Has the knight lady who married into the countryside fallen into depravity today?

After resting for a morning, Klein felt he was in good shape.

The afternoon experiment went much more smoothly than expected.

The improvements to several magic circles have been validated, and the potion's sedimentation speed is nearly half as fast as expected.

Looking at the perfectly colored liquid in the test tube, Klein couldn't help but give himself a mental thumbs up.

Perhaps it was because Ophelia was watching from the side...

He turned his head to look at the female knight sitting on the other side of the worktable.

She was quietly flipping through a basic alchemy book, her long golden hair gleaming softly in the candlelight, her slender fingers gently caressing the edges of the pages.

Sunlight streamed in through the window, casting a pale golden halo over her.

The scene was strangely pleasing to the eye.

Next time, I'll include this condition in the experimental procedure as well—"The experiment must be conducted with a beautiful woman present."

Klein thought to himself mischievously, a slight smile creeping onto his lips.

He wrote down the last few data points in his notebook, carefully noting parameters such as time, temperature, and magic concentration.

When I closed the book, the sky outside the window had completely darkened, with only the last faint crimson glow remaining on the horizon.

Dinner was brought by Martha.

As she carried the tray in, she was still grumbling about how the new oven in the kitchen was hard to control, saying that the bread she baked was always burnt on one side and raw on the other, forcing her to bake a whole batch again.

Klein casually replied that the new furnace needed to be broken in and would be fine in a few days.

Martha left satisfied, reminding him before she left to eat it while it was hot, so it wouldn't get cold like last time.

Klein slowly finished eating after she left.

Tonight's dinner is stewed lamb with rye bread and a small dish of pickled olives.

The lamb was stewed until very tender, and the spices were just right. Although the bread didn't look very appealing, it tasted quite good.

Klein ate while flipping through his afternoon's experimental records, occasionally tapping the paper with his fork as if emphasizing a key point.

He didn't rush to sleep after finishing his meal.

Klein organized today's experimental records and filed them according to date.

This is a habit he has developed over many years—any experimental data must be organized in a timely manner, otherwise he will forget the original thought process after a few days.

The candlelight cast flickering shadows on the parchment, the ink not yet completely dry, emitting a faint scent of pine resin.

He blew on the paper, carefully folded it, and tied it with a red ribbon.

Just as I was about to put the notebook back on the bookshelf, there was a knock on the door.

Her voice was very soft, with a hint of probing, as if she was afraid of disturbing him.

"Please come in," Klein said, putting down his notebook.

The door was pushed open, and Ophelia stood in the doorway.

She was still wearing that light gold dress, the hem of which shimmered softly in the candlelight.

Her long, golden hair was neatly combed and tied back with a dark blue ribbon, revealing her fair forehead and slender neck.

But Klein noticed that her fingers were nervously gripping the hem of her skirt, her knuckles turning slightly white.

The young lady knight is nervous again.

Klein put down his notebook and gestured for her to come in.

"Have a seat." He gestured to the bedside, trying to keep his tone relaxed. "Is there something you need?"

Ophelia came in and sat down on the edge of the bed.

She sat very upright, with her hands on her knees and her back ramrod straight, as if she were undergoing some kind of trial.

But in those golden eyes flickered an emotion that Klein couldn't quite understand—like determination, or perhaps unease.

Klein pulled up a chair and sat down opposite her.

The candlelight shone on Ophelia's face, clearly outlining her features.

The candlelight was reflected in her golden pupils, the light and shadow flickering in her pupils like two leaping golden flames.

The room was unusually quiet.

Occasionally, the chirping of night birds drifted in from outside the window, and the wind rustled through the treetops.

Klein didn't urge her, but waited quietly.

He could tell that Ophelia had something to say, and it was something important—at times like these, giving her enough time was more effective than urging her.

"Still thinking about what happened during the day?" Klein finally broke the silence.

Ophelia looked up at him, then looked down again.

She shook her head, her golden hair swaying gently with the movement.

Klein was a little surprised.

Although Ophelia was somewhat stubborn, once she had made up her mind, she wouldn't dwell on it anymore.

This is the knight's characteristic—once he sets his mind on a direction, he never looks back.

