“Did you remember everything I said?”
In a daze, Shard finally came to his senses and looked around, somewhat confused by everything before him. The last thing he remembered was helping a friend with aftercare, and the next moment, he found himself here.
This was a bedroom, definitely not one from the 21st century. The yellowish light inside wasn’t very strong; the slightly worn wooden floor still looked relatively clean, but the walls had yellowed a bit. Piled books were stacked haphazardly in the corner, looking as if they would topple over at any second. Beside the pile of books, a bookshelf held some metal pots and photo frames.
Those photos were all black and white.
Besides the oil painting on the wall, there were two metal pipes. The attaching fasteners of the pipes were rusted, and one of the thinner pipes branched off at the desk. The desk made of brown wood was cluttered with papers; the drawers on both sides were half-opened, revealing files inside.
The desk’s brass desk lamp was still lit, and the design of the heavy lamp’s bell was quite novel—
“Hmm? Not electric? A gas lamp?”
It was hard to tell if it was a gas lamp just by looking, but the pipes clinging to the walls and the wall lamps connected to the pipes suggested it wasn’t an electric light. The warm yellow light wasn’t very bright, illuminating only the desk area, yet it inexplicably provided Shard with a sense of warmth.
By that light, he saw the decorative oil painting on the wall, the black-and-white photos on the desk, and the newspaper spread out on the floor in the shadows. The words weren’t any he recognized; instead of Chinese characters, they were letters.
No matter where this place was, it was not his homeland anymore.
A rotten smell permeated the air, but it was more like the scent of a funeral home. Shard remembered this smell; after all, a moment ago, he was helping a friend who had unfortunately passed away.
“Did you remember everything I said?”
That voice resounded again, pulling Shard completely out of his daze. The young man quickly realized that someone was holding his right wrist, and it wasn’t until his consciousness fully merged with his body that he thought to look down.
He was standing beside what seemed to be a 19th-century man’s bedroom, next to a four-poster bed with curtains hanging on only three sides. The bed and its visible frame parts shimmered with metallic colors under the bedhead gas lamp.
The bed lamp was modeled like a little angel holding it up, which momentarily captivated Shard.
The person holding his hand was the man lying in the bed. This middle-aged man, presumably the owner of the bedroom, was wearing dark plaid pajamas. Except for his head and right hand, the rest of his body was covered by the quilt.
Despite his obvious Caucasian facial features, his eyes were sunken, his cheeks sagged, and his right hand gripping Shard’s wrist was frighteningly thin. He looked like someone who was about to starve to death, and Shard even believed that if he spoke a bit louder, he would have to beg the man not to die.
Right now, Shard knew nothing and needed to get some information from the man.
“So, I’ve time-traveled?”
He thought to himself, gaining a rough understanding of the current situation.
Fortunately, although the man in bed was frail, he didn’t have any spots typical of a decaying corpse. Otherwise, Shard would really be worried about his current predicament.
“Did you remember everything I said?”
The frail man in bed asked for the third time, his brown eyes deeply sunken but staring fixedly at Shard. Although Shard didn’t understand why he had suddenly time-traveled to this place, he knew it was best to play along for now, at least to understand the situation and then plan for the future.
He opened his mouth to speak, only to realize that the other party wasn’t speaking Chinese, nor any language he knew, but Shard inexplicably understood. He wanted to reply in the other’s language, but although he could understand, he couldn’t speak it.
“No way? I can understand but can’t speak?”
For a moment, his ears buzzed, and his back itched from nervousness. Not being able to speak the local language was an unforeseen and worst-case scenario.
The buzzing in his head was not just from his nerves; he realized he understood another voice in his head, a woman was speaking in whispers:
“The Sixth Epoch, General Calendar 1853, Summer, on the day of the Silver Moon’s radiance, you arrived in this dark world. You understand you need an identity, so you must inherit everything from this inexplicable body. This is the first step: prove that you can enter this world.”
“A system?”
His instinctive reaction was that this was a legendary system, but he quickly realized it definitely wasn’t.
The woman’s voice was extraordinarily elegant and calming, like reciting poetry in whispers, enchanting anyone who heard it. But the language she used was different from both Chinese and the language of the frail man in bed.
That language was older and more profound, like an ancient breeze crossing the veil of time to reach the present. The language itself was a personification of mystery; understanding its meaning, Shard saw the deepest darkness.
Though Shard comprehended this second language, merely understanding it made his head buzz, and his new body’s stomach churned with nausea.
This oppressive feeling stemmed from the extraordinary power inherent in the language itself.
“This is this world’s language! What’s in my head isn’t a system; it’s something already existing in this body!”
Shard made the judgment, his pupils slightly contracting as he feared even more from what he saw:
“A new world, this seeming Victorian Steampunk era world is one where the supernatural and mysterious exist!”
He wasn’t someone who couldn’t accept reality; with time travel already happening, the existence of the supernatural wasn’t entirely inconceivable. His immediate task was to understand his situation, answer the man’s questions, and figure out his identity.
Thus, Shard tried to convey information to the voice in his head using his own language:
“Whoever you are, listen. I want to accept everything about this body, but I have no memory of it, no grasp of its language.”
“Now, you do.”
It felt as if a brick was forcibly stuffed into his head and maliciously stirred. Shard believed it was a miracle that he didn’t pass out.
He didn’t gain the original memory of the body but was instead force-fed some knowledge about “the common language of Delarion in the Northern Kingdoms.” This knowledge just existed, like a translation device, and he didn’t immediately understand all the slang, dialects, religious cultures, idioms, or language habits.
“I apologize, sir. I’m feeling a bit unwell. Could you repeat what you want me to remember?”
Using this knowledge, he translated his Chinese into the otherworldly common language of the Northern Humans in his mind, then intentionally spoke slowly. The frail man holding Shard’s hand suddenly exerted more force, unexpectedly strong for his thin wrist:
“You’re still like this, with that brain of yours. All right, I’ll say it again.”
Apparently, the original body owner wasn’t very sharp, and Shard’s stumbling words didn’t raise suspicion.
“Shard.”
The pronunciation of the name sounded similar.
“I’m going to die. I knew three months ago that I would die, so I chose you from among the vagrants. I changed your life, gave you a new name, taught you basic literacy, and some common knowledge. After my death, you will inherit everything from me: my detective agency and all my assets. But you must do one thing for me, something very simple—”
Though his tone was weak, his deathly eyes resembled those of a dying lone wolf, staring at Shard. The terror in his gaze made the outsider, who was already unfamiliar with this world, feel some fear.
But Shard maintained steady breathing, avoiding eye contact. It wasn’t out of fear but rather from understanding the situation of the original body owner from that sentence.
Therefore, at this moment, for him to avoid eye contact out of fear fit the known character setting.
“Inherit my detective agency. No matter what you intend to do with it, you must keep it operational until September 5, 1853, three months from now. You will receive a letter then. Retrieve it and burn it; that is the cost of inheriting all my assets.”
He held Shard’s hand tightly, and even though Shard pretended to struggle slightly, he didn’t think he could break free. The man’s grip was surprisingly strong:
“This is the only request of me, Sparrow Hamilton, to leave my legacy to you, Shard Hamilton.”
