Chapter 17: Dividing the Mind in Two

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Chapter 17: Dividing the Mind in Two

What Charlie hadn’t expected was that the next two days passed without incident.

The only thing of note, if it could even be called that, was running into George, the round-faced knight, again at the market on Gray Hat Street. He seemed to be on patrol and naturally waved when he spotted Charlie.

“I heard you’re working for that jeweler. He’s not easy to deal with. Don’t let that smiling face fool you—he looks like he never wants to offend anyone, but who knows how black his heart really is.” George slung an arm around Charlie’s shoulder, looking at him with a hint of sympathy.

George had heard the rumors going around Gray Hat Street. That jeweler had come to see Charlie openly in a carriage and had supposedly even brought him a gift. Finding a well-paid job was certainly a good thing, but in a big city like this, George had seen too many people dazzled by the splendor of the city only to be cruelly discarded in the end.

Whether they were abandoned by a person, abandoned by the city, or killed by some inconspicuous spell.

Especially someone like Charlie.

George looked closely at Charlie’s nearly flawless, pale face and once again marveled at how partial the Creator could be. Finally, he coughed and furtively glanced around before lowering his voice. “He didn’t just hire you. I reckon he’s brought out every gemstone worth showing off. Nearly all the noble lords and ladies around Marguerite Gardens have received invitations. I hear even people from the magic academy are going.”

Charlie looked surprised. “A jeweler… has connections that extensive?”

George cleared his throat. “You really don’t know, do you? Anyone who can come up with that many precious gemstones must have quite a background. I heard he owns a mine in Pato City. Didn’t you hear about what happened at the end of last year?”

Last year?

Charlie hadn’t transmigrated yet at the time. The entire household had been busy preparing for Young Master Armand’s coming-of-age ceremony, while the original owner had been caught up in the preparations, anxious yet full of anticipation for his life after coming of age. He simply hadn’t had the time to pay attention to what was happening outside.

Charlie honestly shook his head, his eyes filled with confusion.

George grew even more worried. This single-minded fellow was determined to become a mage, yet he happened to have a face like this. Was he really not going to get himself into trouble?

“A magic ore vein! They supposedly discovered a new associated magic ore vein there!”

Charlie nearly cried out in surprise, but George quickly stopped him. “Shh, keep your voice down. We can’t even be sure whether the news is true. In the end, they said it fell into the hands of a mysterious wealthy merchant, but that person’s name never got out. The jewelry merchants in Pato City may all be black-hearted, but if the Gemstone Association doesn’t want a single word to leak, then there’ll be no wind at all.”

“I understand. Is it possible that person is Mr. Vic?” Charlie asked.

George nodded. “That’s why the banquet that day is bound to be complicated. There’ll be plenty of people with ulterior motives. For your own safety, you’d better not go. If you don’t know how to tell him, I can speak to him on your behalf.”

As he spoke, he patted his chest, making his armor clatter loudly, as if to demonstrate his integrity and reliability as a knight.

“Thank you, George. But I’ve already promised Mr. Vic, so I can’t go back on my word. Besides… there will be mages there, right? I’d like to go and see them.” Charlie looked George in the eye as he spoke.

George sighed inwardly. Charlie looked like someone who would be easy to bully, but his personality was incredibly stubborn. Then again, stubbornness could also be called perseverance in a sense. At least Captain Salomon greatly admired that quality.

“Then you’ll have to be careful. How about this? If anything happens, come to the Black-Armored Knights and find me.” George kept his tone light and flashed him a grin, not wanting to make Charlie feel too weighed down.

“Okay.” Charlie agreed, then asked, “What about that guru… Have there been any results?”

“You really want to know?”

“Everyone on Gray Hat Street wants to know. Mrs. Macken and the others were still talking about her yesterday.”

George waved his hand. “The stolen goods still haven’t been recovered, so there’s still plenty to investigate. It’s getting late. I have to go. See you next time, Charlie!”

