Lord of The Mysterious Realms - Chapter 22: The Flower Seller Girl

Jenkins was naturally overjoyed, not realising that there was such a good thing here, that he could take three salaries for one job, a church, an apprenticeship, and a commission on acquisitions,over which he could also study for free. Even the salary from the “trade” that old Williams had found for Jenkins as a favour would not have been a tenth of what he got here.

“The young man just got a gold pound, is that the antique value of it?”

Jenkins hadn’t forgotten about it.

“Don’t you think that this old man was pretty harsh and inconsiderate towards the young man ?. Pops asked rhetorically.

Jenkins immediately waved his hand.

“Of course not, I know that the better a storyteller like that is, the more fake the stuff he sells. I just want to learn about antiques.”

“Oh! you know this?”

Pops gave a slightly strange look.

“Yes, my family used to run a small shop, and my father would acquire some second-hand goods occasionally, I heard this from him.

In reality he read it from a novel in his previous life.

“Good point, that young man may really be a student, but that ring certainly wasn’t anything that was a family heirloom. The fact that he didn’t even take another look at the ring when he left was enough to see that he was merely desperate to get his hands on something like this. As far as I’m concerned, I’m afraid it’s a piece of junk that he found somewhere to try his luck, or it’s simply a stolen item.”

Jenkins opened his mouth without retorting, this era was definitely not as glamorous as the one he had seen. There was no telling how much evil and darkness lurked in the slums and sewers, and gangs and killers were the keywords of this era. He, on the other hand, was simply lucky enough to come across a good identity.

“As for the value of the antique, if I were to value it, it would only be worth £2. The words I spoke to him were all true.” Pops laughed.

“So, you still made a pound.”

Jenkins spat in his mind, but didn’t see anything wrong with that sort of thing. Pops Antiques was plainly a legitimate antique shop. If it hadn’t followed the rules of doing business, it would have been discovered long ago.

Just like the pops had said, the rest of morning was without any guests. Jenkins had carefully copied the tadpole script a hundred times, all he felt was dizzy and he even dry-heaved a few times.

Pops said this was normal, and he laughed at the way the [Death’s End] church accumulated spirit at a lower level. They did it by following some odd method of getting close to a corpse to sense death, which was the true suffering.

Jenkins didn’t feel much effect at first, that was because he was not sensitive enough to spirit at that time. After a few months of using the method many times he will get used to the spirit flowing through his body, then he would be able to feel the subtle currents even when copying a single word.

After lunch there was a half-hour break, Oliver first tested Jenkins’ knowledge of history and found that it was a mess. He had to tell him to read a book first and understand the common sense and terms before he could practice.

“At least you are literate.”

Oliver stood at the counter and muttered in a small voice, leaving Jenkins embarrassed and at a loss for words.

“Everything is the original owner’s fault!” He cursed in his mind.

The rest of the day went by quietly. The old man didn’t involve Jenkins in the handling of the ring,but he threw him a few history books to read.

“You know all about that big octopus, so hurry home.”

Pops reminded him as Jenkins was about to exit the shop, and he had almost forgotten that there was such a thing.

In Nolan City at the end of July, the sky darken much later. Jenkins’ home was on the west side of the city while the east was a chaotic dock area. His family had advised him not to go there because the security there was even worse than the slum.

Fearing that he might run into the octopus again if he returned home late, Jenkins decided to go back in the carriage. In order not to be belittled by the coachman again, he straightened his mature-looking clothes and tried to pass himself off as a middle-class gentleman who had just finished his work. Holding a book in his hand, he walked towards the junction of Fifth Queen’s Road, where several carriages stopped. The coachman was about to hang out the kerosene lamp.

“Would you like to buy a bouquet of flowers, sir?”

(TN: I am saying it’s definitely a flag, ignore it Jenkins.)

A timid voice came from beside him, and Jenkins turned his head to see a shabbily dressed young girl standing at the entrance standing next to the alley. She couldn’t have been more than ten years old, her face was not very fine and her dark blonde hair was simply tied in a large braid behind her back, the shoes on her feet were showing her toes.

” I have the money to buy a bunch. I should take them home as a celebration.”

Jenkins thought, smiling as he walked past, of course, without walking into the alley. In this day and age, the ordinary gangsters and robbers wouldn’t dare to cause trouble as long as they were on the main road. But the densely packed alleyways are beyond the police jurisdiction .

“Yeah, what kind of flowers you got here, how much for a bunch?”

Jenkins asked cheerfully, and the girl immediately smiled, then lowered her head and took a white flower with a three-inch long green branch out of the little basket. It looked like some subspecies of the pinwheel chrysanthemum, but it was quite pretty.

“Three for two pennies, sir.”

“I’d like a red one, but it’s fine too.”

Jenkins thought, not wanting to disappoint the girl. He put his hand in pocket for the money. In Nolan, a casual worker earns about eight pence a day, and the girl’s little basket can hold no more than twenty flowers at a time, which was not very expensive when you consider the freshness.

He had the change he had prepared in advance, and carefully counted out two coins and took them out, just before he wanted to put them into the girl’s open palm, a cold airflow suddenly appeared and went straight into his eyes

Immediately, the girl, the flowers and the basket gave a dark glow . ( TN: I knew it!)

“Black means a mysterious object”

Jenkins thought for no reason and his expression froze.

“What’s going on here, I just wanted to buy some flowers.”

He froze in the place for a moment, there was some evening breeze in the middle of summer, but Jenkins just felt his whole face swell with heat.

“Aren’t you going to buy them, sir?”

The little girl saw Jenkins’ movements stop, and a slight look of confusion appeared on her face, which soon changed to one of resignation. The gentleman passing by with his civilised stick and black hat looked at the two of them, curled his lips, and continued to stride forward.

“Please buy it, sir.”

“The biggest feature of mysterious objects is that they are strange .Just run as soon as you encounter them and don’t look back.”

This was the secret of long life that Oliver told Jenkins today. At that moment, Jenkins was unable to fully understand what’s happening to him, and he didn’t dare piss off the little girl. But buying the flower means coming into contact with a mysterious object. The danger that the little girl possessed should be greater than that of flowers. After all , the former was a living being while the latter was…..well…just flowers .