The iron gate closed with a soft sound behind them, shutting out the scattered sounds of wind beyond the alley.
The courtyard was small, with building materials strewn about in disorder, clearly untended for a long time.
Daffodil stood motionless at the bungalow's entrance, her knife hand hanging steadily at her side. Her calm gaze swept over Jin'en before settling on Porsette behind him.
"What brought you to the Bridge District?" she asked.
Jin'en walked straight ahead without stopping.
"Passing through."
The answer was short and crisp, with no further explanation.
He had never needed to give advance notice before coming to see Daffodil today.
For one thing, he was looking into the suspicious spatial anomalies on Halfwidth Street along the way. For another, he wanted to clear out the swarm of vermin that had recently latched onto Red Letter.
The real threats at Red Letter's core had never been those overt enemies, nor the targeted encirclement campaigns of other ability-user organizations.
Instead, the most annoying were these scattered gangs in the Bridge District, operating in gray areas and working for money.
They could not make much trouble or damage Red Letter's foundations, yet they constantly watched its members, digging up and selling their movements, coordinates, and ability details. They wormed their way into everything, harassing them again and again like swarms of insects, impossible to drive off or kill completely, wearing away at them more than anything else.
Daffodil withdrew her gaze and stepped aside from the doorway.
"Come in."
The bungalow was sparsely furnished, with only a wooden table, two chairs, and several empty cardboard boxes piled in a corner. It was clean but desolate.
A glass of thoroughly cooled water sat on the table, with no other clutter, entirely in keeping with Daffodil's usual disciplined restraint.
After the three entered, the door closed gently, shutting out the night beyond the alley completely.
Porsette stood beside the door without moving about, her hands still in her cloak pockets as she quietly watched the other two.
She knew perfectly well that Jin'en and Daffodil had old matters to discuss. She only needed to stay quietly out of the conversation.
Jin'en casually pulled over a chair and sat down, leaning back slightly, his posture relaxed without the slightest lapse in vigilance.
"What are you doing here?" he asked in return.
Daffodil settled against the edge of the table and sheathed her short blade in one crisp motion.
"Faint spatial distortions have been appearing frequently on Halfwidth Street lately. The Administration Bureau's investigation turned up nothing, so they handed it to us to follow up."
That matched the lead Inanna had given Jin'en exactly.
Jin'en nodded in understanding.
The anomaly was indeed not unfounded. The fluctuations were simply too weak for conventional detection equipment to pick up, and ordinary patrol personnel had even less chance of noticing them. In the end, they could only dump the work on civilian anomaly-hunter teams.
"Find anything?" he asked.
"No substantive anomalies." Daffodil shook her head, her tone certain. "No distorted entities, no residual spatial rifts. Only continuous leakage of spatial energy over an extremely small area, concentrated around the end of the alley and the abandoned apartments."
Jin'en rested his fingertips lightly against his knee, the curved scrape he had seen at the end of the alley that evening flashing through his mind.
It was not natural wear, nor a mark left by someone dragging things. It was an imprint left on the ground after space had peeled away slightly, touched down, and healed.
Ordinary people could not tell the difference at all. Even ordinary ability users would only take it for stains or wear on the ground.
But he was different. He had coexisted with spatial distortion since childhood and possessed an almost instinctive sensitivity to even the slightest spatial disturbances.
"It's not an anomaly," Jin'en said. "It's a person."
Daffodil's eyes shifted slightly.
Her Thousand Blades, Thousand Eyes could see through to the essence of things and trace anomalies, but it could not uncover faint ability fluctuations deliberately suppressed by a person.
The other party's methods were discreet, deliberately restraining every trace of their presence and leaving only a nearly imperceptible leak, specifically for probing and gathering information.
"Investigating Red Letter?" she asked.
"Yes," Jin'en answered. "There's a broker surnamed Zhou in the Bridge District. He takes black-market jobs, specializing in selling ability users' coordinates and movements. Tonight, Porsette and I were followed and staked out by two people at Unheard-of Bay. They were after her teleportation coordinates."
Porsette raised her eyes slightly at that but said nothing, tacitly confirming it.
Daffodil fell silent for two seconds.
Information on Red Letter's members had always been a resource traded at high prices on the black market.
Especially a rare teleportation ability like Porsette's, which was extremely valuable.
Countless gray-area gangs and underground hunters were scrambling madly for her precise coordinates. Once they had the data, they could set targeted ambushes, make arrangements, and even devise traps to imprison and kill her.
"Do you need me to act?" Daffodil asked.
As she was now, she could no longer purge them as freely as she had during her Red Letter days.
But if Jin'en asked, she would not mind making an exception.
Those vermin deserved death anyway.
"No." Jin'en refused. "I'll handle it myself."
He had intended to clear out these pests along the way when he took Porsette out this time.
It had nothing to do with Inanna's mission or Red Letter's formal plans. He was simply sick of this endless spying and harassment.
Even when Red Letter's people wandered outside, they were not targets just anyone could spy on and manipulate at will.
Daffodil did not insist. She knew Jin'en's temperament too well.
Once he set his sights on a problem, he would clear it out completely, leaving no future trouble.
"How long do you plan to stay out before returning to the mansion?" she asked, changing the subject.
Porsette also quietly glanced over at that question.
From the time they left that afternoon until now, Jin'en had never mentioned when they would return. There was no plan, no deadline; he was acting entirely as he pleased.
Jin'en lowered his eyes to the cooled boiled water on the table, his tone casual and languid.
"Haven't decided."
"Haven't decided?" Daffodil paused slightly.
