Bo Li had prepared herself to be awakened in the middle of the night, yet unexpectedly she slept straight through until morning.
She could not help but feel somewhat doubtful about life.
Was it that Erik had perceived her intentions, or that in his heart, she simply did not hold that much weight?
At this moment, the door was knocked upon.
Bo Li’s heart gave a jolt. “Come in.”
To her disappointment, it was Aunt Freeman who entered.
Seeing that she had not yet risen, Aunt Freeman carried in a tray and placed breakfast directly on her bed.
Bo Li was not particularly fond of eating breakfast this way—there was always the sense that crumbs of bread would scatter all over the bedding. But since she was not the one to change and wash the sheets, she ate without concern.
Aunt Freeman said, “Miss Claremont, someone left a gift box at the door. Your name was written on it. Shall I keep it?”
Bo Li thought of what Mitt had said last night about sending her clothes, and reckoned this must be it. She replied listlessly, “Just put it here.”
With Mitt’s sense of aesthetics, she doubted he could send anything decent.
Breakfast consisted of fried eggs, ham, and cheese toast.
Bo Li had especially asked Aunt Freeman to buy Mexican chili sauce. Aunt Freeman had never before seen anyone spread chili sauce on breakfast, and muttering complaints under her breath, she brought it over to her.
After finishing breakfast, Bo Li opened the gift box sent by Mitt.
To her surprise, inside was a green dress.
It was not that deep and murky Paris Green, the kind that looked poisonous at a glance, but rather a fresh and gentle shade of light green.
The design of the dress was exceedingly simple; the neckline, sleeves, and hem were trimmed with pearl-white velvet, and at the waist was a white belt.
On top of the dress lay a card.
On it was a line written in unfamiliar handwriting:
“This green is dyed from gardenia yellow and indigo, non-toxic.”
Bo Li examined the handwriting carefully and was certain it was not Erik’s script.
Yet this dress was especially… like Erik’s style.
In the past, he would always place the dress directly on her bed.
Why had it now become a gift box?
A flash of realization struck Bo Li.
Could it be that he wanted her to mistake this as a dress from Mitt, testing whether she would put it on?
If so, why had he deliberately preserved his own style?
Retaining a touch of his own style, just so she could notice?
Bo Li felt his heart was simply like a needle at the bottom of the sea—impossible to grasp.
She gazed at the dress in contemplation for a moment, then thought to herself—whatever, just wear it.
Bo Li took off her nightclothes, changed into a corset and petticoat, then put on the dress.
She admired herself in the mirror for a moment and, noticing that her hair had already grown to her ears, decided not to wear the wig. She only put on gloves and a hat before leaving the bedroom.
She had thought Mitt would, as before, invite her out. Who knew that after waiting the entire morning, no messenger ever came from him.
Now, not only Erik—she could not even discern Mitt’s intentions.
Bo Li worried that Mitt might suddenly come to his senses and put pressure on the newspaper, demanding they retract the related reports.
She set out for the newspaper office at once—in this period she had already learned to ride, and could manage some gentle, smaller horses to go about the streets.
But because she was wearing a skirt, she sat astride the horse directly, which once again stirred up a stream of gossip.
Bo Li did not spare those people a glance. She reined in the horse at the newspaper entrance, dismounted, and stepped inside.
The newspaper reporter, who had been about to look for her, was delighted to see her arrive in person.
“Miss Claremont, the copper plate for the photograph will be ready by tomorrow! If there are no issues with printing, it can be put to use immediately—ah, yes.”
He pulled out a stack of drafts and handed them to her. “Here is the written article, would you like to review it?”
Looking it over, Bo Li asked, “Mr. Mitt hasn’t come to see you?”
“No.” The reporter hesitated. “There is a piece of news—I don’t know if it’s true or not, but the people over by the garden are all saying…”
“What news?”
“Mitt has been possessed.”
Bo Li froze. “Possessed?”
“I don’t know exactly what happened,” the reporter said. “I heard others say that Mitt’s coachman disappeared to who knows where and abandoned him in the middle of the road. It happened to be a night when the fog was especially heavy, and he was scared witless. He claimed he encountered a ghost, and the ghost commanded him to scratch his face to shreds. He obeyed, crying in pain as he did so, but—”
Bo Li forced herself to remain calm. “But what?”
“But his face was not injured in the slightest!” The reporter clicked his tongue in amazement. “Everyone’s saying he was frightened into madness by the circus performance—Miss Claremont, should we include this in the paper?”
At these words, Bo Li already knew who the culprit was.
She had always been uncertain whether this world had ghosts, precisely because Erik’s various displays already exceeded the realm of the human.
