Ring of Fate

Chapter 707: Fragments of Destiny (asking for guaranteed monthly ticket)
Time passed minute by minute, and the reporters waiting outside the conference hall showed no impatience or dissatisfaction at all. They had experienced similar situations many times.

Finally, the heavy door of the Rose Conference Hall opened, and the Minister of Industry, Moran Avni, who was wearing a neat suit, had regular features, dark gray eyes, and gray hair, and walked out side by side with the head of the Loen Kingdom delegation.

Click, click, loud flash lights came on one after another, and Moran Avni waved to the reporters gracefully.

Lumian did not force his way to the front, but hid in the crowd, staring at Moran Avni from a distance of several meters.

Under the cover of the camera, his azure eyes quickly turned silver-black.

"Eye of Disaster"!
In Lumian's field of vision, a long river of mercury composed of illusory water droplets emerged from Moran Avni's body, and each drop of water was composed of complex symbols connected end to end.

Taking advantage of Moran Avini's brief speech announcing that the Republic of Intis and the Kingdom of Loen had reached a series of cooperation agreements in the industrial field, Lumian carefully discerned the past, present and future of the Minister of Industry, and the fragments of fate hidden in every drop of river water.

There is a lot of blur here, and the further back in time it is, the harder it is to distinguish. Lumian focused on browsing the clips from the previous two weeks.

He saw Morin Avni living in a special villa provided by the government, and saw the Minister of Industry go to a fixed cafe every week to attend meetings to discuss various things, "leading by example" in Trier's cafe political trend.

Lumian also saw Moran Avni attending salons, balls, dinners, attending operas, concerts, watching plays, art exhibitions, playing polo and poker, going hunting in the suburbs, flirting with socialites, having extramarital affairs with several women, and using his identity to facilitate the Intis Industrial Credit Bank so that the husband of one of his lovers could become the deputy general manager of the bank's southern continent branch - a position that many people dream of pursuing, decent, high-paying, and with great power. The only downside is that it requires leaving Trier and going to the southern continent for two or three years, and in the early stages it is impossible to bring your spouse and children with you.

This fits perfectly with Lumian's stereotype of Trier's upper-class people.

In a quick review, Lumian skipped over the more obscure parts and found two fragments of fate that were worth noting:
One was when Moran Avni was reading a document alone in his study. He suddenly wrote a note and then reached his hand into the mirror beside him. His hand seemed to have no substance. It completely passed through the glass and put the note in.

The other is that Moran Avni seemed to have a brief contact with a lost person while hunting in the Silogne Forest. What attracted Lumian's attention was that this fragment of fate was filled with a white, thin mist, making it appear blurry.

This is somewhat different from the ambiguity of most other fate fragments.

The first fate fragment confirmed Moran Avni's identity as the "Man in the Mirror" from another perspective. You know, among the twenty-two "Paths of God", the "witches" who are most proficient in mirror magic cannot transmit information and objects through mirrors before becoming demigods of Sequence 4. And if Moran Avni is a "witch" at the demigod level, he cannot exist as a male.

Lumian could only think of two possibilities for this situation:

1. The only one who is better at using mirrors than the "witches" and more special in the field of mirror magic is the "Man in the Mirror"!
Second, Moran Avini was originally a "witch" at the demigod level, and later took the "Hunter" potion of a higher sequence and successfully transformed into a man. This means that the Minister of Industry is at least a Sequence 3 Saint, and may even be an angel.

Combining the intelligence previously collected by Franca and others, the information provided by "007" and the fact that Moran Avini never showed any "hunter"-related characteristics in a few clearer fragments of fate, Lumian believed that the other party was indeed the "Mirror Man" and not an ordinary "Mirror Man" without extraordinary abilities.

The second fragment of fate deserves Lumian's attention because it is relatively special and may contain some important information, but Lumian cannot decipher it yet.

He then focused his attention on the future destiny of Moran Avni, that is, the numerous tributaries of destiny.

Without any surprise, Lumian saw that one of them was dyed lightly black.

This branch of destiny with a background of mercury, like many of its peers, had a relatively clear part that "previewed" the process of Moran Avni returning to the building of the Ministry of Industry in a special carriage after the interview. The difference was that after entering the minister's office and sitting for a long time, Moran Avni took the initiative to walk into the full-length mirror placed near the coat rack and disappeared.

Lumian could not see the future beyond that.

He could only use what he had observed so far to infer that if Moran Avni walked into the mirror world before noon today, he would encounter a life-threatening disaster.

But the probability of Moran Avni doing so is low. Among so many tributaries of fate, only this one represents this possibility.

Of course, if Lumian was not afraid of being exposed now, he could indeed mobilize nearly half of his spiritual power and use the ability of "driving fate" to force Moran Avini's future into that branch of fate, but this would be meaningless:
Moran Avni's death in the mirror world will only prevent them from touching his body and completing the spiritual communication!

