In the south area of the Beckland Bridge, in a café with mid-range decoration and low foot traffic.

Dressed in casual attire, Taryn sat on the edge of a single seat away from the window, casually sipping on a mid-range coffee that was more sour and less aromatic. He made a slight disguise, painted himself with a few wrinkles, glued a gray fake beard, and a walnut cane with a smooth and shiny handle rested diagonally on the side of the seat.

On the round table in front of him, a popular novel full of adventure elements and love plots from the five seas was spread out flat, which made him look like a middle-aged gentleman who had found a secluded place to enjoy his afternoon reading.

After about ten minutes, the wind chimes in front of the store and the greeting of the waiter at the front desk rang at the same time. The new customer walked up to the seat behind Taryn with heavy steps, sat down back to back with him, and ordered a simple cup of tea.

Waiting for the waiter to deliver the refreshments and leave, the new customer shook off the newspaper in his hand with a "whoosh", the huge page covered his face, and also covered the slight movement of his lips when he spoke softly: "Sir, something is wrong......

"Speak." Taryn disguised his mouth with a gesture of raising his glass, and calmly spat out a word.

The MI9 informant, nicknamed "Toothless" because he was missing a front tooth, was covered behind a newspaper with a very ...... face Tangled. He stared at the lead-printed newspaper stained on his palm, took a deep breath, and reported: "I followed your instructions to carry out a tracking mission, but when I walked near the red brick street, I suddenly lost my target...... I don't know how he did it, but the guy named Douglas suddenly attacked me from behind. ”

It was not surprising that Taryn replied silently in his heart as he listened. Douglas was a highly inspired extraordinary, and naturally possessed the ability to discover and track. The main purpose of his man-to-hand follow-up was not to completely surveillance, but to put enough pressure on the other party so that Douglas would not dare to have a possible intersection with Winkel without permission.

"After he subdued me, he asked me about my purpose, and I told him what you taught." The informant behind him was still whispering, "Then, Douglas asked me to help him spread a strange text widely in the East End. ”

The folded paper quietly fell from Fang's hand and slid under Tyron's chair. The latter unhurriedly flipped through a few pages of the novel on the table as a prop before stooping down to pick up the papers, clipping them into the novel and pretending to look at them.

There are two pages, the first of which is a few strange lines of letters, some of which resemble the writing of Rune's script, and some of which are very different. Tyron, who had studied cryptography at a military school, immersed himself in trying to decipher it.

But without a sufficient sample of references, it is very difficult to decipher an entirely new text. He tried for a while, then gave up, flipped to the next page, thinking he would see another similar alphabet.

But the next piece of paper turned out to be an extremely detailed bill.

Taryn raised an eyebrow as he looked at the names of the bars and underground bazaars written from top to bottom on the bill, as well as the names or nicknames of the bartenders and intelligence peddlers at those establishments, and the last column of the standard amount of money from sucks to pounds.

"What's going on?"

The voice of "Gaping Teeth" behind "Chief ......" suddenly became softer, hesitating, and explaining with some grievances, "He pointed a gun at my head and asked me to spread those strange words at the rally instead of him, and I paid for the places that needed to be dotted." He, he said, this part can write you a bill for reimbursement......"

Hearing this reply, Taryn was silent for a few seconds, and sneered, "You can't have forgotten the rules of our work. ”

Although MI9 does set up a special fund to serve as an informant, the form of withdrawing this money has always been to make a good budget and release it in advance, and this form of reimbursement is rarely used after the fact.

After all, their informants are not devout members of the church who value honesty as a virtue, but rather people with a low reputation such as bounty hunters. And how could a transaction in an underground market leave a reliable receipt and let the informant make up his own bills than allowing these greedy bounty hunters to reach into the jar and withdraw the money at will.

Although "Huoya" knew this rule, he was really forced to pay a sum of money......

