Mystery: Emerging From Knowledge Moor

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Sitting in the carriage headed to the Deep Red Advanced Hospital with Paz, Leyton looked at the rows of houses receding outside the carriage window, feeling a faint sense of unease in his heart.

"Master, can you go a little faster? I'm in a hurry to get to the hospital," Leyton called out to the coachman.

"This is already very fast. Although there are fewer pedestrians at night, the visibility is poor, and driving too fast can easily lead to accidents. Are you in such a hurry to get to the hospital because a relative is sick? Although you're worried about your family, you can't ignore your own safety!" the coachman said ramblingly.

"Yes, Master, you're right," Leyton agreed in a different tone.

"Meow—" Paz looked at Leyton with great incomprehension.

Leyton ignored it, simply stroking the cat's head with one hand while chatting with the coachman as if in conversation: "Master, do you know about the recent events at Crimson Advanced Hospital? If the doctors there weren't more skilled than those at other hospitals, I wouldn't have let my friend go there for treatment."

"Know? How could I not know? The news has spread all over the city. Only those high and mighty big shots don't know about these things." Mentioning these gossips, the coachman was like a tap that had been turned on. Without Leyton's deliberate prompting, he rattled off all the information he knew.

"It is said that the constables went there twice at the beginning, but they didn't find anything. Instead, they thought that the patients in the hospital were reporting false cases and gave them a warning. Later, the Security Bureau stopped caring about the matter. Who knows if they really don't care or if they're just making excuses for their incompetence!" The coachman's tone sounded like he had a very bad impression of the Security Bureau.

In this era, the conflict between the lower classes of society and those with a certain social status and power is always the most acute and prominent. One side tries its best to survive, while the other is caught between the decisions of the lower classes and the upper echelons, becoming a chain to maintain fragile order, despised by the lower classes and ignored by the upper echelons.

Leyton shook his head, not responding to the coachman's words. This was an inevitable result of an era developing to a certain stage, and it wouldn't change because of individual will.

"Perhaps this is why so many people believe in evil gods! Extreme oppression will inevitably lead to madness." Leyton thought of the evil cult organizations in this world, which were even more numerous than the orthodox God churches, and the terrifying events and even disasters that occurred from time to time, and sighed in his heart.

If he could, Leyton would be willing to change this situation, but it wasn't something he could do, at least not with Sequence 8. Not even close.

"Fool! Soon, June 1349, there are still more than half a year left. I have to speed up the digestion of the potion. If I want to do something in this world, Klein's advancement speed in the later stages will be too fast. If I can't create a gap in the early stages, in the end, I can only be a spectator like the members of the Tarot Club."

A sense of urgency filled his heart.

"What are you thinking about? Meow—" Paz waved his little paw in front of Leyton's eyes.

"Thinking about life... Why did you suddenly start talking?" Leyton looked at the black cat Paz standing on his lap in confusion.

Paz raised his neck, revealing a thin black string. Hanging from the string was a small, dark wooden tag. Because the color of the string and the wooden tag were too similar to Paz' fur, the string and the wooden tag had been hidden in the fluff around Paz' neck. Leyton hadn't noticed that Paz had such a thing on him before.

"No wonder you were so averse to me twisting your neck. So you were hiding something!" Leyton glanced at the coachman, who was turning a blind eye to what had just happened, and roughly understood the function of this thing.

"Its function is to weaken your sense of presence? Or to dull the perception of ordinary people?" Leyton asked.

"Of course, it's to shield ordinary people from perceiving me. It will make them think that anything I do is normal. Of course, I can't do anything too shocking to them, like jumping on ordinary people. Their cognition will break through this cognitive barrier, meow—" Paz proudly raised his head and gazed at Leyton.

"A useless mystical item, but it's just right to use on you." Leyton nodded.

"This carriage is so slow! How long until we get to the hospital, meow—" Paz jumped onto Leyton's shoulder again, looking at the streetlights and houses receding on both sides and complaining.

"Hiss——" The horse pulling the carriage seemed to have hit something and fell to the ground, pulling the entire carriage over with it.

"Meow— Meow—!" Paz lost his footing and was thrown out of the carriage. Leyton also jumped out of the carriage, rolled a few times on the ground, and got up. Fortunately, he had just been abused unilaterally by Sia all afternoon, and his body's instinctive reactions were still there. After jumping out of the carriage, he protected his vital parts very well. It was just that his back was a little sore from being bumped.

Seeing Leyton, Paz nimbly leaped to Leyton's side. As a cat, this guy had already distorted his body in mid-air when he was thrown out of the carriage, and then landed gracefully.

"What happened, meow—" Paz asked aloud.

"The carriage was tripped by vines on the road. A battle between Beyonders probably happened ahead. The appearance of vines in the middle of the road that can trip a carriage is very similar to the work of the Church of the Earth Mother." Leyton had already seen the situation ahead when he got up.

