Chapter 181: Eerie World
“Be careful? Be careful of what? Be careful of whom?”
A bad feeling surged up again from Clark’s heart. He guessed that this note was most probably written to him by Mireille, because these clothes were given to him by Mireille, the outfit he wore tonight was also suggested by her, and she was the one who had the most contact with these clothes and thus the most likely to give him a hint.
Clark’s head was throbbing. He sat on the edge of the bed, recalling all the events that happened during the day.
There were fragmented gaps in his memory. He only remembered that he was clearly on a flight to the Shenzhou Region, then he fell asleep on the flight, and when he woke up again, he found himself in a desolate place with no one around. His clothes and items had all changed.
At first, he was also panicked, but soon he calmed down, searched the things he had on him, and then pulled out a bunch of stuff from the backpack, including a notebook recording his “own” situation and a pocket watch with a very slow-moving hand.
The notebook was dated to the 17th century and stated the purpose of this trip—”he” was to go to a remote Count’s castle built on a cliff edge, with woods uninhabited for four or five kilometers nearby, remote and isolated. His identity was a law enforcement officer seeking the truth, tasked with finding someone who had sent him a plea for help half a month ago from that eerie old castle suspected of hundreds of disappearance cases, confirming the situation and carrying out rescue.
With no destination and unable to discern direction, he could only follow the map route of the castle’s location stored in the crevice of the notebook.
Within less than an hour, he unluckily encountered blizzard weather, which grew increasingly adverse until he finally followed the route to that so-called Count’s castle. Only then did he truly believe he had encountered something that would only appear in novels—he had transmigrated, transmigrated into a “law enforcement officer” in the 17th century.
Forced by the adverse blizzard weather, he had no choice but to stay in this castle that he knew concealed great danger.
However, there were many bewildering aspects about this world for Clark, especially in this castle. Whether it was the environment here or the words and actions of the people, he could sense a deep eeriness from certain details.
The Count’s title was Bluebeard, and this image was not unfamiliar to Clark, because this person was almost the infamous evil villain in fairy tales known throughout the Western world, a perverted noble and women killer in fairy tales. In real history, he indeed existed as a notorious child killer who learned a taboo demon-subduing technique to satisfy his desires, one that required children’s blood to activate, and for that he abducted and killed many innocent children.
As an expert researching anomalous folk cultures, Clark had naturally studied the real historical Bluebeard, but upon arriving at the castle today, he did not believe that the Bluebeard dining with him was the same historical figure he had studied.
Perhaps he had transmigrated to a spacetime completely different from his own world but with a similar historical background?
Clark could not determine it, but judging from Bluebeard’s various performances at dinner, he indeed fit the image of a noble with impure character, and he certainly had the means to ensure that those who entered this castle had no way out, with news of their disappearance hard to spread.
In short, Clark felt that he was destined to have a sleepless night tonight… No, he might as well not sleep at all.
Despite having walked almost a full day, Clark still felt mentally vigorous, not because of abundant energy, but because an inexplicable fear was constantly stimulating his sensitive nerves.
For a professional anomalous folk culture researcher, the primary condition to sustain this profession long-term is a keen awareness of danger, because you never know when you might touch some taboo item capable of mental invasion, memetic interference, or cognitive destruction, and one slip could lead to loss of reason, descent into madness, or even loss of life.
And now, Clark felt that danger was hidden everywhere in this castle.
He wrapped himself in the quilt in the bedroom, sat at the head of the bed, and waited dryly without feeling sleepy at all.
Listening to the blizzard outside that never eased, Clark watched the marks passed by the pocket watch hand. Although the pocket watch hand moved very slowly, for him with no other timekeeping tools nearby, this pocket watch that was many beats slow was still a useful timekeeping tool.
He roughly calculated the actual time by counting heartbeats, compared it to the pocket watch time, and found that nearly an actual hour equaled five minutes on the pocket watch, with a time ratio of about 12:1. That meant from checking into the castle today, changing clothes and resting a bit, to eating dinner, it had taken about two and a half hours in total.
No wonder dinner tonight was delicious but quite torturous—it had taken so long.
Thus, after waiting for ten minutes on the pocket watch time, which was nearly two actual hours, Clark felt it was midnight, the dead of night, and decided to begin investigating the castle.
Knowing the castle was strange and dangerous, sitting idly by was not an option—that would make him no different from a stupid turkey in a farm.
He put on his clothes, took the candlestick in the room, quietly pushed open the room’s door, and looked at the dim and silent corridor, as if the entire world had only him left, his heartbeat involuntarily accelerating due to the chilling atmosphere.
Clark still remembered the original route to the restaurant and the castle door, but those places did not need investigation. He started exploring rooms near his guest bedroom, quietly trying to enter every unlocked and openable room, first checking the nameplate at the room door before entering.
Having nameplates inside the home sounded a bit unbelievable, but after realizing it was a huge castle, it was not hard to understand.
He discovered that the rooms nearby all seemed to have “owners.” For example, the room diagonally across from him had a nameplate reading “Kand’s Room,” the door could be pushed open, and there were clear signs of habitation inside.
Opening the room’s wardrobe, there were many sets of male servant clothes inside. It seemed Kand was a male servant in the castle, probably a gardener or similar, because he saw many books on planting flowers and grass on Kand’s bookshelf.
Clark continued rummaging through the other’s bookshelf, and when flipping to a book on planting “perfume lilies,” he unexpectedly found that the book cover was fake, actually concealing a light yellow box of the same thickness as the cover inside.
Clark opened the box, and his hand nearly failed to hold it steady, because inside was a stone sculpture of a monstrous harmful beast, squatting in a detestable yet lifelike pose.
And this harmful beast’s form was quite familiar to Clark, because it was precisely the research subject he was supposed to study before transmigrating—Shadow of All Things.
