Today is Monday, and because Shade went to the Prophet Association early in the morning, he didn't have time to pick up the gift.
Luvia and Iluna happened to be there, so Shad suggested picking up this week's gifts in front of them.
Asking Iluna to hold the cat tightly to prevent it from running into the box again, Shad reached his hand into the metal box.
More than two months have passed since he received this sage-level relic. Apart from some surprises brought to him by the banknote printing master, most of the gifts were dispensable.
And this time, Xia De's luck finally came.
"oh!"
His eyes suddenly widened, because his fingers touched a key at the bottom of the box, and then he immediately realized that it was a relic.
"Finally! Finally! I've been really lucky lately. First I got the corpse mirror in Middlesbrough, and now I've received another gift!"
Trying hard not to show an exaggerated expression on his face, Xia De took out the cold black iron key. The key itself was as long as Xia De's palm, and the key teeth were small squares. This kind of key was often used in large locks in the old times.
There are very difficult to see scratches on the metal surface. They are long and thin ancient letters like earthworms. After translation, their meaning is:
The only lock that cannot be opened is the lock in girls' hearts.
"Is this it? It turns out that relics can really be taken out of God's gift box..."
Luvia commented from the side.
"What's this?"
Shade asked curiously, and Iluna, who had seen a lot in the church, also recognized it:
"A poet-level master key?"
"Yes, the master key, a one-time relic, with an unknown number of existence and unknown origin. Its function is very simple, it can open a lock unconditionally."
Luvia nodded to Shade:
"Yes, it is very similar to your door key. But the advantage of the relic is that it does not consume the user's spirit, even if it opens a puzzle lock. And when you hold this key, you can enhance your ability to see through illusions. The disadvantage is that it is only one-time use, and there is also the resulting spatial instability."
Luvia thought for a moment:
"The ring wizard who holds the key is more likely to encounter accidents in the unstable space than others. For example, if you take this key to Midhill Castle, you are more likely to be accidentally caught in the narrow space between life and death."
"That's a shame. You guys take it. I already have the key to the door, so I don't need this."
Xia De put the key on the table. Although he couldn't use the key, he was still very happy to get a relic.
The purple-eyed fortune teller and the seventeen-year-old long-haired girl glanced at each other.
"Leave it where you are."
Iluna took the initiative to say:
"I'm also going to Midhill Castle in a few days, and I don't want Shade to go to the narrow space between life and death again to rescue me."
"That's fine. I'll find a chance to compensate Xia De."
Luvia put the key away and asked Xia De:
"So big boy, what kind of mission did God give you this week?"
She and Iluna both laughed. The "take gifts" feature of the gift box can only be triggered by children. It is indeed funny that Luvia compared Shad to a "big boy".
"It's very simple, at least easier than swinging the knife 100 times each day last week. It seems that the difficulty of the weekly task has nothing to do with the value of the gift - give your pet a bath."
Shad said.
"Meow?"
Mia, who was held by Iluna, suddenly stretched out her head. Her big amber eyes looked at Shade, and she looked very cute with her head tilted. So Shade smiled and took the cat back from Iluna's arms:
"It's just that the weather is getting colder, so I'll give it a bath once more in the fall. I often hear people say that it's best not to bathe a cat too often, so I'll give it a bath this time so that I don't have to bathe it again in the winter."
Because of this idea, on Tuesday morning, the first day of the Dead Leaf Month, the tenth month of this year, Shad and Mia got into a "dispute" over bathing.
The winner of this dispute was of course Shad, who first lured the cat into the bathroom with hot water using food, then closed the door and had a chase with Mia in the narrow space, and won.
No matter how agile a cat is, it will be defeated by Shade, who has the ability to move through space.
Although she had seen the sea and taken a bath before, Mia still screamed when Xia De put it in the bathtub.
But it only cried once, and the cat looked around in confusion. Seeing that the warm water did not harm it, it suddenly became obedient, rubbing against Xia De's hand while letting him wash, without even resisting.
Although this cat may seem smart at times, it is still just a cat at the end of the day.
After washing the cat, Shad did not go to Midhill Castle immediately. Instead, he took advantage of this Monday and took Mia, who had been dried, to Tobesk to deal with the monthly bills, taxes, and advertising fees, and to collect this month's salary from MI6.
