Thinking of this, Edward teleported away to a nearby deserted island. He threw the box onto the sandy beach and cast several Fragmentation Curses at it in succession.
Unfortunately, none of them worked.
He wasn't surprised. If the box were that easy to destroy, it would have already been obliterated during the previous battle.
Raising a brow, Edward attempted several consecutive Thefts aimed at whatever was inside—and again, achieved nothing.
After tossing a gold coin to confirm the box posed no immediate danger, he shifted into his spiritual body and approached cautiously. Then he activated [Door Opening], attempting to phase through the box and extract whatever was inside.
As expected, he failed again.
The sensation was eerily familiar—just like the time he'd faced that door in Amon's ruins. It felt specifically designed to counter the Door Pathway or spirit bodies altogether—
Realisation dawned on him.
Perhaps that ruin from before had originally belonged to the Abraham family, and Amon had merely taken it over. After all, He always enjoyed using Jacob's family relics to go fishing.
With that thought, Edward extended an invisible hand to lift the box and began circling it. Before long, he spotted the Abraham family crest engraved on one side—and right beside it, a keyhole.
"…"
After a moment of silence, Edward once again drew out his bronze Master Key. Gripping it with his invisible hand, he inserted it into the keyhole and gently turned it.
Click.
With the crisp sound of gears turning, the lock…opened.
It really opened.
Creak, creak, creak—
A mechanical whir accompanied the movement as all six faces of the box began shrinking inward, folding and compressing, until they transformed into six tiny, illusory doors that faded away entirely—taking the Master Key with them.
Everything stored inside tumbled out onto the ground at once: marbles, gloves, paintings, and all manner of strange, damaged objects, alongside more than ten Beyonder characteristics glowing faintly with a scarlet hue, as well as twenty or thirty kinds of extraordinary materials—
Among them were, unmistakably, the auxiliary ingredients required for advancing to Sequence 3, Wanderer of the Door Pathway!
But what drew Edward's attention most was a miniature Starlight Door, continuously radiating intense pollution—
It was the Beyonder characteristic of a Sequence 3 Wanderer!
For a thousand years, the Abraham family had known they could not ascend to demigod or higher ranks, yet they never stopped collecting relevant materials—always hoping that if the "curse" were ever lifted, they could immediately mass-produce a group of high-sequence Beyonders.
It didn't take Edward long to realise why most of the items here were damaged. They must have been Sealed Artifacts once, all eroded and destroyed by pollution, which in turn caused their contaminated Beyonder characteristics to separate out.
One Sequence 4, three Sequence 5s, five Sequence 6s, and over a dozen Sequence 7 to 9 characteristics—A plentiful haul indeed.
Unfortunately, these items were all too contaminated; anyone else who tried to use them would die instantly. He could only keep them for himself.
Of course, none of that mattered compared to what truly did—the Wanderer's characteristic and the three corresponding materials among the pile. Together, they perfectly completed the formula for the Wanderer potion.
With this…I can finally advance to Sequence 3!
Just yesterday, he'd been fretting about the missing materials, and today, all at once, he had everything—both primary and auxiliary ingredients.
Still, though he was thrilled, Edward didn't relax. He couldn't bring himself to believe that the Russian Priest's elaborate performance had simply been to deliver him gifts. Especially when all this crimson taint around him clearly reeked of the Fallen Mother Goddess.
Carefully, he used an invisible hand to pick up the miniature Starlight Door, then placed it inside a tin box and immediately tossed it into his spatial pocket.
Almost at that exact moment, a pall of grayish-white fog began to rise from all directions.
Edward's heart tensed. He looked around warily—and through the thinning mist, faint outlines of streets and buildings began to appear.
Ding-Ding-Ding…
A crisp bell chime rang out.
From the distant end of a hazy long street, a figure slowly approached. He wore a straw hat, with a towel draped around his neck, and leaned forward as he pulled a small, black two-rickshaw. The rickshaw had a canopy to shield from sun and rain.
Seated inside was a lady in a waist-fitted long dress, holding a round fan painted with flowers and birds.
The man's face was rotted to the bone, pale-yellow pus seeping down his cheek. The lady's skin was grotesquely swollen and glossy, mottled with dark greenish-blue patches.
Ding!
With another sharp chime, a blue two-car train burst out of the boundless grey fog.Through the glass windows, Edward could clearly see the "passengers"—each of them was nothing but a head, every head trailing a blood-soaked spinal cord that swayed as the train thundered past.
Edward's pupils contracted sharply.
Fragments of memory surged through his mind as he suddenly recalled this exact scene from the original story—this was the bizarre world hidden behind Bansy's ancient wooden door, a place whose reality and illusion were impossible to distinguish.
A city that looked like old Shanghai—the rumoured City of Calamity, one of the Nine Sefirots.
"How did I end up here…?"
Could it be the Wanderer's Beyonder characteristic?!
Realisation struck him all at once:
So the real reason "Mr. Door" had sent the Abraham descendants to Bansy…was for the City of Calamity?!
But even if He wanted a Sefirot, shouldn't His goal have been the Sefirah Castle?
"Oh… right," Edward muttered, suddenly remembering. "Mr. Door's behaviour was likely influenced by the Mother Goddess of Depravity. Which means the one truly seeking the City of Calamity…is Her."
