System 55 was taken aback: "Ah?"

Bai Yu said, "I just think it's a bit too coincidental."

The desolate and dilapidated small building in the Duke's Mansion, the glasses with the exact right prescription in the corner, and that cat that seemed to deliberately remind him of the direction.

If it were an accident, how low would the probability be for so many factors to stack up?

Bai Yu slowly closed his eyes. "Let's wait until dawn tomorrow."

He had a guess in his heart that needed to be confirmed face-to-face with Duke Imuel. After testing the waters, he might be able to draw a conclusion.

But Imuel refused to see him for several days in a row.

The interrogator kept a deadpan face: "Mr. Bai, it's true that the Grand Duke dotes on you, but you show no remorse at all and refuse to surrender. The Grand Duke will not see you."

Bai Yu was thoughtful: "I see."

It seemed he had annoyed Grand Duke Imuel.

The next few days passed peacefully. Bai Yu read books and newspapers in the small building, feeling content and at ease. His meals were similar to before, and he wasn't mistreated in any other way. Bai Yu tentatively mentioned it was cold, and the next day, the underfloor heating was turned up.

If nothing unexpected happened, they would be at a stalemate for a long time, but late one night, a major incident occurred in the Duke's Mansion.

Bai Yu washed up as usual. After falling asleep, he was awakened by the sound of gunshots outside the window. He half-sat up and saw flames shooting up into the sky.

Soon after, gunshots and screams rang out outside the small building where he lived. Bai Yu tentatively pushed the door but was blocked by an expressionless guard. He then stood on the balcony and looked out. The fire and shooting were happening just outside the perimeter of the small building, and footsteps and shouts could be faintly heard.

The Duke's Mansion seemed to have been attacked, but before it could reach him, the intruders were apprehended by the defending personal guards.

Within half an hour, the gunfire subsided, the fire was extinguished, and the small building returned to the tranquil and heavy night. Under the operation of the guards of the Duke's Mansion, this attack failed to make any waves.

Bai Yu couldn't leave, so System 55 floated down for a spin and returned, mimicking human mannerisms to Bai Yu:

"I heard the personal guards chatting. They said the assassins came for you. The Black Robe Society wants to kill you. Someone in the mansion leaked intelligence and passed out the news that you were here. It's just that they didn't expect the guards around the small building to be exceptionally strict, so they failed."

— For Bai Yu alone, there shouldn't have been many guards, but unexpectedly, Grand Duke Imuel was also resting here. The small building was like an iron bucket, difficult for even a fly to enter.

But Bai Yu didn't know this.

He paused slightly: "The Black Robe Society wants to kill me?"

It wasn't strange that the Black Robe Society wanted to kill him. Although Bai Yu knew nothing, the original owner had been in the Black Robe Society for many years and might have known some secrets. Now that his identity was exposed, the Black Robe Society naturally wanted to cut the weeds and eliminate the roots.

As soon as System 55 finished speaking, a steady knock came from the door.

Outside the door was the interrogator. The rigid silver-haired old man held a sealed document and bowed slightly to Bai Yu: "Your Excellency, you should have noticed the commotion outside. I am here on the orders of the Grand Duke. Perhaps we should talk."

Bai Yu: "Please come in."

A monocle still rested on his nose bridge. A few days ago, his glasses had been personally taken away by the old man, but the old man acted as if he hadn't seen it and simply handed the document to Bai Yu: "Perhaps you should take a look at this."

It was an interrogation report.

The people of the Duke's Mansion worked quickly and efficiently. As soon as they apprehended the assassins, they bound them securely, escorted them into the interrogation room, pried open their mouths, and obtained confessions.

Bai Yu raised his hand to flip through it. The confession was not long. The old man concisely explained, "Sir, I'll get straight to the point. These assassins are from the Black Robe Society. The evidence is conclusive. It was a direct order from the higher-ups of the Black Robe Society to kill you."

The old man fixed his gaze firmly on Bai Yu, his sight sharp as a knife: "The organization you serve wants you dead."

He tried to see unwillingness and anger on the face of the handsome young man in front of him. These emotions would become the key to prying open crucial information, but Bai Yu's face was calm, his brows not even twitching. His handsome face was completely blank, devoid of any emotion.

System 55 poked him: "Host, do you have no reaction?"

Bai Yu pushed his glasses and asked weirdly: "Should I have any reaction?"

Let alone the Black Robe Society wanting to kill him, even if the boss of the Black Robe Society performed a striptease in front of him right now, Bai Yu couldn't be bothered to spare a glance.

He didn't serve the Black Robe Society; he just wanted to go home.

The old man frowned slightly. The young man before him was incredibly resolute, harder to deal with than he had imagined. The old man changed his approach, trying to appeal to both emotion and reason.

Leaning forward slightly, he said amiably, "Mr. Bai, you know full well how you've been treated in the Duke's Mansion these past two days. The Grand Duke has not treated you unfairly. As a mere prisoner, you lack nothing in food, clothing, and daily necessities. Under such circumstances, must you really betray the Grand Duke and chill his heart?"

