“Did you remember everything I said?”

In a daze, he finally came to his senses. Xia De looked around at everything with some confusion. The moment before, he was helping a friend with funeral arrangements, and the next, he was here.

This is a bedroom......definitely not a 21st-century bedroom. The yellowish light wasn't very strong, the somewhat discolored wooden floor was fairly clean, but the walls had started to yellow. A stack of books piled in the corner, leaning precariously, threatened to fall. On the bookshelf beside the pile were some metal pots and picture frames.

Those photos are in black and white.

Besides the oil paintings on the wall, there were two metal pipes. You could faintly see that the connecting buckles of the pipes had already rusted, one of them, a thinner pipe, branched off at the writing desk. And on that brown wooden desk, there were stacks of papers, with the drawers on both sides half-open, revealing files inside.

On the desk, a lamp with brass pipes connected still glowed. The lamp's heavy base and unique trumpet-shaped mouth were quite novel—

"Um? Not an electric light? A gas lamp?"

Though it was hard to tell by looking, the presence of pipes clinging to the wall and a wall lamp connected to them made it clear this wasn't an electric light. The warm yellow glow wasn't very bright, illuminating only the area around the desk, but for some reason, Xia De felt a sense of warmth.

Let me know if you have any other text you'd like me to translate!

By the light, he saw the decorative oil painting on the wall, the black-and-white single portrait on the desk, and the newspaper spread out in the shadows on the floor. He couldn't make out any of the content in the newspaper, but he could see that it wasn't block characters, but letters.

This sense of timelessness, no matter where this is, it's no longer home.

>

A smell of decay hung in the air, more akin to that of a funeral home. Shadd remembered the scent well, for just moments ago he had been helping his ill-fated friend...

“Do you remember everything I said?”

The voice rang out once more, and that was when Xia De fully snapped out of his daze. The young man reacted quickly, sensing someone gripping his right wrist. At this moment, his consciousness and body merged completely, only then did he remember to look down.

He was at the bedside of a bed in this room that seemed to be out of the nineteenth century, a four-poster bed but with only three sides draped. The frame and the visible parts of the headboard glistened with metallic hues under the gaslight above.

The bedside lamp was shaped like a little angel being held up, and Xia De was momentarily attracted by its delicate design.

The person holding his hand was the man lying in bed. This could have been the middle-aged owner of the bedroom, wearing dark plaid pajamas, with everything but his head and right hand hidden under the covers.

　　The man had a distinctly white face, but his eyes were sunken and his cheeks sagged. His right hand, which gripped Shade's wrist, was so thin it seemed almost skeletal. He looked like someone who was about to be starved to death; Shade even believed that if he spoke too loudly, he would have to beg the man not to die.

Summer hasn't a clue at the moment, she needs to get information from the man.

"So... this is time travel?"

He thought to himself that he now had a general understanding of the current situation.

At least the man on the bed, despite his weakness, didn't have any lividity. Otherwise, Xia De would really be worried about his current situation.

"Did you remember everything I said?"

The weak man on the bed asked for the third time, his brown eyes sunken deep into their sockets, yet fixed unwaveringly on Shade. Though Shade didn't understand why he had inexplicably been transported here, he at least knew that it was best to play along for now, at least to understand the situation before making any plans for the future. Let me know if you have any other text you'd like me to translate!

He opened his mouth to speak, only then realizing that the other person wasn't speaking Chinese, nor any language he knew. Yet, inexplicably, Xia De understood. He wanted to answer in the other person's language, but as he slightly parted his lips, he realized he understood but couldn't speak it at all.

"Won't you tell me? You can understand, but not speak?"

For a moment, there was a buzzing in his ears and an itching on his back from the tension. He couldn't speak the language of the alien residents. It wasn't something he could have predicted; this was the worst-case scenario.

