dognovel Chapter 1074 Acquaintances Behind the Mask, Undercurrents in the Wine Pool
Chapter 1074 Acquaintances Behind the Mask, Undercurrents in the Wine Pool
Wu Hen took the ancient blueprint from Lin Qiye's hand.
He glanced at it and then placed it alongside another rubbing of Sumerian cuneiform script.
"Door, something outside the door."
Wu Hen's voice was soft, yet it struck Lin Qiye's heart like a heavy hammer.
"The code name 'The Thing Outside the Door' may not refer to a specific creature, but rather... the door itself, or rather, what's behind the door."
Lin Qiye felt a chill run from the soles of his feet straight up to the top of his head.
Damn it, there's a crack in this door.
"Let's go."
Wu Hen put the drawings back into the file.
"We won't see anything interesting if we stay here. We'll let you know if there are any new discoveries at the memorial."
"Let's go out for a walk and sort out our thoughts."
Lin Qiye nodded, forcefully shaking off that strange door in his mind.
Thinking about it now is useless; with too little information, it will only make you panic.
The two stepped out of the castle, where the brightly lit streets of Utopia contrasted sharply with the deathly silence inside.
Steampunk-style trains roared past on the elevated tracks.
Loud music and voices emanated from the shops along the street, filling the air with vitality.
However, Lin Qiye and Wu Hen felt extremely heavy-hearted.
"Gilgamesh..."
Lin Qiye spoke in a low voice.
"What exactly is hidden in this old monster's 'King's Treasury'?"
Why did he suddenly lose control? Was it related to those three who escaped the net?
"do not know."
Wu Hen's answer was as concise as ever.
"But he was a god of the Sumerian civilization, and his timeline is closest to that 'Feast at Hongmen'."
"If anyone could possibly know something, he is definitely one of them."
"The problem is he's a madman now, killing anyone he sees. How can we question him?"
Lin Qiye scratched his hair in frustration.
"We can't just beat him into submission before we start talking, can we? What's the difference between that and tearing down a utopia?"
Wu Hen didn't reply, but walked silently, a thoughtful glint in his calm eyes.
He was constructing a complex network of relationships in his mind.
The attempt is to connect "Nicholas", "The Outsider", "The Faceless God", Anqingyu, Gilgamesh, and all these time travelers.
Just then, a flippant yet delighted voice came from the side.
"Holy crap? Lin Qiye? Wu Hen?"
The two stopped at the same time and looked in the direction of the sound.
A young man wearing a floral shirt and with flaxen hair was looking at them with disbelief.
Lin Qiye was stunned for a moment, then recognized the other person.
"He Lin?"
"It's really you!"
He Lin rushed over, gave Lin Qiye a bear hug, and patted Wu Hen on the shoulder.
A smile that was not concealed was on his face.
"What are you two doing here? I thought you had both gone back to Great Xia to retire after what happened with the believers!"
He Lin, a member of the Shangxie Society and a former comrade-in-arms.
"Aren't you the same?" Lin Qiye punched him in the chest.
"I thought you and Shen Qingzhu had gone off to some remote mountain forest to live happily ever after."
"Ugh, why bring her up?"
He Lin's smile froze for a moment, then he resumed his nonchalant demeanor.
"Let's go, let's stop talking nonsense! A chance encounter is worse than a formal invitation. Today it's my treat, let's go to the bar up ahead and drink until we drop!"
Without waiting for their agreement, he grabbed them by the shoulders and pulled them toward the busiest bar on the street corner.
The heavy metal music in the bar was deafening, and men and women were dancing wildly on the dance floor.
He Lin was clearly a regular here, and he easily asked the waiter for a private room.
The moment the soundproof door closed, the world became much quieter.
He Lin generously ordered a large quantity of wine and personally poured it for the two of them.
"Come on, the first toast is to our escape from death!" He Lin raised his glass.
Lin Qiye and Wu Hen exchanged a glance, then picked up their wine glasses and drank them down in one gulp.
The spicy liquor went down my throat, and the stuffiness in my chest seemed to ease a little.
"Seriously, why did you all come to Utopia?"
