When Li Wei saw Baron Hanklis emerge from the Empire's Central Bank again, the baron was deathly pale. He held a letter in his hand and looked utterly distraught.
"Sir Li Wei, I..."
Baron Hanklis looked at Li Wei, started to speak, stopped, then tried again. In the end, he simply handed Li Wei the letter.
"Please read it yourself. Holy Lord above, my head is about to explode."
Li Wei took the letter, sat down in a nearby chair, and pulled the paper from its envelope to read it.
It read as follows.
[...I am Harbolt, Baron Hanklis. I have left this letter here to tell whoever opens this safe what happened to me. Since you are reading this, I must have failed to solve the mystery. I hope you can solve it instead. As payment, all the valuables I left in the safe are yours.
This is not a delusion. In fact, I am not sure whether something is wrong with me or with the world. Everything changed after I killed that man.
It began that night. I was at home, reading in my sitting room, when I fell asleep. Then, for some reason-perhaps instinct-I woke up. When I opened my eyes, I saw a masked man thrusting a sword at me. Almost instinctively, I raised my gun and pulled the trigger.
The gun fired, and the man died. At least, I believed he was dead. But after that, I lost consciousness again.
When I woke again, I found the man's body still there. I could touch him. But apart from me, neither my family nor my servants could see him. Even so, they still avoided his body. I do not know what was going on. Perhaps I had gone mad, or perhaps everyone else had.
I tried