He Holds a Rose from the Abyss

Maybe it was because the starlight was too gentle, Sheffield felt that his heart was also touched. When he lowered his head and just wanted to say something…

Chi Lang started singing that song again.

No matter how beautiful the words were, they gradually changed under such singing.

Finally, when Chi Lang sang “You are an angel among the devils” for the third time, Sheffield said to him, “Shut up.”

The ears finally cleared.

Chi Lang was very obedient, he didn’t sing any more, he just continued to mutter and jabber under his breath, not knowing what he was saying. Sheffield pulled him back into the dormitory in silence.

Chi Lang suddenly pointed to the ground: “Sheffield, look, there is only one shadow ah!”

Their shadows almost overlapped.

After Sheffield finally settled Chi Lang, he also laid down. But he didn’t sleep at all, he just stared at the ceiling. There was an urgent desire to prove something in his heart.

So he did not sleep all night.

When Chi Lang woke up the next day, Sheffield first said good morning in a friendly manner, and then pretended to ask casually, “You… last night…”

Chi Lang yawned. He had a headache now and replied blankly, “What happened last night? I shouldn’t have done anything since I was drunk, right?”

Sheffield could hardly hold back his smile: “You don’t remember anything?”

Chi Lang instantly sobered up: “I don’t remember… I shouldn’t have done anything… I remember when I was drunk before, my friends said I was very compliant even when I was drunk.”

Sheffield smiled: “Nothing, you just sang for a while.”

Chi Lang, who had deeply experienced his humility as a soul singer, sincerely bowed his head: “Ah, I’m sorry, I like to sing sometimes when I’m drunk…”

Sheffield interrupted him: “It’s okay.” He stood up and walked to Chi Lang with a smile on his face.

Then he reached out and poked Chi Lang in the face.

Chi Lang stiffened and heard Sheffield say, “But you’d better not get drunk in the future.”

Okay. Chi Lang thought. He always felt something was wrong with Sheffield this morning, but he couldn’t see what was wrong.

Sheffield had already reached the door and suddenly turned his head to ask him, “Do you usually like to sing to others?”

Chi Lang shook his head quickly, he wasn’t so bad as to take the initiative to embarrass himself.

“Then do you like poking people in the face?”

Chi Lang hesitated for a moment and shook his head. He felt that he should not have this hobby.

Sheffield smiled: “Very good.”

Because it was a holiday, the students in the school were almost gone, and many part-time jobs were vacated. Chi Lang found a lot of part-time jobs, such as helping Mr. XX take care of his cat, and helping Professor XX to rearrange his manuscripts. Anyway, he was doing whatever he could to make money as the first priority.

So he didn’t have time to think about what was wrong with Sheffield for a while.

He also wanted to go around Zefnar with Sheffield for a bit, but when he mentioned the idea to Sheffield—

Sheffield: “I’m going to the opera house every day, do you want to come along?”

Opera… Theater… Chi Lang pretended to think about it and decisively refused the offer. He is not very interested in this aspect of the opera, and more importantly,

Opera House tickets are very expensive QAQ.

So Chi Lang devoted almost all of his time and energy to making money. In his spare time, he went to the library to continue reading materials on this continent, and he had a fulfilling life.

Of all his part-time jobs, delivering meals to the alchemist, Luth, was one of the strangest.

Alchemist Luth spent all day in the laboratory and hardly went out, and very few people in the academy had seen his true face.

When Chi Lang went there for the first time, he couldn’t even get in the door of the experiment.

He knocked on the door, and then came a hoarse, low voice from the laboratory, “Put the meal at the door.” It sounded like an old man.

Chi Lang put the lunch at the door of the laboratory and then walked back slowly. He walked a long distance, and then looked back, the laboratory door was still not open, and there was a lonely lunch box on the ground.

Chi Lang did this for several days, leaving his meal at the door of the lab, and leaving, he felt like a prison visitor.

Until one day when he knocked on the door, he didn’t hear a response from inside. Chi Lang felt strange but put down the meal, but when he went the next day, he still didn’t hear a response from Luth.

Chi Lang couldn’t help but started to make up his mind again. For a while, countless modern news flashed in his mind, “Single man lives alone in an apartment, no one found out about his strange death.”

Chi Lang thought that this Mr. Luth didn’t go out every day. If something really happened, maybe no one would find out. He knocked on the door again, this time with a little more force, and then he tried to push the door.

The wooden door opened at once.

Chi Lang walked into Luth’s laboratory, which was beyond his expectations.

After entering the door, there was almost no place to stay, the ground was full of scattered parts and dirty garbage, and there was only a huge table and a chair in the laboratory.

