From the Ship of Fools to Earl of Wugang

Behind the rift was another street, with moonlight shining obliquely from the other side.

After confirming that the crack was safe, Edmund squeezed through to the side.

As soon as he left the wall, a soft sound came from the crack behind him.

The gray bricks fit together, and the passage created by the opening spell quickly disappeared, leaving not even a trace of the dagger.

Meanwhile, the moons that had been hanging in the windows, puddles, and doorplates all around gradually dimmed.

A greyish-white sky appeared above the street, and the cries of seagulls and shouts of loading and unloading goods could be heard in the distance.

Edmund stood there, frowning as he observed for a moment, and realized that he seemed to have been transported to Twilight Harbor—an upgraded version of Twilight Harbor.

Not far away, the seaside pier was filled with merchant ships, and workers were loading goods onto trucks. The exterior walls of the old relief center had been repainted, and the emblem of the Knights of the Laurel hung above the main entrance.

The distant Wangchao Fortress was unusually clear, showing that it had been restored to its former glory, with servants coming and going.

Someone on the street saw Edmund and immediately took off his hat and bowed: "Your Excellency, Earl."

Edmund stared at him, but the man nonchalantly returned to his work.

Edmund walked a dozen steps along the street, and suddenly a familiar door appeared between the shops on his right.

He gaped in surprise and involuntarily opened the door with the picture of the bearded man on it.

Sure enough, his top-of-the-line computer was displaying the familiar boot screen, with takeout and drinks on the table, and his usual jacket draped over the back of the chair.

As long as I sit in front of the computer, it seems I can reconnect to a night that was cut off by death.

Edmund stood in the doorway for a while, then casually closed the door.

"That mimicry is despicable and ruthless; it actually used my memories against me?"

Edmund gritted his teeth and returned to the street, choosing a wall similar to the one before, and placed his palm on the brick surface.

He refused to turn back and continued hitting the wall until a gap appeared that he could pass through.

Edmund pushed his way through the edge with his shoulder, but suddenly lost his footing and fell through a second-floor window into a narrow back alley.

Fortunately, the height was only a little over a meter, and he managed to brace himself against the wall in time to avoid falling.

The window behind me had become a solid brick wall. The moonlight reappeared in the back alley, and the anomaly was even more obvious than before.

Edmund had just taken a step forward when his own footsteps came from a dozen meters away. He pushed open a wooden door on the left and walked through the dark doorway, but then stepped out of a second-floor window of the building on the right.

As he turned around, he saw his own figure still moving forward at the end of the alley.

The reflection in the shop window turned its head a moment earlier than the person, looking through the dusty glass at another fork in the road.

Edmund stopped and stroked his chin, deep in thought.

Being led by the nose is not his style; the space here seems a bit abnormal.

He simply chose a door with a leaky crack, crawled out through a small door under the bathtub in the bathroom behind the door, and arrived at the abandoned theater.

Then came an empty train carriage moving along, followed by a door embedded in a mirror... Edmund walked down these obviously wrong roads one after another.

With the Relics Compass, he wasn't too worried about getting back. However, he could sense the spatial deviations each time a mistake occurred.

Even mistakes can leave a direction.

Edmund walked along the intersection of the three deviations and found an extremely narrow crack between the two buildings.

Its two walls are almost completely flush, originally allowing only moonlight to pass through.

Edmund pressed his finger to the edge of the crack, activating the opening spell.

The silver light in the crack gradually widened, and when the gap expanded enough to fit a hand, Edmund touched something cold and sharp.

He slowly and forcefully peeled a piece of silver-black glass from the inside along the edge.

Edmund picked it up and examined it closely.

[Rhythm and Rhyme - A Tiny Gap: A door that exists only briefly, yet it remembers more than two directions.]

[This aligns with the first-order influence of the pillar "Initiation." A perceptive apprentice can easily discern it. If collected properly, it can be used as material in rituals or to deepen understanding of certain skills.]

He didn't know before that the spirit world could solidify such influences into physical form, and now it seems he can try to see if it can be brought back to reality.

Edmund took out his silver halide bag and put the glass inside to store it.

The crack closed quickly after the material was peeled away, causing the surrounding buildings to shift slightly, and the back door of a tailor shop appeared at the end of the alley.

Edmund entered the tailor shop and opened the innermost wardrobe. After pushing aside a row of shirts, he emerged from a wardrobe in another tailor shop.

Outside was a wide intersection, with all the windows of the surrounding buildings open and many isolated door frames standing on the road.

A series of impacts came from the center of the intersection, mixed with the sound of glass bottles shattering.

Edmund hid behind a door frame and looked toward the source of the noise.

He saw a man moving rapidly between doorways, restraining a faceless humanoid monster.

The monster had two bat-like wings growing from its shoulders and back, and its face was constantly cracked, spewing out thick black smoke.

A shimmering net floated above their heads, each node inlaid with gems of different colors, resembling a fishing net covered with floats from afar.

Fremont's Dreamcatcher

[A tool crafted by alchemist Rick Fremont for capturing spirit creatures. The power of the gems defines the prey, the boundaries, and the capture; the alchemical threads can bind most low-level spirit creatures.]

Edmund looked closely at the man, and sure enough, the entry showed that the man holding the alchemical bottle and the short forked stick was Rick Fremont.

The monsters he was dealing with were creatures from the spirit world.

Nightmare

[A spirit creature commonly found in the dream world, feeding on fear, feelings of suffocation, and nightmares.]

Nightmare abruptly folded its wings and crashed out from where the Dreamcatcher was still open.

Rick rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding its outstretched arm, and then smashed a smelting potion at the monster's feet.

The silver-gray powder in the bottle exploded, and Nightmare's skin blistered, yet it howled and lunged at him again.

Encountering a strange supernatural being in the spirit world and rashly joining the battle may lead to misunderstandings, while killing the prey that the other party is capturing may also affect a certain ritual.

Edmund drew his Windhawk sword and called out from a distance of over ten meters, "Need any help?"

Rick dodged a Nightmare's attack as his forked staff caught the monster's wrist.

He kicked Nightmare away and yelled, "I'd be very grateful if you could just keep this monster quiet!"

That's enough. Edmund raised the Eagle in the Wind, aimed at the Nightmare's unfolding left wing, and pulled the trigger.

A large-caliber bullet pierced through it, and a streak of dark silver afterglow accurately struck the Nightmare's deployed left flank.

The projectile tore a half-foot-long rip in the wing membrane, from which a large amount of black gas spewed out.

Amidst a piercing scream, Nightmare was spun to the side by the bullets, crashing into an isolated door frame in the middle of the road.

Edmund's mood improved considerably; the Eagle Coins hadn't been wasted after all.

But after being injured, Nightmare suddenly turned to the roadside and crashed into the window of an office building, dragging its tattered wings.

The moment it touched the window, it collapsed into a dark shadow, blending into the unlit room inside.