So she's sitting here for something else.

"I think..." Ophelia paused, her voice much lower than usual, carrying a softness that Klein had never heard before but could sense, "Since you're willing to stand with me... and treat me as your wife, then I should let you see the real me."

Klein blinked.

This is said in a somewhat intimate way, with a kind of frankness that only comes with a close relationship.

However, Ophelia's expression was very serious at this moment, as if she was about to give some important last words.

Her fingers traced lines on the hem of her skirt, leaving shallow creases.

Ophelia raised her left hand.

That hand was long and slender, with distinct knuckles.

His skin was very white, almost translucent in the candlelight, making his bone structure stand out exceptionally clearly. There were several shallow scars on the back of his hands, like marks left by some sharp weapon.

Klein stared at the hand, but before he could ask anything, he saw Ophelia pull out a small dagger from somewhere with her right hand.

The blade was very thin, reflecting a cold, sharp light in the candlelight.

It was a finely crafted dagger, with several small gems inlaid on the hilt, but the blade was completely undecorated.

She gripped the dagger, the tip pointing at the palm of her left hand.

The movements were steady, without the slightest hesitation.

"Wait—" Klein stood up abruptly, the chair legs scraping against the floor with a screeching sound.

But it was too late.

The blade has already slashed down.

Very light, very fast.

The skin cracked open, and blood gushed out.

Klein's words caught in his throat, and he swallowed the rest of his sentence back down.

The liquid that flowed out was not red.

It's blue.

It was a deep blue, like the darkest part of the deep sea.

Blood seeped from the wound, slowly flowing down her pale wrist, gleaming eerily, almost fluorescently, in the candlelight.

That blue wasn't an ordinary blue; it had a supernatural quality, like liquefied moonlight or molten sapphire.

Klein was stunned.

He had seen many strange things—mutated creatures from alchemical experiments, materials contaminated by magic, and even monster specimens described in certain forbidden texts.

But he has never seen a human bleed blue blood.

No, it should be said that this color of blood flows from creatures that can still maintain human form and reason.

Only the faint crackling of the candlelight remained in the room.

Ophelia remained in that position, her left hand raised, blood dripping down her wrist and onto the hem of her skirt, leaving a small blue stain.

The blood seemed to have a life of its own, slowly spreading across the light gold fabric, forming eerie patterns.

She looked up at Klein.

Her golden pupils were calm, as still as a stagnant pool. But the knuckles of her fingers gripping the dagger were slightly white, betraying the tension within her.

Klein instinctively reached out to check her wound.

"Don't touch it." Ophelia quickly withdrew her hand.

She suddenly chuckled softly and made a lighthearted joke: "Like a little kid, I wonder if there's any danger."

She looked completely indifferent, as if she hadn't been the one who had just slashed her own palm.

But the phrase "I don't know if there's any danger" clearly refers to her own blood—even she herself isn't sure if this blue blood will harm others.

Klein's hand froze in mid-air, and it took him a second to realize how reckless he had been.

As an alchemist, he should know that any unknown supernatural substance could be deadly.

And he had actually tried to touch it with his bare hands—in a normal experiment, he would have been severely reprimanded.

"This is..." He heard his own voice was dry, as if his throat was filled with sand. "What happened?"

Ophelia looked down at her left hand, where the wound was still slowly bleeding.

The blue blood, under the candlelight, resembled some kind of translucent gemstone liquid, gleaming with a luster that seemed otherworldly.

They flowed down the wrist, leaving glowing marks on the skin, like some kind of eerie tattoo.

"When I was on the West Coast," she said, her voice soft but each word eerily clear, "I encountered... the siren god."

Klein's breath hitched.

Because of his alchemy, he came into contact with many forbidden books and dark magic, and as a result, he was often spied on.

Most of those voyeurisms are vague and indirect—in dreams, in hallucinations, in certain magical rituals.

But those were all contacts separated by a barrier, like looking at a monster through glass.

Ophelia's words, her tone, and her eyes at that moment—they didn't seem like indirect contact.

I saw it with my own eyes.

We've met face-to-face.

"I swung my sword at Him."

