On Saturday morning, the sun made a rare appearance in Brighton.
A sliver of light squeezed through a gap in the curtains, painting a bright stripe on the floor.
Richard woke up later than usual. His brain had been overloaded from decoding yesterday, and his body needed to catch up on sleep.
He rolled over, planning to laze around a little longer.
The clatter of bowls and plates drifted up from downstairs, mixed with the sound of his sister’s voice.
Resigned, he had no choice but to get out of bed, dress, and go downstairs.
Only Evelyn was in the kitchen, an apron tied around her waist, placing bread on the grill.
"Where are Mom and Dad?"
"Dad went to the post office, to pick something up, I think. Mom’s resting in the bedroom. She was coughing for a good while last night."
Evelyn flipped the toasting bread with a deft motion.
She had been helping their mother with chores since she was little—washing dishes, scrubbing floors, toasting bread. Her hands were much more practiced than those of other girls her age.
Before—or rather, up until two weeks ago—Richard’s role in the family had been "the one who needed to be taken care of."
His health was poor, and he got sick at the drop of a hat. More than half of their mother’s attention was focused on him, so Evelyn naturally took on the rest.
She was a year younger than Richard, but sometimes her tone made her sound more like a big sister.
Lately, however, this dynamic had been subtly changing, because Richard had started to proactively help around the house.
He helped clear the dishes, woke up early to clean the ashes from the fireplace, and even learned to sew a button back on for himself the day before yesterday—though it was so crooked that their mother had to take it and redo it.
Evelyn’s reaction to this was somewhat complicated.
On one hand, she felt it was a good thing. Her brother was finally no longer a useless invalid.
On the other hand, she couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she felt as if something deep inside her had been displaced.
For the past few years, "taking care of her brother" had become a significant part of her sense of purpose within the family.
Their mother cared for her brother’s health, and she cared for his daily needs. It was a chain that had been in motion for a very long time.
Now, a link in that chain suddenly no longer needed her.
Judging by his performance at school these past few days, one could even say that link had suddenly started turning on its own—and very quickly at that.
"The toast is ready." Evelyn brought the plate over and set it on the table. "Butter it yourself."
"Okay."
"The tea is on the stove. Pour it yourself."
"I know."
Watching Richard pour his own tea, butter his toast, and cut it in half, she suddenly asked:
"Brother, have you been secretly doing something behind our backs lately?"
"My homework. I already told you."
"Liar. Who locks their homework in a drawer?"
Richard took a couple of bites of his toast and lied without batting an eye. "I lock my diary."
"Since when did you start keeping a diary?"
"Recently."
"What do you write?"
"That my sister asks more and more questions every day."
Evelyn shot him a glare, forcefully tearing her own piece of toast into small bits and popping them into her mouth one by one.
After a moment of silence, she abruptly changed the subject:
"Brother, Mom’s birthday is coming up."
"Yeah, the tenth of next month."
"You remembered the date?" The girl sounded a little surprised.
The old Richard had a memory for such dates that was close to zero. Birthdays, anniversaries, the day rent was due... he would only acknowledge them when someone else brought them up.
"My memory’s gotten a bit better lately."
Evelyn didn’t press him on that, but her eyes narrowed.
"I want to buy Mom something," she said, her words muffled as she stuffed the last piece of toast into her mouth.
"A scarf, or a pair of gloves. She’s been wearing her current pair for years; they’re so worn out there are holes in the fingertips."
"Good idea. How much would it cost?"
"The cheapest wool gloves are one shilling, and a decent pair is two."
She sounded a bit dejected when she mentioned the price. Two shillings was not a small sum for them.
"How about we split it?" Richard said.
"Where would you get the money?" Evelyn asked bluntly.
The question was a small test.
Where did someone who usually didn’t even have enough pocket money suddenly find the confidence to say, "let’s split it"?
"Warren’s been buying me lunch every day now, so I’ve saved up the money I would’ve spent. By next month, it should be about enough."
Evelyn’s expression relaxed a little. She knew about this, of course.
"Alright, it’s a deal then. We’ll buy the two-shilling pair."
"Yep, the two-shilling pair it is."
The brother and sister clinked their teacups, which contained cheap black tea mixed with milk.
After breakfast, they headed out.
Ostensibly, they were going to look for a birthday present for their mother, but in reality, they both needed to get some fresh air.
Besides going to school and helping around the house, Evelyn rarely had a chance to go out.
The streets were much more crowded than on a weekday.
Housewives in scarves carried baskets to the market, vendors with pushcarts called out, selling roasted chestnuts on street corners, and the shouts of newsboys mingled with the clatter of hooves, creating a lively clamor.
"Let’s go look at the gloves first." Evelyn walked ahead, her steps quicker than Richard’s.
The cuffs of the coat she wore were a bit too short, revealing a sliver of her pale white wrist.
Her braid swung back and forth behind her as she walked, tracing lively arcs against the gray, gloomy streetscape.
