Vivian was about to be roasted alive by the metal core in her pocket.
Cicero weaved through the labyrinthine corridors, with Vivian grimacing and baring her teeth as she followed behind.
“Can you carry this for a change?”
“As a gentleman, I refuse to carry such an unclean object.”
“As a boss, you should lead by example!”
“As an employee, this is your performance review.”
At the end of the Hall of Mirrors, hundreds of candles burned atop crystal chandeliers, illuminating the place as if it were broad daylight.
In the center of that radiant brilliance, a man stood.
A deep purple velvet coat, hair a perfect shade of silver-white, combed without a strand out of place.
“Who’s that guy?” Vivian hid behind a marble pillar, whispering her complaint.
“Dressed like an eggplant.”
“You’ve seen him before, the Count of Saint-Germain.”
“They say he’s looked like this since the time of Louis XV, forever forty-five, forever wealthy, forever eating and drinking his way through every court.”
“A forty-five-year-old deadbeat?” Vivian summed up with precision.
It seemed he’d overheard their conversation, because that eggplant—no, the Count—turned around.
“Ah… what a nostalgic sound of running.” He smiled faintly.
“It reminds me of an afternoon in 1758. I was in the gardens of Versailles, watching Madame de Pompadour chase her pet dog, just as you are now. That vibrant panting… it’s exactly the same.”
Vivian: “…”
Cicero: “…”
“He’s insulting me.” Vivian clenched her fists, her knuckles cracking.
“I’m going to throw a frying pan at him.”
“Don’t move.” Cicero pressed down on her shoulder.
“He’s using ‘reminiscence’ to reinforce the ‘weight of history’ here. If you play along, you’ll be drawn into his tempo.”
The Count clearly had no intention of stopping.
He raised a piece of metal in his hand with elegance, admiring it in the candlelight.
“This core… reminds me of the days I drank with Casanova in Venice. He told me, ‘Count, love is like a mechanism, requiring precise adjustment.’ People back then truly understood the union of romance and machinery. Not like now…”
He sighed, casting a scornful glance over the two bedraggled figures.
“Now it’s all tasteless industrial trash.”
“He’s insulting you,” Vivian said, turning to Cicero.
“He’s mocking your suit that’s been altered by a sewing machine,” Cicero retorted coldly.
The Count began pacing through the Hall of Mirrors.
“Do you know, this mirror…” he pointed to the mirror closest to Vivian.
“Queen Marie herself most loved trying on her diamond necklace in front of this very glass. I stood beside her and told her, ‘Your Majesty, diamonds are eternal, but your beauty outshines them.’ She laughed like a child…”
Vivian felt her stomach start to churn again.
How can someone be so pretentious?
Isn’t this just the nineteenth-century version of “I had dinner with Jack Ma, shook hands with Buffett”?
“He’s suppressing us with this,” Cicero whispered an explanation.
“In this illusion, the ‘witness’s’ authority overrides everything. If he establishes that idea, we really become ‘barbaric intruders’ in this space, and the rules will erase us.”
“So what is this, Versailles-style literary attack?” Vivian was incredulous.
“So we need to shut him up.”
“But I don’t know much about that era’s court secrets. He’s really lived a long time—it’s hard to outwit him on knowledge…”
The Count continued his monologue.
“And then Voltaire. Oh, that stubborn little old man. I once ran into him at a café—even he had to admit my alchemy surpassed reason. He told me—”
“I’m talking.”
Vivian suddenly stepped out from behind the pillar.
She couldn’t take it anymore.
“Can you stop talking about all those dead people? What, you pick on them because they can’t crawl out of the grave and argue with you?”
The Count’s face froze. Evidently, in his long career of showing off, he’d never encountered such a blunt audience.
“Vulgar.” The Count shook his head, looking as pained as if Vivian had just relieved herself on the spot.
“This is why I dislike this era—you people lack reverence for greatness.”
