The Plan Begins

July 1, 1860, Holy Sun Calendar—three days had passed since Lude's transmigration.

The storage vault was empty late at night, save for the Vessel. Miss Siana had not returned since leaving that day. According to her, she needed to "avoid suspicion." After all, her situation within the Black Tide Society was hardly good, and arranging that meeting had cost her no small amount of effort.

Still, Lude had not wasted these past few days. He had been working to become proficient with this body.

This body could bench-press over five tons, hammer iron with its fists, shape sheet metal with its fingers, and sharpen blades with its nails. Its three hearts and two lungs granted it extraordinary athletic ability, while its hemispheric asynchronous modifications allowed it to work while sleeping. It could even bathe in flames to speed up recovery.

Its photographic memory and transcendent five senses seemed almost unremarkable by comparison.

Beyond that, this body possessed micron-level precision comparable to a precision instrument. He could carve a seven-character quatrain onto the tip of a scalpel with his fingernails, even controlling the lettering into perfectly precise Song typeface—sharp as iron hooks and silver strokes, without the slightest smear.

Unfortunately, Lude had not studied mechanical engineering in his previous life, so even he felt that this talent was being wasted.

At that moment, Lude sat upright on the dissection table. Beside him sat a beaker of Ceylon black tea brewed over a flame. In his hands was a copy of Six Volumes of Alchemist Essentials, an introductory textbook for alchemists in this world, perfectly suited to an outsider like him.

Lude was studying Alchemy largely because he needed a maintenance manual for his own body.

After all, this body merely looked human. Take it apart, and it could give every doctor on the block a stroke. Given Lude's suspicious nature, he would never entrust himself to just any alchemist. If something went wrong, he could only inspect and repair himself.

Just then, a sudden set of footsteps sounded from the corridor, interrupting Lude's thoughts.

Lude glanced toward the corridor. The base should have already been cleared out, with only a handful of guards conducting their night patrols. Yet these footsteps clearly did not belong to guards—one of them even sounded familiar.

An old limping man: Professor Beshe. The other was a young man Lude did not recognize.

As a one-hundred-and-sixteen-year-old man, Professor Beshe normally came to the base at ten in the morning to conduct alchemical research, then went home at six in the evening to eat and sleep. It was an unshakable habit. He should not have been here at this hour.

Yet Lude was not surprised. Professor Beshe's arrival was part of the plan.

Tonight's the night, Lude thought. He swiftly cleaned up the mess, washed the beaker that had been brewing tea leaves, pinched out the alcohol lamp in one motion, shoved the book back onto the shelf, then lay flat on the dissection table like a vegetable.

As the metal door slowly opened, Professor Beshe and the young man came into view.

The young man stood around six foot one. His thin lips looked harsh against his pale face, and his ice-blue eyes bulged from their sockets like a frog's. He wore a pitch-black double-breasted trench coat, its shoulder epaulets adorned with dark-red tassels.

Lude vaguely felt that the outfit looked familiar. He seemed to have seen it somewhere before.

But more than the outfit, it was the man's face that seized Lude's attention. Damn it—he had seen that face in the memories Siana had implanted in him. That man was a member of the Black Tide Society chairman's Elite Guard!

Had Professor Beshe gone mad? Why had he brought an Elite Guard member here? Had he discovered my secret?

Yet just as Lude considered whether he should rise up at once, kill them, and flee, the young man's next words dispelled his doubts. The man scrutinized Lude with sharp eyes and asked in a low voice, "Grandfather, is this the [Vessel] you mentioned?"

Oh... so this brat was Professor Beshe's grandson. That meant things were not quite so bad.

Professor Beshe nodded, greed nearly overflowing from his eyes. "That's right, Aleppo. This is the key I told you about—the one that took me so many years to create, forged with the finest Alchemy in the world, the key that can lead me to immortality!"

"Then," Aleppo said, looking at Lude, "I'll keep watch while you cast the spell and seize this body?"

"No, what are you thinking?" Professor Beshe raised a hand to stop Aleppo. "That ritual would be as conspicuous as a torch in the night. We need to take it back to my private alchemical workshop. Come give me a hand—these old arms and legs of mine can't lift it!"

Lude clicked his tongue inwardly. Everything seemed to be unfolding exactly as Siana had planned.

If there was any flaw in the plan, it was Aleppo himself. Lude truly had not expected Professor Beshe to have a grandson. And as a member of the Elite Guard, this man was certainly a spellcaster too. Now Lude could only adapt as things developed.

Then again, it was only natural that Professor Beshe would have an assistant. He could not move the Vessel by himself.

The Vessel's skeleton had been smelted from Red Dragon remains. Its muscles and organs were primarily formed from the aberrant growth of Dragon Beast flesh, blood, and organs, supplemented by metal-forged Tendon Steel Cables and artificial organs. Overall, it weighed roughly five times as much as a human of the same size.

Lude sprawled across the dissection table, every muscle in his body completely relaxed, watching Aleppo grunt and strain as he pushed.

Come to think of it, Lude was rather curious how these two planned to get him out of the Black Tide Society base. Surely they were not going to stuff him into a cart like they were shopping at a supermarket and wheel him out? That would be far too conspicuous—and bizarre—in every sense...

While Lude's thoughts wandered, a sudden sensation of weightlessness struck him. The light around him immediately went dark.

Hmm, what was going on?

Lude felt as though he had been stuffed into a cramped space, surrounded by piles of strange objects.

He cracked his eyes open and found himself in a space of roughly eight cubic meters. The light overhead was rapidly fading. He could see a seam closing, and what seemed to be closing it was a metal clasp on a pouch?!

At that moment, Lude suddenly recalled a passage in Six Volumes of Alchemist Essentials describing the achievements of Alchemy.

Alchemy was divided into four ranks: Nigredo, Albedo, Citrinitas, and Rubedo. Rubedo-level alchemists were exceptionally rare. Rubedo-level Alchemy also had eight great achievements, such as Life Creation, Element Reconstruction, and... Space Opening!

But according to the book, no Rubedo-level alchemist had been born in this world for over three hundred years!

The memories Siana had passed to Lude also confirmed this. Professor Beshe, a Citrinitas-level alchemist, was already the finest alchemist the Black Tide Society could find. Even so, he lacked the ability to forge the Vessel through Alchemy alone.

Siana's Ritualism, Professor Beshe's Alchemy, and the power of the Heart of the Furnace—none of the three could be absent.

That meant this spatial Vessel holding him was likely a Relic at least three hundred years old. It also meant Professor Beshe likely possessed the inheritance of some Rubedo-level alchemist. If there was time to spare later, Lude could take a look.

After all, a thief never left empty-handed. Curled up inside the Space Bag, feeling the tremors of old Beshe's footsteps, Lude thought to himself.