There was another corpse inside the carriage. A man in his thirties, looking like a merchant with a full beard, was sitting there. A crossbow bolt of the same kind was shot into his chin, and the arrowhead pierced through his skull and was firmly nailed to the wooden board at the back of the carriage. Blood flowed down his beard and dyed his entire chest red. On the floor at the feet of the corpse lay a heavy military crossbow. It was this extremely powerful weapon that ended two lives within just a few minutes.
Seeing this heavy military crossbow, Ivan couldn't help but take a sharp breath. Thinking that this was originally a weapon meant to deal with him, he felt extremely frightened. Ivan had never expected that, in order to keep the secret, the assassin in the carriage would even turn on his own after shooting the coachman. Who on earth had planned all this? And what kind of extremely cruel person was directing things from behind the scenes? Who was this person who could make his subordinates so fearless of death? Ivan didn't dare to imagine any further. He realized that he had been far too reckless this time.
All along, Ivan had been full of longing and yearning for adventures. In his eyes, the life of an adventurer was rich and colorful, extremely exciting, and those adventure experiences were as romantic as described in novels. In fact, Ivan wholeheartedly hoped that he could become an outstanding explorer like Mr. Hyde. Mr. Hyde's experiences were an alluring and wonderful story for Ivan. Although Mr. Hyde told him that in that adventure, most of his companions had lost their lives and only he and Mr. Dauphin had survived, how could Ivan care about the number of people who died during the adventure? In his view, only the victors would draw attention, while the dead were often ignored by people. However, now Ivan finally understood that real adventures were not as romantic as he had imagined. Adventures were often accompanied by death and were a cruel game of challenging death. It was only at this moment that Ivan found that although he was already in this game, he was not yet ready to embrace death.
An extreme sense of exhaustion hit him. Ivan dragged his heavy steps and walked towards the cathedral in the distance. Behind him, more and more people gathered around the carriage. From a distance, he could hear the rapid and shrill ringing of the police carriage approaching this way. But Ivan was completely unaware of it. He walked towards the cathedral alone.
In the blink of an eye, he passed the two blocks. When he stepped onto the steps in front of the church, a hand silently stretched out from behind him. "You did a good job just now." It was Herbert's voice. Ivan didn't answer. For some reason, his throat seemed to be choked by something and he couldn't say a word.
Passing through the bustling and crowded main hall of the cathedral, Ivan followed Herbert to the place where the monks lived at the back of the church. On both sides of a corridor nearly a hundred meters long, there was a door every five or six meters. Judging from the distance between the doors, the rooms were quite small. But that was no wonder. The pleasures of the secular world were not what the monks cared about. For them, the bedroom was just a place to rest.
Going out from one side of the long corridor, there was a patio. In the middle of the patio stood a statue of the God of Light. The sunlight projected down from the high glass roof of the church just shone on the statue, making everything look solemn and solemn. There was a small door on one side of the patio. Herbert walked over and pulled the rope connected to the doorbell. After a series of pleasant ringing sounds, the observation hole on the door panel was opened. When the people inside saw that it was Herbert, they quickly removed the door bolt.
Ivan followed Herbert and walked through the small door. Behind it was a long flight of stairs sloping downward. There were probably twenty or thirty steps. At the end, there was another small door. This place was extremely secluded. Whatever was done here would not be known to anyone outside. After going down the stairs and walking through the small door, Ivan saw Mr. Hyde and Audrey sitting inside. Seeing Herbert and Ivan coming in, Mr. Hyde waved his hand and pointed to the sofa beside him. For Ivan, it was really nice to be able to sit down. For some reason, his legs had been a bit weak all along.
"Mr. Hyde, did you ask Ivan to come here?" Herbert asked.
Mr. Hyde frowned as if he remembered something and replied, "Yes, I sent Hess to pick you up."
"Hess might be in trouble." Herbert said expressionlessly.
Hearing this news, Mr. Hyde didn't seem surprised. He looked at Ivan and nodded and asked, "Ivan encountered assassins, didn't he?"
"They put on quite a show. They even used military crossbows." Herbert said.
"It seems that someone is getting more and more impatient." Mr. Hyde muttered to himself.
After a while, he turned to Audrey and asked, "Does Hess have any family?"
"A wife and a four-year-old son." Audrey replied.
"Send five thousand gold coins to his wife and have a word with Mayer. He will take care of the mother and son." Mr. Hyde instructed.
"Audrey, how's the investigation going?" Mr. Hyde asked again.
