Rivers of the Night - Chapter 702

Capítulo 702: Bigger Fish

Half of Theron’s face seemed to have become black fog whistling in the wind. He stood there as though peeking out from the fog, his eyes the only parts of his body that looked as though they had any real substance at all.

Right this moment, the pavilion was very quiet, having closed down for the night. Had Theron seen this previously, he would have already found it to be very odd.

This wasn’t the mortal world. Cultivators were a dime a dozen in this city, and the average strength seemed to all be around the Gold Mancy Realm, with at least 30% of the population being in the Cloud Mancy Realm.

While Dome of Heaven experts were still the top 1% of this city, in one of tens of millions in population like this one, that was still a substantial number of people.

But even if there had only been a few dozen Dome of Heaven experts to begin with, you didn’t need to be a Dome of Heaven expert to stay up for several days at a time.

Back when Theron was a Bronze Mancer, he was already able to skip nights of rest without harming his focus. By the time he was a Silver Mancer, staying up in batches of three or four days was hardly an issue either.

Now that his soul was at the Cloud Mancy Realm, he could stay awake for weeks at a time without the slightest issue.

While not everyone had the equivalent of a Dome of Heaven expert’s soul, Theron would say the average person in this city could stay up for stretches of three days without a problem. So… for such an important trading hub to be closed just because the sun went down and the moon cycled up was…

Ridiculous.

It was the sort of openly accepted fact in a city one grew up with that no one would ever think twice about, but the moment it was scrutinized just the tiniest bit, countless holes would crop up one by one.

The best sort of secret was the open one everyone knew about, and yet was too distracted by the mundaneness of it all to internalize the gravity.

It seemed that he should have spent more time exploring at night. If he had, he wouldn’t have needed the Angel Doctrine to spot the inconsistencies.

Theron’s eyes flashed, and countless sigils danced before him like twirling, malformed tadpoles in the air.

The more he looked at them, the more beautiful he was beginning to feel they were. It was like the world was constantly whispering its secrets to him.

He already wasn’t very good at turning his mind off, and it felt like in this state, he was constantly deducing and comprehending things. At the back of his mind, bits and pieces of things he didn’t understand from his Spells were also coming together in silence.

Theron didn’t realize it just yet, but the Angel Doctrine and Demon Doctrines weren’t just going to help him grasp formations with greater ease…

They might also make him a better cultivator by extension.

Everything in the world of mages was connected.

Theron nodded to himself. As expected.

There was no need to do anything. Theron pulled out a pendant and tied it to his waist. Then he walked forward as though nothing at all had happened.

He slipped through the detection mechanisms like they weren’t there.

As he expected, the identifying matrix of the assassins was hidden within their pendants. It seemed it was multi-purpose, and equally as foolish.

Maybe the female assassin had just been too overly confident, and maybe that confidence came from the fact she had been in her home base, but carrying around something like that on her waist was just asking to get it stolen.

The problem was obvious, though. She knew the pendant was stolen, so why was Theron so confidently walking into the front door like he didn’t know he might be immediately caught?

That was because Theron knew how assassination guilds worked. If he was correct, that female assassin would rather die than reveal she had lost her pendant, because that would likewise mean her own death.

Theron faced the tall double doors of the pavilion. But rather than taking them, he looked to the side and took a step. As though activating a mysterious mechanism, he vanished.

When he appeared again, he found himself in the halls of the pavilion. They seemed so very familiar, and yet so unfamiliar at the same time.

Theron’s gaze flickered as he remembered the inner workings of the pavilion.

‘Clever.’

The pavilion was only much of a pavilion on the ground level. Above stacked columns was a tower that stretched into the skies.

If Theron was correct, that one tower was actually two, fit into one another like nesting dolls. However, from the inside of either one, it didn’t feel like that at all.

This wasn’t an application of Space Mancy, but instead the perfect engineering feat. If Mana was used, powerhouses would sense it. But because they just cleverly architectured the halls, walls, and stairways to twist into one another, you couldn’t feel the existence of a completely separate building right on the other side of the wall from you.

And because it was a place where important items were stored and kept safe, you could easily justify Third Eye warding formations that could block your other senses from feeling the changes.

However, this was a high-risk, high-reward sort of situation.

Because Theron had been to every floor of the main pavilion… he could easily reverse-engineer the complete layout of the assassin’s guild as well.

He confidently stepped forward.

‘How long will it take her, I wonder?’

Theron highly doubted the female assassin was waiting on him to make such a bold move. In fact, she would probably feel like loitering around the assassination guild would get her exposed.

If he was correct, her pendant was also the special key she would need to enter her own personal living quarters, and if she spent too long here, it would be exposed that she didn’t have that key.

So right about now… she was probably slipping into the King Inn, a place that the Merchant King was probably present in by now…

A Merchant King that was probably very angry.

Why should he have to lift a finger to deal with this problem? He had bigger fish to fry.