Bai Yu's expression shifted slightly.

Humans are not unfeeling plants or stones. For Imuel, a Grand Duke, to act like this, it would be a lie to say he felt absolutely nothing.

Seeing this, the old man struck while the iron was hot: "Grand Duke Imuel values old ties. If you are willing to forsake the Black Robe Society, we won't treat you poorly. Moreover, given your relationship with the Grand Duke, achieving rapid success and prosperity in the future would be much happier than following the Black Robe Society, wouldn't it?"

Bai Yu sighed softly.

It wasn't that he didn't want to surrender to the Grand Duke's Mansion; it was that he had no way to.

As a spy, if Bai Yu wanted to defect, he had to provide some valuable intelligence. Whether it was the Black Robe Society's internal personnel roster or their upcoming plans, he needed to prove that he truly no longer served the Black Robe Society to be convincing. He couldn't just claim with empty words that he wasn't a spy and wanted to defect.

But the problem was, Bai Yu truly didn't know.

The Black Robe Society acted cautiously. Not only did they use single-line contacts the entire time, but their meeting locations were also frequently changed. The only place Bai Yu knew, the West City Cathedral, had long since been emptied.

He couldn't possibly tell Grand Duke Imuel that he actually came from another world, was bound to a system, had replaced the original owner's identity, and was here to complete missions, rather than serving the Black Robe Society. If Grand Duke Imuel believed that, he'd have to be out of his mind.

Besides... he wanted to confirm some things.

Thus, Bai Yu said, "Sorry, I have no comment."

The old man narrowed his eyes: "Mr. Bai, have you thought this through?"

Bai Yu: "I have."

"..."

Separated by a single wall, Imuel slowly closed his eyes.

Even at this point, the doctor was still unwilling to betray the Black Robe Society.

His fingertips squeezed a document tightly, his fingers trembling and cramping. His beautiful, striking brows furrowed deeply, brimming with agony.

These past few days, he had wanted to grant the doctor's wish countless times. Since he sought death, since he courted death, then...

But in the end, looking at the doctor's calm and indifferent face in the mirror, he lowered his eyes to the document, revealing only a bitter smile.

"I can't blame you."

For the doctor to be like this, he couldn't be blamed.

It was an investigation report documenting Bai Yu's life.

When the doctor became a manservant in the Duke's Mansion, he had also submitted a dossier,

But that dossier had been whitewashed by the Black Robe Society and was untrue. Based on the confessions of the assassins and Madam, and after further investigation, the report in Imuel's hand restored the real truth.

The Black Robe Society had covered up a lot regarding the doctor's past. The personal guards had painstakingly peeled back the layers, investigated for a long time, and compared confessions from multiple sources before compiling the current information.

In the previous records, Bai Yu was born into a middle-class family in Illyria. He grew up cherished by his parents, had excellent grades, was admitted to the top medical school in the city-state, and became a practicing doctor after graduation.

His career was smooth sailing. He was optimistic and handsome, the object of affection for all the female classmates in his class, receiving dozens of love letters in a single night. He even played the violin on behalf of the medical school at the campus graduation gala. The young man had a handsome and clean face, wearing a white shirt and black trousers, sitting under the spotlight in the center of the stage. Imuel could imagine how charming the doctor must have been like that.

At the time, the personal guards of the Duke's Mansion believed the doctor's background was clean and flawless, without any issues, which was how he passed the selection for manservants in the Duke's Mansion.

But Imuel knew now that this wasn't the case.

The original owner was an orphan. He had no parents, nor had he ever learned to play the violin.

Before Imuel came to power, the old Duke was brutal and debauched. He launched several external wars, creating countless war orphans. These orphans were uniformly taken in and raised by the Black Robe Society. Under year-round brainwashing and high-pressure coercion, they became figures similar to death-sworn assassins.

The original owner was one of them.

Later, these children were sent out in all directions, becoming various people across all social classes to consolidate the power of the Black Robe Society.

For example, Madam, because of her beautiful face, was packaged as an aristocratic daughter from a wealthy family and sent to a local old man who made his fortune as a mining entrepreneur to be his second wife. This was also the origin of her nickname "Madam." After the old man died, his family fortune fell under the management of the Black Robe Society.

As for Hammerhead Shark, with his strong physique, he became a street thug, gathered a bunch of lackeys, and did the dirty work for the Black Robe Society that was inconvenient to handle, such as murder and robbery.

The doctor, previously thin and weak, and being a boy, despite his delicate features, was deemed of little use. At first, he was the most bullied among that batch of children in the Black Robe Society.

Madam stated in her confession: "Bai Yu hates cats very much, because he once fought wild cats for food when he was little and got a high fever after being scratched."

Fortunately, the original owner had good grades. He went out to study, and after being packaged by the Black Robe Society, he became the top physician on Xike Street. Physicians in Illyria were respected, and by reaching this position, the original owner had finally made something of himself.

Growing up in such an environment, for the doctor to be loyal to the Black Robe Society—Imuel didn't blame him.

He was just a little sad, that was all.

