Both of them were smiling, but the atmosphere at the table was colder than the winter rain outside.
Ryan watched quietly from the side.
“Are there girls in New Salem?”
Winona asked suddenly, tracing a finger through the cold condensation on the outside of her glass.
“Of course there are,” Simon said with a laugh. “I hear there are plenty of them, all very warm and lively.”
Winona nodded.
“That's good.” She took a sip of her drink, keeping her voice very soft. “Saves you from thinking about people in London when you come back in the future.”
Simon froze. He opened his mouth but, for once, said nothing.
Ryan silently lowered his head, carefully cutting a cold piece of beef offal with his fork. He suddenly felt like he really shouldn't be sitting here.
“Let's not talk about such depressing things. Let's drink.” Simon broke the silence, feeling a bit stifled, and raised his mug with force.
...
After leaving the tavern, Ryan did not return to his shabby little apartment.
With the five-pound advance Morton had paid him tucked inside his coat, he braved the freezing night rain and boarded a public carriage bound for the secondhand book market in London's West End.
The shop smelled of mothballs and old paper. Ryan rummaged through the towering piles of secondhand books for a long time before finally picking out five heavily worn textbooks:
An 《Introduction to Classical Greek Grammar》, a copy of 《Practical Double-Entry Bookkeeping》 printed in 1872, a thick volume of 《Geography and History of the British Empire》, a 《Guide to English Composition and Official Document Formatting》, and a 《Foundations of Practical Arithmetic and Algebra》.
“One pound, two shillings, and sixpence, young man,” the owner said, not even bothering to stand up as he glanced at the stack of books.
After paying, Ryan realized textbooks were indeed not cheap. But he didn't mind at all. He carefully wrapped the volumes, which smelled of old ink, in greaseproof paper, cradled them in his arms, and set off for home.
By the time he returned to the run-down apartment building on St. Blaise Street, the night was already deep.
A faint kerosene lamp was still lit in the communal kitchen on the first floor.
Ryan pushed open the courtyard gate with the heavy stack of books in his arms. He saw Irene, the landlord's daughter, wearing a dirty apron and helping her mother organize the straw and clean bedsheets for the next day.
Hearing the noise, Irene turned around. She froze when she saw the ridiculously thick stack of books in Ryan's arms.
“My goodness, Ryan.”
Irene patted the dust off her hands and stepped forward, curiously eyeing the top book on Classical Greek. “Did you plunder some professor's study?”
“Exam prep materials,” Ryan said with a self-deprecating smile. “I'm going to try my luck. The Archive gave me a chance to take the preparatory exam for the St. Blaise Royal Academy.”
Irene's gaze shifted slightly.
A flicker of complex emotion crossed her eyes, but it quickly faded into a relieved smile.
“You must be doing really well at the Archive then.”
Irene leaned against the weathered wooden doorframe, looking at Ryan. “Ever since the day you became a formal employee, I knew you'd leave the East End sooner or later. You're completely different from before.”
She reached out a finger and touched the rough cover of the old book with a hint of envy.
“Back when I was in school, I used to dream about the Royal Academy too. I always thought that if I worked hard enough, I'd eventually get to attend classes in those beautiful Gothic buildings in the West End, sitting alongside gentlemen in top hats and ladies in woolen coats.”
Irene shook her head, a faint, self-deprecating smile on her lips. “I looked into it once—it costs nearly fifty pounds a year... But I've passed the Archive's assessment now. Thanks to your recommendation letter, I start my formal job next month.”
“You don't need to thank me. It was your own hard work,” Ryan said softly. “Once you have a permanent position at the Archive, you'll still have opportunities to study.”
“That's true.” Irene was amused, and the slightly somber mood instantly vanished. “Hurry on up. Good luck, future star student of the Royal Academy.”
“Thank you.”
Ryan nodded to her, cradled his books, and quickly headed upstairs.
For the next ten days, Ryan completely shut himself inside his cramped, dark room.
All the noise of the outside world seemed to have nothing to do with him.
By day, he frantically devoured the textbooks he had bought; by night, he compiled dense pages of notes under the dim, flickering glow of the gas lamp.
At night, London's cold rain lashed against the window, making an irritating racket. Ryan sat at his wooden desk, staring at the worn 《Introduction to Classical Greek Grammar》.
Under the influence of the 【Lantern】 aspect, the originally obscure and twisted ancient Greek characters began to undergo a bizarre visual shift under the gaslight.
They began to move across the paper on their own.
Nouns, verbs, third declensions, tenses... This tedious information was no longer rigid ink on a page, but like countless precisely interlocking golden gears, rapidly arranging and reorganizing themselves in Ryan's vision.
He didn't even need to actively memorize them, let alone repeat them by rote.
With a single sweep of his left eye across a page, the classical grammar, legal statutes, and complex imperial geographical data that would normally take a scholar years to master would fall perfectly into place in his mind.
He let out a painful groan, finally unable to hold out any longer. He slumped over the messy pile of books and closed his eyes.
Almost the instant his eyes closed, his consciousness plummeted into an abyss.
There was no gravity, no temperature—only boundless, infinite void all around.
After an unknown amount of time, a sliver of pure, absolute white light that defied description illuminated his field of vision.
Ryan raised his head.
Before him, a massive, ancient, and sacred portal loomed: 【the White Door】.
“Hello, did you miss me, Ryan?”
A voice came from the silhouette in the light.
Ryan turned his head and saw a blurry figure slowly taking shape within the halo. It was Chris.
“Chris?” Ryan took half a step back warily, his left eye growing slightly warm in his subconscious.
“No need to be so tense, my friend. Come to Moth Port for a chat, Ryan. There, you will find the answers you seek, and the path you are destined to walk.”
Chris looked at him, a strange and pitying smile suddenly appearing in his deep eyes.
“But before we set off... haven't you realized that you've forgotten something?”
“Forgotten what?” Ryan's brow furrowed.
“Those absurd and vast pieces of 'common sense'... that don't belong to this world.”
Ryan's body froze instantly.
He tried to recall.
He knew he was a transmigrator. He knew he didn't belong to this moldy East End, nor did he belong to this Victorian era built of gas lamps and marble.
But...
Who was he before?
What kind of era did he live in? The technology and society of that era, his parents, his friends, the details of the more than twenty years of life he had lived...
All blank.
No matter how frantically he dug into the depths of his mind, those memories that should have existed—the memories belonging to a modern person—seemed to have been completely gouged out by an invisible, blunt knife, leaving behind nothing but a cold, empty void.
He only remembered abstract "knowledge," but had lost all sense of where "himself" had come from.
In horror, Ryan looked up, staring fixedly at the towering portal of 【the White Door】.
The light was still holy and pure.
But he had become a rootless leaf in this world.
“This is the price, Ryan,” Chris's voice gradually faded into the void. “The 'Lantern' illuminates everything, but it also evaporates everything. We'll be waiting for you in Moth Port.”
...
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