The once clean and flat road had become pitted and uneven. There were also several vines and withered leaves larger than Paz on the ground. The carriage had just been tripped by a vine on the ground.

Leyton stepped forward to help the coachman up, giving him some money for the carriage fare and injury expenses: "This money is for your carriage fare and medical expenses. Both you and the horse need treatment. I'll leave now. It's not far from the hospital, so I can walk there myself."

"Paz, follow me."

Leyton turned back and called out, then walked towards the Crimson Advanced Hospital.

Paz lightly followed beside Leyton, the vines and dead branches on the ground having no effect on it.

The man and the cat quickly disappeared from the coachman's sight.

"Ugh, why are there vines everywhere on the ground, meow."

Paz complained after jumping over another vine.

"The Church of the Earth Mother controls the 'Planter' pathway. Sequence 7 has the ability to catalyze plant growth and mutation. It seems a Harvest Priest has fought someone here.

We need to be careful, no matter which side it is, they may not be friendly to us,"

Leyton analyzed.

"Planter? Not a Classical Alchemist, meow?" Paz asked in confusion.

"You know about Classical Alchemists?" Leyton turned his head in surprise to look at the black cat.

Paz, feeling annoyed by Leyton's stare, shook its body a couple of times, wanting to change the subject.

"Bang!" A loud sound of something heavy falling to the ground came from ahead. Leyton and Paz exchanged a look.

"Go ahead and see what it is."

Leyton signaled Paz to scout ahead.

"No, why don't you go? I'm just a cat!" Paz immediately shook its head in refusal upon hearing this.

"You're from the Arbiter pathway, and you're a cat, so you won't arouse suspicion and you have the ability to protect yourself.

My pathway doesn't have any frontal combat ability in the early stages, so of course you should go scout ahead,"

Leyton coaxed Paz to scout ahead with a straight face.

"Okay, meow~ But you have to come and save me immediately if there's a situation."

Paz nodded, looking at Leyton with a serious cat face.

"No problem, we're so familiar, don't you trust me?" Leyton patted his chest in assurance.

Paz meowed and quickly ran towards the direction of the sound. Leyton didn't wait in place either.

He took out the pistol from the gun holster on his waist, and put his other hand into his coat pocket, holding a confinement charm, cautiously approaching.

Leyton had previously marked the two charms, so he could tell which charm he was holding without looking.

"Meow!" Paz's cry came from ahead, full of panic. Leyton disregarded caution and quickly hurried forward.

Ahead, Paz was confronting a clown wearing a tall red top hat, a red swallowtail coat and trousers, dark red leather shoes, and exaggerated makeup on his face.

His face was as white as if it were covered in flour, but he had a smile that stretched all the way to the roots of his ears.

More precisely, Paz was retreating step by step, while the clown maintained his exaggerated, almost pathological elegance, approaching Paz step by step, along with a corpse beside it.

The moment he saw the clown, Leyton's advancing steps abruptly stopped, an invisible fear spreading through his heart.

"Yo! Little kitty, I didn't expect to find you here. I've been looking for you in the hospital for so long. The days without you playing games with me have been especially long!

Let's play together!" The clown's voice was somewhat hoarse and insane, with a unique Charm, causing people who heard him speak to unconsciously fall into contemplation and confusion.

"Don't! Don't listen to him, quick! Kill him!" The body lying beside Paz hadn't died yet, making a painful sound, reaching out to grab something, but ultimately falling down weakly.

Leyton slowly approached, subtly activating his Eye of Mystery Prying, watching the scene before him. The guy who looked like a corpse in Leyton's eyes could actually still talk.

Moreover, after Leyton calmed the tense emotions caused by suddenly seeing the clown he feared the most, he realized that facing the clown again, the pressure he felt was far less terrifying than the last time.

An odd spiritual glow appeared on the person who originally looked like a corpse in Leyton's eyes, filled with traces of artificial modification. A piece of information appeared in Leyton's mind: "Alchemical Modification."

As for the clown who was constantly approaching Paz, Leyton discovered through the feedback from the Eye of Mystery Prying that the other party was only Sequence 8.

Although it was a bit strange, the spiritual glow on the other party was almost twice as strong as that of an ordinary Sequence 8, but it was indeed just a Sequence 8.

However, the clown also had stitched marks on his body, not stitches on the body or soul, but the stitching together of two different Beyonder characteristics.

The clown got closer and closer to Paz, and Paz's fur was about to explode.

"Meow!"

Paz let out a threatening cry, its voice filled with a sense of authority, making people unconsciously want to believe it. This was the ability of a Sequence 9 Arbiter.

The clown seemed to be stimulated, and suddenly charged towards Paz.

Paz pounced out as a conditioned reflex. The clown didn't touch Paz, but he didn't stop, continuing to charge over.

"His target is me, he was just pretending."

Leyton suddenly reacted. The clown's speed was very fast, and he was already close.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!" Leyton quickly drew his gun and fired, not even bothering to aim. At the same time, he quickly moved his body to the side, dodging.

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