Chapter 1157: Chapter 126: Four Lords Leave (Part 2)
Lu Li didn’t think that solving the issue with the chef and the farm owner required his help, but Claire insisted on having him join, so he had to agree.
Claire didn’t know where the farm owner was, but she was relatively familiar with the chef—the burly cook, akin to a black bear, was busy in the lower levels of the castle, preparing food for the entire castle day and night.
The chef would only be there.
Thus, Claire’s method of infiltration emerged: she knew about the cellar where they stored food supplies. The guard there wasn’t very strict. By infiltrating the cellar and being carried into the kitchen as food supplies, they could avoid the roaming Lizard Maids and Bat Guards.
And who would be wary of food supplies lying on the chopping board?
On the eve of the operation, Lu Li entrusted the True Vision Orb to Merchant Anthony. It’s worth mentioning that upon contact, Lu Li glimpsed Claire’s silhouette curled up inside the Iris Sparrow’s body.
Claire just thought it was an odd Merchant’s Eye and didn’t notice anything unusual.
Crack—
Listening by the door for a moment, a tail pulled the doorknob open.
Claire was the first to slip out, flying to the end of the corridor, signaling Lu Li to follow.
Lu Li closed the door, rolled up the Merchant’s Eye, and silently flowed toward Claire’s direction.
In the maze-like corridors that made one lose their sense of direction, Claire led Lu Li to a side staircase. Waiting for a Lizard Maid carrying a broom to pass by the stairs, Claire flew to a chandelier on the ground floor, casting a shadow on the ceiling.
Lu Li followed along the stairs, trailing behind.
The dim light from the corridor illuminated the darkness outside. Quietly sticking to the wall corners, Lu Li and Claire ran to the middle, where a shadow emerged from the corridor’s end.
Tap—tap—
Pushing a food cart, a Lizard Maid entered the corridor, the echoing footsteps and the sound of wheels ringing as she walked through the deserted corridor.
Once the Lizard Maid left, Lu Li and Claire emerged from behind the armor on display.
"Sniff, sniff... we should be getting close to the kitchen," Claire whispered, sniffing the air.
But their destination was not there, at least not for now.
While bypassing the kitchen area, Lu Li saw Bat Guards hanging upside down from the ceiling.
There was absolutely no way to enter the kitchen without alarming the Bat Guards.
Following the familiar terrain with Claire, they gradually moved away from the kitchen, reaching a silent exhibit hall lurking in the darkness.
Only faint light streamed in from the corridor they came through and the one on the other side of the exhibit hall.
Claire landed atop Lu Li’s head as they passed between the standing exhibits. As they delved deeper, the collection gradually shifted from the Earl’s to that of the Viscount, and the exhibits deviated from human aesthetics.
At a certain moment, Lu Li stopped, quietly gazing at a head specimen housed in a display case.
"Do you know her?" Claire asked.
"Margaret, my companion from middle school."
Her head was lifelike, half fearsome and half beautiful, her closed eyes resembling someone in a deep sleep.
The appearance of this head seemed to dispel all the smooth progress they had after infiltrating the manor.
"There’s no need to feel sadness; this was a fate long destined."
Claire’s whispered voice came from overhead.
"Fate?"
Lu Li’s inquiry went unanswered. After a brief pause, he refrained from touching the display case or having Merchant Anthony collect the head, and continued on, reaching the opposite corridor.
Claire flew into the corridor, with Lu Li following, leaving the eerie and tranquil exhibit hall behind.
Reaching the end of the corridor, the spires of the Alchemical Tower stood against the pitch-black night sky, indicating they had distanced themselves from the castle’s main building, arriving at the side tower.
The garden plants were severely mutated, a thick layer of decaying flesh piled at their roots, having grown recklessly without a gardener’s care—fortunately, they still respected Lu Li.
The intense stench from the garden, the moat, and the cellar converged together—
Lu Li was thankful he hadn’t brought the Doomsday Apocalypse.
Under the side tower, where decay and death dominated, two shadows approached the source of the stench—the open, devouring dark cellar.
The shadows vanished into the cellar shortly before a stout, plump cook pushed a cart with an oil lamp into the cellar.
The wheels rolled over sticky blood plasma, bumping into severed limbs, the dim oil lamp casting limited light around, revealing the cellar packed with body remnants.
The malignancy bred here, and it would be no surprise if some repulsive existence emerged from it.
The cook walked to the edge of the light, selecting a meat chunk of suitable freshness to place on the cart.
Picking up a skeleton with juices flowing, gnawed and rotted to mere bones, the cook muttered indistinctly while tossing it into the depths of the cellar.
Behind it, a flowing shadow silently approached the cart.
Clap—
The cook turned around due to the noise, picking up the oddly fallen thigh meat chunk and placing it back onto the cart, continuing to select within the cellar.
A few minutes later, the cook dragged the cart filled with rotten meat back to the garden, leaving a trail of flesh residue and thick juice across the corridor and castle walls, reaching the castle’s exterior.
The cook tipped the cart at the edge of a low mound composed of flesh chunks, picking off scraps from the cart to stuff into her mouth, then returned to the corridor to continue transporting chunks of meat.
Seven or eight cooks were lined up beside the malodorous moat. They took chunks of meat from the mound, skinned and deboned them, cleaned them in the moat, then stuffed the leftover bones with scraps of meat into their mouths, tossing them to the suspicious shadows floating in the moat.
The processed meat pieces were placed on another much shorter meat mound—
Finally, picking up an entire breast meat chunk and throwing it onto the cart, the cook pushed the fully loaded cart back to the kitchen.
Splash—
The processed food was dumped into the filth-filled storeroom, and following the cook’s departure, the storeroom returned to its calmness.
Clap.
A piece of meat rolled, revealing Lu Li and Claire emerging.
"We’ve infiltrated the kitchen," Claire exclaimed, wings akimbo.
Lu Li, who emerged afterward, remained silent because his body now emitted the same foul stench from the cellar.
"We have two options now," Claire said, raising a wing, ignoring the smell, "sneak up to the chef, look for an opportunity to act; or, revert to human form, and eliminate everyone who sees us along the way."
The tail holding the eye orb emerged from the pile of meat, and Lu Li stated, "The third option, sneak up to the chef to take action, then deal with those who see us."
Unexpectedly, the storeroom was adjacent to the kitchen—when Lu Li, with Claire atop his head, emerged from the storeroom, he directly saw the broad, bulky back of the apron-wearing chef.
Two cooks were in an unseen corner handling ingredients, their chopping sounds echoing.
They had no obstacles before the chef.
Using the eye orb, Merchant Anthony arrived, Claire took the antidote, and donned clothes to cover her body—
The chef continued stirring the meat stew in the pot, maintaining no vigilance over the ingredients stored behind in the storeroom, much like how no one would expect meat from an opened can to leap out and attack.
Yet when the canned meat did indeed attack, the chef could only blink her bloodshot eyes.
A horrific gust of wind swept through the entirety of the kitchen in an instant, vanishing in a flash, leaving the butchered meat, formerly the chef, splattered across half of the kitchen and walls.
Four lords, down two.