"Hey, Candice!"
A quick call made Candice raise her head.
In her sight, a young woman, also wearing a reception uniform, was walking towards her.
"Reda, what's wrong? What's the matter?"
Candice's eyes revealed vigilance. This female colleague once said bad things about her to other guests behind her back. What a bitch.
"Mr. Charles is giving a public lesson and sword fighting with a young and handsome gentleman! Don't you want to go and see it? It's really awesome!"
The woman named Reda described it vividly, with a twinkle in her eyes.
"A lot of people were watching. It was a rare scene!"
Listening to her description, with key words like "dark-haired young man", "tall and straight" and "angelic face", Candice suddenly remembered the man named "Jack".
She was a little hesitant because she was working.
But she soon discovered that more and more people were leaving the hall and pouring in in groups of three or five.
From time to time, I can hear a few related words.
These little words, like little kittens, jumped into Candice's heart, scratching her and making her unable to bear the intense curiosity.
squeak!
She stood up suddenly and the chair made a sharp noise.
"Whatever! I'll skip class if I want to. I'm just going to take a look and I'll be back right away!"
Candice said to herself.
People are like this, as long as they make up their minds to give up, the initial entanglement will disappear, and immediately all will turn into relief and ease, and even a little inexplicable expectation and excitement.
Candice took a step forward and ran inside quickly.
Her female colleague Reda looked at her from behind and sneered.
"I knew you couldn't resist temptation, little bitch... Then I'll tell Mr. Charles about your skipping class and see how you explain it."
Candice followed the direction of the crowd and ran to the door of the open-air training room. As soon as she squeezed in, she saw many figures gathered in a circle.
"Everyone from the club should be here today, right?!"
Candice thought to herself, secretly surprised.
clang!
Ding ding dong!
clang!
I could hear the crisp sound of metal clashing and exclamations from the people around me.
Candice finally made her way to the front of the crowd.
When she saw the scene inside, she couldn't help but cover her mouth.
"Oh my god! The sun is shining!"
The black-haired young man had taken off his black dress coat, revealing the white shirt underneath. He was holding a long sword and was fighting fiercely with Mr. Charles.
Knight swordsmanship LVMAX (passive)!
After adding 4 skill points, this passive skill will be maxed out.
At this moment, various attack, defense, counterattack and coping skills flashed through Chen Lun's mind. He was very skilled, as if he had gained more than ten years of swordsmanship experience out of thin air.
He held the hilt of the sword, stroking the non-slip leather with his thumb, feeling quite familiar with it.
With a sudden step and a nimble leap, he attacked Byers with the sword in his hand from a tricky angle.
"This sword is great!"
Byers spoke up.
He stepped back, raised his short sword lightly, and blocked the long sword.
Then he put the dagger against Chen Lun's arm, swung it upwards, and slashed at Chen Lun's neck.
Chen Lun ducked and dodged, thrusting his shoulder forward, impacting the inside of Byers' arm, causing his sword to slant and his body to retreat.
The two men moved extremely quickly, with swords flashing everywhere as they fought back and forth.
The long sword and the short sword collided, bounced off, and sparks flew.
Zizi—clang!
The swords collided again, but the black-haired young man stepped closer with ease, and immediately entangled Mr. Charles's dagger with his long sword. After blocking it, he turned his elbow and hit the back of Mr. Charles' hand with the hilt of the sword.
Peng!
With a clang, Mr. Charles's dagger fell to the ground and broke into several pieces.
It must be because it could no longer hold on after such an intense battle.
The black-haired young man's sword drew a beautiful arc, making a sharp whistling sound, and then stopped steadily on Mr. Charles' shoulder.
clang!
The sword trembled slightly, and the wind from the sword blew Mr. Charles' hair.
You defeated Byerswolf (possessed) and gained 3000 experience points!
Everyone fell into dead silence.
After a while.
Suddenly, as if a pot of boiling water had exploded, the crowd burst into loud exclamations.
Mr. Charles, the famous swordsmanship master of the Foil Fighting Club, was actually defeated by an unknown young man!
Among them, several muscular men who had laughed at Chen Lun in the training room before were now shocked and then embarrassed.
They looked at each other.
"If he didn't have a weapon, I think I could still knock him to the ground with one punch..."
"Oh! Come on Mike, stop kidding yourself... this is so sad!"
Biles ignored the excitement of others and showed a surprised expression.
"Mr. Jack, to be honest, I'm surprised..."
He spoke.
"You are improving so fast... A genius in swordsmanship? A talent in fighting? Or something else... I don't know, and I can't describe it in words."
As Byers spoke, he took two steps forward and suddenly stopped.
His eyes were sharp and he warned in a low voice:
"In short, your talent is very scary and dangerous... Don't expose it easily, otherwise it may attract the attention of certain beings."