"That butler really omitted a lot of crucial information. Baron Byndit was a depraved and decadent person. The whole family was rather abnormal." Audrey sighed and said, "I'll bring the butler in. You can ask him yourself and it will be clear."
With that, Audrey got up from the sofa, opened another small door on the right side and walked out. After a while, he brought back an old man of medium height with graying hair to the hall.
Ivan took a good look at the old man. No wonder many people believed that the real Ivan Byndit had always been under the strict protection of this old man. He really did look honest and reliable. He had a square face with distinct edges and corners, gentle and kind eyes, and thick lips, giving an impression of dignity and dependability, just like the typical image of a nice old fellow.
The butler appeared extremely deferential. He stood there with a slight bow, his legs tightly pressed together.
"Tell Mr. Hyde again about the things you omitted." Audrey said after sitting back down on the seat.
"I'm damned. I'm as stupid as an ox and so muddled." The old man said as he slapped himself several times in quick succession. Then he said respectfully and cautiously, "Mr. Hyde, please forgive this old fool of mine. I really forgot about that matter completely. Oh, no, I was so used to it that I didn't think it was a big deal, so I forgot to mention it."
"Stop being so wordy." Mr. Hyde was clearly impatient.
"Yes, yes, yes. I forgot to tell you that the real young master Ivan was a scoundrel. The Byndit family was all like that, and our master was the most despicable one among them."
"You don't know that when our mistress was just tricked into marrying our master by him, she was still an innocent and pure girl like an angel. When the mistress married the master, she seemed to be only eighteen years old. Yes, exactly eighteen. At that time, the mistress was like an angel."
"But since marrying the master, the mistress was tortured beyond recognition. Do you know? For a long time, the master didn't allow the mistress to wear clothes or get out of bed. Although we couldn't see what the master and the mistress were doing in bed, the mistress's pleadings for mercy could be heard by our ears."
"Whenever the master was in the mood, he often stayed in the mistress's bedroom all day and all night without coming out. Those days were the mistress's days of suffering, with no peace from morning till night. And according to the maids, the master had a lot of tricks for tormenting women. Many of those means were beyond our imagination..."
The butler chattered on. Although he kept condemning the master's baseness and shamelessness verbally, judging from his expression, he seemed to be relishing these stories when he told them, as if he didn't really dislike them. It seemed that he was rather fond of this topic.
The butler was getting more and more excited while talking, but Ivan was completely bored listening on the side.
"Alright, stop for a moment. I want to ask you, what's the matter with that young master Ivan?" Mr. Hyde interrupted the butler.
"Ah, young master Ivan. Right, I was just about to talk about him. Our master was such a scoundrel. Young master Ivan grew up witnessing all these things. How could he not learn bad ways? You don't know that our master was very strict with us servants. When he was having fun with the mistress in the bedroom, servants were not allowed to enter the bedroom, and even the third floor where the bedroom was located was off-limits. This rule applied to both male and female servants, except for the young master."
"You would never imagine that when young master Ivan was not fully sensible yet, he often watched the master and the mistress having sexual intercourse. As time passed, the young master also became a scoundrel. Moreover, it's also said that the master even let the young master touch the mistress. Of course, this is just our speculation, but these speculations are not unfounded. You don't know that the master liked painting and was quite good at it. He painted women, all kinds of women. The mistress was the subject he painted the most. Although these paintings didn't involve sexual matters, I think they were even more despicable, much more so. There were several paintings showing the mistress and the young master together."
Hearing what the butler said, Ivan felt a bit queasy in his stomach.
"Mr. Hyde, I've brought those paintings too. It was really a close call. Fortunately, the thugs didn't check these few paintings. The ones with the real Ivan Byndit in them were at the bottom." Audrey said.
"Are you sure no one has touched them?" Mr. Hyde asked. He hadn't expected that there was still such a huge potential danger that hadn't been discovered. One could only say that they were really lucky this time.
"I'm sure. There's a thick layer of dust on the frames of the paintings, which can prove that the paintings haven't been touched. Fortunately, only the top dozen or so paintings were turned over. The killers obviously also wanted to find something valuable from the paintings, but like us, when they saw that they were all of this kind of content, they gave up further searching." Audrey said.
"Bring the paintings here and let me have a look." Mr. Hyde said.
Ivan took a look at Mr. Hyde and saw that his brows were tightly furrowed. He knew that Mr. Hyde wasn't really interested in these vulgar paintings. Mr. Hyde might have other intentions.