"The 'Black Witch' should also be able to enter the mirror world, but if she communicates with us, we won't be able to obtain the corresponding information. Even if Franca has completely gained her trust, there are some things that should not be known that will not be told to her unless it reaches a certain sequence..." Seeing that Moran Avini was about to end the interview and his bodyguards began to squeeze out of the reporters, Lumian stopped using the "Eye of Disaster" and took a black-and-white photo in a very dramatic manner.

Then, he gradually withdrew from the ranks of reporters, went to the public bathroom, stuffed the camera into the "traveler's bag", put on the "lie", changed back to the appearance of Charles Dubois, and then entered the annex restaurant of the Champs Elysees Hotel as a guest.

Franca was waiting for him here.

As he followed the waiter to the reserved seat, Lumian saw a man and a woman drinking coffee.

The woman had black hair and brown eyes, and was beautiful with a slightly exaggerated temperament, which could be seen from her clothes. The man looked ordinary, wearing a double-breasted flannel jacket, chicken-claw trousers, buttoned leather boots, and a soft fur top hat, which has been the favorite outfit of Trier's bankers and financiers in recent years.

Lumian noticed the man and woman not because of their wealth, but because he knew the beautiful lady with some foreign features.

Of course, the other party didn't know him, he just saw her photo in "Ghost Face" magazine:
She was Perle, a theatre actress from Ruen and a socialite from Trier.

Duval, the inventor of Duval broth and owner of a famous restaurant, once spent a lot of money on her and even attempted suicide because of her, but failed.

At this time, Perle and the middle-aged man who seemed to be a banker had not started eating yet, but were just drinking coffee.

The middle-aged man took the empty coffee cup from Perle and pointed at the remaining coffee grounds. He was explaining something, but the socialite was listening very attentively.

Lumian relied on his excellent senses and briefly listened as he passed by. He soon realized that the middle-aged man who looked like a banker was playing divination with coffee grounds.

This is a divination method that is quite popular in upper class society and is closer to a game.

"The coffee grounds you left behind are in a round shape, which means you may have encountered love recently..."

Hearing the middle-aged man's words, Lumian couldn't help but mutter inwardly:
"Do you want to say in the end that I am the love you will ever meet..."

If it were another woman, even if she knew what the man really wanted to express, she would be secretly surprised that her divination results pointed to signs of love, and think that this might indeed be the guidance of fate - the various states naturally formed by leftover coffee grounds have corresponding revelations of fate, and this is recognized by everyone, and there is no possibility of tampering with the words.

But considering that Perle is a senior socialite with a bold style, Lumian has reason to believe that she took the initiative to drink coffee in a certain way so that the remaining coffee grounds would be round!
After walking a distance, Lumian saw Franca.

This "Witch of Joy" was dressed very ladylike today, very suitable for such an occasion, and Lumian almost couldn't recognize her.

Of course, Franka still didn't wear a real long skirt, but instead wore a pants skirt.

Looking at Franca, whose hair was no longer in a ponytail but was elegantly tied up, Lumian chuckled and said:

"Janna did your hair?"

"Yes!" Instead of getting angry, Franca was complacent.

Before the two had time to exchange their observations, a nearby waiter came over and handed them two identical menus.

"The lunch set costs 7 Felgin. If we order a la carte, plus the decent red wine, it will cost at least 50 Felgin for the two of us." Franka lowered her voice and said to Lumian in Ancient Feysac, "In the market area, this amount can feed your godson."

She thought the restaurant at the Champs Elysees Hotel was expensive, but she was also interested in trying it.

"Any recommendations?" Franka asked the waiter in Intis.

The male waiter had been stealing glances at Franka, and after hearing the question, he said enthusiastically:
“Would you like to try some filt fish?

"In Trier, except for some private banquets, we are the only place where you can eat Fürth fish."

“Is there anything special about it?” Lumian asked with a little curiosity.

The waiter looked at Franca and said:

"The body of the Fürth fish looks half-burnt. It can only be found in a certain section of the Trier underground river. It is said that a long time ago, it was normal. One day, it was caught by a man named Fürth, who set up an oil pan next to the underground river and prepared to fry it for food. Halfway through frying, the fish actually found an opportunity, jumped out of the oil pan, jumped back into the river, and lived on until it gave birth to many offspring, and all of its offspring were half-burnt.

"The skin of this fish has a burnt and oily texture, and the meat inside is very tender..."

Trier's underground river...half-burnt...alive...Lumian extracted the key words and suddenly wondered if this was caused by the leakage of the "Hunter" power of Trier in the Fourth Epoch.

He smiled and said to Franca:
"Shall we each have one?"

"Okay." Franca wanted to try it anyway.

PS: Please give me a guaranteed monthly ticket~
(End of this chapter)