Ophelia spoke calmly, as if recounting what she had eaten that day and how the weather was.

Klein's mind raced for a while before he could process what he had just heard.

He had seen many alchemists targeted by evil gods for coming into contact with forbidden materials—most of them went mad in the end, and the few who survived spent their lives hiding in the churches of the true gods, praying for more than ten hours a day, for fear that those evil gods would come knocking on their door again.

Ophelia was not passively touched.

She didn't accidentally see anything she shouldn't have.

She took the initiative.

She rushed to the god with her sword and stabbed him.

Even more absurdly, she is still sitting here perfectly fine, and apart from the blue blood flowing from her left hand, she looks no different from an ordinary person.

She wasn't insane, she hadn't turned into some kind of twisted monster, and she could even maintain her sanity and talk to him.

Klein felt he was a little out of sync with the knight lady's train of thought.

Or rather, he began to doubt whether there was something wrong with his understanding of the word "normal".

He looked at Ophelia's left hand; blood was still flowing down, and it had already smeared a small patch on the hem of her skirt.

The blue stood out against the light gold fabric, like some kind of glowing seaweed, or like those eerily fluorescent jellyfish in the deep sea.

Did you hurt Him?

Klein heard himself ask the question.

His voice carried an almost absurd confirmation—as casually as if he were asking, "Have you eaten today?"

But he knew that this problem was anything but ordinary.

A god was harmed.

Even if it's an evil god, even if it's just a scratch—that's enough to leave any normal person speechless with shock.

Ophelia looked up, her golden eyes reflecting the candlelight.

"It should be," she said, her tone even carrying a hint of uncertainty, "otherwise the siren wouldn't have retreated."

She spoke of it so casually, as if she had merely chased away a flock of crows that were disturbing the wheat field, or shooed away a few rats that were stealing grain.

Klein took a deep breath, leaned back in his chair, and tried to clear his mind.

He had heard about the battle on the west coast—he had heard about it throughout the empire.

The sirens launched a massive invasion, and the several elite armies dispatched by the empire were almost completely wiped out.

Those armies were filled with the empire's elite warriors, each of whom had undergone rigorous training and was equipped with the best weapons.

But they were like paper in front of the sirens, torn apart, swallowed up, and dragged into the sea in groups.

In the end, it was Ophelia alone who managed to push those monsters back into the sea.

"So your left hand..." Klein looked at the still-bleeding wound, the blue blood still slowly seeping out, "was it contaminated at that time?"

Ophelia nodded.

"When the sword slashed in, His blood splattered onto my hand," she said, raising her left hand to examine it closely in the candlelight, as if looking at a strange object. "It can't be washed off. Nothing can wash it off. Holy water, purification magic, even the blessing of the true god—nothing works."

She spoke calmly, even with a hint of helplessness, as if she were talking about an indelible stain on her clothes or a piece of chewing gum stuck to the sole of her shoe.

But Klein knew that things were far more complicated than she made them out to be.

He stared at the blue blood, his mind already conjuring up various possibilities.

The blood pollution of evil gods, the erosion of divinity, the corruption of the spirit, the mutation of the body—any one of these is deadly enough.

At best, it can cause lifelong disability; at worst, it can turn one into some kind of indescribable monster.

But Ophelia didn't seem to have gone mad, nor had she turned into a monster.

She can still wield a sword, still fight, and even sit here and talk to him calmly.

Her thinking was clear and her logic was normal. Apart from the abnormal color of the blood on her left hand, she looked no different from an ordinary person.

This is abnormal in itself.

This is very abnormal.

"Is it really okay for me to tell you this?" Klein suddenly asked.

Ophelia looked up at him.

The candlelight cast a flickering shadow on her face, making her expression appear somewhat indistinct.

But those golden pupils were very clear, reflecting Klein's image.

"Because..." she paused, her voice very soft, "we are... husband and wife."

The room was silent for a few seconds.

Only the candlelight was burning gently, making a faint crackling sound.

Klein looked at Ophelia and suddenly smiled.

"Thank you for trusting me," he said earnestly.

Ophelia was taken aback, seemingly not expecting him to say that.

She opened her mouth as if to say something, but in the end, she said nothing.