A buzzing sound filled his head, and he immediately realized that it wasn't caused by his own nervousness. He understood the voice in his head; it was a woman, a woman speaking in whispers:

The Sixth Age, Universal Calendar Year 1853, Summer, the day of Silver Moon's brilliance, you arrived in this shadowed world. You understand that you need an identity, so you must inherit everything from this inexplicable body. This is the first step, to prove, to prove that you can enter this world.

“It’s…”

The instinctive reaction is that this is the legendary system, but then you immediately realize it's definitely not.

The woman’s voice was unusually elegant and soothing, like a whisper reciting poetry, enchanting the listener. However, her language differed from both Mandarin Chinese and the frail man's words on his deathbed.

That language was older, more profound, like the gentle breeze of ancient times, crossing the curtain of time and suddenly blowing into the present. Language itself is a concretized mystery, even if it's just understanding its meaning, Xia De felt as if he had seen the deepest darkness.

>

Although Xia De had now understood this second language, just understanding it itself caused his head to buzz, and the stomach of his new body churned uncomfortably.

This is a sense of mental oppression, the language used by the inner voice itself possesses extraordinary power.

"This is the language system of this world! What's in your head isn't a system, it's something that already existed in your body!"

Xia De made a judgment, his pupils constricting slightly as he drew even more terrifying guesses from what he saw:

"This new world, a world seemingly from the Victorian steampunk era, is one of marvels and mysteries!"

He wasn't the type to reject reality. Since time travel had happened, the existence of the extraordinary wasn't completely beyond acceptance. However, his top priority right now was to figure out the current situation, answer the man's questions, and clarify his own identity.

Thus, Xia De tried his best to convey the information in his mind to the voice in his head with his own language:

"Whoever you are, please listen. I want to accept this body as it is, but I don't have the memories of this body, nor its language habits."

Now you have.

It felt as if a brick had been forcefully jammed into his skull, then stirred around maliciously. Xia De thought it was a miracle he hadn't fainted.

He did not gain the memories of his original body, but was instead forcibly implanted with knowledge about "the Northern Kingdom's Human Common Language - The Drareian Royal Tongue." However, this knowledge merely existed like a translator; he couldn't immediately grasp all the slang, dialects, religious culture, allusions, or language habits.

Let me know if you have any other text you'd like translated!

“I’m sorry, sir, I’m not feeling well. Could you please repeat what you want me to remember?”

Relying on this knowledge, he intermittently translated Chinese into the alien's "Common Language of Northern Humans" in his mind and then deliberately spoke it in a translated tone. Grasping Xia De's hand, the weak man suddenly exerted force, it was hard to imagine that such slender wrists could possess such strength:

“You're still the same, not very bright... Alright, I'll say it again...”

It seemed that the original owner of the body wasn't very bright, and Xia De's words hadn't aroused any suspicion for now.

"Shade..."

The pronunciation is very similar.

“I am about to die. I knew three months ago that my time was coming, so I chose you from among the homeless. I changed your life, gave you a new name, and taught you to read and write and some common sense. And after I die, you will inherit everything—my detective agency, all my possessions. But there is one thing you must do for me, something very simple—"

Although his voice was very weak, his terrifying eyes stared at Shade like a dying wolf. The immense terror in his gaze chilled the heart of the foreigner who didn't understand this world.

But Xia De kept his breathing steady, yet he didn't dare to meet his eyes. It wasn't that Xia De was afraid at this moment, but rather from the previous sentence, he had a preliminary understanding of the situation of the original owner of this body.

Therefore, at this time, he should absolutely not make eye contact with men, but rather should fearfully avert his gaze, for this only conforms to the established character setting.

"Take over my detective agency. Whatever you want to do with it, at least keep it running. Until September 5th, 1853, three months from now, you will receive a letter. Bring it back and burn it. That is the price for inheriting my entire estate."

His hand gripped Shade's tightly, and even though Shade was acting out a slight struggle, he didn't believe for a second that he could break free. The other person's strength was truly immense:

“This is me, Spilo Hamilton, leaving my legacy to you, Shade Hamilton. This is the only request I have.”

(Editor in charge：classic novels)