Just as he was trying to explain the situation of MI9 to Douglas, the other party wrote a bill on the spot while talking about understanding, and brazenly said "I have already calculated it for you, and you can still make a net five pounds after this money is reimbursed, otherwise you will treat this money as a waste today, and I will not pay you" This kind of nonsense.

How does this make "open teeth" refuse! He is an informant to make extra money, not to make a loss-making deal! The problem is that he can't solve it privately, one is that Chief Taryn and Douglas have cooperated, and he can't set up his own chief's stall; The second is that "open teeth" found that they really couldn't beat it......

"Huoya" quietly wiped away the fine cold sweat from his forehead, and said tentatively according to the words taught by Douglas: "That, sir, Douglas also said that this money can be deducted from his honorarium, and there is no need to go through MI9......"

Taryn: "......"

He carefully figured out the logic and found that this big circle came down, how did it become that I paid for Douglas to work for Douglas?

It was true that Douglas did have a hundred pounds in cash in the final terms of the deal, but the problem was that Taryn and Cortina were not prepared to give the money away at all.

According to the plan, Douglas should be a dead man at the end of the deal, and he should be locked up in the Inquisition, no matter how bad it is.

Who will pay the dead...... Although Taryn was not short of the dozen pounds of money, he was now full of a different kind of enthusiasm for the subject of how to kill Douglas.

After a short and awkward silence, he said stiffly, "This money will be in your account by Sunday, get out." ”

"Toothless" put away the newspaper as if he had been pardoned, and immediately rolled out of Tyron's sight. After all, this thing is really bad, and he is embarrassed to dangle in front of this chief again......

Drinking the cold coffee in his cup in one gulp, Taryn calmed down a little, got up and left, and changed places to meet with another informant.

After learning about the ability of the "apprentice" pathway, he predicted that it would not be possible to keep an eye on Douglas with only one or two people, so he arranged for several people to keep an eye on Douglas at different times and places.

So half an hour later, faced with another similar reimbursement form, Taryn fell into deep thought again.

-

Douglas, who had successfully collected a handful of wool, carried a brown paper bag and walked into the church of St. Samuel, showing the night coat of arms to the priest on duty and indicating his intentions. Descending through the secret door, he briskly turned the intersection and ascended the stairs until he came to one of the offices of the Nightwatchers in the city, behind Pesfield Street, where St. Samuel's church was located.

And his month-long occult teacher, Nora. Merros was waiting for him in the hallway with her arms crossed.

Douglas just wanted to say hello to the teacher, but the next glance he found the bright red gloves covering Melros's hands, and raised his eyebrows in surprise: "When did you join the 'Red Gloves'...... Shouldn't I congratulate you on your successful promotion to Sequence 7? ”

"There's no need to rush." Merros, who had just returned to Bakerland from her month-long training at the Templar, shrugged, "I haven't really been promoted because of the lack of potion materials, but the approval to join the Red Glove was passed first." ”

Since she learned the "trick of playing", it took her less than two months to digest some of the potions that she had not digested in the past two years, and successfully passed the Templar's review.

And the digestion time of more than half of the two years, although slightly faster than the average, did not reach the level of genius, and the Templar did not think in the direction of "playing the method", but only did a routine test.

"Then when you are officially promoted, I will make up a gift." Douglas smiled and held up the paper bag in his hand, "These are the Ferneport Highlands coffee that our church has given out as a benefit. I'm not used to drinking it, so I'd better leave it to you to savor it slowly, so that you don't bury their value. ”

Melos, a senior coffee lover, had her eyes lit up, opened the paper bag and sealed it, pinched out a few coffee beans, and sniffed them on the tip of her nose: "Hmm...... The roasting heat is just right, removing some of the sourness, leaving only a rich nutty aroma and smoky flavor...... Alas, coffee beans of this quality are not cheap on the market. ”

She took the paper bag with joy, weighed the approximate weight, suddenly realized something, quickly put away her smile and looked at Douglas, and lowered her voice: "Wait, so what are you going to bribe me for?" I must warn you that even if our church has a partnership, there are some things that you should not know...... Also, I'm a very principled person. ”

