When evil gods hold a meeting in my head

Nolan held Richard's hand with his left hand and grasped the potion formula with his right.

She jogged out of the lounge, led Richard through the gallery corridor, and then expertly turned into Edmund's consultation room.

"The potion-making process may take a while."

Nolan reminded him.

She closed the heavy wooden door, instantly shutting out the outside noise and making the room very quiet. She pressed a hidden button on the medicine cabinet, and the basement door, which Richard had visited once before, swung open with a bang.

Richard followed Nolan down to the basement, where the smell of damp paper immediately hit them.

Nolan then pulled out a set of pharmaceutical mixing equipment from the wall, its surface covered in dust. Inside were distillation tubes, condenser tubes, and so on...

She kicked aside the clutter at her feet and said excitedly, "It's been so long since I've brewed potions here."

Richard tactfully began cleaning the table in the middle, while Nolan wiped the dust off the equipment.

After a long while, everything needed was cleared away! Nolan pinned the formula paper to the table and turned to Richard, saying, "Don't move here, I'll go get the herbs."

She went to the wooden cabinet and rummaged through it, picking out a large pile of herbs Richard didn't recognize. Before long, all the ingredients mentioned in the recipe were ready.

5 drops of black dead fish blood, 7 drops of splitting grass extract, 3 pieces of calming bark, 1 molting beetle...

"Give me the calming bark," Nolan said.

"it is good."

Richard gave all eight pieces of Tranquilizing Bark to Nolan, who reminded him, "Tranquilizing Bark needs to be stored in a special way; storing it carelessly like this will cause its medicinal effects to dissipate. If you don't mind, I can keep the remaining five pieces for you until you need them..."

As she spoke, she weighed the three pieces of calming bark and selected three pieces that weighed exactly 10 grams in total!

Then, she dripped five drops of Black Dead Fish blood onto the tree bark: "In this recipe, the main function of the calming bark is to suppress the fear contained in the Black Dead Fish blood... By doing this, I can allow the two ingredients to neutralize each other first."

She then picked up a small bottle of the splitting grass mixture and put it into a beaker.

The flame licked at the distillation flask, and water vapor slowly flowed out from the condenser and dripped into the beaker.

Eventually, a light brown liquid was formed.

"The extract needs to have impurities removed from the mixture before it can be used safely," Nolan said to Richard.

She seemed eager to explain the purpose of each step to Richard, as if she were teaching a newcomer, or perhaps she couldn't suppress her desire to share.

Once all the key materials were prepared and the reaction was complete, Nolan poured a bottle of pre-weighed purified water into the reactor and then added all the materials in a specific order.

In an instant, the indescribable liquid inside the reactor began to boil!

The color changed from light brown to deep black.

With a soft bubbling sound, Nolan held his breath, adjusting the flame of the alcohol lamp from time to time...

When the liquid became as thick as ink, she quickly poured it into the final refined bottle and plugged it with a stopper with vent holes.

In less than half an hour, a bottle of completely black liquid with a faint fluorescent glow lay quietly on the wooden table.

...The nineteenth potion in the Puppet Master sequence, "Fear of the Undead," has been successfully prepared!

Nolan wiped the sweat from his brow and handed the potion bottle to Richard: "If you feel your mood is right now, you can drink it. Potions become very difficult to swallow when they cool down, don't blame me for not warning you."

It sounds like traditional Chinese medicine...

Richard took the potion without hesitation and swallowed it down in one gulp while it was still warm.

It wasn't as bad as Nolan described, nor as bitter as Richard imagined; on the contrary... it was a little sweet?

Richard smiled with relief...

But the next second, a tearing pain instantly pierced his mind! This pain was comparable to having a needle stuck in his eye, or even more painful!

The pain made him unable to stand any longer, and he suddenly knelt down on the ground.

A sense of fear spread through Richard's mind, and his vision began to distort, everything in front of him was shrouded in an eerie black and red hue.

Nolan's body continued to elongate and deform, his skin turning into layers of black feathers, and his head... becoming a giant raven's head!

She opened her sharp beak to its maximum and let out a piercing screech at Richard!

"Don't come any closer! Don't come any closer!"

Richard was so frightened that he waved his hands and roared. He desperately scrambled to the corner of the wall, pressing his back against the cold wall. The cold only intensified his trembling. He wanted to close his eyes, but fear forced him to stare intently at the giant crow.

Just when he was about to be driven mad, an indescribable heat suddenly emerged from the soles of his feet.

They spread throughout the body; although shapeless, they can be felt very clearly…

Richard's consciousness was being pulled by this force! His body went limp all at once, and even his soul detached from his original body.

After a few breaths, his vision blurred, and the dimly lit basement disappeared from his sight.

Instead, there was a small alleyway with muddy pavement and a sour, fermenting smell in the air, along with the greasy smell of breakfast stalls at the alley entrance.

Richard was leaning against a wall piled with garbage, with Rosalie's dilapidated little house right in front of him: "I'm back at the rented room at 17 West Street?"

This is clearly the alley next to the rental house!

He subconsciously looked down at his body...

She wasn't wearing any clothes, and her hands were as delicate as a newborn baby's! This isn't my original body... Richard pondered.

While he was still somewhat shocked, a familiar figure walked out of the alley. He looked up, intending to cover his naked body, but when the familiar face came into view, he was immediately stunned!

The other person was actually Alice! Richard carefully examined Alice; she looked so vibrant and real, not like a hallucination. And she was wearing the off-white dress she often wore in her lifetime.

"We are very destined to meet."

Alice walked up to him and asked, "Did you mix and drink the potion according to the recipe I left you?"

Richard finally came to his senses.

He looked at Alice in front of him and slowly nodded: "That's about right."

He stared intently into Alice's eyes, trying to find a trace of emotion, but her gaze was clear yet empty, devoid of any self-awareness.

Moreover, they didn't seem to recognize him as Richard.

Alice, as if simply following a pre-programmed procedure, coldly said, "Could you do me a small favor?"

The Alice before me doesn't seem to be a real person... but rather a "remaining image" she left behind using her extraordinary powers before her death, like a pre-recorded video that can only be played at a specific time and in front of specific people.

Regardless of whether this person is Richard or not...