In the modern era, hypnosis was merely a method of psychotherapy, at most used to treat insomnia or relax the mind.
It had nothing near such miraculous effects.
Only in films or novels would hypnosis be depicted as something so extraordinary.
Bo Li wondered if this world might harbor other supernatural forces… If so, could she perhaps return to the modern era?
A jumble of thoughts flashed through her mind in an instant.
After a moment, she said, “Mm, of course it must be written into the paper.”
That day, recalling the “War of Currents” between Tesla and Edison, she realized one truth: no matter the era, sensationalism was indispensable.
If hype were useless, then even after more than a hundred years, people would not still believe that it was Edison who invented the electric light.
“Prepare yourself,” Bo Li said. “Soon there will be people accusing my performance of having safety issues, using this matter of Mitt being ‘possessed’ as a reason to push the city government to ban my shows.”
The reporter had not expected Bo Li to think so far ahead at once. “Then what should we do?”
“Prepare the article. Tell the public: first, our performances are absolutely safe. Actors will never touch the audience. The audience is welcome to come and verify it themselves. If an actor touches a spectator even once, there will be a ten-dollar compensation per touch. Props are not covered by this rule.”
The reporter hesitated, secretly wondering if Bo Li was being too confident. Since the performance’s core was to frighten people, if the actors could not touch the audience, how could they truly scare them?
But since Bo Li paid him a generous salary to help draft articles at the newspaper long-term, no matter how outrageous the boss’s words were, he would not refute them.
“Second, the performance time will be shortened to twenty minutes,” Bo Li continued. “Any spectator who clears it within eight minutes will receive a five-hundred-dollar reward.”
“What—” The reporter nearly cried out loud.
Five hundred dollars!
Why should he still be writing articles? He might as well study the circus performance himself!
“Third, every week the completion times of spectators will be posted outside the tavern,” Bo Li said. “Every participant will be able to see their own time or that of others.”
The reporter immediately understood her meaning.
At present, many were interested in the performance precisely because Mitt, Wright, and Davis had all failed the challenge.
With the ranking list in place, regardless of whether later challengers cleared it or not, as long as their time in the tavern exceeded that of those three gentlemen, it would prove they possessed greater courage than them.
The reporter’s blood surged with excitement.
With these three measures, who would still pay attention to the so-called “safety issues” of Bo Li’s performances?
Even articles raising safety concerns would, instead, become tools to hype her show.
The reporter looked at Bo Li differently now, eager to know how she could so skillfully manipulate public opinion.
Bo Li herself was a little astonished that she had come up with so many ruthless tricks in an instant.
Actors not allowed to touch the audience, ten-dollar penalty per touch—that was the hook to draw people into the haunted house.
Clearing it within eight minutes—this would stir up the desire to attempt it repeatedly.
The ranking list—this would ignite people’s competitiveness and impulse to spend.
These were the common tactics of modern game designers.
It was only that modern game designers were too scheming. Bo Li shrugged—it had nothing to do with her.
Since Mitt was already “possessed,” she no longer had to dine with him, nor listen to his lofty talk and boasting of family lineage.
But with Mitt gone, what bait could she use to lure Erik?
Pondering, Bo Li mounted her horse and wandered leisurely through the city of New Orleans.
Unwittingly, she reached the slums—the streets abruptly turned muddy and filthy. Men squatted on stoops with half-smoked cigarettes tucked behind their ears; dogs barked, pigs squealed, children played and tussled; women carried baskets of vegetables and pails of milk on their way home.
Because the slums bordered the factories, the undrained wastewater flowed into nearby puddles. Both people and livestock suffered from scabies, their appearance somewhat ghastly.
Just as Bo Li was about to turn her horse around and leave, she suddenly sensed a faint, indistinct gaze.
Erik was behind her.
Her heart stirred, and she lightly pressed her heels to the horse’s belly, continuing forward.
The ground was thick with foul mud; the horse splashed through sludge and water, growing restless and snorting twice.
The air reeked of coal smoke, donkey dung, and the stench of rot and fermenting garbage.
Bo Li sneezed.
The faint, lingering gaze from behind her suddenly sharpened the moment she sneezed.
Bo Li was filled with curiosity—why did his gaze carry such a palpable weight?
Like strands of hair, like filaments, like some tangible thing—fine yet tenacious—hooking into her very lungs, so that every breath she drew came with a faint ache.
It was practically no different from violation.
Bo Li had no intention of lingering long in the slums—not from disdain for the people here, but because the smell was unbearable.
Just as she was about to ride out of the alley, several ruffians suddenly blocked her path.
“Madam,” their leader jeered, “you’ve been wandering here for some time. Have you found the person you’re looking for? How about this—you give us a little money to spend, and we’ll help you look. How about it?”
