The long corridors of the Night Rose Palace were deep and silent.
Bell did not look back.
The footsteps echoed in the empty corridor, every step landing exactly in the center of the stone tile seams.
Lilian's choice was within his expectations.
Fear is a biological instinct, and overcoming it requires sufficient stimulation.
Hatred is often the most effective catalyst.
Passing through two corridors, the smell of blood in the air gradually faded, replaced by the musty scent of old paper.
A massive double wooden door stood at the end, its panels carved with intricate patterns of bats and roses.
The Library.
Bell pushed the door open.
The heavy wooden door let out a harsh, grinding sound.
Thousands of rows of towering bookshelves came into view, looking like the skeleton of a giant, supporting the intellectual backbone of this castle.
Stored here was the accumulated knowledge of the vampire race over thousands of years.
Magical tomes, rare historical volumes, and forbidden soul research manuscripts were stacked haphazardly on the shelves.
Bell walked past the rows of bookshelves.
His fingertips brushed against the dust-covered spines.
《Origins of Blood Magic》, 《Genealogy of the Night Kin》, 《Soul Contracts and Enslavement》.
He stopped in front of the last book.
He pulled it out.
He opened it.
The pages were yellowed, recording some ancient ritual in dark red ink.
This was an analysis of the underlying logic of master-slave contracts.
Clack.
The sound of the book closing rang out abruptly.
It wasn't Bell who closed it.
A pale, slender hand pressed down on the page.
Bell looked toward the hand.
From the shadows of the bookshelf, a tall figure emerged.
A long black dress trailed on the ground, and her silver hair cascaded down to her waist like a waterfall.
Those crimson eyes were looking down at him, scrutinizing him.
Leila Vantrue.
The First Ancestor of the Blood Race.
“A human brat.”
Leila withdrew her hand, her fingertips flicking lightly in the air as if she had touched something dirty.
“Is he even worthy of touching the hall of knowledge?”
Bell looked at her calmly.
He didn't bow.
He didn't panic.
Even his breathing frequency didn't change.
“Knowledge does not distinguish between races.”
Bell reopened the book, his gaze falling on the paragraph that had just been interrupted.
“It only distinguishes between ignorance and wisdom.”
The air froze for a moment.
Leila's eyebrow twitched.
In her thousands of years of life, she had seen countless humans trembling before her, kneeling and begging for mercy.
He was the first to dare speak to her like this.
“Arrogant.”
Leila let out a cold snort.
She casually pulled a thick, black-covered book from a nearby shelf.
《On the Nature of the Soul》.
This was the most obscure and difficult theoretical work in the vampire magic system.
“Since you pride yourself on wisdom...”
Leila tossed the book onto the table in front of Bell, kicking up a cloud of dust.
“Then explain why a soul, when outside the body, exhibits non-material penetrability yet can still be captured by specific vessels?”
This was a paradox that had troubled vampire scholars for centuries.
If the soul was matter, it shouldn't be able to pass through walls.
If the soul was non-material, it shouldn't be able to be contained in a bottle.
Bell glanced at the book.
He didn't even flip it open.
“Wave-particle duality.”
Leila froze for a moment when those words were uttered.
A term she had never heard before.
“What?”
Bell casually picked up a quill from the table and drew two lines on a blank piece of parchment.
“You view the soul as a single form, which is why it seems contradictory.”
He drew a dot between the two lines.
“The soul is both a particle and a wave.”
“When you use a vessel to ‘observe’ it, attempting to capture it, it collapses into a particle, exhibiting material properties, so it can be locked down and contracted.”
Bell's pen tip drew a wavy line on the paper.
“And in a non-observed state, it exhibits wave characteristics.”
“It can resonate, it can penetrate walls, and it can transmit information across space.”
Leila stared at the parchment.
Her red eyes narrowed slightly.
Absurd.
But this theory perfectly explained the paradox.
“Sophistry.”
Leila countered verbally, but her hand instinctively picked up the parchment.
“If it's a wave, how do curses attach? Waves cannot carry mass.”
Bell put down the pen.
“The principle of entropy increase.”
He threw out another unfamiliar term.
Leila's movements stiffened.
“A curse is not matter; it's a guide toward disorder in an energy state.”
Bell pointed at the surrounding bookshelves.
“Your so-called magic cycle is essentially the conservation of energy.”
“A curse breaks the system's balance, causing the entropy of the target's life system to increase rapidly, moving from order to disorder.”
“Which is what you see—decay, aging, and death.”
Leila felt something explode in her brain.
The magical cognitive system she had built over thousands of years suffered an unprecedented impact at this moment.
Those magical bottlenecks that had troubled her for so long, those unexplainable spell backlashes...
In just a few sentences from this human, she had found the key to the answers.
She looked at Bell.
The original contempt had vanished.
In its place was a near-greedy fervor.
“What about contracts?”
Leila stepped closer, her black skirt brushing the floor.
“What's the deal with the forced connection of a master-slave contract?”
Bell leaned against the bookshelf.
“Quantum entanglement.”
He held up two fingers.
“Two particles that have once interacted will remain correlated regardless of the distance between them.”
“The master and servant are such a pair of entangled particles.”
“When you change the state of the master, the state of the servant instantly undergoes a corresponding change.”
