"Mr. Peerless!"
At the main entrance of the King family manor located somewhere in New Jersey, Tyler King, who had been waiting at the gates, hurried over as he saw Locke step out of a black sedan and remove the black cloth covering his eyes.
"Apologies, but this is a rule established by my father."
Locke shook hands with Tyler King. "Your turf, your rules."
He didn't mind being blindfolded for the journey.
He came here today with the primary objective of making money. As long as the funds from selling the *Voodoo Encyclopedia* arrived safely into his account as agreed, he was very easy to talk to. But if the King family planned to play any little tricks, that would be a completely different story.
"This way please, Mr. Peerless."
"Mm."
Adjusting his cuffs, Locke nodded to Tyler King, who was leading the way, and followed him into the manor, which looked completely unremarkable from the outside.
They walked down the stairs to the underground auction hall, which was decorated far more magnificently than the upper levels. Looking around, it seemed most of the guests attending the auction had already arrived.
Of course, they all wore masquerade masks, looking as though they were attending a masked ball. But then again, if masks were truly effective, what would be the point of Langley inventing lifelike human skin masks?
Locke immediately spotted a few familiar faces.
For instance, the owner of a massive enterprise in the US.
Or a certain prominent hitman agency operating within the US.
And even a rumored major contractor kingpin who handled the CIA's overseas black ops.
It had to be said that the King family's network was incredibly vast. Basically, generation after generation, the clients who came to either sell or buy items would, from a certain perspective, become part of the King family's network.
Although the King family guaranteed they never kept any backup records of client information, everyone here lived in the underworld—such words were meant to be taken with a grain of salt.
Locke didn't doubt for a second that his name was recorded somewhere in the King family's ledgers. For example: On such-and-such date, at such-and-such place, the Peerless Assassin commissioned Tyler King to sell the Voodoo Encyclopedia.
Compared to the others, Locke was in a better position. At the very least, just like most people, the King family only knew that the Peerless Assassin was called the Peerless Assassin, without any extra personal details.
After a short while, Rosa arrived as well.
Dressed in a long purple gown and holding a small clutch in her hand, she walked down from the entrance looking stunning, as if attending a formal banquet, her face concealed by a mask encrusted with crystals.
The moment Rosa made her appearance, she drew the gaze of quite a few guests.
Locke turned his head to glance at her, then took a glass of bourbon from a passing waiter's tray.
Rosa walked over. "Hi."
Locke glanced at her. "This doesn't fit your usual style."
"How so?"
"I'm the one who goes in loud."
He was the one who liked to fight openly; the Brotherhood usually operated strictly in stealth mode.
Locke stared at a Van Gogh painting hanging on the wall, not looking directly at Rosa beside him as he sipped his drink.
"Still, a very striking entrance. Quite eye-catching."
Rosa offered a word of thanks, picked up a glass of champagne from a waiter's tray, and took a sip. "Did it catch your eye?"
The corners of Locke's mouth curved upward. "Want to see what I look like under these sunglasses?"
"A lot of people are curious about what's behind your glasses."
"Then let them stay curious."
Locke downed the bourbon in his glass, his tone casual. "Only two kinds of people ever see my face: dead people, and things that can never speak human words again. Which one do you want to be?"
Rosa shrugged. "I choose to be myself."
Locke nodded and looked at her. "Smart choice."
With that, Locke looked up toward the underground hall, narrowing his eyes slightly as he stared at the left corridor where a bonfire was blazing.
"Fascinating. I didn't know the King family had vampires among their clientele."
He had already unlocked the scent profile of vampires back when he went hunting with George, and he currently held the status of an Monarch-grade Blood Sovereign. Therefore, it was impossible for him to mistake the scent of a vampire.
Hearing Locke's remark, Rosa's eyes lit up. "Vampires? We ran into two of them a few days ago in Queens, New York. Before coming to the America, I thought those creatures only settled in Europe."
Locke let out a short laugh and looked at her. "Then you ought to visit Texas sometime."
The Texas was vast and sparsely populated, so naturally, there were quite a few non-human species roaming around.
If one were to compare Texas to the bottom of a well, then "looking at the sky from the bottom of a well" wasn't a derogatory term there—it was a compliment. If you stayed in Texas and understood it completely, you essentially understood the whole world.
Rosa nodded thoughtfully at his words. "Maybe once Lynch's son and daughter arrive, we'll head down to Texas for a vacation."
Locke added, "Remember to visit Texas. If you're lucky, you might see the Lord of Hell singing on stage."