Beneath her petticoat, Bo Li had a pistol hidden.
She tilted her head slightly, about to draw it, when the sound of hooves came from behind.
She turned—and saw Erik.
Come to think of it, she had not seen him under daylight for a long while.
Compared to the beginning, his attire had changed greatly, almost refined.
On his head was a black top hat; he wore a black overcoat, with a white shirt and black waistcoat beneath, a silver watch chain hanging at his waist.
On his feet were black riding boots, their heels fitted with heavy, gleaming silver spurs.
As he tugged the reins and rode forward, the silver spurs clinked sharply against the stirrups.
Bo Li’s ears burned at the sound.
Human desires are sometimes strange.
A handsome face might stir little in her—but the sudden tautness of black gloves, the sharply defined knuckles of his fingers, the swaying of the watch chain, even the ringing of silver spurs—these could set her heart racing.
Erik drew his horse up beside her.
His knee seemed to brush against her, while the masculine aura he carried enveloped her completely.
It was not body odor, nor perfume, but an indefinable presence—warm, unseen, and overwhelming.
Though without any distinct scent, it was intensely provocative; one needed only to breathe it in to know it belonged to the opposite sex.
Bo Li froze for several seconds before she realized what it was.
—Hormones.
At that moment, Erik glanced at her.
His gaze, too, seemed saturated with hormones.
Bo Li felt as though his presence had her cornered and blocked, her breath coming short.
The ruffians, seeing Erik’s towering figure and the powerful, oppressive aura he exuded, already faltered somewhat.
But the one leading them, thinking Erik might merely be passing by and had nothing to do with Bo Li, sneered, “What, you want to stand up for this woman?”
Bo Li thought Erik would tell them to get lost.
Who would have expected that the next instant, he suddenly flung out a rope and looped it tight around the thug’s neck.
—This was not some desolate wilderness, but the middle of the city.
Bo Li hurriedly seized his arm.
The muscle beneath her hand was taut as stone.
If not for her restraining him in that instant, that thug’s head might already have parted from his body.
“Darling, this is the city!” she leaned close and lowered her voice, “Endure it, they’ve done nothing truly wicked.”
Her form of address nearly made his hand jolt and finish the strangling on the spot.
Erik stood still for a long moment before slowly loosening the rope.
The ruffians fled in haste.
Erik said nothing. With a tug of the reins, he seemed ready to leave as well.
Bo Li urged her horse after him.
Once they had left the slum district, he finally turned his head slightly, his voice cold: “Why are you following me.”
“I heard…” Bo Li pressed her horse closer to his side, “Mitt was possessed.”
“So?”
“Was it you?” she asked.
His tone was cold and sharp. “That is none of your concern.”
Since the moment he had realized he wanted to kiss her, his entire being had been seized by an almost furious impulse.
He had never been one prone to rashness or anger.
Perhaps it was age—he had begun to dream more often, dreams of her breath, her warmth, her moist, crimson tongue.
Yet each time he awoke, he forced the impulse down.
Lately, it seemed no longer suppressible.
—No matter what she did, she stirred inexplicable tremors in his chest.
Tremors that suddenly gave rise to a brutal urge.
To seize her throat, to bite her skin, to hold her so tightly her bones would creak under the pressure.
That day when she met with Mitt in secret, he had felt his head grow faint, nearly overtaken by the impulse.
Even after punishing Mitt, when he closed his eyes he could still feel the furious tremors coursing through his veins.
He had rented an apartment on the outskirts, with no neighbors around. Inside, the furnishings were exceedingly simple—apart from daily necessities, there was only a grand piano.
He heard his own breath growing rough, and tried to vent the surging impulse through music.
But it was useless. The heat in his blood seemed to fuse into the melody, turning even the music wild and frenzied, like a violent storm—every note sharpened to the extreme, carrying within it a terrifying force of eruption.
A sharp crack resounded.
His touch upon the keys had been too fierce; a piano string snapped.
Not until the following morning did his heart cool somewhat.
Yet because he had never before done such a thing, he felt an indescribable sense of guilt and shame.
The blood had cooled, leaving only a clammy dampness upon his hands.
As though he had defiled or broken something.
What was more disquieting was that this calm lasted only an instant.
After bathing, just as he was about to sleep, that furious impulse surged back once again.
It was not content with hollow illusions.
It demanded to be enacted.
He did not wish to let Mitt off so lightly, either.
But considering that her circus had only just begun, he let Mitt return home unscathed.
Otherwise, he would have torn Mitt into pieces and hung his head in the bustling streets.
Erik’s expression was calm, yet in his heart there lingered a touch of scorn.
If she knew what he was thinking—would she still dare walk beside him?