This table took up almost one-half of the entire laboratory space and was filled with all kinds of items, from potions to books to scattered pens and scraps.

And on the right edge of the table, there was a person lying on his stomach.

This man’s entire body was lying on the table, concentrating on the books beneath him, propping himself up with one hand and working out something on draft paper with the other.

“Hello, may I ask…” Chi Lang tried to speak.

“Don’t disturb me, it’s the critical moment!” The man looked very irritable, he ignored Chi Lang and kept writing on the scratch paper.

After Chi Lang waited for a while, the man suddenly threw the draft paper under the table, flicked the pen, and stood on the ground from the table.

He raised his head, his face was full of wrinkles, and he was still frowning: “Are you the student who delivered the meal?”

Chi Lang found that Mr. Luth’s hair was completely white, but his hair looked sparse and dry, and there were not many hairs on the top of his head.

“Yes… you haven’t responded, I was afraid something was wrong, so I came in.”

Luth took the meal from him and waved his hand: “Okay, you can leave, and help me throw out that trash on the way out.” After that, Luth sat down in his chair again, and while eating, he took out a new stack of draft paper and wrote almost feverishly on it.

Chi Lang thought Luth ordered him too smoothly, but he picked up the scrap paper on the ground as Luth said, and prepared to throw it away as garbage. But when he saw what was on the scrap paper, he was stunned for a moment.

There was a musket drawn on the scrap paper. The musket was not long, the grip was not very curved, and its trigger also protruded from the gun surface. It looked more like an artifact rather than… a sharp weapon to kill.

Chi Lang hurriedly scanned the scrap paper. Most of it was a calculation of some data, and occasionally, a few words were mixed in, but Luth’s handwriting was so sloppy that Chi Lang didn’t really recognize the words.

“When you come over tonight, stop by and pick up my newspaper from the mailroom,” Luth told him.

Chi Lang replied “Okay”, lowered his head, and continued to pick up a few scraps of paper. When he picked it up, he smelled a very familiar smell, just like the smell of gunpowder when he used to play with firecrackers.

The laboratory was very humid, and there was always a smell of decaying wood, so when Chi Lang smelled the smell of gunpowder, it was mixed with many other smells.

Chi Lang looked at Luth again, Luth was still concentrating on his work, not the least bit distracted by Chi Lang.

After walking out of the laboratory, Chi Lang was still thinking about Luth. Luth was known as an alchemist, usually only responsible for the production of magical potions and some magical materials processing, but he was actually researching firearms.

This gave Chi Lang an inexplicable feeling of disconnection from the magical world.

He went to the mail room and found the stack of newspapers with Luth’s name on them. He saw the musket pattern on the newspaper again, but he couldn’t read the words on the newspaper.

Some newspapers were for a certain group to read, and some illusion magic was used in the newspapers to prevent people from casually peeking into the content.

Chi Lang could only send the newspaper he couldn’t read to Luth again. But he was still very interested in this newspaper about muskets. Chi Lang observed that after reading the newspaper, Luth threw it on the ground at will.

So Chi Lang picked up the newspaper together with other discarded draft papers and took them out of the lab on the pretext of throwing them away.

Chi Lang could only ask Sheffield about this kind of thing.

He handed the crumpled newspaper to Sheffield before he went to bed and asked him to translate it.

Sheffield took the paper: “This is the ‘Journal of Magical Research’, what part of it do you want to know?”

“About that, the musket.”

Sheffield repeated to him the content of the newspaper, probably about a hypothetical scenario of increasing the rate of fire of muskets. Chi Lang studied mechanical engineering in college, and also because of his interest in listening to many classes on weapons engineering, he actually understood what the theory was about at this time.

Hurray! He could actually understand the contents of the Magic Research Journal.

“Are you interested in muskets?” Sheffield asked him.

“Well,” Chi Lang was a little stunned, “How is its combat power? Compared to magic?”

“If you enchant a musket, it can hurt a magician, but the rate of fire of a musket is so slow that if a fight does occur, the magician can completely kill the wielder before the bullet is discharged.”

The rate of fire, the rate of fire of muskets… Chi Lang felt that it was necessary to understand the development level of muskets in this world. He had a vague idea in his mind, although it wasn’t clear yet.

“Chi Lang,” Sheffield called him.

Chi Lang’s movements paused, how did Sheffield…

“When you were drunk that day, you said your name was ‘Chi Lang’.”

Chi Lang began to make up reasons, “Ah… that’s because I have a relative who is from the East, so I was given an Eastern name as well.”

Sheffield’s eyes lit up and he asked, “Then can I call you Chi Lang from now on?”

“…okay.”

“That’s a better name.” Sheffield’s eyes curled into crescents.