He Lin put down his wine glass and asked, seemingly casually,
"This is no peaceful place; it's a melting pot of all sorts of people, even more chaotic than the old Garan."
"I have some personal matters to attend to."
Wu Hen answered calmly, picked up the wine bottle, and filled He Lin's glass.
"And you? And Shen Qingzhu? How are you all doing now?"
He cleverly threw the question back at him.
"She's doing fine."
He Lin smiled, a smile with an indescribable meaning.
"The Shangxie Society has disbanded, and she's too lazy to manage things anymore. She found a place to live in seclusion, saying she wants to study her 'Tao'."
"I'm just a free spirit, wandering around aimlessly, and that's how I ended up here."
"Good."
Lin Qiye nodded and drank another cup.
"It's better to be free, so you don't get caught up in some mess and die without even knowing how."
His words carried a hint of weariness, as if he were referring to something else entirely.
He Lin's eyes flickered for a moment, then he smiled and said, "That's true."
"By the way, have you heard?"
"Recently, a formidable figure has emerged in Garan. Wearing a red cloak, he single-handedly took down several 'mysterious' strongholds. He's incredibly powerful."
Lin Qiye paused in his hand holding the wine glass, but his face remained expressionless: "Really? That's pretty impressive."
Wu Hen acted as if he hadn't heard anything, and simply drank his wine quietly.
He Lin observed their reactions but couldn't detect anything amiss.
He laughed and stopped talking about it, instead bringing up some embarrassing things that happened when he was in the Shangxie Society.
The atmosphere seemed lively, but each of the three men's clinking glasses concealed their own thoughts.
Lin Qiye and Wu Hen wanted to know He Lin's true purpose in appearing here, while He Lin seemed to be testing something as well.
Just then, the music outside the private room suddenly stopped.
Immediately afterwards, the DJ's energetic roar came through the speakers: "Hooray! Everyone! Where's the screaming?!"
"Let's thank our esteemed guests in Box A1! Tonight's entire bill will be on these two gentlemen!"
"Oh!!!"
The entire bar was instantly ignited, with countless people whistling and shouting "Long live A1!" The atmosphere was even more frenzied than before.
"Holy crap, that's incredibly extravagant?"
He Lin also became interested, stood up and looked down through the glass of the private room.
"Where did this deity come from?"
Lin Qiye and Wu Hen also subconsciously followed his gaze to the center of the dance floor.
Two figures jumped onto the DJ booth.
A man was holding a bottle of expensive champagne and spraying it wildly at the crowd below.
They were all wearing masks.
One of them is Pigsy, grinning foolishly.
The other one is Sha Wujing with a full beard.
The moment they saw the two masks, Lin Qiye and Wu Hen's pupils suddenly contracted!
What the fuck...
"what happened?"
He Lin keenly sensed the change in the aura of the two people beside him and turned around to ask in confusion, "Do you know each other?"
"do not know."
Lin Qiye answered almost immediately, forcing himself to relax.
He sat back down on the sofa, picked up his wine glass to hide his embarrassment.
"I just think these two are a bit too flashy; I've never seen anything like this before."
Wu Hen sat back down, his expression unreadable, his fingertips unconsciously tracing the cold glass.
"It's really quite sexy."
He Lin, unsuspecting, sat back down, smiling and shaking his head.
"There are plenty of rich eccentrics in this utopia."
However, he had just finished speaking.
On the DJ stage downstairs, those two figures wearing masks of Pigsy and Sandy...
As if sensing something, they abruptly stopped their revelry.
They all turned their heads in unison, their gazes piercing through the noisy crowd.
Through the swaying lights, they pinpointed Lin Qiye and Wu Hen in the private room on the second floor with unparalleled precision.
The noise of the entire bar seemed to be silenced at that moment.
Four pairs of eyes collided in mid-air.
The next second, the person wearing the Pigsy mask slowly raised the wine bottle in their hand.
He made a gesture of respect towards Lin Qiye and Wu Hen from afar.
Beneath the mask, the curve of his lips was full of mockery and amusement.
Lin Qiye's eye twitched violently.
Wu Hen's brows finally furrowed almost imperceptibly.
He put down his wine glass and whispered something in a voice only the two of them could hear:
"It seems they've found this place."