“It requires no medium and no time.”
“This is what you call—absolute dominance.”
Leila's breathing quickened.
Her chest heaved violently.
She had lived for too long.
So long that she had lost her thirst for blood and grew weary of power.
Only unknown knowledge could make her long-silent heart beat again.
The human before her possessed a set of truths completely different from this world.
That was the domain of the gods.
“If...”
Leila's voice trembled slightly.
“If I want to break this entanglement?”
Bell looked at her.
“Introduce a third-party observer.”
Bell pointed to himself, then to the void.
“Change the angle of observation and redefine the nature of the entanglement without destroying it.”
“Make the ‘master-slave’ state collapse into an ‘equal’ state.”
The two of them talked for a long time.
Finally.
Boom.
The final shackle in Leila's mind collapsed.
A path she had never imagined.
Scenery she had never seen.
She looked at Bell as if looking at a massive treasure, a sun walking among men.
Leila took half a step back.
She lifted her black skirt.
And knelt on one knee.
This was the highest etiquette the Blood Race would perform only when facing supreme wisdom.
“Please allow me to follow you.”
Leila lowered her proud head, her silver hair spreading across the floor.
“To learn your knowledge.”
“In the traditions of the Blood Race, a being who can teach supreme truths is a heaven-sent partner.”
Bell frowned.
Things had deviated slightly from the track.
He just wanted to find a technical consultant, not a fanatical believer.
“I have a lover.”
Bell rejected her directly.
“I don't do interspecies romance.”
Leila snapped her head up.
A blazing fire burned in those red eyes, but it carried no hint of lust.
“You misunderstand.”
“What I seek is not a physical union.”
“I grew tired of that low-level pleasure thousands of years ago.”
Leila stood up, her hands folded over her chest, her expression solemn.
“What I seek is the resonance of soul and wisdom.”
“This feeling of trembling...”
She pressed her hand against her heart.
“It is even more wonderful than drinking the blood of an emperor.”
Just then.
“Creak—”
The library door was pushed open again.
Lilian stood at the entrance.
She had changed into a dark red dress, her pale skin gleaming coldly under the candlelight.
Her gaze swept over the two people at the desk.
Finally, it landed on Leila, who had just stood up.
“Oh my.”
Lilian stepped inside, the rhythm of her high heels hitting the floor light and sharp.
“My former master sure is charming.”
She walked to Bell's side, turning slightly to block the space between Bell and Leila.
“Even the First Ancestor has fallen at your feet?”
Her words were laced with thorns.
Leila straightened her skirt, regaining the poise of an ancestor.
She gave a slight bow to Lilian.
“Your Majesty.”
Her tone was respectful but not subservient.
“I was merely asking this gentleman for guidance.”
Leila's gaze toward Bell remained fanatical.
“He can bring light to our entire race.”
“This is the salvation we have sought for thousands of years.”
“Leila is deeply impressed by the gentleman's achievements.”
Lilian narrowed her eyes.
She turned around, her arm naturally hooking into Bell's.
Her body pressed close.
Her cold body temperature seeped through his clothes.
“Ancestor Leila, you should be careful.”
Lilian looked sideways at Leila, her red lips parting slightly.
“This ‘gentleman’ is a dangerous person.”
“His knowledge is like poison.”
“Once you're tainted by it, you'll never be able to break free.”
As she spoke, her fingers tightened slightly on Bell's arm.
Her nails almost pierced the fabric.
It was a warning.
It was also her declaring sovereignty.
Even if that sovereignty was crumbling.
Bell expressionlessly pulled his arm away.
The movement was crisp and decisive.
Lilian's hand froze in mid-air.
“I need Ancestor Leila's help.”
Bell looked at Leila, cutting straight to the point.
“To dissolve the contract between us.”
The fake smile on Lilian's face froze for a moment.
She slowly withdrew her hand, her fingernails leaving a red mark in her palm.
“Then I wish you a pleasant cooperation.”
Lilian turned around, her back to the two of them.
“But don't forget.”
She turned her head, her peripheral vision sweeping toward Bell.
“You still owe me a promise.”
With that, she strode toward the door.
Her skirt fluttered, carrying a suppressed anger.
Only after the heavy wooden door closed again were there only two people left in the room.
Leila immediately leaned in.
That noble and cold face was now filled with a thirst for knowledge.
“Quickly, tell me.”
She grabbed the quill from the table and handed it to Bell.
“The knowledge about that ‘quantum’ thing.”
“And that ‘Schrödinger's cat’—did it die or not?”
Bell took the pen.
He wrote a string of formulas on the parchment.
“In exchange.”
Bell's pen paused.
“After the contract is dissolved, these books belong to me.”
Leila nodded repeatedly, not even glancing at those precious rare volumes.
“Deal.”
“However...”
Leila looked at the complex symbols, an unusual light flashing in her eyes.
“I hope that after the contract is dissolved...”
“...you can become my mentor.”
She leaned forward, her silver hair falling across the back of Bell's hand.
“I want to know what exactly lies at the end of the world.”
Bell looked at her.
His pen made a heavy mark on the paper.
“Then let's start with calculus.”
Outside the window.
Two purple moons hung high.
The night in Moon Phase City had only just begun.
Rate on N.U.
