The Loen Kingdom, the City of Cities, Backlund.
Split diagonally into two parts by the Tussock River flowing southeast into the estuary, connected by Backlund Bridge and ferries, and boasting a population of over five million, this city was one of the most prosperous in the continent. No, perhaps there wasn't even an "one of"!
At this moment, in a dim alley located in the Bridge Borough of this metropolis, a young man was sprawled in the darkness of a wall corner. There were no obvious external injuries on his body, but his expression was extremely ferocious and distorted, as if he was enduring immense agony.
Liu Bo endured the lingering buzzing in his mind, struggling to open his eyes, and then saw the bridge body of the bridge spanning the Tussock River right above, as well as higher up in the night sky, a crimson full moon!
The Crimson Moon... the Loen Kingdom... Backlund...
Scene after scene of chaotic memories flashed quickly across Liu Bo's mind. After a long while, he felt his body regain some strength, so he propped himself against the wall and stood up.
He lowered his head to look at palms that obviously did not belong to him, and chuckled as he muttered to himself:
"I've transmigrated... The Loen Kingdom, Backlund? Heh, hearing these familiar names, I've transmigrated into Lord of Mysteries by Cuttlefish! This really isn't any kind of desirable, good place!"
Liu Bo had originally been an elective course lecturer at a third-tier university, neither high nor low after three years on the job. Lately, he had been pondering whether to change jobs, only to find out that upon waking up, he had transmigrated, and right into the world of Lord of Mysteries, the web novel he loved most!
"This body I'm in right now is named Abner Brain. He just turned eighteen and is still studying at a public school. Because he was in a daze, he accidentally tumbled down from Backlund Bridge, which brought about my transmigration. As for the reason for his trance, it seems to be a sudden family upheaval... Wait, that doesn't seem right!"
Liu Bo, who was recalling the memories of the original body's owner, suddenly changed his expression. He quickly reached into his pocket and pulled out a thumb-sized, sharp-edged blue gemstone.
With his pupils reflecting this gemstone glowing brilliantly under the red moon, a scene flashed across Liu Bo's mind: a middle-aged man dressed only in undergarments lying in a pool of blood. Even though almost all his valuables had been plundered, this gemstone alone lay quietly on his chest! And Abner, who happened to be passing by this secluded corner, had a moment of greed, picked up the gemstone, and left quickly.
"This... could this gemstone be a Beyonder characteristic precipitated after a Beyonder's death? Turns out the original owner's death involved a supernatural event? No, perhaps the corrosion of the Beyonder characteristic alone was enough to cost him his life!"
Recalling how the original Abner had carried this gemstone close to his body for nearly a week, the corners of Liu Bo's eyes twitched. While silently mourning the other's ignorance, he hurriedly followed Klein's method from Lord of Mysteries, taking an iron cigarette case out of his other trouser pocket, throwing away the last two cigarettes inside, and then carefully placing the blue gemstone inside.
Having done all this, Liu Bo let out a long breath of relief. Then he put away the cigarette case, identified the direction based on his memories, and hurried toward his temporarily rented dwelling in the East Borough. After all, the Bridge Borough was not a safe place; the personnel were very complicated, and there were quite a few vagrants at night. When it came to public security, it was perhaps even inferior to the relatively decent areas in the East Borough.
Along the way, Liu Bo was on tenterhooks because he hadn't fully absorbed the original owner's memories, and coupled with how muddled the other party's days had been lately, he still didn't know the exact date after his transmigration. He was terrified of running into those assassins, devils, and cultists from the original Lord of Mysteries work.
Fortunately, his worries were superfluous. Along the way, apart from seeing some vagrants who looked like walking corpses, there were no other accidents, and he successfully returned to the one-room apartment he rented on Black Palm Street in the East Borough.
This apartment was small in area, and the rent was 4 soli a week, so the furniture was also simple, consisting only of a bed, a chair, a bedside table, and a half-length mirror hanging on the wall. Thanks to Emperor Roselle, his improvements to craftsmanship lowered the cost of glass manufacturing far too much, or else I'm afraid even this mirror wouldn't be here.
Casually lighting the candle on the bedside table, Liu Bo dazed off for a little while to soothe his brain, which had been dizzy ever since his transmigration. Only then did he take the blue gemstone out of the cigarette case again, and after carefully examining it, he couldn't help muttering to himself, "I have no idea which pathway this belongs to, what Sequence Beyonder characteristic it is, or whether its corrosion on this body of mine has any sequelae..."
Just as he finished saying this, he suddenly felt his concentration and logical analysis abilities shoot up abruptly. His brain seemed to have turned into a high-speed computer, with data streams calculating and processing within it! In just a few seconds, intense pain filled his entire brain, and Liu Bo let out a miserable cry as he fell face-first to the floor.
Before losing consciousness, the corner of his eyes caught sight of himself reflected in the half-length mirror. It was a young man with brown curly hair, while his eyes at this moment were completely rolled back, as if he had lost his pupils!
