Mulan hurried out of the Royal Palace and boarded a carriage back to the Black Castle.
Now running smoothly, the Black Castle had seen nothing particularly unusual happen in the past month, and Mulan's return drew little attention.
Mulan first checked on a few things. First, Walton was not in Digo, and no one knew what he had gone off to do. Second, Owen had also been sent away. Third, Mulan visited the residence of the Black Castle's original Alchemist.
Although Matt had arrived in Digo and moved into the Black Castle, he was still settling in and had not begun teaching. Despite their public welcome, Dierjia's officials did not fully trust this Alchemist.
Meanwhile, research into the wolf venom in Mulan's blood was being conducted by the Black Castle's original Alchemist.
This Alchemist had two residences. One was a secluded place in the wilderness outside Digo City, known almost exclusively to him and a handful of others. The other was inside the Black Castle. Since the Black Castle's reforms, he had been spending more time in the city, partly because he occasionally had teaching duties, but also because students made convenient assistants to order around.
In one corner of the Black Castle's central area stood a seemingly small, fortress-like building, roughly the same size as Mulan's little residence. His carriage stopped there, and he looked up. The building was somewhat crooked, and strange objects were embedded around the edges of its door and windows. Some resembled ornaments, while others looked like sculptures.
Chimneys dotted the fortress, and a huge curved pane of glass crowned the building. In a lake out front, the water actually changed colors-sometimes red, sometimes green, sometimes metallic, and sometimes multicolored. It looked countless times more toxic than water contaminated by industrial chemicals.
Mulan surveyed the