Leonard's chanting was like a lullaby, softly echoing between the doors on either side, echoing within the winding wooden staircase.
Klein's mind immediately went hazy, as if he saw the quiet moonlight, saw the calm, gently rippling lake.
His eyelids quickly grew heavy, as if he could fall asleep standing up.
In this blurred perception, he once again felt the intangible, eerie, indifferent gaze from behind, like when he was wandering the spirit world.
A vague sense of déjà vu arose, and Klein suddenly regained his thoughts. Relying on his own strong intuition and the meditation he was extremely familiar with, he barely managed to shake off the influence of the "Midnight Poem."
But he remained calm in body and mind, unable to produce other emotions.
Soon, Leonard stopped chanting and turned his head with a smile:
"I'm thinking of applying for a Feneport guitar, how can chanting have no accompaniment?"
"Hehe, just joking, I heard they all fell asleep."
The black-haired, green-eyed, poetically temperamented member of the Nighthawks team walked over to the door where the kidnappers and hostage were.
He suddenly shook his shoulders, burst out his fist, and slammed it into the lock.
Crack!
The wood around the lock shattered, the sound very faint.
"This requires precise control," Leonard said, turning his head and smiling, while reaching into the hole and opening the door.
Klein, who had recovered his senses, was not as confident as Leonard. He reached under his armpit, drew his pistol, and adjusted the cylinder to ensure it could fire immediately.
As the door moved back, he saw a man sleeping on the table with his pistol at his feet, and another man who was groggily rubbing his eyes and trying to stand up.
Thud!
Leonard slid in and knocked out the kidnapper who was about to wake up.
Klein was about to follow him in when suddenly, as if sensing something, he turned his body sharply to face the stairs.
Tap, tap, tap. The sound of footsteps came from below, gradually becoming clearer. A man in a brown coat and without a hat, holding a paper bag of bread, came around the corner of the stairs and headed up to the third floor.
Suddenly, he stopped, seeing the metallic glint of a gun barrel pointing down at him.
In his pupils were reflected a young man wearing a semi-high silk top hat, a black formal suit, and a matching tie, the cane resting against the railing, and the dangerous revolver.
"Stop all your movements, raise your hands, three, two..." Klein said in a low, slow tone.
He gripped the revolver with both hands, trying to treat the other person as a target for practice.
In the tense atmosphere, the man in the brown coat dropped the bag of bread and slowly raised his hands.
"Sir, have you misunderstood something?" he asked, staring at Klein's finger on the trigger, forcing a slight smile.
Klein could not tell whether he was an accomplice of the kidnappers or a neighbor, but he did not show any abnormality. He said in a deep voice:
"Don't try to resist, someone will come later to determine if it's a misunderstanding."
At that moment, Leonard, who had dealt with the kidnappers in the room, came out. He glanced at the man at the corner of the stairs and said leisurely:
"So the kidnappers have another accomplice, responsible for support and buying food?"
Hearing this, the man in the brown coat's pupils constricted. He suddenly kicked the bag of bread in front of him, trying to block Klein's view.
Klein seemed unaffected, and as if in practice, calmly pulled the trigger.
Bang!
A spurt of blood burst from the man's left shoulder.
He rolled with the momentum, trying to escape to the second floor, but Leonard had already supported himself on the railing and jumped down.
With a dull thud, Leonard landed from above, falling on the man.
The man fell unconscious. Leonard patted off a bit of blood that had gotten on him, looked up at Klein, and laughed:
"Not bad marksmanship."
I was aiming for his leg... Klein's mouth twitched almost imperceptibly, smelling a faint scent of blood.
He found that after taking the "Seer" potion, although his sight, hearing, and touch had not improved, he could still "see" blocked things and "hear" faint footsteps, allowing him to make judgments in advance.
This is within the scope of "spirituality"? Klein nodded thoughtfully, watching Leonard search a sharp dagger from the accomplice, and watched him "drag" the man into the room.
With a gun in one hand and a cane in the other, Klein entered the room where the kidnappers were. He saw Eliot Vickroll awakened by the gunshot, his body uncurling and slowly sitting up.
The original three kidnappers were tied up tightly by Leonard with the ropes they had used on Eliot, strung together and thrown into a corner—where there wasn't enough rope, he tore their clothes to make up for it.
The one shot in the shoulder was unconscious and receiving bandaging, but Leonard, disdainful of the filth, did not remove the bullet.
"You, you are?" Eliot stammered with hidden joy at the sight before him.
"Yes, your guess is very accurate." Leonard, half-squatting, answered casually.
So this guy actually has some humor... Klein lowered the revolver and looked at Eliot:
"We are mercenaries hired by your father, you can also call us security personnel."
"Really? Am I rescued?" Eliot asked joyfully but not daring to move.
It could be seen that in the few hours since being kidnapped, he had gone through a lot and had lost the impulsiveness typical of his age.
Leonard stood up and said to Klein:
"Go find a patrolling policeman downstairs and have him notify the tobacco merchant. I don't want to go out carrying a kid and these four guys like a kidnapper."
Klein, who was thinking about how to handle the aftermath, nodded, put away the revolver, picked up his cane, and walked toward the stairs.
As he descended step by step, he vaguely felt he had forgotten something, and heard Leonard say to Eliot:
"Don't worry, you'll see your father, mother, and old butler Clee soon. How about a game of Gwent?"
...