Chapter 165: The Poker Expert

Chapter 165: The Poker Expert

Upon hearing the Red Angel evil spirit’s answer, White Witch Katarina’s expression froze in spite of herself.

Sauron Einhorn Medici laughed and continued, “You should have become a demigod toward the end of the Fourth Epoch. More than a thousand years have passed, and you still haven’t become an angel. Don’t you feel inferior inside?

“And that fellow just now—originally, he had to rely on Azik Eggers just to face you directly. He was as weak as a newly hatched chick. Yet now, in less than a year, he has already advanced to Sequence 4, obtained divinity, and gained strength sufficient to contend with you. Do you have no thoughts on that? Don’t you feel those thousand-plus years of yours were wasted? Even a dog, after living for more than a thousand years, might have pushed open that door and become an angel by now.

“I know what you are thinking. On one hand, you’re jealous. On the other, you have developed some twisted desire, wanting to prove yourself by sleeping with him. Witches truly are laughable. On one hand, you have to insist deep down that you were originally male, lest you lose yourselves and lose control. On the other, you have to display feminine charm, attempt the extremes of pleasure, and experience intense love. We Hunters have no such problem. No matter what sex one used to be, afterward, all that needs to be done is war, war, and war!

“The Primordial really is a twisted one. Pure women would be far better suited to the Witch pathway. By passing down harm generation after generation, your primary purpose is really to take revenge on fate, isn’t it?”

Every sentence from the Red Angel evil spirit was like an arrow piercing White Witch Katarina’s heart. Her pure, delicate face faintly twitched, and her glossy black hair seemed to thicken slightly.

Sauron Einhorn Medici glanced at Katarina and immediately clicked His tongue with a smile.

“Don’t tell me you’re about to lose control directly because of my provocation?

“What a nostalgic feeling.”

The Red Angel evil spirit paused, then changed the subject.

“You may leave. If anything comes up, remember to recite my honorific name. Of course, if necessary, I will also come directly to find you.”

White Witch Katarina’s expression returned to normal. Frowning slightly, she asked in disbelief, “You’re just letting me leave like this?”

The Red Angel evil spirit chuckled.

“What? Want to sleep with me? If the timing is right, it isn’t impossible. But right now, I still have important things to do.

“Relax. Since you have already recited my honorific name and given me a drop of your blood, you will remain under my gaze and may be influenced by me at any time.

“Have you already forgotten the difference in status between angels and saints? Do you no longer understand just how powerful true high-ranking existences are?

“Heh. Unless you pray directly to the Primordial and receive a response, you will never escape my gaze. Mm, under normal circumstances, an angel could indeed accomplish something like that, but that is limited to situations where one has merely recited the honorific name. If you do not believe me, I permit you to seek an angel’s help.”

White Witch Katarina listened with a slightly gloomy expression. In the end, she smiled.

“I shall obey your teachings, Lord Medici.”

Sauron Einhorn Medici’s brow twitched.

“You don’t seem quite so obedient. I can even imagine the state you were in just now when facing Gehrman Sparrow. However, I do not care.

“Ah, I forgot to tell you. You had better immediately confirm the state of those descendants of your bloodline. If Gehrman Sparrow could find you so easily, don’t you think there might be a problem?”

Katarina’s face first paled a little, then became grave and solemn. She nodded slowly.

“I understand.”

After saying that, she immediately stepped backward and entered the glass window again, disappearing to who knew where through the illusory, layered world within the mirror.

Watching White Witch vanish, a bloody gash suddenly split open on the left cheek of the Red Angel evil spirit and issued a voice:

“What a fine stage actor. She made herself appear as though she wasn’t very good at controlling her expressions—somewhat unruly, yet lacking enough intelligence, easily exposing her intentions.”

“That’s right. This way, there’s a considerable chance we might underestimate her and lower our guard.” On the right cheek of the Red Angel evil spirit, another hideous blood-red slit opened.

“Tsk. Witches really are cunning. But I never underestimate any prey.” The Red Angel evil spirit spoke with His normal mouth. “She wants to numb me and make me look down on her? Not a chance.”

The bloody gash on His left cheek opened and closed in response.

“Then why were you captured by Alista Tudor back then?”

“That was because the two of you were there,” the Medici personality said with a curl of His lips. “It had nothing to do with underestimating anyone or being numbed.”

The blood-colored slit on His right cheek snorted.

“How did it feel to become someone else’s prey, great God of War, Red Angel at the Creator’s side?”

“Not bad.” Medici’s face darkened slightly, yet His tone sounded rather pleased.

The personality belonging to Sauron used the slit on the left cheek to speak.

“You enjoy using bluffs to achieve your goals far too much. Back then, Alista and the others saw through your bluff and seized the opportunity.

