"The Hermit Order does have people going to the woodland. We have people in Weilun Dai'er City too, and they work in a black-market trade much like mine. If you're interested, I can introduce you."
Seeing that Shade no longer mentioned the Demon, Old John lowered his head and continued working on the pocket watch. Shade asked curiously:
"I meant to ask just now, this pocket watch is a Relic, right? Can Relics be dismantled too?"
"To be precise, the true Relic is only the gem embedded in the pocket watch's mechanical core—the Document Level Relic Heart of Flowing Light. Spatial storage Relics are rare, aren't they? This is a time-based storage item. It can store time, or rather, steal time.
"Place the gem in the pocket watch, and it can steal other people's time and store it within, allowing its user to live longer. Unfortunately, once this Relic is used, it absolutely cannot be removed. Otherwise, however much time was used will also be lost from the user. There are quite a few Relics with similar effects. This one has relatively few side effects."
With a soft click, Old John's tweezers steadily removed the white gem, about the size of two Grains of Rice. Shade pushed over the small box beside him, and the gem was submerged in the rice slurry inside.
"Did you know, Detective? Over the past month, the number of out-of-control time-related Relics appeared across the Old Continent has been more than ten times higher than in normal years. In Tobesk City alone, the number of time-related incidents over the past two weeks has already exceeded the total from the past half-century.
"Do you know what shops are on either side of mine?"
He suddenly asked. Of course Shade knew:
"On the left are a general