Chapter 185 Ancient Castle and Old Acquaintance

Hao Ren watched as Igor fell straight backward, only to be caught by the butler halfway down. He couldn't help but turn to Vivian, "You left a mark and didn't tell me? If I'd known, I wouldn't have bothered bringing out the painting. Now I have to return it."

"I just remembered," Vivian pouted. "Besides, what were you planning to do with the painting? If you really want to see it, I have the real thing here."

Hao Ren looked at the portrait with regret. "Tsk... this thing looks pretty valuable. Too bad Lily poked a hole in it."

At this moment, Igor had recovered. He stared blankly at Hao Ren and his group, his gaze finally settling on Vivian. "A witch?"

Vivian nodded. Seeing Igor about to faint again, she quickly added, "Hey, don't be afraid, I'm not here to settle scores. Relax, relax, take a deep breath—your ancestor was much calmer back then."

Vivian was blatantly lying. When the ancestor of the Andre family saw her back then, he immediately knelt down...

Igor clenched the buttons on his chest with his hand, his knuckles white from the force. He seemed to be using this to confirm the reality before him and avoid fainting again. He stood trembling, his face full of unease. "Then, why are you here today?"

"To help you solve this evil spirit," Vivian waved her hand. "In fact, I never expected you to be descendants of that kid back then."

Igor looked anxious. "Not because our ancestor violated the agreement back then and..."

Vivian waved her hand in exasperation before he could finish. "Stop, stop, you've spent three hundred years turning the story into something mystical, which doesn't match the situation at all. The evil spirit's curse has nothing to do with your ancestor, and I won't inflict any punishment—in fact, I even feel a little sorry for you... Okay, there will be time to talk about these things later. The important thing now is that stone from back then. I hope you descendants haven't thrown away your ancestor's belongings. If you really lost it, I might actually get angry."

Igor waved his hands frantically. "Of course, of course... Oh, I mean, of course we haven't lost it. It's kept in the highest room in the castle. I'll take you there now."

Igor led the group towards the castle. Before entering the gate, Hao Ren looked up at the ancient building, which was three hundred years old. On the castle's gray-black exterior walls, he saw large patches of ice and snow gradually shattering and dissipating into the air, as if awakening from a nightmare. The entire castle seemed to be enveloped in a layer of crystal clear, shattered crystal dust, gradually sublimating. Under this beautiful and bizarre spectacle, the oppressive atmosphere surrounding Andre Castle was gradually fading. The wrathful spirit had left, and the strange magnetic field and spatial phenomena it had created were retreating into the depths of the earth. The slanting sunlight shone on the mottled dome of the castle, bringing a feeling of warmth and brilliance for the first time.

The servants in the castle had already received the news that the evil spirit had been defeated. They were coming out of their rooms one by one, filled with surprise and uncertainty. They felt the cold receding, and the strange atmosphere that had always lingered in the castle was also gradually dissipating. These people, who had served the Andre family for many years, were immersed in joy.

Servants could be seen walking back and forth in the castle corridors, asking each other for news. A thin figure suddenly ran down the stairs from the side and weaved through the crowd, coming to the group. It was Anna. The poor girl had finally gotten rid of the nightmare-like voice whispering in her mind. She seemed particularly invigorated, and she rushed to Igor eagerly as soon as she saw him. "Dad, the voice, the voice! The voice is gone!"

"I know, I know," Igor was also unable to contain his excitement, but he still tried to maintain his composure in front of Vivian. He held Anna's shoulders. "It's over, it's all over, good child. The evil spirit will never appear again."

Anna stared at Hao Ren and his group with wide eyes. Her face was still pale from her recent illness, which made her gaze a little frightening. "You really killed that evil spirit? But how is that possible..."

As soon as Hao Ren saw Anna, he couldn't help but remember the strange things she had mentioned, such as "Tanagrus," "high-energy aggregate state," and "sublimation." He suddenly realized that the strange knowledge in Anna's mind might be the key to unlocking the secrets of the wrathful spirit. "Anna, do you still remember what the wrathful spirit... that is, the evil spirit, told you? Tanagrus and stuff."

Anna couldn't help but shudder when she heard this word, but after the murmuring voice in her mind had faded, she was no longer affected by fear. Those strange pieces of knowledge were now just incomprehensible fragments of memory for her. "I probably... still remember some..."

Vivian looked at Anna. "Think carefully, I hope you can tell us everything the evil spirit told you, exactly as it was. Of course, not necessarily now—you can go back and rest first, and recover your energy."

Anna looked at Vivian in confusion, then curiously looked at her father. Igor quickly put on a stern face. "Do as she says, child. She is the master of the Andre family."

Anna was immediately very surprised, but she didn't ask any further questions. Igor told her to go back to her room to rest first.

"By the way, go check on Akim's condition and have Doctor Freeman confirm," Igor called out behind Anna. "He may still need to recover for a while, don't be in a hurry to unlock the chains!"

"She doesn't look so scary now," Lily muttered. "When I saw her before, I felt like she was weird from top to bottom."

Igor led Hao Ren and the others to the top floor of the castle. On this floor, there were no servants wandering around. Only four guards in black uniforms guarded the two entrances. These four guards were obviously the Andre family's most elite bodyguards. Even when the castle was shrouded in supernatural phenomena, they did not leave their posts. Igor greeted the guards, then pointed to a metal door that looked unusually heavy. "It's behind this door."

After entering a complex password and verifying iris and fingerprint scans, the vault door slowly opened, revealing a small, brightly lit room inside.

There were only a few display shelves in the room, displaying the Andre family's most precious collections: two ancient swords, some documents whose purpose could not be determined, and a gray-black, inconspicuous triangular "stone."

"Oh, that's the thing." Vivian immediately spotted the small stone in the center of the room. Igor lowered the bulletproof glass shield with an alarm system around the stone. Vivian beckoned to the stone, and it flew over on its own.

"Woah, only you from three hundred years ago would think this is a stone," Hao Ren took the "stone" and looked it over. "This is obviously some kind of man-made thing."

It was a device about the size of a cigarette box, with a texture between stone and metal. One side had several raised ribs, while the other side had some recessed pits. Hao Ren had never seen anything like this, but its regular polishing marks undoubtedly came from excellent craftsmanship.

This was the "stone" that Vivian had given to the Andre family's ancestor three hundred years ago.

"Yes, it looks man-made at a glance, but no one knows what it is, so we can only call it a stone," Vivian pouted, turning to look at Igor. "You said this brought great wealth to the Andre family? How did you do it?"

"It's gold," Igor took the small device and stroked its ribs in a specific order. "I can still demonstrate the process of opening a spatial exit, but the things inside have already been taken away by my ancestors. The Andre family's initial wealth came from this..."

As Igor spoke, a purple light suddenly projected from the front end of the small device in his hand. The light flashed in the air, actually opening a spatial rift about one meter in length. Igor placed the small device on the nearby table. He walked over and reached his hand into the spatial rift, his face filled with awe. "An incomprehensible supernatural phenomenon... I can reach my hand in and take out or store something here. It was once filled with gold—the witch's property."

Vivian stared blankly at the "little gadget" she had casually given to her human follower back then, with a look on her face as if she was about to die. "...I almost got rich back then..."

Hao Ren patted her shoulder. "Don't think too much about it. If you really had it, you probably wouldn't have been able to keep it for three days before losing it."

Vivian was about to cry. "Why didn't I study it more back then!"

Lily pointed out bluntly, "It's because it's you that you didn't study it more, and even if you really did study it more, you wouldn't have found this activation code—you're never going to get rich in this lifetime, it's the will of the Great Universe."

Vivian: "..."