“Reverence, my ass.” Vivian rolled her eyes so hard it was almost audible.
“You just said, you and Louis XV were—”
“Intimates.” The Count raised his chin by fifteen degrees.
“His Majesty the King often invited me to dinner, to discuss the mysteries of immortality.”
“Alright.” Vivian nodded.
“Since you two were so close, I have a question for you.”
Cicero looked at her nervously. “Vivian, don’t do anything rash. If it’s about historical dates or politics, he’ll know them all by heart…”
“How often did Louis XV bathe?” Vivian asked loudly.
The entire hall plunged into deathly silence.
A look of utter confusion appeared on the Count’s face.
“What?” He doubted his ears.
“Bathing.” Vivian mimed scrubbing her skin.
“Scrubbing off the grime, get it? If you dined with him so often, you must know what your ‘intimate’ friend smelled like?”
The Count’s mouth twitched. “Th-this… that’s an inconsequential detail! The brilliance of his character eclipsed—”
“So he stank.” Vivian cut him off.
“Admit it. It was a blend of perfume, sweat, foot odor, and greasy hair. You hung around him all day, so you must have gotten used to it? Or maybe, you smelled the same?”
Vivian exaggeratedly pinched her nose and stepped back two paces.
“No wonder you keep your distance. Turns out you’re an old herring who hasn’t bathed in centuries.”
“You—!!” The Count’s face flushed purple, like pig liver.
“Slander! This is blasphemy against history!” The Count’s voice jumped up eight octaves, like a rooster with its tail stepped on.
“He’s really panicking,” Vivian turned to Cicero, spreading her hands.
“See? I told you he was faking closeness. Real brothers don’t care about each other’s ‘fragrance’.”
Cicero: “…”
Around them, the once-pristine mirrors suddenly began to crack.
Vivian caught the detail instantly.
“And another thing,” Vivian pressed her advantage, not giving him a chance to recover.
She pointed to the Count’s purple outfit.
“If some garishly dressed man was standing next to the queen, would she laugh like a child? She was probably laughing at you looking like an eggplant!”
【Pfft—】
A crisp laugh.
It wasn’t Cicero, nor Vivian.
It came from within the mirrors.
In countless reflections, the once-solemn “historical phantoms” were all covering their mouths and snickering.
“Silence! Silence!!”
The Count was completely undone.
A lock of his meticulously combed silver hair came loose, and his whole body trembled with fury.
“I am a witness to time! What do you fleeting ants know!!”
“Witness my foot.” Vivian finished him off mercilessly.
“You’re just a clout-chaser. Whoever’s famous, you latch onto. If you live another two hundred years, you’ll be posting selfies online every day and swindling old ladies with your miracle supplements.”
“Shut up ahhhhh!!”
The “weight of history” pressing down on Cicero vanished in an instant.
In its place was a humiliated clown.
“Now!” Vivian shouted.
“Cicero, use the Annihilation Beam!”
Truthfully, she didn’t need to shout.
The moment the rules loosened, Cicero was already moving.
His cane struck the ground with force, and the red gem, which had been charging, burst with dazzling light.
“In the name of God, cleanse all falsehood.”
A golden ripple spread out from the cane as the center.
“Bang—crashhh!”
Every mirror shattered at that instant.
Countless shards of glass rained down like a storm.
The resplendent Versailles illusion tore like a ripped oil painting, revealing the cobblestones of Place de la Concorde beneath.
The Count was blasted backwards by the force.
His expensive purple velvet coat was slashed with a dozen cuts, making him look like a ragged purple mop.
He crashed heavily to the ground, the metal core in his hand rolling away not far off.
“Hoo…” Vivian let out a long breath, “That was super effective.”
She felt as if her throat was about to smoke.
“Didn’t expect you to know so much about… well, the living details of that era,” Cicero looked at her with a complicated expression.
“Common sense, boss.” Vivian shrugged, “Any history that doesn’t mention food, drink, and the bathroom is just playing games.”
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