"Tap, tap, tap..."
Golden light from the setting sun streamed through the study window, illuminating a clock with a stark, modern minimalist design.
The hour hand pointed to six. As the clock ticked, the study felt unusually peaceful.
Click.
A discordant sound came from beneath the clock. Then, with a creak, someone slowly opened the safe below it.
Several stacks of documents and a few notebooks sat neatly on the upper shelf. Bundles of Grand Alliance banknotes, artworks, jewelry, and a few gold bars lay scattered across the lower one.
The next moment, a hand reached into the safe. After a brief rummage, it found a black notebook.
"Found it." Xia Lun pulled the Black Notebook from the safe and sat back down behind his desk.
The Information Panel had another half hour to go before its upgrade was complete.
Rather than sit idle, Xia Lun planned to spend those thirty minutes writing in his private journal and carefully reviewing his performance in the Scenario.
He had made a habit of reviewing his actions both before and after arriving in this world. He firmly believed that experience gained through feeling could only benefit him once he examined it rationally.
In other words, Xia Lun saw reflection as the foundation of progress.
"First, let's get the information in order."
Muttering to himself, he opened the Black Notebook to a blank page near the middle and wrote "Foresight Club" at the top.
"1. According to the detectives' investigation, the name Foresight Club first appeared in conspiracy theories from Greyroad State. Believers in those theories claim the Grand Alliance government has been taken over by aliens, and that the people under alien control call themselves Foresighters."
Xia Lun paused, picked up a photograph beside him, and pasted it onto the page.
"2. The Foresight Club's symbol is shown above. At a glance, it looks like several triangles nested inside one another, but its core design uses an optical illusion to make it appear to loop endlessly back into itself."
"3. Bird, a director at Jade Pharmaceuticals, may have ties to the Foresight Club. His daughter came to me for help in the middle of Fogwinter Month. She believes Bird has been mind-controlled or replaced."
Xia Lun's pen paused briefly before he continued writing.
"For some reason, Bird's daughter looks familiar to me. That's strange, and worth keeping in mind."
"That's all the relevant information I have so far."
Xia Lun set down his pen and flipped back through the Black Notebook until he reached this year's planning page.
He had already written quite a bit there, but the page fell into three sections: short-term goals, medium-term goals, and long-term goals.
His gaze shifted. Beside "cure my illness" under medium-term goals, he drew a large check mark.
Then he twirled his pen and began writing quickly.
"Short-term goals: rest and get my body back in shape (); enter a dream and obtain the Nonhuman Toughness Specialty through memories (); complete the Special Memory 'Courtly Tournament' (); find a chance to meet the information broker White Line and sell or buy game-related items ()."
"Medium-term goals: cure my illness (√)."
"Long-term goals: discover the truth behind my illness (); use the game to gain supernatural powers or other benefits ()."
Xia Lun nodded and read through the page carefully. Then he closed the Black Notebook and returned it to the safe.
Next, he took a brand-new notebook with a brown cover from the bookcase and opened it.
"Time for a review," he muttered, and began to write.
"First Scenario: Sea Battle Royale."
"Events: omitted."
"Questions: 1. How exactly did I enter the game's Scenario? There's no doubt that Investigator is no ordinary game. Rather than a game, it's more like being transported to another world."
"But if that's the case, it's strange that the Underwater Breathing Potion I took before entering the Scenario for the first time stopped working. If my physical body crossed over, I should have had both my illness and the potion's effect. Instead, I retained only my illness."
"That's quite strange. If only my soul crossed over, why did my illness come with me?"
Xia Lun frowned slightly and kept writing.
"Could my Lung Disease have affected my soul?" His pen paused again. "Never mind. Either way, I'm cured now. I can think about that later."
"Question 2: Erroneous Occult Knowledge appeared among the Specialization Memories available for exchange. I, the monster, the First Mate's trusted Bearded Pirate, and Daolunte, the disfigured crewman who betrayed us at the end, all had this strange Specialization Memory. There may be a hidden clue connecting us."
"I feel like I'm close to the truth. I just need to look at it differently, or find a little inspiration..."
The next moment, Xia Lun's eyes grew intent as he activated Heightened Focus.
Time seemed to slow abruptly. In an instant, countless muddled thoughts and hazy flashes of inspiration became as clear as if they had been brought into sunlight.
Xia Lun felt as though his mind had become a lens, his attention the sun, and his memories and inspirations the clear, distinct halos of light refracted through it.
In the space of a few heartbeats, a flood of information and possibilities swept through his mind. His subconscious sorted and sifted through them until a complete chain of reasoning emerged, shining like a jewel in sunlight.
"If that's the case... but... on the other hand... though overall..." He rested his elbows on the desk and brought his fingertips together. "I see. I've got it."
Human reasoning relied on sentence structures to develop ideas. With his mind working at such speed, Xia Lun needed only to mutter the connecting words aloud to keep his thoughts clear.
Boom...
The next instant, Xia Lun left the state of Heightened Focus, picked up his pen, and wrote furiously in his journal.
"From what the monster said to me during the final battle, I can infer that my original identity in the Scenario knew it. And from the Erroneous Occult Knowledge Specialization Memory, I can infer that I was an occult apprentice of the monster, the 'mentor.' Daolunte, the disfigured crewman, and the First Mate's trusted Bearded Pirate were probably its apprentices too."
"This would explain the timing of the First Mate's faction's mutiny: the Bearded Pirate urged him to act."
"If that's true, the monster and I had no conflict at all. We may even have been secret allies. So the normal path through the game was probably to resist the pirates' tyranny with the monster's help, working together from inside and out to survive six days. Hm. Looked at that way, the first round was actually pretty easy..."
"But I was so tense that I went straight into attack mode and seriously wounded the monster. Then, by allying with Geliide, voting, and so on, I became the pirate leader. All that maneuvering put me on the opposite side. Yeah, that's probably why this round became so absurdly difficult."
"In a sense, I brought the difficulty on myself. This whole bloody mess started with the equivalent of 'What are you looking at?' 'You, what about it?'"
Xia Lun's mouth twitched, and he kept writing.
"I need to learn from this. Next time, I can't be so quick to attack."
"But thinking about it more deeply, I probably acted that way because I've spent too long in Whitewash City. That place has destroyed my trust in strangers—and strange monsters. After all, most of its citizens live by the rule 'strike first, or suffer for it.'"
"Ah, Whitewash City!"
He shook his head at his own dry joke, then continued writing.
"Still, judging by the final rewards, acting that way actually earned me more. I never would have killed the monster, obtained the Prayerbook of the Drowned, or won the pirates' approval by following the normal path."
"So overall, attacking the monster right away wasn't entirely bad. After all, I cured my Lung Disease."
His pen whispered across the paper. As black ink spread over the white pages, time slipped quietly by.
When Xia Lun put down his pen, the minute hand pointed to five. It was already 6:25.
He silently called up the Information Panel and found that six minutes remained until its upgrade was complete.
"Just about perfect. I can clear my head for a while." Xia Lun closed the notebook and slipped it into the safe, then gently shut the door.
Once that was done, he sat back in his chair, closed his eyes, and focused on his breathing, beginning to meditate.
Cool air flowed slowly into his nose, warmed by his body, then passed down his windpipe into his lungs.
Xia Lun quietly felt his chest expand. The invisible air filled the tiny vessels in his lungs, and his weary aches seemed to drift away with each breath.
As his breathing rose and fell, his mind gradually emptied. Memories, thoughts, inspirations, and stray notions surfaced like bubbles on water, then vanished...
Suddenly, a flash of inspiration shot through his mind.
"Wait. Could I bring items into reality?"
Before you continue