After dealing with these, he took the cat to have lunch. When Shade entered the city area of Midhill Castle, it was already three o'clock in the afternoon.
Fortunately, he didn't have anything important to do today. He just wanted to help Lesia count the goods in the warehouse at No. 19 Punjab Street to determine how much the local "rats" had stolen.
Punjab Street is a street in the city center, close to Santa Carla Street and Perfume Street. It is mostly the residence of multinational trade groups. It is very lively on weekdays, and it is even more crowded on the first day of October. Merchants from all over the world want to finalize those important commodity transactions before the winter comes.
Numbers 10 to 20 on Punjab Street are all warehouses, but when Shad came here, the first place he looked at was not No. 19, but No. 18 with a red house number hanging next to it.
Gray Gloves received intelligence that the goods would arrive at the warehouse on the 18th on the last day of last month, which was yesterday. And if Shade's guess was correct, the agent who came to pick up the goods had died on the fourth floor of the Xikar Hotel last week.
Among the three people who received the goods, the one who knew the address was shot, and the one in charge of security committed suicide at the local police station. Only Professor Higgins was still alive, and it is suspected that he stole the pen that no longer had any information on the night the gunman committed suicide.
"Theoretically speaking, the goods are most likely still here. Under normal circumstances, there is no way that the linguistics professor would know this address."
Xia De stared at the number 18 for a long time, then reached out and touched the door of number 19, and the door lock opened automatically. He looked around and saw that although there were many people on the street, no one was paying attention to this place, so he lowered his hat with his right hand and walked in.
This type of warehouse located in the city center is generally not large. Of course, considering the land utilization rate, it will naturally not have only one floor. In addition to the main entrance on Punjab Street, there is also a large door on the other side for transporting goods, but that door is now locked from the inside with rusty hinges, so Shad does not have to worry about someone entering from the other side.
Lecia didn't know why she rented this place, but from the looks of it, there were some steam engine repair parts piled up here.
There was not much decoration inside the warehouse, except for paving the floor and painting the walls. There was a very obvious smell of oil in the air, and the boxes of metal parts were the source of the oil smell.
"Lecia asked me to go to the third floor to check."
Between the second and third floors and the first floor, there is a lifting platform powered by a steam engine. It is very convenient to use. You can start the lifting platform by standing on it and stepping on the bulge in the middle. However, to start the steam engine, a special key is required, and the key is not there now.
Of course, this thing also makes a lot of noise, so Shade didn't use his magic to unlock it. Instead, he chose to open the iron door at the stairs and then walked up the stairs to the upper floor.
He also did not forget to lock the door again.
The second floor was lined with rows of shelves filled with scattered steam engine parts. There were even some outdated disassembly diagrams of small steam engines posted on the walls, with specific sizes and alloy types indicated.
Xia De stood by the wall and looked for a while, then opened the iron door at the stairs again and went to the third floor.
The layout of the third floor was similar to that of the first floor, also filled with wooden boxes. Xia De found a crowbar by the wall and pried open the wooden planks nailed shut. He saw straw inside, and lying in the straw was a steam and gunpowder hybrid machine gun.
The black metal gun body, eyepiece, magazine, steam chamber and other small parts were disassembled and placed aside. This was a controlled munition that foreigners could only see in books, and it was a great lethal weapon in the war of this era.
"Oh, Leicia is actually in the arms business, and it's a transnational arms business. Who is she going to sell it to?"
Xia De muttered quietly in his heart, but he was not very surprised. After all, Miss Leixia and Miss Aurora could open a shipyard together to build some ships that "have military potential but she can't modify", so it is not unimaginable to sell a few boxes of arms:
"The arms business seems to be very profitable."
Muttering to himself, he took out the toy notebook from his pocket, restored it, and counted the number of boxes while recording them. Occasionally, he would pry open one or two boxes to confirm that they contained the Kingdom's controlled arms.
It took Xia De almost an hour to finish the work.
He carefully returned along the same route, trying not to make too much noise. Fortunately, Xia De was lucky, and no one noticed him until he left Warehouse No. 19.
He lowered his hat and walked down the stairs, following the wall toward the street corner, intending to return to Tobesk immediately to tell Leicia the result. However, because he walked with his head down, he accidentally bumped into the shoulder of a stranger who was walking in the opposite direction after only a few steps.