"There’s a department store branch on Grafton Street that has a sale on Saturdays."
"How do you know that?"
"A classmate told me."
The two of them turned onto Grafton Street.
The department store branch had a small storefront, with a few women’s hats and a row of gloves displayed in the glass window.
Evelyn pressed her face against the window, staring for a long time before pointing to a pair of dark brown wool gloves on the second row.
"Those ones. Two shillings."
The gloves had fine stitching, a thin fleece lining, and durable leather patches on the fingertips and palms.
Practical, not flashy, and perfect for their mother.
"When we’ve saved up enough allowance next month, we’ll come and buy them," Evelyn said, reluctantly pulling herself away from the window display.
As the two walked back along Grafton Street, they passed a small alley that branched off the main road.
A faded wooden sign hung at the entrance to the alley: "Clement Antiques"
The lettering was fancy, with a small drawing of a copper pot next to it.
Below that was a description of its services: "Rare Collectibles • Estate Appraisals • House Calls for Acquisitions"
Richard stopped in his tracks.
"Evelyn, are you interested in antiques?"
"No," she answered crisply.
"Then why don’t you look around nearby? I’m just going to pop in for two minutes."
"Brother, you’re not interested in antiques either, are you?"
"I’ve gotten a little interested recently. I want to see some of the old artifacts Mr. Hutton talked about in class in person."
Evelyn gave him a once-over, muttered, "Suit yourself," and turned to walk toward the other side of the alley’s entrance.
Richard stared at the faded wooden sign.
Ever since discovering that the Copper Pendant and the Divination Disc could provide Points, he had started consciously paying attention to places in Brighton that traded in old objects.
Last week, he went to Antique Market Street and walked from one end to the other, visiting every single one of the thirty-plus stalls.
The panel never once appeared.
The items at the open-air stalls weren’t old enough, or if they were, they didn’t have that specific kind of residue.
Most were just ordinary old copper pots, silver spoons, and grandfather clocks that had been steeped in time for decades or even centuries, but they weren’t the kind of "loaded" items he was looking for.
He had estimated the probability: an antique that had happened to be used in a Mysticism ritual, and had also happened to find its way to the common market through many hands...
Each step in that chain was a low-probability event. Strung together, it became an extremely low probability.
Moving on from screening open-air stalls to indoor antique shops was the second step in his revised strategy.
Indoor shops had broader sourcing channels, their items were generally older, and their selection was more varied.
Multiply an extremely low probability by a large enough sample size, and you’re bound to get a hit eventually.
The first two shops he had found time to visit had yielded nothing.
One sold old items from the local industrial era, the oldest being sixty or seventy years old at most;
The other specialized in porcelain from a single source.
But this shop, Clement Antiques, was a little different from the previous two. He hadn’t come here today purely on a whim.
While chatting with Warren last week, he had nonchalantly steered the conversation toward antique collecting.
Warren himself wasn’t particularly interested in such things.
But his family had been in business in Brighton for three generations, and he had heard his family mention a thing or two about the local shops and their backgrounds.
"An antique shop? There’s one in an alley off Grafton Street."
Warren had been spinning a pen in his hand at the time, casually replying:
"My dad says the old man who runs it used to be an Appraiser for some auction house in the Imperial Capital. He retired and came back to his hometown of Brighton to open a shop."
"Is business good?"
"Not good, not bad, I guess. He doesn’t really do business with walk-in customers. He mainly does estate appraisals and house calls for a few old clients."
"Anyway, my dad goes there to hang out sometimes. I think he’s bought something before, but I don’t know the details."
’An antique shop that Warren’s father would patronize.’
This piece of information had spun around in Richard’s mind a couple of times before sinking to the bottom, but it wasn’t forgotten.
An Appraiser from an Imperial Capital auction house, running a small antique shop in the Northern Industrial District.
His business didn’t rely on walk-ins, surviving on estate appraisals and house calls for old clients.
This business model indicated that Clement’s inventory came from the old collections of wealthy local families.
Although Brighton was an industrial city, industrial cities had their own logic when it came to collecting.
During the peak decades of the Imperial colonial expansion, the factory and mine owners of the Northern Industrial District were some of the wealthiest people in the country.
Among them were plenty who aspired to culture, purchasing all sorts of "exotic treasures" from Imperial Capital auction houses, colonial port markets, or even directly from expeditions to the New Continent.
Most of that generation had long since passed away, their collections having been passed down for a generation or two.
Some of their descendants knew the value of the items and continued to keep them. Many more, however, were ignorant of their value and didn’t care, selling them off in bulk to antique dealers for quick cash.
How many old artifacts must have passed through the hands of an Appraiser with a background at an Imperial Capital auction house, after operating in a city like this for so many years?
Among them, might there be a few items that ignorant descendants had cleared out from their ancestors’ studies—things whose true value they themselves did not know?
Richard felt the probability wasn’t low.
At the very least, it was worth pushing open that door.

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