Chen Lun was slightly startled at first, then he said seriously:
"Thanks for the reminder."
He turned the sword upside down, held the hilt in front of his chest and saluted.
Biles nodded, then refused others' attempts to keep him, pushed through the crowd and left alone.
Everyone thought that he was defeated while being taught swordsmanship, and felt humiliated and did not want to stay any longer.
But only Chen Lun knew that the Black Knight was on the verge of collapse because of the body he was using now, after experiencing the high-intensity battle just now.
In order to avoid it collapsing in public, he chose to leave quickly.
"Oh, my sunshine! Mr. Jack, you are so great!"
Sibert rushed forward and said excitedly.
He then moved closer and whispered:
"I knew it! You really did block the bullet with your cane just now, right!"
His tone was firm, and it was obvious that no matter how Chen Lun explained, he regarded this matter as a fact.
Chen Lun simply stopped explaining and handed the sword back to him, chuckling:
"Thank you for the sword, Mr. Siebert."
"Oh! You're welcome, on the contrary, I want to thank you for using it!"
Siebert gave an exaggerated smile.
"Don't worry. After I go back, I will take good care of this sword and make it a family heirloom. When I get old, I will tell my son, grandson, and great-grandson about it. In the past, a swordsmanship master defeated another swordsmanship master with it!"
"You are so humorous."
Chen Lun was successfully amused by his words, and then sighed from the bottom of his heart.
The crowd around was very excited, and several of them walked towards Chen Lun.
"Hey, sir, may I ask..."
But they had just opened their mouths, before they could finish their words, they saw the black-haired young man turn around and take back the silver cane and black hat that he had placed against the wall.
The other party put on a black hat and walked away with a silver cane.
Without exception, everyone who approached him failed.
It seemed as if I was always a few steps away from him, but I just couldn't catch up. In the end, I could only watch his back disappear at the door of the open-air training room.
Among them was a waitress who looked anxious and worried. She was standing there, biting her lips, wondering what she was thinking about.
*
*
*
Time soon arrived at New Year's Eve.
After this night, it will be the 4419th year of the solar calendar.
According to the customs of people of this era, on New Year's Eve, they usually need to pray to the existence they believe in, and then prepare the Eucharist in advance according to the rituals of their church.
The general specifications of the Eucharist are that beef, turkey and goose are the staple foods, supplemented by unleavened bread, sugar cakes and fresh fruits.
Different churches may have different details.
For example, the Church of the Sun requires gin brewed from dew, the Church of the Moon increases the number of plums, the Church of the Red Apple requires red apples and red wine, and the Hailing Group requires pickled salted fish and kelp soup, etc.
There are no special requirements for the "Holy Communion" at Jack Manor tonight, because the members present are not church members.
Chen Lun sat at the dining table in the living room, eating the fried beef fillet specially made by Fuluoyin.
The other members sat down at the table, and on each person's table was placed a gift he had prepared.
The gifts from Golov and Barton were simple, two pieces of low-sequence conspiracy faction mysterious substances each, enough for them to carry out a mysterious accumulation.
As expected, when they opened the small gift box and saw the two small gray balls inside, they showed expressions of surprise.
"Thank you for the gift, Captain!"
The two men stood up and saluted with respectful expressions.
Chen Lun waved his hand casually, signaling them to sit down.
Maggie's gift was a bottle of extraordinary beef-flavored red wine, which took Chen Lun a lot of thought to prepare.
After all, it took him a long time to acquire a supernatural material similar to beef from the Silver Dragon Chamber of Commerce. Then, when he performed the Bloody Brewing, he happened to brew red wine with this flavor.
Maggie unwrapped the paper, sniffed the bottle, and her face flushed with excitement.
She said that there were two things that made her happiest in the past few days. One was receiving the bottle of "beef red wine", and the other was that she would go out in a few days to complete the "special commission" of the team leader - investigating the plague.
She really took this matter to heart.
This made Chen Lun quite pleased.
He thought about Noah's gift for a long time. After all, this "rich second generation" basically had everything he needed.
Finally, Noah saw his embarrassment and proposed to seriously draw a portrait for the head of the group. But Noah hoped that Chen Lun could adjust the posture according to his wishes.
Chen Lun was very considerate and met his small request as a New Year's Eve gift... Of course, he asked carefully and tactfully to confirm that he was not a naked model.
This made Chen Lun feel a little relieved.
So the gift box for Noah contained only a simple bag of candy. He remembered that Noah liked sweets very much, and Miss Rosa had added a lot of sugar to Noah's black tea.
Connie's gift was a "useless piece of trash" that Chen Lun found among the pile of "weird odds and ends".
It was a finger-sized mini pendulum called "Hundred Ticks".
The effect is that if you swing it a hundred times, the user will fall asleep immediately. But the price is that after waking up, it will start swinging on its own. If the user fails to wake up completely and leave the bed within a hundred times, the user will fall asleep again, and the cycle will repeat.