…… Then you should spread the hand holding the coffee beans first. Douglas couldn't help but laugh: "Can't it be that I'm simply, well, want to give my mentor some thanks?" ”

"Don't do that." Melos muttered, realizing that it was not good to talk to him in the hallway like this, so she turned around and led the person to the reception room, and sighed, "My potion has been thoroughly digested, and I tell you, martial arts can reflect people's personalities." A guy like you who likes, well, sneak attacks from strange angles probably wouldn't have such a conscience. ”

"Please put aside your prejudices, dear Mr. Merros," Douglas said bitterly, "I like sneak attacks only because you can't beat you head-on, can I!" ”

He said in his heart that when I was in school, I was also a three-good student, so I was called a moral, intellectual, and beautiful student, so why didn't I have a conscience!

Melos invited him into the reception room, closed the door tightly and sat down across from him: "Tell me, what is the matter?" ”

Jokes aside, she knew very well that her cheap apprentice was a young man who was very cautious, but would never make a big mistake. Rather, when it comes to maintaining a sense of boundaries, Douglas behaves completely beyond what his former class should be, like those aristocrats who are meticulous in etiquette, and never offends Melos.

So for Douglas coming to the door with a gift, Melos's mentality was far more positive than what he said.

"On the one hand, I really want to give you a little gift and express my gratitude for your careful teaching in the past." Douglas is colored. For the past few months, Merros has taught him hands-on, and most of the ritual materials are in Merros's own inventory, and he has not been asked for any fees.

The country has always had a tradition of respecting teachers, and he is not really without conscience, whether it is out of respect or for the sake of logistical contact, it is natural to give a small gift.

"On the other hand, I do have a small matter to trouble you. I'd like to know the list of underground gatherings in the hands of the night watchmen, the high-end kind that doesn't need to be attended by the extraordinary, the level of the occult enthusiasts' gatherings. ”

Merros frowned slightly, but her expression quickly relaxed: "Can I know the reason?" ”

Douglas pretended to recite the excuse that he had made up a long time ago: "That's right, in the process of digging through some of the historical materials left by the Blood Clan, I accidentally discovered a strange and difficult to decipher text, and there is no more information within the Blood Clan to refer to. So I thought, why bother yourself, those who love to read Russelwin, those who know the unknown occult knowledge well, must be happy to do me a small favor. It's just that I don't have so many channels in my hands. ”

As he spoke, he took out a piece of paper with English sentences written on it, pushed it in front of Merros, and said with 100% sincerity: "You can divination, it doesn't involve anything extraordinary, I can swear to the Mother Goddess for this." ”

After all, it's just a simple and harmless "you jump, i jump" and "April 15, 7p.m., see you at No.18b Black Olive Street, East zone."

One is the Titanic line used to recognize his relatives, and the other is the address of a safe house he rented in the East End. Even if the world is apocalyptic in the next second, there is no extraordinary element in these two sentences.

Unless there's a cult den under his safe house...... Douglas personally confirmed this, but there really isn't.

Meros glanced at him, and without hesitation, he reached out for his amethyst pendulum, divining on the spot with the conditional statements "This text contains extraordinary elements", "This text will point to beings with extraordinary elements", and "Reading this text will bring unfortunate results".

The amethyst pendulum rotated counterclockwise three times in a row, and although the amplitude was different, they all represented negation. Melos pondered for a moment, then divined "This piece of paper is the original source of information that Douglas said", and "This text is from ancient times"

The answer is all yes.

“…… That's it," Merros, who had completed the preliminary identification, touched his chin and decided, "I'll leave a copy of this text for you to ask in the 'Red Glove', they have been exposed to more bizarre events, maybe there will be clues." ”

"The Voyeur" is a sequence with extensive knowledge and skills in the occult, and Meros is confident in her divination results. Getting the "red gloves" inside the discussion is another layer of insurance.

But if there is a ghost in it, Douglas will not let the "red gloves" with deep seniority in the extraordinary world get it...... Melos said, keenly observing Douglas's expression.