Audrey responded and got up from his seat again and walked out of the room. This time, it took quite a while before Audrey returned to the hall. He was dragging a small flatbed cart piled with painting frames of various sizes. After unloading the oil paintings from the small flatbed cart, Audrey dragged the empty cart and left the room again. After repeating this four times, the hall was filled with oil paintings.
Everyone got up from the sofa and walked to the pile of oil paintings. Mr. Hyde looked at them one by one, and the butler stood behind Mr. Hyde, explaining a few words from time to time. This butler had a good memory. The earliest few paintings among these were painted by that scoundrel master when he was young, and the butler could even tell who the noble lady models in the paintings were. Audrey had obviously seen them once before, so he had no reaction. Herbert had never been interested in such things. Only Ivan blushed and his blood boiled with excitement as he watched on the side.
It had to be admitted that Mr. Byndit really had extraordinary painting talent. The beautiful women in the paintings were so vivid and lifelike that they seemed like real people with flesh and blood leaping onto the canvas, and even the temperament and disposition of each person could be vividly shown. These paintings unreservedly maximized Byndit's painting talent, while also completely exposing the dissolute and decadent side of this playboy.
The paintings were full of blatant sensuality and provocation. The magnificent and exquisite silk, the white and delicate wool blanket, the fluffy and soft camel hair, and the bright and charming bouquets of flowers were all used by the painter with the skillful technique of hiding and revealing, successfully arousing people's desire to explore further. Ivan didn't know what effect such provocation had on Audrey and Mr. Hyde, but he knew very well that he could hardly resist this temptation. In fact, on several occasions, Ivan was so impulsive that he wanted to pick up an oil painting and bring it closer to take a closer look at the details that were half-hidden and hazy yet extremely alluring.
In addition to this, there were some other elements that made Ivan even more itchy. Most of those beautiful women were wearing strange accessories that he had never seen before. For example, an extremely sparse pearl necklace or an exquisite and delicate chain hung down along the slender jade legs, and a long golden needle as sharp as a wasp's sting was exposed between the buttocks. These appeared frequently in the oil paintings and almost became common accessories. Looking at these, Ivan inexplicably felt his whole body getting hot, his cheeks flushed red, and burning hot.
"Are these the ones?" Mr. Hyde asked, pointing to a stack of nine oil paintings.
"Yes, yes." The butler nodded and bowed hurriedly in response.
Ivan secretly took a look and could only see the first painting, as the ones below were covered. Different from other nude paintings of beautiful women, in addition to Miss Lisa Medin in this painting, there was also a child of about eight or nine years old beside her. Miss Lisa's slightly curly golden hair was spread out behind her, contrasting with the green grass, like the fragmented sunlight on the blue waves. Her pointed and upturned chin was slightly raised, revealing her snow-white and slender neck. A pair of crystal-clear and lively big eyes paired with a straight and delicate nose made it a masterpiece. Beside her, a child of about eight or nine years old was kneeling on one knee, with the same flowing and slightly curved hair, just of a different color. Judging from the facial features, the child looked quite similar to Miss Lisa. Presumably, it was the real Ivan Byndit, the heir of the lord who died of the plague seven years ago. In the painting, the child had one hand tightly hugging Miss Lisa's raised long leg, and the other hand was holding a long sparse pearl necklace, with the other end of the necklace disappearing between Miss Lisa's legs.
Seeing this painting, Ivan's heart suddenly beat faster, his chest felt so stuffy that it seemed about to burst, his throat was burning as if he had swallowed a red-hot charcoal, and even worse, his lower abdomen was aching unbearably. Suddenly, Ivan found that there was an obvious bulge in the front of his pants, and his face became even redder. He quickly turned his head away, not daring to look anymore. Perhaps this was really too stimulating for him.
"This was the birthday present that the master gave to young master Ivan on his eighth birthday." The butler explained on the side.
"Such a present is really unheard of. I'm afraid the real present wasn't this painting." Mr. Hyde said.
"Mr. Hyde, look, can I completely dispose of these extremely dangerous paintings?" Audrey asked.
Mr. Hyde thought for a moment, then turned to ask the butler, "Who did your master show these paintings to?"
"Yes, he showed them. Viscount Belfry and Viscount Animum were both good friends of the master." The butler replied. "However, I'm not sure if he showed them these few paintings."
"What's the background of these two viscounts?" Mr. Hyde asked.
"I'm not very clear. I only know that they are very influential in the capital, France." The butler said.
"Have they seen the real Ivan Byndit?" Mr. Hyde further asked.