Though it was pure noise pollution. If the Lord of Hell weren't so formidable and exceptionally petty, he probably would have been beaten to death inside that bar a long time ago.
Locke didn't pay much attention to the presence of a vampire guest. A guest was a guest. He was also just a visitor here, and he wasn't going to do anything to upstage the hosts.
A moment later, Rosa, who had completed a quick loop around the area, found Locke again. He had already switched to examining a different oil painting. Looking at the piece Locke was focused on, she asked, "What's the name of this painting?"
"The Battle of Grunwald."
Locke's tone was calm. "A work by the Polish painter Jan Matejko. He was a master of portraits and historical paintings, a famous artist who often gets overlooked."
"...You understand art?"
"Not at all."
Locke chuckled, withdrawing his gaze from the canvas.
"I once thought about buying a few assets that hold their value. Oil paintings were one of the options."
But after thinking it over, he gave up on the idea. There was no other reason than the fact that the highly valuable paintings on the market already had owners, and he couldn't be bothered to pay a premium to unearth the lost ones.
Most importantly, paintings weren't easy to liquidate, and they risked drawing the attention of the FBI's Art Crime Team. It wasn't nearly as convenient as laundering money through the Continental Hotel.
*Clink, clink, clink!*
Right at that moment, an elderly man with a pale complexion stepped onto the freshly prepared auction stage, flanked by Tyler King and his younger brother, Francis King. The old man gently tapped his champagne glass.
Rosa's brow furrowed slightly as she let out a soft exclamation. "Earl King's health has recovered?"
Locke remained expressionless.
Rosa lowered her voice. "Just a few days ago, Earl King still needed a wheelchair. I checked the records, and he was terminally ill. But right now?"
Locke remarked, "Maybe he found a good doctor."
Rosa shook her head.
Watching Earl King deliver his opening remarks on stage, the corners of Locke's mouth turned up into a slight smirk. He murmured, "When you're alive, you're naturally prone to all kinds of illnesses. But what if you're dead? Say, transformed into a vampire?"
Pausing for a beat, Locke looked at Rosa. "Perhaps you should start preparing silver bullets."
Rosa froze for a moment.
After saying that, Locke fell silent. He watched Earl King on stage—who didn't even have a heartbeat—with genuine amusement, highly curious about who had given the old man his sire's embrace.
More importantly, how could that vampire bring themselves to bite into him? These days, did vampires have absolutely no standards when recruiting new members? They would just turn any old withered squash?
Wait. He wasn't a vampire anyway, Oh. Then it didn't matter.
Locke chuckled internally.
On stage, Earl King finished his toast. Following his call of "Cheers," the attendees joined in, taking a sip from their respective glasses.
Immediately afterward, the auction segment commenced.
Tyler King walked down from the stage with a smile, nodding to Rosa beside Locke. After watching his brother's guest depart, he turned to Locke. "Mr. Peerless, I must apologize. The first five items were brought in by my younger brother."
Locke smiled. "I never care about missing the scenery along the way, so long as the final outcome is what I want."
Tyler King smiled and snapped his fingers. A waiter stepped forward, and Tyler took two glasses of champagne, handing one to Locke.
"Mr. Peerless, I wish you the best of luck. Cheers."
Locke maintained his gentlemanly poise, clinked glasses, and drained the champagne in one go.
Displaying proper hospitality, Tyler King took the empty glass from Locke's hand and offered an apologetic smile.
"Please excuse me for a moment, Mr. Peerless."
Locke nodded, watching Tyler King walk toward the next client he had brought in, repeating the exact same routine.
Indeed, the adult world was full of hardships.
'But... why did you have to seek death?'
Locke thought to himself. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the waiter who had taken his empty glass. After making a single turn through the crowd with a practiced movement, the specific empty glass that belonged to him mysteriously vanished.
'Incredible. Quite impressive.'
'You should be performing magic tricks.'
Locke narrowed his eyes. He couldn't quite figure out why Earl King had suddenly decided to court disaster out of nowhere.
Was it because his blade was no longer sharp? Or... was the price someone offered simply too good?
Who could it be? Locke pondered.
Just then, on the auction stage, Tyler's brother, Francis King, enthusiastically announced the next item up for bid.
"The location of the Fruit of Eden."
Francis King's gaze fell upon the masked Rosa, before sweeping across another masked woman from Western Europe who possessed a tall, striking figure and model-like legs.
"The King family guarantees on our reputation that this information is 100% authentic. The starting bid is five million dollars."
The moment the words left his mouth, the Western European woman immediately raised her paddle. "Six million!"
Rosa raised her paddle with an unaltered expression. "Seven million!"
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