that the boss had no topic to talk about today but was forcing a conversation, as if he was trying to prove something.
Franka did not have lunch with Gardner Martin and returned to 3 Whitecoat Street before 12 o'clock.
She saw that the door of the guest bedroom was tightly closed, and with a little confusion, she turned the handle and pushed it open.
Jenna was wearing pajamas and pajama pants, hugging the quilt, sleeping soundly on her side.
Noticing the movement, she rubbed her eyes, slowly sat up, and looked towards the door.
"Are you still sleeping?" Franca asked with a smile.
You don't have to go to the old pigeon cage to learn acting recently, so you just indulge yourself
Jenna smoothed her brown hair and muttered, "It's all Charles' fault. He kept me up till midnight."
"..." Franka's smile froze on her face.
Janna continued, "I don't know what happened to him last night. His mood and state were not right. I was afraid that he might have an accident, so I followed him all the time. I waited until he entered the Golden Rooster Hotel and slept on the bed before I came back to rest."
Franca breathed a sigh of relief and said with concern, "Tell me more about it."
Jana started from the moment she finished singing and left Breeze Ballroom, where she saw Lumian sitting on the side of the road in the rain. She kept talking about how he used a "method" that no one else could imagine to help Gabriel get the opportunity to sign the script contract, and finally said: "Fuck, it was almost three o'clock at that time, and he was willing to go back to his room to sleep. I was so sleepy!"
Franka listened quietly and said with a little concern: "It's rare to see him in this state..."
At this point, Franca paused. She remembered that Lumian was still receiving regular treatment from a psychiatrist, and that state might be his truest self.
"He must have been upset by something last night. I'll go ask him later." After saying that Lumian was her relative, Franka no longer concealed the fact that she had a close relationship with Lumian in front of Janna.
Janna nodded: "Be careful with your words and don't irritate him."
breeze
On the second floor of the ballroom, in Lumian's office.
He saw Franka coming over "invisibly".
"I heard from Janna that something happened to you last night?" Franca, who was wearing a white women's shirt and black trousers, asked casually, "Did you see Mrs. Pualis?" While having lunch with Janna, she probably thought about what might have stimulated Lumian and caused his mental illness to erupt.
Hearing Franca's question, Lumian seemed to have lost all his strength. He collapsed on the swivel chair. After more than ten seconds, he exhaled and said, "Yeah, I know some of the truth. Some of it is hard to accept, but I have to accept it."
Seeing that he was unwilling to elaborate, Franca did not ask further questions and nodded gently, "Is there anything I can help you with?"
Lumian sat up straight and said bluntly: "Two things. One is that I have a lot of questions about the occult to ask you, and the other is about the Sting Gang.
"I told you before that after the election, Hugh Artois will become a member of parliament, and Black Scorpion Roger and his men will receive new gifts. By then, we will all be in danger. Do you want to raid No. 126 Market Avenue at night and eliminate the hidden dangers before the election results come out?"
Franca thought for a while and said, "According to your description, the sorcerer has a strong home advantage. Even if the two of us use our trump cards, we can only say that we have a certain hope of killing Black Scorpion Roger and his men, and this is assuming that he has nothing else at home.
"But if we don't act now, they will be even more difficult to deal with after receiving a new round of gifts..."
She hesitated, unable to make up her mind.
126 Market Avenue, in the three-story building with a garden.
"Black Scorpion" Roger looked at his men who had gone to the Market District Congressional Election Committee to inquire, and asked expectantly, "How is the situation?"
The subordinate said excitedly, "Mr. Hugues Artois is ahead by a large margin."
"Black Scorpion" Roger smiled, and waited until the subordinate left before turning his head to say to "Bald" Harman and "Shorty Candlestick" Castina: "The election results will be announced tomorrow afternoon, and in the evening, Ms. Yue will personally preside over the ceremony and grant us the gift.
"Then, we won't have to be patient anymore. That bastard Ciel must die."
PS: The previous chapter is an allusion to a story in which two writers in Paris sneaked into the home of a theater manager, tied him up, and made him listen to their script. After hearing the third line of dialogue, the manager decided to take over the play. The manager's reaction was purely respect for reality.
In addition, I am very satisfied with the writing of the previous chapter. The state of depression, confusion, emptiness, wanting to explode but having nowhere to put the strength, and doing whatever happens and doing whatever you see others do is fully presented.
Also, Lumian's personality is very different from that of Cleveland. He is on the edge of darkness, and he has a lot of bad, borderline behaviors. Sometimes he does good things, but most of the time he is very indifferent. You can dislike this person, but it's boring to accuse him of this.
Also, the second volume I mentioned is longer than the first, but not much longer. It will probably be around the end of this month or the beginning of next month. Don't worry, the light chasers have only cast their lines and haven't really collected them yet.