Of course, Her ultimate goal wasn't the Sefirot itself—it was the Western Continent that was connected to it.
Or, more precisely—the Brood Hive.
So, She must have intended to use the Door Pathway's powers—using the aura of the leaking City of Calamity from Bansy as a bridge—to open a "path" into the Western Continent, infiltrate it, and obtain the Brood Hive…
"Wait a minute…doesn't that sound eerily similar to how I travel between the Harry Potter world and the Lord of the Mysteries world?" he thought wryly.
But hold on—the Western Continent's seal couldn't be broken until a new Lord of Mysteries was born…
"Oh."
"So that's why I'm here."
For a moment, Edward's mind filled with a thousand unspoken curses. He didn't even know where to begin venting them.
"No, wait," he quickly refuted his own theory. "I was sent here by Adam. There's no way He'd cooperate with the Fallen Mother Goddess to unseal the Western Continent and let Her get the Brood Hive to destroy the world."
"Besides, I'm still miles away from ascending to the Lord of Mysteries. I don't even have the ability to touch the Western Continent's seal yet."
"Whatever's going on—it's safer to get the hell out of here!"
With a thought, he activated [Hearth]. Instantly, without delay, he appeared deep within the Spirit World—at Calderón City.
But before he could even take a proper look around, grayish-white mist surged up once more, engulfing everything—
—and in the next instant, he was back in that strange, old city again.
"What the hell?!"
Edward's expression darkened. He tried [Hearth] again.
The result was identical.
The moment he reached Calderón, he was pulled straight back into "Old Shanghai."
After repeating the attempt four or five more times, a realisation dawned on him. He reached into his spatial pocket and pulled out the Wanderer's Beyonder characteristic.
"Could it be…this thing that's dragging me back here every time?"
"Then…I'll have to throw it away?"
But he hesitated.
That was the Wanderer's characteristic—the key to advancing to Sequence 3!
After all the trouble he'd gone through to get it—should he just toss it away like that?
"That's…so damn unfair."
Edward's expression flickered. Damn it, this is exactly what I hate about the three cowardly-yet-reckless pathways—scared to death, but still too unwilling to let go to act rationally.
"Wait—what if I offer the characteristic to the Sefirah Castle? There's no way Mr. Door's influence could reach there, right?"
"…But if I just start chanting the four incantations here to enter the Castle, isn't that even more dangerous?"
"…Maybe I should take a closer look first."
Zzzzt…zzzzt…
A sound of static crackled from across the street. The mist-shrouded buildings suddenly lit up with bright, colourful neon lights, displaying a few large traditional Chinese characters—something that looked like the sign of a cabaret or dance hall.
Thirty seconds later, a distorted old song began to play:
"Zzzzt… zzzzt…Night Shanghai…Night Shanghai…zzzzt…you are…a sleepless city…zzzzt...lights are bright…music sounds…singing and dancing…zzzzt…in peace…"
The melody sped up and slowed down erratically, sometimes skipping like a broken record, sometimes dragging into eerie distortion—the kind of warped audio one might hear in a horror film.
Unconsciously, Edward took a step forward.
His feet passed through the faint mist and touched solid ground with a crisp, echoing tap. He blinked in surprise. "I can walk?"
In the original novel, Gehrman Sparrow had been blocked by the fog—no matter what method he tried, he couldn't pass through.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Edward's footsteps echoed along the empty street. Occasionally, figures drifted past him—some decayed, some swollen, some little more than floating heads with bloodied spines dangling beneath them.
Each one turned to look at him as they passed—but they did nothing more than stare, before moving silently on.
"It really does feel like I've stepped right into a horror film…" he muttered.
A few minutes later—
He stopped roughly ten meters away from the dance hall. Through its wide glass doors, he saw a shapely figure standing by a microphone inside, singing that same distorted tune.
Creak…
The glass doors swung open automatically.
Before him stretched a brightly lit stage—on which stood a figure in a high-slit cheongsam…a man?
No—it had a woman's body, but its face was covered in dense stubble.
Its skin was rotted, the flesh splitting to expose bone beneath. The hands gripping the microphone stand were grotesquely swollen, dripping with thick, yellow pus. As the doors opened, its pale-grey eyes fixed directly on Edward—bringing with them a wave of pollution so strong it made his skin sting.
"Rebuke!"
Edward's eyes narrowed as he reflected the pollution back at double intensity.
"AAAHHH!!!"
The "singer" let out a piercing scream.
Its lower body swelled and exploded in an instant. Its head, still attached to its bloodied spine, was yanked upward—as if pulled out of its body—before bursting apart into a rain of blood.
Zzzzt…zzzzt…
Static returned.
The dance hall's lights went out one by one, followed by the neon signs outside. In the next moment, the entire building was swallowed by grey mist—vanishing completely.
Edward stared at the empty space, a single dry thought crossing his mind:
"…That's it?"
But as if reacting to the disturbance, the gray-white fog began to churn violently—thickening, swelling, engulfing the street and burying the surrounding buildings. In the blink of an eye, the entire "Old Shanghai" scene was drowned.
Then—
A decayed wooden door suddenly appeared right in front of Edward.
———
[Note]: Don't forget to VOTE. It keeps me motivated.