It turned out that from the very beginning, they were destined to be strangers crossing swords.

Imuel pressed his lips together silently, thinking, '...It would have been better if we had never met.'

Since the doctor hated cats, why did he save him? If he had just left him lying on the riverbank to his fate, he wouldn't be imprisoned right now.

Facing the death threat from the Black Robe Society, the doctor's expression remained calm, as if determined to resist to the end. Separated by a layer of glass, the interrogator discreetly made a hand signal.

That was a universal gesture among interrogators, meaning: "A discarded pawn whose mouth cannot be pried open."

Having been in charge of interrogation for so many years, they had always encountered some tough nuts that took time and effort for no reward. In such situations, the standard procedure was to directly kill the person and drag them to the back mountain to be buried.

Refusing to confess even after being betrayed by his organization, Bai Yu was indeed a discarded pawn.

But of course, Imuel couldn't treat the doctor like that.

When he was dying on the riverbank, it was the doctor who picked him up. When he fell sick repeatedly, suffering from fevers and agony during his mutation period, it was also the doctor who held him in his arms. Imuel still remembered that scorching embrace. That was the first embrace Imuel had ever received in his entire life.

The old butler was at the side, taking in the Grand Duke's expression. Imuel's eyelashes trembled, and those beautiful lake-blue eyes lost their luster. He had to lean over and remind him: "Grand Duke, if you release him directly, I'm afraid it won't convince the masses."

The nobles of Illyria weren't fools either. Bai Yu had been completely surrounded at the banquet, and now such a thing had happened in the Duke's Mansion today; it couldn't be hidden from the upper echelons, and the doctor's identity in the Black Robe Society was completely exposed. If the Duke insisted on having his own way and didn't deal with it, releasing the person exactly as he was caught, that would be indulging evil and treating the laws of the realm as nothing.

As a Grand Duke, Imuel had to follow the law and give everyone else an explanation.

"..."

A long silence.

It wasn't until almost dawn, when the moon was about to disappear in a moment, that Imuel raised his hand to wearily rub his brow, then said, "Butler, go... go prepare a glass of wine."

He spoke every word with great difficulty.

Respectable nobles always needed a respectable way to die, such as hanging or poisoned wine. Compared to machetes and firing squads, these methods of death left the corpse intact, allowing for a decent burial.

Thus, 30 minutes later, the interrogator knocked on Bai Yu's door again.

The doctor was reclining on a lounge chair on the balcony, reading a book. He still wore a white shirt, his trench coat taken off and draped over the back of the chair, and an ash-gray plush blanket spread over his knees. His slender fingertips gently turned the pages. He was reading with great interest, looking tranquil and gentle.

The interrogator cast his eyes down and saw that it was an illustrated catalog introducing local customs and practices. The page Bai Yu had turned to mentioned that the neighboring country was rich in spices and slaves, and the young boys and girls were bright and beautiful.

Seeing him, Bai Yu pointed to the page and asked, "I heard that the neighboring country once offered slaves to the former Duke as tribute. Is it this neighboring country?"

The interrogator: "...Yes."

At a time like this, Bai Yu actually still had the mood to read leisure books and ask these random questions.

The next second, the doctor saw the wine carried by the interrogator. Bai Yu slightly raised his hand to adjust his glasses and smiled: "Is this my sentence?"

The rigid old man supported the wine glass. The pure silver goblet was filled with clear wine, which reflected a dangerous flame-blue hue under the illumination of the lights.

The interrogator kept a straight face: "Yes."

Bai Yu: "Since I'm going to die anyway, could you let me see the Duke?"

The Inquisitor: "The Duke does not wish to see you."

"Still doesn't want to see me?" Bai Yu raised an eyebrow and smiled, his tone rather meaningful, then said, "Alright."

He calmly accepted the wine glass.

System 55 rested on his shoulder and couldn't help cheering: "Can we finally leave?"

Although in the original work he was shot dead by the Grand Duke, and now it's poisoned wine, luckily there isn't much difference, so it should just barely scrape a passing grade.

However, Bai Yu closed his book and sighed softly: "System 55, I'm sorry, I might have to apologize to you in advance."

System 55: "?"

This apology came inexplicably, and a bad premonition arose in its heart: "What sorry? Isn't this a good thing? How are you sorry to me, Host? Wait, explain yourself first—"

Before it finished speaking, Bai Yu lifted the wine glass and downed it in one gulp. His Adam's apple rolled, and the wine dribbled down his chin, disappearing into his collar and leaving a dark water stain.

System 55: "..."

The drug took effect very quickly. Bai Yu reached out and grasped the edge of the lounge chair, closed his eyes tightly, and then collapsed.

"..."

The system wished it could go up and kick him a couple of times: "Damn host, couldn't you have made yourself clear before dying?"

Despite saying so, it still dutifully probed toward the wine glass—

After the host "died," the system had to detoxify him and send him back.

But when the analysis report of the wine appeared within the system, System 55 scratched its non-existent forehead, feeling like it had lost a virtual hair.

— Is this wine, poisoned wine?

Why doesn't it have any lethal components?