Meanwhile, in the basement of Saint Wind Cathedral in Cherwood Borough, a member of the Mandated Punishers Squad was reporting to his captain:
"Captain, Old Red found An Rui's corpse in a garbage dump in the Bridge Borough. During the battle in the suburbs last week, after he was randomly teleported by a cultist's Sealed Artifact, his condition obviously wasn't very good, and as a result, he was killed by someone taking advantage of his state..."
A clear look of anger appeared on the Mandated Punisher captain's face as he interrupted, "Did you perform Spirit Channeling? Do you know who did it?"
That team member sighed with a gloomy expression and said, "We found An Rui's corpse too late, and furthermore, he was thrown into the garbage dump by a few vagrants. The remaining spirit wasn't much, and Spirit Channeling didn't yield any good results. However, based on clues, our Keeper of Knowledge deduced that he should have encountered East Borough gangsters under heavy injuries and was robbed and murdered."
"How dare those maggots in the sewers?! Hmph, since it was a robbery, they should have taken the valuables and Beyonder characteristic on An Rui. You lot follow this clue and make sure to find those pieces of garbage who harmed An Rui!" The captain stood up and heavily slapped the table, only to slump back down as if deflated, and continued, "You and Old Red take half a day off to rest before you go investigate... Dawn is approaching. Since there is a definitive result, I must go face An Rui's family..."
"Captain..."
When Liu Bo regained consciousness, he didn't show any bewildered expression. Instead, he calmly took out a pocket watch from his embrace to check the time and mused, "Unconscious for nearly six hours... It seems I do have a golden finger after all, only it's a golden finger that works for three to four seconds and forces an unconsciousness cooldown of six hours... Is this thing gold-plated or what?"
Then he looked into that half-length mirror again. The eyes in the mirror had returned to a light blue, but he hadn't forgotten the pure white pupils he saw before losing consciousness, and he couldn't help mocking himself, "What is this? The Byakugan from Naruto? In terms of insight alone it's pretty much similar, but the duration is much too short! Well, following the art style of this world, let's just call it the 'Pure White Eye'."
Mocking aside, Liu Bo understood that the transmigrator perk he had named the 'Pure White Eye' actually possessed quite powerful functions, because in those few short seconds earlier, he had already gained immense benefits. Immediately, he subconsciously took out pen and paper to summarize these benefits in Chinese.
"The first ability of this Pure White Eye is to enhance my memory and memory-processing capabilities! In those few short seconds, not only did I digest all the memories of the original owner Abner, but even the knowledge I learned and books I read before my transmigration became clear! These are all wealth. Setting other things aside, just the potion formulas and ritual incantations involved in the novel Lord of Mysteries are priceless. Although I loved this novel very much before and read it many times, it's impossible for me to have deliberately memorized potion formulas. Now the Pure White Eye can directly revive these memories, which is simply fantastic! However, after exiting the Pure White Eye state, these memories will gradually distort, and I must quickly review them to truly remember them. Hmm, it seems that knowledge involving demigods and above is forgotten especially fast, and knowledge regarding Outer Deities cannot be remembered at all."
"The second ability is to enhance logic and insight. It allows me to discover many details while in the Pure White Eye state, and multithreadedly think about the internal logic and connections of these details. It's an excellent auxiliary skill for planning and strategy. That I had no bewilderment whatsoever after regaining consciousness is precisely because I had already thought through all the situations in the few seconds before losing consciousness."
"The third ability I consider to be the core ability of the Pure White Eye, which is the analysis ability! It is an ability that can operate only on the basis of the knowledge constructed in my memory and the specific phenomena observed. In other words, the above two abilities are actually prerequisites for this ability! And this ability is extremely powerful. Within those few seconds, just by taking a glance at that Beyonder characteristic and looking at myself through the mirror, I had already analyzed quite a lot of situations!"
Liu Bo changed to a new sheet of paper to record the analysis results: "First, this Beyonder characteristic belongs to the Reader Pathway, Sequence 8 Detective; second, this body of mine has indeed been contaminated by the Beyonder characteristic, but because of the suppression from the high level of my Pure White Eye upon transmigration, this contamination has already fused into my body and spirit, causing my spirituality and mental body to gain a slight boost. This boost is not a temporary state activated upon opening like the Pure White Eye, but rather like those lower and middle-sequence second-generation Beyonders who naturally inherit a bit of Beyonder characteristic..."
Writing up to this point, Liu Bo couldn't help but let out a bitter laugh, pondering: "This also means that I can no longer walk other pathways and can only try to advance as a Reader. Yet supernatural beings of this sequence similarly enhance memory, insight, logic, and analysis in the early stages, which is simply a standard match with my Pure White Eye, and will boundlessly and continuously strengthen this golden finger's ability... Is this really just a coincidence?"
"Forget it, anyway I already have no other choice now. Without truly advancing to a Reader, even with the Pure White Eye suppressing them, those fused characteristics are a huge hidden danger, and the slightest thing wrong will cause a loss of control..." Thinking of this, Liu Bo continued to write on the paper containing the analysis results:
"Reader Sequence 9
Main ingredients: Garrol Fish Pupil
This is the true formidable nature of the Pure White Eye's analysis ability—an ability that surpasses analysis at the Sequence 5 level of the Reader Pathway!
(Chapter end)"