This strange item is a "useless" item in terms of functionality, but it is very suitable for a technician like Connie, especially since she recently complained to Chen Lun that she had insomnia.
So when she opened the gift box, thinking it was an ordinary decoration, Chen Lun smiled and explained to her how to use it and its price.
Connie was so happy that she almost cheered out loud because she could finally have a good night's sleep!
Finally, as for Floin's gift...
*
*
*
late at night.
Third floor balcony.
Chen Lun draped a fluffy black short cloak over Floyin's shoulders.
He ran his fingers through her long light blonde hair and shook it gently, causing her hair to fall like a waterfall.
Under the moonlight, she looked extremely holy.
"Thanks… "
Flo Yin tilted her head slightly and spoke in a low voice.
"You're welcome. It suits you very well."
The cloak seemed to be hazy, emitting a subtle and ethereal black mist.
This is a D-level strange item that Chen Lun picked up from the Silver Dragon Chamber of Commerce - the Black Mist Cloak. Due to its price-performance ratio, it has been unsaleable for a long time.
The effect of the cloak is that when attacked or spied on, a thin layer of black mist will be activated, which has a slight protective ability. Physically, it is roughly equivalent to a chain mail, and mentally, it is similar to a minimum level of protective shield.
The cost is that after activating the protection, the user will fall into a black fog state and his vision will be obscured for six hours.
So that's why it couldn't be sold, but it just happened to be suitable for Flo Yin.
The fine mist emitted from the cloak seems to have a constant temperature effect, and it is a nice piece of clothing to wear on a daily basis.
"I have a gift for you, too."
Flo Yin said softly.
"Um?"
Chen Lun was surprised.
Immediately, he saw Flo Yin waving her hand, and the grape ring on her finger flashed slightly.
A beautifully wrapped gift box appeared in her hands.
After Chen Lun took it, he opened it under Fuluoyin's smiling "gaze".
A black leather glove lay quietly inside.
"This is a strange thing I forged using the power of the Moonsmith... Your other hand should be very cold."
Chen Lun's heart skipped a beat.
He raised his hands. His right hand was wearing a brown leather glove and holding fireworks, but his left hand was empty.
"Flo Yin..."
"I occasionally help the team take on some commissions in exchange for some extraordinary materials..."
Flo Yin's ethereal voice came.
"I used them to make this gift for you."
D-level Trickster-Moonlight in the Palm
Item description: Contains the power of the moon, and looks like a black leather glove. It seems to be very warm when worn, because the person who forged it has a warm heart.
Item Effect: You can summon the dead soul from the corpse and talk to it. Note: The corpse must have been dead for no more than 24 hours.
Item cost: After each use, it needs to be exposed to moonlight for a period of time.
"Thank you, Flo Yin... I like this gift too."
Chen Lun chuckled.
He slowly put the glove on his left hand.
A warmth came from my hand, but this warmth was different from that from my right hand.
"When I first saw you, you reminded me of my brother..."
Fuluoyin turned her head and "looked" at the night sky, as if staring at the purple moon.
“But then I realized that this was different…
Does God love His creation? I don't know.
But I know that the gods are the gods of the world, just as I am the gods of the world."
She turned her head back slightly, lowered her head, and continued in a ethereal voice:
"Master Jack, please allow me to call you this once...
When you save me, I will be yours from now on, and I will do whatever you wish."
Chen Lun was silent for a few seconds.
He slowly reached out his hand, gently supported Floyne's chin, and lifted her head.
"Since you respect my wishes, I hope you don't have to bow to me so much."
The corners of Fuluoyin's mouth rose slightly, revealing a smile that made Chen Lun feel a little sweet.
"Yes, Flo Yin knows."
After a while.
Fuluoyin folded her hands, clenched them together, and gently placed them between her eyebrows, praying towards Zi Yue.
Chen Lun looked at her in confusion.
"What's wrong, Floin?"
She spoke softly:
"After tonight, a new chapter will begin. I see a light passing by."
"Meteor...?"
Chen Lun thought to himself.
I looked up at the night sky, but apart from the purple moon, the expected meteor did not appear.
He suddenly remembered the origins of some customs in this world.
For example, people make wishes to shooting stars because they believe that shooting stars are dust falling from the world where gods live. When shooting stars appear, gods may be looking down at the earth and may fulfill people's wishes.
It's like making a wish on your birthday and blowing out the candles.
People believe that the wisp of smoke when a candle is extinguished can carry wishes to the moon and be known by the moonlight goddess.
But there were no meteors in the night sky at this moment, and Chen Lun was puzzled.
Flo Yin remained in a prayer posture silently.
I said in my heart:
"In the long darkness, in the past and in the future, you are my only light."