While Matthew was meditating.
Deep within a quiet manor in the western district of the inner city, inside a hidden basement.
The damp air was thick with a strange, pungent odor—a mixture of chemical reagents and some kind of decaying tissue.
Inside the room, several fluorescent stones glowed brightly, illuminating the entire space.
Wooden shelves lining the walls were packed with glass jars and flasks of various sizes. Inside them, unrecognizable organs and tissue fragments drifted slowly in a murky green liquid.
Stained parchment, rusted surgical instruments, and several bubbling alcohol lamps lay scattered across the tabletop.
Yet, the room did not appear cluttered or messy at all.
In the center of the room, a young man dressed in a black robe stood quietly.
He had a slender build, and though his robe was somewhat loose, it could not hide his tense, dangerous aura.
A few strands of pale golden hair peeked out from the edge of his hood. Its color looked dull in the dim light, as if covered by a layer of ash.
His face was surprisingly young—he looked to be only twenty-two or twenty-three years old—with skin so pale it was almost translucent, revealing the faint, blue veins beneath.
However, this youthful face bore disturbing marks of “modification.” His left eye was a deep, empty socket, the skin around the edges slightly shriveled as if it had been brutally gouged out or eroded away, leaving only a dark, quiet hole.
His right eye was a pale amber, its pupil occasionally flashing with an inhuman, metallic glint when it contracted in the light.
When he spoke, his voice was hoarse and dry, sounding like sandpaper scraping against rusted iron—a bizarre contrast to his youthful appearance.
“How is the situation with those few?”
he asked, his raspy voice echoing clearly in the quiet basement.
A subordinate who had been waiting on the side—a burly, fierce-looking man with a scarred face—immediately bowed upon hearing this. He presented a stack of booklets roughly bound with hemp rope with both hands.
“My lord, these are the observation records from the past week.”
The youth reached out with pale, slender fingers and took the booklets.
He flipped through the pages quickly, his gaze scanning the dense columns of data and scribbled annotations. His intact right eye moved across the lines with intense focus, flashing with a barely perceptible hint of joy.
After a moment, he closed the booklet and nodded slightly.
“You did well. Everything is formatted exactly as I requested.”
No emotion could be heard in his raspy voice, yet it caused the fierce-looking man to instinctively straighten his back. “The data is recorded in more detail than last time. I will mention your contribution to the master.”
Hearing this, the subordinate's face instantly erupted with uncontrollable ecstasy, his scar twisting slightly with excitement.
He knelt on one knee, his voice loud and loyal:
“I am willing to die for you, my lord!”
The golden-haired youth, however, did not seem to care much for this display of loyalty. He tapped the cover of the booklet with his fingertip. His empty left socket turned toward his subordinate, while his right eye remained cold. “However, the value of these ordinary human samples... has already been completely drained. Continuing further is just a waste of time.”
He paused, lowering his raspy voice even further, though it carried an unquestionable weight. “Go find some Class holders. Black Iron or Brass Rank will do. They don't need to be too strong in the early stages.
“Make them ‘voluntarily’ drink the newly concocted modified ‘Blood-Burning’ potion. Record their life energy fluctuations before and after taking it, their physical reactions, and their collapse thresholds... especially the tissue changes during collapse. I want the most detailed slice data.”
When the subordinate heard the words “Class holders,” a trace of hesitation involuntarily flashed in his eyes.
In the inner city, targeting Class holders carried far greater risks than dealing with ordinary people. It was easy to leave traces, and even easier to anger those who upheld certain implicit rules.
But when he looked up and met the youth's empty left socket, a sudden chill rushed up from the soles of his feet.
He instantly recalled his “predecessors” who had vanished due to incompetence or hesitation, the jars in the corner of the laboratory containing unidentified remains, and the pure, cruel curiosity in his young master's eyes whenever his identity was brought up...
The person in front of him was no third-rate old alchemist.
All hesitation shattered in the face of fear.
He immediately lowered his head, his voice resolute:
“Yes! This subordinate understands! I will definitely bring back suitable ‘materials’ as soon as possible!”
The youth seemed to have anticipated this reaction. The corner of his pale mouth twitched slightly in a cold semblance of satisfaction.
“If the initial numbers are insufficient, or if you can't find suitable outsiders...”
he added nonchalantly, his raspy voice like a venomous snake slithering through a crack in a rock,
“...then draw them from within your Blood Hand Gang. Your gang can't possibly be a single, solid block of iron. Since there is opposition, take the opportunity to clean them out.”
The subordinate's body trembled almost imperceptibly, but he did not even dare to raise his head, merely squeezing out a more submissive response from his throat: “...Yes, everything shall be done according to your orders, my lord.”
“Go on.”
The youth waved his hand, his posture betraying a clear impatience, as if the brief conversation had already exhausted his limited patience,
“Do not make me wait too long.”
“Yes!”
The fierce-looking man, as if granted a massive reprieve, bowed and quickly retreated from the basement. His heavy footsteps soon faded away up the stone steps.
The door was gently closed, and the laboratory fell back into a silence smelling of medicinal potions.
The pale-golden-haired youth stood alone between the dim light and the eerie green reflections of the glass containers. With his intact right eye, he quietly stared at a newly preserved heart specimen on the shelf that was still slightly throbbing.
His pale fingers unconsciously brushed over his empty left eye socket, his raspy voice murmuring inaudibly:
“The life energy of mortals is too thin and muddy... like turbid water mixed with sand.”
His raspy self-muttering was exceptionally clear in the silence, as if spoken to the organs soaking in the jars,
“Even if I drain every last drop, I can only obtain this messy data. Not a single thread of useful material can be extracted.”
At this point,
his raspy voice suddenly dropped, carrying a trace of unbelievable, almost twisted satisfaction:
“However, this potion formula actually turned out to be real...”
“Cyril actually didn't lie to me. If I can return smoothly this time, I will really have to thank him properly.”
When he uttered that name, a rare, extremely faint, and almost imperceptible trace of daze flashed in his intact right eye, as if he had begun to reminisce.
But in the next second, this trace of daze vanished instantly.
He raised his eyes. His empty left socket and cold right eye scanned the room simultaneously, a clear look of disgust surfacing on his young yet ruined face.
“The energy particles here are just too sparse.”
With those words, the youth turned back and immersed himself in his experiments.
...
...
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