The Cycle of Fate

Chapter 9: The Suspect

"What exactly is it?" Lumian felt both excited and a bit worried.

The lady took a sip of the "Venus Holy Oil" drink and then responded at a measured pace, "That's something you'll have to ask yourself."

After saying this, she slightly lowered her head and focused on enjoying her breakfast, signaling that she wasn't going to continue the conversation.

How frustrating—why does she always say things halfway and then stop? Are we supposed to wait until next time for an answer? Isn't that just a waste of everyone's time? At that moment, Lumian even felt that when it came to making people angry, he couldn't match this lady.

He controlled his breathing, smiled, stood up, and excused himself before leaving.

For the rest of the day, Lumian stayed at home, not venturing out.

It wasn't that he was so afraid of the owl that he didn't dare to go out during the day, nor that he had nothing to do. Instead, he was putting on a show for certain people.

He was very curious about the contents of the plea for help that Leah and the others had. He wanted to find out what exactly was written and who had written it. The best way to investigate this was to find an opportunity to go through every single "Little Blue Book" in the village, searching for the one with missing words. As a local villager, Lumian was definitely more suited for this task than Ryan, Leah, or Valentine, but he was concerned that starting an investigation right after meeting those three outsiders might draw the attention of certain people and lead to unnecessary trouble.

This was likely a matter of life and death, of existence and annihilation. Even with Aurore's protection, Lumian couldn't guarantee that someone wouldn't take risky actions against him.

Over the past two years, he had become increasingly adept at judging the appropriate limits when playing pranks.

This was thanks to his extensive experience.

He planned to wait a few days until Lent began before using the pretext of searching for festival-related legends to visit every household.

As night fell, after dinner, Aurore went back to her room to work on a manuscript she'd been putting off for a while.

Lumian, on the other hand, entered the study, intending to find some books related to dreams, hoping to gain insight into the special inspiration he had in his dream.

Since the house had only one battery-powered lamp, which Aurore was using, he had to light a kerosene lamp, though it smelled strong and didn't provide much light.

Carrying the kerosene lamp that emitted a dim glow, Lumian ran his other hand quickly over the spines of the books, occasionally pulling one out and tucking it under his arm.

After a while, he returned to the table with three selected books.

Just as he was setting down the books, Lumian noticed the "Little Blue Book" in the house.

It sat quietly in the corner of the desk, its grayish-blue cover seemingly covered in a thin layer of dust.

Seeing the "Little Blue Book," Lumian immediately thought of the one he had obtained in the dream ruins and the one that had been cut up to create the plea for help.

He reached out and picked up the "Little Blue Book" in front of him, intending to flip through it and see which words could be cut out and used to form useful sentences.

After just a few pages, Lumian's gaze froze.

On this particular page, there was an obvious hole in the explanatory text following the calendar.