Outer City, East Irons District, 121a Cork Street.

  Old Dunling had descended into night, Zeppelins gliding silently through the dark sky as always, casting massive spotlights to peer at the sleeping city below.

  Scalding steam billowed from beneath the manhole cover, and Burton stepped into the white haze, moving slowly with a cane, his face pale but otherwise composed.

  He had escaped the arriving cavalry just before their arrival, the Lower City’s labyrinthine streets saving him—his familiar evasive maneuvers indicated this was far from his first pursuit.

  This time, however, he hadn’t escaped unscathed. The thugs’ makeshift nail gun had proven effective, a finger-length nail piercing his waist amid the dense barrage—luckily a superficial wound.

  Thanks to Old Dunling’s perpetual dampness, Burton favored black clothing, its dark hue masking whether the stains were water or blood.

  After a long walk, he finally reached his doorstep: 121a Cork Street.

  A remote, newly developed area, the neighborhood offered cheap rents—still beyond a detective’s modest income, but through Boro’s introduction, he had rented a decent room here.

  Burton didn’t dare knock, instead easing the door open and slipping inside cautiously.

  On the first floor lived his landlady, Mrs. Varell, a formidable old woman who had once been a valiant sky cavalry soldier.

  She often bragged to Burton about her youthful exploits, her favorite story being how she met her husband.

  During the final days of the Glorious War, as Old Dunling descended into chaos, Mrs. Varell, as a wounded soldier, had returned to Old Dunling to recover but was forced into emergency duty during a riot.

  Burton had guessed she met some officer and fell in love, but the truth was that Mrs. Varell, as a sky cavalry, had descended from the sky with an iron cable, shot an enemy’s head off, and captured a young man who would later become her husband.

  “You married the enemy?” Burton had asked, confused at the time.

  “He was just a wayward young man. He reformed under my discipline,” she said.

  “What were you thinking? You were in battle! And you brought back a husband?”

  “Burton, you’re still young. Do you know what love at first sight is?”

  She replied with a sparkle in her aged, cloudy eyes.

  It was a rare love story: a fully armed warrior woman descending from the sky, who should have shot the hapless young man but couldn’t pull the trigger due to an absurd case of love at first sight. Like a primitive, she knocked him unconscious, and when he woke, he had two choices: marry the woman before him or be executed for treason.

  What happened in their marriage afterward, Burton never knew. He had doubted Mrs. Varell’s words, but whenever he thought of her pulling a gun over late rent, he chose to stay silent.

  Creeping upstairs, there were two doors in the living room: one belonged to Burton, the other to his roommate, an ordinary man who worked as a mechanic and often worked overtime at the factory.

  The roommate’s room was dark—another late night at work, it seemed.

  Entering his own room, Burton finally felt at ease. Hanging his clothes neatly on the rack, he carried his medical kit into the bathroom, one of the reasons he loved this place: a private bathroom, excellent.

  Warm water ran as he cleaned the wound, bare-chested. The wound was not large, but after careful cleaning, Burton began to disinfect it. Weapons made by the thugs in the Lower City were mostly not deadly, but what they carried was—filth that could kill.

  In that dirty hellhole, you never knew where a knife or sword had been the night before—perhaps in a gutter.

  The era of war had passed, but now disease was what took lives, with most deaths caused by infection after injury, and these people lacked even basic medical awareness.

  A “tetanus blade,” as Burton called it, had once been popular in the Lower City—nothing more than a rusted metal weapon, but with quack doctors everywhere, infection meant a death sentence.

  After treating the wound, Burton slowly stood up, his body heavy with exhaustion urging him to sleep.

  Inadvertently, his gaze swept over the mirror, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw grotesque, twisting black patterns reflected there.

  It was a tattoo, a black tree growing along his spine. It was eerie—staring at it, it was as if Burton himself were a human skin, with iron branches and thorns supporting the entire body, or a coiling black snake wrapping around a mortal frame.

  Eerie and pitch-black, as if the blackness led to another world.

  A tree that supported the world.

  Burton seemed to have grown used to ignoring it, sparing only a brief glance before turning away.

  “Nice tattoo.”

  A voice suddenly sounded in the room.

  Beast-like alertness cut through Burton’s nerves, murderous intent flickering in his gray-blue eyes.

  Looking over, a man wearing an elegant mask sat on the sofa, moving with casual ease as if in his own home.