“And just now, you bluffed Katarina again. You clearly can only show a little aura and rely on traps and surprise attacks to inflict a certain amount of damage, with no way to deal with her quickly, yet you pretended to have recovered to Sequence 1 and tricked her into reciting your honorific name and giving you her blood.”

Medici curled His lip again.

“Bluffing is a normal part of poker. The effect wasn’t bad, was it?”

At this point, the Red Angel laughed softly.

“Besides, it wasn’t purely a bluff. What I like most is mixing one or two truths among several bluffs, then waiting for those who believe they have seen through my disguise to voluntarily step into a trap—just like the mistake you two idiots made back then.”

“But you were the first to die!” the two slits on the Red Angel evil spirit’s face answered at the same time.

Medici did not hesitate in the slightest.

“That proves I was the strongest and the most valued!”

After saying this, all three personalities of the Red Angel evil spirit fell silent at once. After several seconds, the blood-red slit representing Einhorn opened and closed.

“Gehrman Sparrow’s connection to Evernight is closer than I imagined. Katarina’s true state just now should already have been detected by Her.”

Medici chuckled.

“It doesn’t matter. This was tacitly permitted by Her to begin with.

“During the Great Smog of Backlund, those who acted directly all disappeared. Only that witch called Trissy survived. Doesn’t that explain certain things quite well?”

The Sauron and Einhorn personalities said nothing more, letting the bloody gashes on the cheeks squirm and heal.

The Red Angel evil spirit was then reflected in the glass window and vanished from the area surrounding the Clock of Order.

…

Above the grayish-white fog, within the ancient palace.

Klein looked at the yellow crystal pendant spinning clockwise in his hand and nodded almost imperceptibly.

Through the pendulum method, he had confirmed Katarina’s answers one by one and concluded that they were sufficiently true.

Immediately afterward, relying on the information he had learned regarding the eight secret mausoleums, he performed Dream Divination and saw the corresponding regions and their blurred conditions.

This allowed Klein to understand that there truly was no longer any way to enter through ordinary means. Even peeking through interference-free divination could hardly lock onto the insides.

This is very troublesome… Also, White Witch’s state during the spirit channeling was different from that of Qonas Kilgor and Hvin Rambis. She had too many expressions, and her answers were more proactive… Is this a special trait of witches themselves, or are there other factors involved? A thought stirred in Klein. He beckoned and drew over the sheet of paper stained with Vice Admiral Ailment’s blood, wrote the corresponding statement, and performed Dream Divination to locate the target.

In the gray, hazy world, Klein saw Tracy, already freed from the bindings of her own spiderweb threads. The witch was gazing out the window.

There, a black and illusory storm spread out, belonging to some unknown place.

Tracy has escaped… Her expression shows no grief, only a certain amount of anger and confusion… Is her parent-child relationship with White Witch really this poor? Or perhaps… Klein had only just formed the question when black flames suddenly burned, rapidly melting his dream and shattering it to pieces.

He opened his eyes and confirmed that he could no longer divine Vice Admiral Ailment Tracy through the blood in his hand. A demigod-level powerhouse had used a secret art to sever the connection between the two.

“Could it be that White Witch Katarina didn’t die? This… Right. When the Red Angel evil spirit answered me, He used a rhetorical question and never admitted it directly… I was channeling the spirit of a living person!” Klein suddenly understood. Hurriedly, he performed another divination and finally confirmed that White Witch was indeed still alive.

“As expected, the Red Angel evil spirit’s true target isn’t White Witch… Also, combining this with the feedback from my potion digestion, can I assume that the Red Angel evil spirit is even weaker than I imagined? Perhaps He hasn’t even recovered to Sequence 2, and can’t quickly deal with White Witch. He can only rely on other methods to subdue her?” Klein pondered for a while, but could not reach an overly certain conclusion.

He quickly restrained his thoughts and stopped considering that matter, because he had already obtained the intelligence he wanted from White Witch Katarina.

Klein put down the sheet of paper stained with Vice Admiral Ailment’s blood, then suddenly gave a low laugh.

“Severing a certain connection between blood and the body so that divination and prophecy cannot use it as a medium?

“I wonder if smearing it on the surface of Groselle’s Travels would still work?”

After looking at the paper for several seconds, Klein temporarily abandoned the idea of experimenting, because he had no current need.

His focus quickly shifted to whether there was a way to enter George III’s other eight mausoleums.

“Normal approaches probably won’t work. Anything I can think of, George III and those angels and saints can definitely think of too…

“If not for the gods having already tacitly permitted it, printing this matter on leaflets and distributing them might have some effect…

“Mm. Fixed-point Teleportation… Tudor’s ruins… This…”

As he thought, Klein’s heart suddenly stirred. He developed a certain guess.