Charlie watched him leave and remained where he was for a while before turning around and slowly continuing his shopping. He had come to buy ingredients for dinner. He had heard that there was fresh wild rabbit meat available today.

There was plenty of it, and it was cheap. As for whether eating it would make him even more melancholy, well, he would leave that to fate.

Meanwhile, George strode away from the market and into a side alley. The narrow stone alley was barely wide enough for one person. In the light at the far end stood a man dressed in luxurious but rumpled clothes, with a wild, overgrown beard. He had one foot raised as he beckoned to the bent-over shoeshine man.

The shoeshine man bowed and scraped, calling him “sir” as he cheerfully invited him to sit down and began polishing his shoes.

“You’re slacking off here again. Watch out or Captain Salomon will come catch you!” George walked over, planting his hands on his hips and glaring at him.

“Just don’t tell him, then.” The man looked up, revealing a pair of smiling fox-like eyes completely at odds with his disheveled appearance. “Did you see him?”

George glanced at the shoeshine man but didn’t answer.

The man shrugged. “I’m guessing you came back empty-handed.”

George was puzzled. “Why did you have me go say all that?”

The man had brought up the subject himself, only to raise a finger to his lips and signal for George to be quiet. Once his shoes had been polished, he tossed a silver coin to the old shoeshine man under the latter’s flattered, almost startled gaze, then sauntered away.

George followed him. “Why, exactly?”

The man walked leisurely with his hands in his pockets. “Charlie is obviously a stubborn person. The more you try to convince him not to go, the more determined he’ll be to go. Salomon is too rigid. How is he supposed to outmaneuver that pack of old foxes with an investigation like his?”

George frowned. “Then why did you send me to Charlie? If Captain Salomon can’t outmaneuver them, do you really think Charlie can? He isn’t even a mage!”

“Never underestimate an ordinary person, George. If that jeweler chose him to attend the banquet, then he must have something distinctive about him.”

“Is that really a good thing?” George’s gaze was full of wariness. “He’s not only caught Vic’s attention, but now he’s caught yours too. If anything, he’s just unlucky. Don’t forget the supreme Knight’s Code, Deputy Captain Leon. I agreed to go talk to him, but if you really do anything that violates the code, I’ll tell Captain Salomon!”

“Okay, okay, I heard you.” The man called Leon helplessly rubbed his ear. “But have you forgotten, George? When the barber got into trouble, there was a carriage parked nearby. Charlie was the one who gave us that information. And now we suspect that carriage may have belonged to Vic. That night, neither he nor his old butler was at the jewelry shop, and no one knows where they went.”

George’s heart tightened.

Leon continued, “So how do you know that keeping an eye on Charlie isn’t actually a way of protecting him? Isn’t it better for him to be a little more wary of Vic?”

Meanwhile, Charlie returned to the alchemy laboratory on the fifth floor of Pinecone Tower.

Some of the materials needed to brew basic alchemical potions could be bought at the market. Most of them served auxiliary functions in potions and weren’t expensive, making them ideal for practice.

“Puff…”

White smoke rose from the small cauldron. The sixth batch of materials was officially ruined.

Ben’s hip bone backed away three meters, and he stood by the wall watching Charlie from a safe distance. “How did you fail again?”

His innocent tone made the question all the more painful.

But Ben hadn’t meant anything by it. In his eyes, Charlie was an extremely focused and persistent person. For someone like that to keep getting distracted and failing was simply too strange.

Charlie calmed himself and answered, “I’m trying to divide my mind in two.”

Ben was even more confused. “Why? Aren’t you supposed to stay focused?”

Charlie countered, “What if you were suddenly ambushed by an army of skeletons while you were doing alchemy? They could crawl out of the fireplace, or come up from underground.”

“Huh? Why would an army of skeletons suddenly ambush you?”

“I don’t know either.”

Charlie simply believed it was better to be prepared.