"I'll think about it once I've spent the Fons I have."
He had no specific deadline or return date, unbound by the mansion's rules or the pace of missions.
The funds Inanna had given him would last a long time. He was in no hurry to return, nor did he want to.
The Scarlet Letter Mansion was like an exquisite cage, seemingly secure but in truth filled with nets everywhere-a prison Inanna had painstakingly woven to trap all her adopted daughters and hold him captive for years.
He rarely got to come out on his own. There was no need to rush back.
Daffodil understood what he meant and nodded lightly, asking no further questions.
A brief silence settled, leaving only the faint sound of moving air inside the room.
Just then, a familiar burning sensation suddenly flared in Jin'en's right wrist.
It was not the stabbing pain of spatial rifts rupturing as before, but an entirely different kind of power.
The silver markings that had remained dormant for years, hidden within the lines of his skin, rapidly lit up without warning. They no longer shone with a single cold, silvery-white light; an intensely dark black radiance began winding around their edges.
Two utterly different energies, black and white, intertwined, collided, and pulled against each other within the markings on his wrist.
The two forces were incompatible, yet coexisted strangely, surging rapidly toward his right hand through his blood vessels and meridians.
Jin'en's pupils contracted slightly, and his body instinctively tensed.
Over his many years of life, he had encountered countless pieces of common knowledge about abilities and Red Letter's internal records. Every account explicitly stated that from the day of awakening, each ability user would possess only one ability and one attribute lineage for life.
Without exception.
Dual abilities and dual attributes were concepts that simply did not exist within Hethereau City's ability system.
They were an absolute taboo, something theoretically impossible.
His Space Manipulation was purely light-attributed, rooted in his soul and engraved into his origin. It had never changed since his awakening at nine years old.
Yet now, an entirely new dark-attributed power genuinely occupied his body, vivid and forceful.
There had been no external implantation, no modification by drugs, no bewitching illusion. This was a second power awakened entirely from his own origin.
The other two in the room instantly noticed something wrong.
Daffodil's gaze abruptly grew grave, and her body tensed instinctively. A faint aura of dark-attributed power quietly rose around her, ready to respond to sudden danger at any moment.
She could clearly sense a strange, powerful, intensely devouring dark energy that had suddenly appeared within Jin'en.
Porsette also took half a step forward, her golden eyes fixed on Jin'en's wrist, genuine worry hidden in their depths.
Jin'en raised his hand and looked at his right hand.
His palm was empty, holding no object.
But in the next instant, a strand of dense, dark radiance condensed in his palm, spreading, rapidly stretching, and taking shape.
The radiance wound and intertwined. In an instant, a pitch-black fishing rod appeared out of thin air in his hand, its shaft smooth and unmarked, its tip gleaming with a cold, dark light.
It did not need to rely on his old physical fishing rod or use any external object as a vessel.
It was formed entirely from his own dark-attributed ability.
The shaft felt steady and substantial, without the sharp, rending sensation of his previous silver-lit rod. In its place was a deep devouring force, understated yet more lethal.
Jin'en tightened his fingers around the handle.
It felt slightly cool, fitting his palm as though they were one.
He could clearly feel that this condensed black rod was completely synchronized with his consciousness, body, and ability. He could control it with a thought, without the slightest resistance, truly achieving unity between body, mind, and weapon.
An unfamiliar ability name naturally surfaced in his mind-
[Unity of Man and Rod]
This was his new ability, exclusively dark-attributed and independent of his light-attributed Space Manipulation-a brand-new power belonging to him alone that broke every rule of abilities.
An immense shock surged through Jin'en's heart, but his expression remained calm, without the slightest loss of composure.
Years of restraint and endurance had long since accustomed him to hiding every emotion. Even faced with a change that overturned his understanding, he would reveal nothing.
He raised his hand slightly. The black rod shifted in his palm, its tip tracing an extremely faint dark arc.
Previously, his fishing rod had merely been a supporting weapon, relying on spatial rifts to enhance its damage.
But now, in the state of Unity of Man and Rod, the fishing rod was an extension of his ability, a tangible vessel for his dark-attributed power.
The light attribute tore through space; the dark attribute devoured and counterbalanced.
One light, one dark-two ultimate powers coexisting within a single body.
"A new ability?" Daffodil's voice held a barely perceptible tremor.
She had seen countless ability users, geniuses with heaven-defying talent, and aberrant beings transformed by distortion, but she had never seen anyone possess two attributes and two independent abilities simultaneously.
This already went beyond the understanding of Hethereau's existing ability system.
"Yes," Jin'en answered mildly, his tone betraying no disturbance. "Just awakened."
Porsette spoke softly. "Did it appear... after you dealt with those people following us?"
She remembered clearly that the first trace of darkness had appeared at the tip of Jin'en's rod when he attacked at the viewing platform. The light had been dim then, so she had thought it was a trick of light and shadow. Now it seemed that had been the first sign of his new ability awakening.
The intense combat, continuous expenditure of ability power, and stimulus of outside scrutiny had finally forced out the second power hidden deep within his origin.
"More or less," Jin'en replied casually, lowering his head to toy with the black rod in his palm.
The state of Unity of Man and Rod was very stable. The dark-attributed power was docile and controllable, unlike Space Manipulation, which frequently went out of control and ruptured involuntarily.
This power was obedient, controlled entirely by his thoughts, with no signs of backlash or risk of losing control.
Compared with the spatial rifts that constantly kept him on edge and required desperate restraint, this dark-attributed power felt more like an ability that truly belonged to him.