"Father, Leon Pat has invited us to the manor tomorrow night for tea," Eaton said, looking at the invitation with a trace of confusion in his eyes.
The old man with the white beard also paused for a moment after reading the invitation, then chuckled softly. "It seems that this family's fate is not meant to end tonight."
Eaton was taken aback for a moment, realizing that his father had no intention of allowing him to go slaughter the manor tonight. He smiled and replied, "I suppose he knows how to read the situation, but I wonder why he changed his mind?"
The old man chuckled and pointed at the wooden box. "Perhaps it's because of this wooden box."
As night gradually faded away, the bloody evening did not descend upon Pat Manor. The sun rose the next morning, warm as it bathed every inch of the manor's land.
None of them knew they had narrowly escaped a massacre. This, of course, included Angell.
Early in the morning, Angell went with a few maids to the tea garden to pick the freshest tea leaves. Although it was winter in the outside world, with everything frozen and cold, thanks to Jon's greenhouse modifications, the tea garden remained warm as spring.
To prepare for the evening's tea gathering, Angell instructed the maids to pick plenty of "After the Rain, Morning Dew" tea leaves. Some would be used for brewing that night, while others were handed to Mana for roasting. Only by using high heat to knead and "kill" the leaves could they preserve their original flavor and fragrance for a long time. The roasted tea leaves were meant to be given to Earl Eaton as a gift.
Once the leaves reached the "kill-green" stage, Angell felt it was safe to leave the tea garden and return to the wooden house.
Jon was sitting on the balcony on the second floor, soaking up the rare winter sun and humming a little tune.
Angell walked up and took the ointment from the mute servant, then began applying it to his mentor's body. Jon glanced at him but remained silent. Even though he had explained the reason for his limb atrophy to Angell the day before, it seemed that Angell didn't fully believe him. Jon didn't mind—it was probably just his disciple showing filial piety. After all, his time to enjoy his disciple's care was probably running out; he might not even survive the Frozen Soil Moon.
Jon smiled contentedly, facing the wind, humming an unfamiliar tune.
There was a hint of sadness, a touch of carefree spirit.
But mostly, there was an endless longing.
"If I could return to Earth, I would be willing to die even in the next moment," Jon murmured. He had never understood the meaning of "returning to the roots," but now, in this moment, he did.
Angell's eyes reflected concern. He didn't know what to say to comfort his mentor. "Separation" was the most painful feeling, especially when it spanned two worlds.
The quiet moment didn't last long. Jon suddenly pointed at a transparent crystal protruding halfway from a flowerpot on the balcony. "Could you bring that to me?"
Angell nodded and carefully dug out the crystal from the wet soil. After wiping it clean with a handkerchief, he handed it to Jon.
This transparent crystal was oval-shaped and, from a distance, resembled a piece of glass.
Jon held the "glass bead" and gazed at it for a long time. His expression shifted from resentment to sadness, and then to a bitter smile.
"Three years ago, I threw this away in the forest. I didn't expect to find it in the flowerpot," Jon shook his head. "Perhaps this is fate?"
Angell watched his mentor muttering to himself, feeling embarrassed. After a long while, he hesitantly spoke. "I... I found it and picked it up. I saw you often playing with it and crying while staring at it, so I guessed it might be something from your family. That day, I saw you throw it into the woods, and I thought you didn't want to be reminded of your loved ones. So, I picked it up and buried it in the flowerpot, hoping that if you ever regretted it, it might still be of use."
Jon paused for a moment, then muttered to himself in a voice only he could hear, "Perhaps... this crystal bead is connected to you by fate?"
After a while, Jon turned his gaze to Angell. "This crystal bead... is not something from my family. But... I suppose it's from Earth, isn't it? I don't know its origins."
"I'll tell you a story, about the story of the crystal bead."
As Jon began to tell his story, the look of astonishment in Angell's eyes grew deeper.
He had thought this was just a crystal bead with sentimental value, but it turned out the story behind it was far more extraordinary than he had imagined!
The story began twenty years ago, when Jon was still on Earth, working as a researcher. He was born in China and later moved to Long Island, New York, in the United States with his wife and daughter. There, he was invited to participate in a top-secret research project that would last for more than a decade.
The project was called the Montauk Project.
The Montauk Project was a famous topic in Earth's space physics. Jon was born in the mid-23rd century, but the Montauk Project had begun two centuries before his birth. It had been shelved several times, with research stretching over 50 years. Jon's involvement was during the sixth restart of the project.
The Montauk Project's predecessor was the 1942 Philadelphia Experiment. At that time, radar had just been invented. In order to make naval ships invisible to radar waves, the U.S. military conducted experiments aboard the USS Eldridge, equipping the ship with omnidirectional antennas and energy coils powered by the ship's generator. From the beginning of the experiment, strange phenomena occurred. During the second and third experiments, the situation worsened, with the generator running uncontrollably. In the end, the USS Eldridge vanished from sight, teleporting over 7,000 kilometers away. The Philadelphia Experiment was forced to halt, but its side effect was the discovery of long-distance teleportation of objects.
In short, the Montauk Project was a scientific study of space traversal.
At first, the Montauk Project was still tied to the Philadelphia Experiment, but sadly, there was no real progress. That is, until the early 23rd century, when an extraterrestrial object excited all the scientists!
This extraterrestrial object fell in the southwestern part of the Sahara Desert in Mauritania, right in the center of the famous "Eye of the Sahara."
The object immediately drew the attention of various countries. As a small African nation, Mauritania was no match for the world powers. In the end, the object remained in Long Island, New York, where scientists from countries like China, the U.S., the UK, France, Japan, and Russia participated in the research. It was named the "Eye of the Extraterrestrial."
During the research process, scientists discovered that the Eye of the Extraterrestrial emitted energy fluctuations that defied most known physical constants. Initially, when high-energy rays were directed at it through specific frequency bands, the Eye of the Extraterrestrial exhibited a miraculous ability to teleport objects within a small range.
It was this discovery of spatial teleportation that led to the initiation of the sixth phase of the Montauk Project.
Jon, however, was just an ordinary researcher in the Montauk Project, tasked with recording the effects of the Eye's energy waves on plants.
One day, as usual, Jon brought a few sealed plant seedlings into the highly protected area of the Eye to record samples.
At first, everything went as expected. Most of the plants withered and died under the energy fluctuations emitted by the Eye. But, curiously, one plant—a tea seedling brought from China—survived.
Just as Jon was using a parasitic chip to record data on the tea seedling, something went wrong with the control panel. A few high-energy rays shot into the Eye, and suddenly, the laboratory was thrown into chaos.
Space collapsed, darkness spread, and the terrifying aura released by the Eye instantly covered everything within the laboratory. Before Jon could react, still holding the tea seedling, he was engulfed by the darkness.
The Eye of the Extraterrestrial passed through several layers of barriers, arriving—scarred and battered—in the world of today.
Later, Jon was rescued by the old Viscount Pat.
Since then, the Eye of the Extraterrestrial lost its miraculous powers, transforming into an ordinary, mundane... glass bead.