  “I almost killed you.”

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  Burton’s mood was low. Recognizing the man’s identity, he extended his hand from the blind spot of the man’s vision, holding a loaded gun.

  This was one of Burton’s habits: the small room was filled with hidden weapons, so that even if someone broke in while he was indisposed, he could pull a weapon from behind a towel and blow their head off.

  “It seems you don’t like others looking at your tattoo. It’s actually quite artistic,” said Boro, watching Burton put on his coat before sitting across from him.

  “I just don’t like being stared at by a man.”

  Burton retorted mercilessly, placing the pistol aside as he looked at his employer.

  “So, what brings the honorable Butcherbird here at night?”

  Boro didn’t answer Burton’s question, instead picking up an iron box beside him. As he opened it, the aroma of tobacco wafted over.

  “I assume these markings have a purpose?”

  It was Burton’s cigarette case. Despite Burton’s obvious displeasure, Boro continued to flip through it and comment.

  “Is this… mandrake?”

  Boro asked, holding up a cigarette marked with a red stripe, smelling it with some surprise.

  “I didn’t think you’d recognize it,” said Burton, slightly taken aback— in his view, someone like Boro should be addicted to money and wine.

  “I’ve had a group of shamans from the Fertile Lands recently, muttering about gods and devils, all sorts of nonsense,” Boro continued, flipping through the cigarette case.

  “Their leader wants to make a living in the Lower City, so when he met me, he talked a lot about shamanic witchcraft, like this mandrake. They say smoking it makes the user a ‘medium,’ and then the user triggers ‘spirit sight’ to see things they shouldn’t.”

  With a playful glint in his eye, he looked at Burton.

  “How long have you been using this?”

  “None of your business, Boro,” Burton replied with rare firmness.

  “Alright, then what’s with this cigarette?”

  Boro knew Burton’s habits—most of his cigarettes were mixed with invigorating herbs, but this one was special, marked with a black line, only one in the case. It emanated an ominous feeling, as if hiding deadly poison.

  “It’s poisonous. Don’t touch it if you don’t want to die,” Burton explained, patience wearing thin.

  “Hmm… I guess this is your murder tool?”

  “Would I leave a mark on a murder tool?”

  Burton sneered at Boro, even though this benefactor had nearly shot him hours earlier.

  “That’s my cigarette. The neurotoxin will put me into a coma, and my heart will stop in a beautiful dream.”

  This was his suicide tool, but Burton spoke of it effortlessly, as if it weren’t his own life at stake.

  Boro was slightly taken aback, seemingly unprepared for this cynical man to have such a ruthless side toward himself. Seeing Boro’s expression, Burton added slowly,

  “You’ve been in the Lower City long enough to know: some things are more terrifying than death, so sometimes dying is the right choice.”

  Death is but a moment, but pain can last a lifetime.

  “Truly profound philosophy,” Boro commented after a moment of pause.

  “Has Burton Holmes ever encountered something where ‘dying would be better’?”

  Like a viper revealing its fangs, Boro sat up straight, smiling.

  In response, a dark gun muzzle was quickly raised, and Burton’s gray-blue eyes were icy cold.

  “Boro, you said it yourself: coming to Inverweg, to Old Dunling, is a new life, and a new life should leave the past behind, right?”

  “It seems you’re really angry,” Boro said casually. “I’m just curious about who this man was before he became Burton Holmes, but it seems you still don’t want to say.”

  This was not the first time such a conversation had occurred. Since Burton arrived in Old Dunling six years ago, Boro had more than once tried to dig into his past.

  Everyone who starts a new life has a past, but Burton was different. No matter how Boro investigated, he couldn’t uncover Burton’s origins, as if he had appeared out of thin air.

  “Don’t be angry. I still trust you—after all, you’re my Iron Thorn. If you still don’t want to talk, let’s change the topic.”

  Boro disregarded Burton’s offense; the two were special, an employer-employee relationship where they were often equals.

  “Tell me about today’s case progress. Thanks to you, Su Yalan Hall has started to take notice.”

  As he spoke, Boro drew an elegant revolver from his chest and pointed it at Burton, an amiable smile curving beneath his half-mask—no one knew if the final bullet was chambered.

  With personal matters done, it was time for business: to be honest, if no one could replace him, Boro truly wanted to shoot the detective before his eyes.