The Arrival of War

"Three days! Uncle Vane, the young master hasn't come out for three days!" O'Hara, looking exasperated, stood with her hands on her hips and shouted at the butler, Vane.

Mr. Vane rubbed his temples, feeling a headache coming on. For the past two days, his spirit and ears had been tortured by Rose O'Hara. I never realized this girl was so noisy before... Vane complained to himself.

"The young master has such a huge appetite! He usually eats seven or eight pounds of steak and lamb chops a day, not to mention vegetables, fruits, desserts, and iced drinks... Forget about him, if any normal person were locked up for three days without food or water, how could they possibly survive!"

"Cough, cough. I already asked Victor, and he just said 'don't worry about him.' Victor goes to the basement every day, so you don't need to be too concerned..." Mr. Vane continued to soothe O'Hara.

"You actually believe what Victor says!" O'Hara raised her eyebrows, her high-pitched voice making Butler Vane jump.

"That big oaf Victor only has muscles and no brains; he doesn't know a thing! The young master reads to me every night, and if he says he won't read to me, I can't even sleep well..."

"I think it's you who can't sleep well..." Butler Vane muttered under his breath, continuing to handle O'Hara. In truth, the butler wasn't worried about his young master at all. Aside from O'Hara, no one else in the entire estate seemed worried about James. Thinking back to what happened that night, Vane still felt as if he were in a nightmare.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Victor had been "torturing" himself even more severely these past few days. It was related to the battle that night; he realized more and more just how vast the gap was between him and James. He could not tolerate being weaker than James; this obsession seemed as inherent as his own genes.

Another reason was that ever since James entered a small, quiet room three days ago and sealed the stone door, increasingly terrifying auras and vibrations had emanated from within. Victor was very familiar with that sensation; it was a state he practiced on the ground every day. James had mentioned it once, calling it something like the Tiger-Leopard Thunder Sound—a very awkward term.

However, the amplitude and force of the vibrations coming from the stone room were many times greater than what Victor could achieve in his own practice; there was simply no comparison.

Those rhythmic sounds, like the low growl of a lion or tiger in its throat, caused the entire underground training space to tremble faintly, with dust and debris shaking down from the ceiling from time to time.

Several giant lead balls filled with mercury continued to hum. Even today, Victor could not manipulate even the smallest of the mercury-filled spheres with various parts of his body as freely as James could.

Click, click, click... click, click...

The sound of joints grinding, enough to make one's teeth ache, came from inside. Before long, it became silent. Even stranger, Victor suddenly could no longer sense James's presence.

The stone door trembled and was slowly pushed open. Perhaps due to the circulation of air, Victor caught James's scent. He squinted, staring intently at the figure slowly walking out from within.

"Ah, Victor, how many days have passed?"

James showed no signs of fatigue from three days without food or water. His skin looked even better, possessing a lustrous, jade-like sheen. Despite the dust and stone debris constantly falling in the basement, there wasn't a single speck of dust on James.

Victor ignored James's question, still staring at him, his breathing slightly rapid.

Seeing this, James smiled and asked nonchalantly, "What? Want to have a fight?"

Hmph!

For the first time, Victor did not accept the challenge. He strode toward another area filled with specialized equipment and began training as if his life depended on it.

Just two people, yet they were so competitive.

James shook his head and walked quickly toward the corridor of the Underground Palace. He hadn't been out for days; everyone must be very worried.

August, 1862.

The war in America had officially broken out in full scale in April of last year, but the situation for the Union Army was not optimistic.

Thanks to the Mexican-American War, the Confederate Army possessed formidable combat power; they were a group of veterans who had just been baptized by the fires of war. The commander of the Southern army was the brilliant strategist Robert E. Lee. Based on the disparity in strength between the two sides, he formulated a strategy of "offense as defense," concentrating his forces to seek out and annihilate the main force of the Union Army, forcing the North to sign a treaty under duress.

The North, however, was ill-prepared for the war and adopted the so-called Anaconda Plan, spreading its forces across an 8,000-mile front. Coupled with the passive tactics of McClellan, a commander who sympathized with slave owners, the Union Army suffered repeated setbacks.

"If this goes on, bearded Lincoln is going to lose!" O'Hara looked at the newspaper on James's desk and said with concern.

"It's President Lincoln. Don't get used to calling him that. If you accidentally call him that when you meet him in the future, I'll be utterly humiliated." James tapped O'Hara's little head with the letter paper in his hand and continued.

"Lincoln's current goal is to restore the unity of the North and South. He hasn't yet made up his mind to completely abolish slavery, fearing that touching the slave system will push some border slave states toward the Southern rebels, thereby losing these important strategic regions."

O'Hara listened, half-understanding. As James wrote his letter, he continued, "But this President is not a man of indecision. He will abolish slavery; it is the choice of the era."

Having finished, James stopped his pen, sealed the envelope, and pressed a wax seal onto it. The seal bore the crest of the Howlett family—a primitive letter H with marks that looked like they had been slashed by sharp claws.

"Send this letter to Washington."

O'Hara took the envelope, watching James's calm and composed demeanor. She giggled, her eyes full of innocent charm, and swayed her waist as she walked out of the study, her dress a vibrant red.

Compared to the Southern army, what James was more worried about was the creature locked in the dungeon.

Hiss... hiss... hiss...

A ragged, gaunt figure was hunched over, clutching a rooster. The rooster's claws twitched from time to time, and the figure's face was buried deep in the rooster's neck, with audible sucking sounds coming from its mouth.

Within seconds, the rooster went limp and dropped to the floor, piling up with the carcasses of several other animals like rabbits and rats. The once plump vampire, Marcus, now looked like a dried corpse unearthed from a graveyard, carefully licking a drop of blood from the corner of his mouth.

"Tell me, what else is there that I don't know? Think carefully again." James sat in a chair, looking at the iron cage with bars as thick as a human arm, and the foul-smelling vampire inside. He held a silk handkerchief to his nose and mouth, saying with disgust.

"My lord! There's nothing left, truly nothing! I've lived for over a hundred years; everything I could remember in my brain has been scraped clean!" Marcus scrambled against the iron cage, his greasy, disheveled long hair revealing half of his pale, lime-like cheek. His eyes were as red as if they were dripping blood, and saliva constantly drooled from the corners of his mouth, like a starving stray dog.

Ever since he was captured and locked up, Marcus had initially been tough for a few days, even mocking James and claiming that his progenitor would come to taste his blood. But the months that followed made Marcus deeply hate why he was a vampire; he couldn't even commit suicide.