I saw that there seemed to be a flash of joy on the other party's face, and then he agreed very happily: "Is it really possible?" Great, you've done me a great favor. ”

For his part, Douglas wished that this text would be as widely circulated as possible, both the official extraordinary and the wild extraordinary.

Not...... The more you look at it, the more stupid you become. Meros shook her head, getting up to sift through a list for him, "You sit here for a while. ”

A few minutes later, she retrieved a list of safe and harmless occult gatherings, transcribed the passage in English, and sent Douglas out of the Nightwatch's office.

-

Douglas, having completed a plan, whistled easily and walked back to the square in front of St. Samuel's Church. He had pit several MI9 informants before, not intentionally to disgust the other side, but the situation of rushing to send manpower and funds was too tempting, so he couldn't help but have a subtle psychology of "being a bastard if you have a advantage......

Or strategically, Douglas fully understands Tyron's purpose in putting pressure on himself.

So he did not hesitate to put the pressure on MI9 in turn.

Stalk me, right, do you try with another one? I've emptied your wallet!

It's just that after such a small death, he didn't dare to wander around the cramped and dim streets of the East Side anymore. Counting how many strong men capsized in the gutter in the past, Douglas went to the Church of the Night, just to give himself a peace of mind, and decided to feed the pigeons in the square at the last time before sunset, and relax.

So he bought a bag of bread crumbs from a vendor in the square, and as soon as he turned his gaze to the rows of benches where people were resting, he found Amon in a classical wizard's hat and a monocle in his right eye sitting not far away.

There were also handfuls of bread crumbs on the ground, and at least dozens of pigeons of different colors gathered around them.

Douglas was confused. Is this the life of the three big guys in the sequence? It's so unpretentious, but there are many slots......

Before he could decide whether to go over and say hello or just slip away, Amon raised his head and looked in his direction precisely, revealing a "found you" smile.

After standing there and hesitating for a minute, Douglas walked over bitterly and carefully sat down at the other end of the bench.

Amon patted the crumbs of bread on his palms and smiled, "You're quite talented at cheating. ”

"'The text obtained from the Bloodline' is the premise of all the lies that follow, and it is also the easiest to falsify." He grabbed a pigeon pecking at his side, held it in his arms and stroked it, "but precisely because it is too easy to be punctured and not taken seriously." It is only when there is a real unknown danger in the writing that its origin is worth examining; If it's safe and harmless, then what does it matter if it actually existed or is it some kind of fiction? ”

Douglas, who was sitting next to him and listening to these words, only felt a cold sweat running down his spine.

You know, he advanced to St. Samuel's Church, the headquarters of the Church of the Night in Beckland, and passed through the underground passages.

On the other side of the crossroads of the underground passage is the Chanis Gate, where the seals are kept, and there must be the highest level of secrecy in the Night Church to prevent prying eyes.

Then he spent half a day in the lair of the night watchmen, half of whom were extraordinary beings with enough sensing abilities for special powers.

In any case, Amon should not have been so clear about the content of this conversation...... Douglas quietly looked at Amon's expression, and secretly complained in his heart: Is the big guy here to beat me?

"I, I have never revealed anything about you......" he whispered his loyalty.

"Ah, I know." Amon snorted, let go of the pigeon, and groped for something out of his wide robe with the sound of wings flapping, and shoved it into Douglas's hand, "This is the reward for your obedience." ”

It was a glass test tube-like container three fingers thick, slightly longer than the palm of a hand, and it was cold to the touch. The liquid in the container looks eerily viscous, as if it were a whole piece rather than a droplet, giving it a mixed but not harsh color.

I don't know if it's an illusion, but Douglas suddenly felt the urge to drink it all. He looked away with some curiosity and asked, "Excuse me...... What is it? ”

Amon lifted his monocle and replied lightly, "Sequence eight, the potion of the 'master of tricks'." Drink it and I'll watch you. ”