From the Ship of Fools to Earl of Wugang

Chapter 106 Employers and Data

Two nights later, a dance performance themed around hatching and feathers was being staged on the stage of the Shedding Club.

Edmund continued to enter the underground trading hall as the "eye of the storm." He walked through the masked guests surrounding the long table and went straight to the seller on the purchase list who was selling knowledge of the methods.

The other person was wearing a brass lion mask, and there were only a few transparent plastic boxes on the table, containing a roll of microfilm and a three-and-a-half-inch floppy disk.

"The first stage of the path to strength: the hero. It includes secret medicine, rituals, training methods, signs of failure, and two alternative materials."

Having heard Edmund's needs, the Lion-faced Man presented a box and made the following recommendation.

"This tradition has passed through the Western Continent many times, and its contents have been verified. You definitely won't regret it."

Edmund put on gloves and picked up the plastic box. Information Horizons quickly made its judgment.

[Complete knowledge of the first stage of the Path of Courage, "Hero." Its core is the control of fear and instinctive impulses, allowing the body to bear greater power under a clear will.]

[The knowledge has been copied multiple times; some ancient terminology and overly graphic details have been modernized, but the ritual structure, material proportions, and handling of failures remain intact.]

This knowledge was widely circulated, well-preserved, and not directly related to Edmund's own methods, making it a perfect resource for exchange.

Although the price of the lion-faced man is enough for an ordinary person to save up for several years.

Edmund verified the payment method and then paid the amount using a draft approved by the club.

He now has over 500,000 Divine Eagle Gold Coins in his account, so this expense is nothing to him when it comes to accounting.

After completing the transaction, he took the film box to the second-floor office.

Two untouched glasses of wine sat on Ligeia Shaw's table, as if she had just finished dealing with something. Seeing Edmund enter, she instructed the maid to bring out teaware.

"Ms. Xiao, I need a Tier 2 bodyguard," Edmund said bluntly. "For at least a month, preferably skilled in direct combat and protecting the employer, and even better if they can handle undead or spirit creatures."

He has a lot to do next, and without help, he's finding it difficult to keep up.

Ligeia glanced at him: "The scope isn't narrow; the club can contact people who meet the criteria. However, Tier 2 employees rarely accept long-term private employment, so the allocation will take some time."

"Can it be done within a month?"

"Of course. Please describe the work location, main enemies, and risk limits. Also, the club should retain a clause to terminate the contract."

Edmund was not going to hide the underwater exploration, leaving the royal cooperation and the Undersea Order out of the explanation and describing them in rather vague terms.

Since there's a connection to the oath, the prince is unlikely to harm him. As for the Order... they need to know first that Lane Hall is Edmund Lockman.

After listening, Ligeia wrote down a string of numbers: "This is the estimated deposit; the final payment will be adjusted based on the guard's ability and the level of danger."

The amount was equally expensive, and Edmund signed the code and drew up the draft.

"Please hurry," he said. "As you probably know, my investigation is nearing its start; we can't wait until after the accident to add more personnel."

After returning to the old relief center in the early morning, Edmund first read the floppy disk, then randomly selected several pages from the microfilm to compare with the text.

After confirming that everything was correct, he began to organize the materials into an encrypted compressed file.

The data machine beeped, and the alchemist's cauldron appeared on the screen.

The seller happened to be online, so Edmund uploaded a catalog, randomly selected material proportions, and ritual fragments for the website's knowledge verification program to compare.

A few minutes later, the other party sent a message indicating that the exchange conditions had been met, and then granted download access.

A compressed file of nearly two megabytes began to arrive slowly.

Edmund went to the kitchen to make coffee and finished processing two emails from the firm before the progress bar finally came to an end.

The archives come from a long-term observer and include twenty years of tide levels, wind direction, fog conditions, lunar phases, and regional spiritual tide readings off the coast of Twilight Harbor.

Some years also include scanned images of handwritten observation tables, as well as brief notes on anomalous events.

Edmund was slightly curious about who would create this kind of data, but he still uncompressed the data and connected it to the previously established accident database.

The first round of comparison was almost meaningless. The data contained unverifiable records such as "I heard someone is missing" and "a crew member is unwell," and the accident time formats were inconsistent, with many errors. Some people even recorded accidents that occurred after midnight as if they happened the previous day.

He had to first eliminate accidents that lacked original logs, ship positions, or records of those involved, reducing more than one hundred anomalies to forty-seven.

The two ellipses still exist.

He then adjusted the time error based on the lighthouse log, tide station records, and ship watch lists. The program was restarted, and the dot matrix printer produced the second batch of charts.

Anomalies near the Farian coordinates are clearly concentrated in the fixed tidal range.

When the regional tidal wave rises from a low level and exceeds a certain similar height, the number of accidents increases significantly. Regardless of the year, the cluster core oscillates only within a very small range.

Edmund removed the tidal level condition, retaining only the tidal changes, and the correlation weakened; further removing the tidal condition and only looking at the tidal level, the correlation also decreased. When the two conditions were superimposed, the anomalies in the Farian region re-converged.

This is more like a fixed structure being briefly triggered under specific water pressure and spiritual height.

The situation is entirely different near the Black Crown's track, where the tide level offers little explanation. Dense fog, wind direction, and several nights with a nearly waning moon are more crucial.

When these conditions are met, the accident coordinates will drift along a northward-curving route: the conditions disappear, and the anomaly subsides.

Edmund deleted the seven worst-recorded incidents, shifted the time error forward and backward by half an hour each, and even removed one of the following: fog conditions, wind direction, and moon phase.

As dawn broke, the nautical chart on the wall was already covered with three layers of tracing paper.

A fixed patch lies on the Farian coordinates, while another string of points curves along the Black Crown's last course, like an invisible ship still slowly sailing on the sea twenty years ago.

Edmund leaned back in his chair and gave his assessment of what he could currently afford.

There is likely a fixed space near the Farian coordinates, while the area near the Black Crown is more like a region that moves with the environment, or a region where anomalies occur due to specific conditions.

The two may influence each other, but they cannot continue to be treated as the same goal.

He closed the program, put the two sets of charts into folders, and wrote "Farian" and "Black Crown" on the covers.

The mystery that the Schenkel family has been pursuing for generations has now been split in two.

He would be better off going to Fort Wormhill to see if the Schenkel family has any more nautical logs, old letters, or accident records.

After that, perhaps we can use the existing data to make some predictions? That's something finance professionals excel at.

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