Alisa tilted her head with an innocent look, her delicate face dusted with dirt, which instead gave her a slightly more worldly air.
"I don't know!"
"Huh?"
Joey had an urge to punch someone; he lowered his head and looked intently at Alisa.
"You aren't kidding with me, are you?"
Alisa seemed to find it hard to understand Joey's emotional shift, clapping her hands and straightening her clothes. "I really don't know!"
Joey tried his best to control his impending outburst, asking in a low voice, "Then where did you get the Fortune Teller potion formula?"
"Oh."
Alisa let out a soft "oh" and said with a completely honest expression, "Everybody knows that potion formula."
As she spoke, Alisa gathered her golden hair and playfully made a face at Joey.
"Hehe, Frank was right after all-people in the Outer City are so easy to fool. That Fortune Teller Sequence isn't some big secret in the Imperial City, but nobody ever succeeds, you know."
A devil, she was definitely a devil. Wearing an innocent face, what kind of stunt was this?
Piss-poor Sequence 9 Luck-Master—there was no advancement pathway at all. This was a massive fire pit specifically designed to trap people, and he had stupidly jumped right in.
Blame? Not really, just a stifling sense of grievance.
Given the situation at the time, Alisa could only resort to that method to get Joey to save people.
Watching Alisa return to her farm work, Joey could only let out a helpless sigh and turn to leave.
The night was terribly desolate. The windows of the dilapidated shack failed to keep out the biting wind, rattling noisily along with the night breeze.
Checking on Old Tony's physical condition and tucking him in, Joey lay down on the straw mat and closed his eyes.
While his body slept soundly in the shack, his consciousness had already arrived Above the Gray Fog.
Coming into view were those twelve antique chairs. Joey stepped forward, gently landing in the topmost seat to sit down.
Beneath his feet was endless darkness, and as far as the eye could see, there was only gray fog. Leaning back against the chair, Joey began to ponder the path he should take next.
Who would have thought that the Fortune Teller pathway was actually fabricated? If that wasn't enough, he had also stumbled into a successful advancement.
"Maybe I can get some clues from those inscriptions."
His advancement wasn't a traditional one; instead, he had taken a shortcut, changing the deity's honorific name during the ritual.
His gaze pierced through the gray fog, his sight locking onto that Sky-Piercing Pillar. Immediately, an ancient, rustic aura washed over him, followed by countless incomprehensible gibberish sounds drilling into his ears.
The text still remained unclear. If it were before, Joey would definitely have stopped such self-destructive behavior, but tonight, he intended to give it a shot.
Enduring the splitting headache that felt ready to explode, his eyes stared fixedly at the text carved onto the pillar.
He flipped his palm, tossed out a coin, and muttered, "Tonight, I am lucky."
The text that had consistently resisted clear sight turned into strands of drifting lines within his vision, some deep and some shallow, varying in color. They coiled around the cylinder, slithering back and forth.
Without a second thought, Joey reached out and grabbed. The lines that had originally been outside the gray fog appeared right in his hand at his grasp, resembling a mischievous little snake that circled his palm once before plunging into his body the moment Joey failed to react.
Joey's consciousness began to gradually blur.
In Ishlandon, the capital of the Duchy of Isamott, within an antique church in the Forty-Nine City.
Helena Rose knelt devoutly before the cross, her hands clasped together in prayer.
"Light of the world, I shall pursue You."
"I swear in the name of the Rothschild Family that I shall spend my entire life hunting down the traitor!"
The glaring sunlight pierced through the skylight glass and struck Helena's face, a face filled with exhaustion and disappointment.
She recited the prayer over and over, taking a crystal-clear little stone from her bosom-palm-sized, with a lightning pattern etched upon it.
Holding the stone above her head, she waited for a long time, yet still received no response whatsoever.
Looking at the empty church, Helena ultimately chose to give up, burying her face in her hands as she wept dejectedly.
"Father, what possible meaning is there in us guarding this broken stone all this time?"
Once upon a time in the Duchy of Isamott, there was a powerful clan, the Rothschilds. Because of a secret treasure, only a single person remained in the entire family now.
She concealed her identity and investigated the culprits, but she was too weak-so weak that she couldn't withstand even a breath from her enemies.
Helena understood that only by becoming a Beyond-the-ordinary individual would she have the slightest chance at revenge. She had spent a full year gathering the Sequence potion for the Arbiter Pathway.
Today, she was preparing to advance under the blessing of the divine.
Every Transcendent's advancement required not only resisting the corruption from the potion, but also guarding against the mad gibberish echoing from the earth.
Those with influence and background would always choose a high-sequence Beyond-the-ordinary individual to assist them during advancement. Those who relied purely on themselves to advance were fewer than one in ten, and success rates were only high for low-sequence advances.
The Arbiter Pathway belonged to the most elite Beyond-the-ordinary pathways, with complete advancement sequences possessed solely by the duchy's authorities.
Isolated and lacking support, Helena could only pin her hopes on divine blessing for her advancement.
Reality was cruel. The treasure she considered extremely precious had elicited no response at all.
Just as Helena was preparing to give up, the stone bearing the lightning design burst apart with a bang, followed instantly by a brilliant radiance that enveloped her entire body.
Joey regained consciousness. He rubbed his throbbing head and instinctively looked downward, freezing instantly.
Beside the round table, a figure was frantically surveying her surroundings. She was quite tall, with a crop of honey-reddish-brown short hair and a tight leather skirt that highlighted her capable demeanor.
"What is this place? Why am I here?"
That was a very good question. Even I would love to know why you're here.
Joey didn't rush to speak, quietly observing the other person instead. Judging from her skin tone and accent, she looked nothing like a native of Senegal.
While he was sizing her up, Helena was also moving cautiously through the gray fog. When she realized she was unable to leave, she finally shifted her attention to the twelve chairs.
Can't she see me?
Joey noticed that this brown-haired woman had looked up and gazed around more than once, yet seemed completely unable to see him.
While Joey was still stunned in thought, Helena suddenly bowed toward the topmost seat.
"Light of the world, I am your most loyal believer."
Helena's heart hammered against her ribs. Keeping her head lowered, her body trembled uncontrollably.
An inadvertent glance upward revealed that, apart from the twelve round table chairs, there was a much larger one at the very top, upon which a hazy human figure unexpectedly sat, looking down at her from on high.
Though she couldn't make out the face, that sense of heart-palpitating dread felt entirely real.
Suddenly, a phrase flashed through her mind: Unseeable God, unspoken name.
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