Who knew whether he might someday have to activate an alchemical array while casting magic at the same time? Perhaps he might even have one hand hidden behind his back, ready to suddenly smack someone over the head with a brick.

It was always better to be prepared.

In truth, he had always been prone to letting his thoughts wander.

He had been easily distracted ever since he was a child, and even after taking up painting, he remained that way. He could be painting with his eyes still fixed on the canvas, on the scenery before him, while his thoughts wandered off somewhere else. He would continue painting without needing to consciously think through the process, and the lines and colors would simply leap onto the canvas.

The resulting paintings were often highly abstract. No matter how realistic the subject was, the lines would begin to break free from conventional constraints, and his use of color was often bolder as well.

Some teachers liked his paintings, while others criticized them harshly, but he didn’t care.

When his thoughts wandered away, it felt as though he had embarked on some fantastical adventure. He rather liked the feeling, but he had no intention of explaining or sharing the details of that adventure with anyone.

Returning to alchemy, however, the process was somewhat different from painting. When he painted, Charlie could divide himself into two “selves.” One was abstract, and the other was abstract as well. The two “selves” did not conflict, so he had never had any problems.

But alchemy required greater precision. One “self” could be abstract, but the other had to be rational to the point of objectivity. These two contradictory “selves” could not reach unity, so he failed, failed again, and failed once more.

He remembered the first step of Aye’s meditation method:

Close your eyes, forget your own existence, and let “I” and the “universe” achieve unity.

The universe was vast and inherently encompassed all things. Whether abstract or objective, both should be able to exist simultaneously in harmony and remain internally consistent.

“Do you understand?” Charlie explained his thoughts to Ben. Ben, however, only wondered why he had to make things so complicated. He had 206 bones, but he had never counted them, nor had he ever wondered which one he had lost or where any particular bone might be.

Humans were complicated and difficult to understand. But once a human became a skeleton, everything became simple and happy.

So Ben extended the invitation again. “Are you really not going to consider burning yourself?”

Charlie had no idea why his question had received such a response. He stared blankly for several seconds before answering, “Save it to burn my enemies.”

“Why burn them? Filthy enemies aren’t worthy of being burned with soul fire.”

“To save all living beings and accumulate hidden virtue.”

“Hidden virtue?” His hip bone had encountered another strange term he couldn’t understand, so he began looking for his own head. His head didn’t understand either. The skull went rolling down the chimney, overshot its mark, and a loud clatter immediately came from the kitchen downstairs.

Charlie knew the instant he heard it that a pot had been knocked over—his newly purchased pot.

He glanced at Ben again. Wonderful. The pot was overturned, and the culprit had shut himself away in his own gloomy little world again.

“Do you know what I was thinking about while I was trying to divide my mind in two?” Charlie picked up an herb. He needed to crush it, extract its juice, then mix it with duck’s blood and distill it at high temperature. The resulting liquid would be one of the pure raw materials that could be used to make potions.

This process could be done through purely physical means, such as using the instruments in the alchemy laboratory, but it was cumbersome. It could also be done through magic, by using the alchemy table to directly complete the transformation of matter.

The latter was obviously more convenient, but with Charlie’s current magic level, he could only maintain it three times, so he wasn’t in a hurry to use the alchemy table.

Ben, shut away in his own gloomy world, faced the wall and refused to answer. Charlie calmly began grinding the herbs. “I was thinking about why the knight came looking for me again.”

“I’m very curious about that.”

“Gray Hat Street is becoming more and more mysterious.”

“A thief stole something, and an assassin set his sights on the thief. The thief was caught, the assassin was attacked. Who was the attacker? And where will the righteous knights go from here?”

Suddenly, the back of Charlie’s neck went cold, and his train of thought came to an abrupt stop. He paused what he was doing, slowly turned his head, and looked out the window.

A pair of emerald-green slit pupils stared back at him.

It was the neighbor’s cat.

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