East Borough, a rented two-bedroom house.
Klein took the reply letter from the witch Triss from Miss Reinette Tinekard, pulled up a chair, and sat down to read.
"She knows about Mr. Door and can communicate with Him through the bloodline ties of the Abraham family... Is Triss already able to withstand Mr. Door's cries without fear of losing control? And she seems very certain of Mr. Door's identity... Has she really obtained more knowledge and secrets from the Primordial Witch? But if so, why is the White Witch Katrina pursuing her?" Klein looked at the brief contents of the letter, and questions flooded his mind.
Since the things Triss vaguely mentioned were within his understanding, he believed she wasn't lying on that front, and she indeed proposed a very feasible method.
Of course, for this method to succeed, it required knowing the correct ritual, having an item from a descendant of the Abraham family as a medium, and being willing to bear enormous risk.
Of these three, Klein lacked the first, had considerable doubts about the third, and was trying to find a safer and more covert way, while the witch Triss seemed to only lack the second.
"For me, finding a descendant of the Abraham family is easy; I can directly contact Miss Magician. But once I give their hair, blood, flesh, and bones to the witch Triss, they'll be at risk of being cursed..." Klein was quite familiar with the Witch pathway and knew they excelled at curses.
As his thoughts raced, he gradually found a solution: use the hair, decaying flesh, or bones of a dead person.
He remembered that Miss Magician had mentioned to Mr. Fool that she had once buried an old gentleman named Lawrence, who was undoubtedly a bloodline descendant of the Abraham family.
"I hope he wasn't cremated... Although this somewhat desecrates a corpse, talking with Mr. Door is a necessary step to lift the Abraham family's ancient curse. Using the dead is better than implicating the living... I'll append this condition in the reply to Triss, claiming that the Abraham family descendant requires it for the ritual medium...
"Also, I must first confirm that Triss wants to talk with Mr. Door, not try to pull Him back into the real world... They are either high-level themselves or involved with high-level beings, so it's hard to get effective revelations through divination. But the Emperor said that the ritual to bring back Mr. Door is very complex and can't be arranged with just a few items from bloodline descendants. I can ask the Mysterious Queen, Miss
...
North Borough, Paceful Street.
On a bench sat a young man in a black trench coat and silk top hat, with a thin face and broad forehead. He stared blankly at the falling yellow leaves of the Intis plane trees.
He wore a monocle made of crystal on his right eye, giving him a rather scholarly look.
Just then, an elderly man heading to Saint Samuel Cathedral noticed his strange state, stopped, and asked gently: "Young man, what are you worrying about? Things lost in this war?"
He suspected that the young man's relative, lover, or friend had died in the previous air raids or fallen in fierce frontline battles, so he sat aimlessly on the roadside, looking lost.
The young man raised his hand to adjust his monocle, sighed, and shook his head: "I'm just thinking about some rather complicated problems."
"Are you a philosopher?" the old man was taken aback and blurted out.
"No, but I often pose philosophical questions to others, like who I am, where I am, and where I am going." The young man smiled calmly and then continued his contemplation, occasionally moving his lips to mutter almost inaudibly.
The old man couldn't understand this at all, shook his head, and walked away slowly under the watch of street dogs, sparrows in the tree, ants on the ground, and some microorganisms in the air.
The young man didn't turn his head; the monocle reflected the falling yellow leaves, and he mumbled to himself: "Parasitize... don't parasitize... parasitize... don't parasitize..."
"Watch the bait... swallow the bait... watch the bait... swallow the bait..."
...
After obtaining Lawrence's hair from Miss Magician and seeing that the Tassok Times had started serializing the terrifying legend of Backlund Hospital, Klein entered a state of patient waiting and promised to take Miss Magician to a new place the following week to record new scenery and customs.
In the blink of an eye, a new week arrived. After lunch, Klein planned to take a short nap in preparation for the three o'clock
Just then, Reinette Tinekard's four golden-haired, red-eyed heads emerged from the depths of the void, one of which held a linen bundle in its mouth.
"Who sent it?" Klein asked, suddenly feeling some vague, complex premonition, and hesitated for a moment to take the bundle the messenger lady was carrying.
Reinette Tinekard's three free heads spoke in turn: "Mutated..." "True..." "Mushroom king..."
"Such a string of modifiers... I probably understand what's going on..." Klein suppressed a wince and slowly took the bundle.
Opening it, he unsurprisingly saw a large number of various devils, no, mushrooms.
Some were white and plump, as if they would spurt milk at a touch; some had a black base inlaid with red threads and marbling; some were covered with golden stars, with caps the size of palms...
At this point, the mushrooms were still wiggling slightly, as if trying to spread their mycelium and spores.
Klein swallowed his saliva, picked up the letter nestled among the mushrooms, unfolded it, and began to read.