Chapter 68: Old Friend

Louis stepped into the elevator. The numbers ticked downward.

The suffocating pressure in the hallway finally lifted. Marshall leaned against the wall, let out a long breath, and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

"Elisa." Marshall swallowed, his voice still unsteady. "Is Mr. York constantly this...dangerous without apparent effort?"

Elisa turned and walked to the sofa, picking up the organized folder.

"He hasn't been sleeping well. His temper's bad right now." She handed the folder to Marshall. "Don't let it get to you. There's a rare ancient Zephyrian manuscript to review today, and the client's breathing down our necks. Don't be late."

Marshall took the folder with both hands and straightened up. Four bodyguards in black suits approached from both ends of the hallway and took up positions at four corners, surrounding Elisa in the middle.

The group headed to the private conference room on the top floor of the hotel.

The royal foundation had reserved the highest-grade meeting room available. There was no one from Victor's team inside — only two elderly men.

One wore a well-tailored grey suit and was examining a parchment scroll on the table through a magnifying glass.

The other wore a crisp black suit.

The man in grey looked up. When he saw Elisa, the deep wrinkles around his eyes softened at once.

"Elisa, it's been years. Running into you here in Emberfall City — what a surprise."

Elisa walked quickly toward him, folded her hands together, and gave a slight bow.

"Mr. Caudill, what brings you to Emberfall City?"

Theron Caudill. A towering figure in international translation. He had been Elisa's supervising mentor during an international summit.

"The royal foundation people couldn't make sense of this fragment. They brought me in." Theron set down the magnifying glass and gestured to the man in black beside him. "Come, let me introduce you. This is Leandro McCall. He's even better than I am."

Elisa felt a jolt inside.

Leandro McCall. A true living legend in interpretation. He had turned down all commercial work for years, dedicating himself exclusively to classified document decryption.

A third of the ancient language definitions in translation textbooks had come from him.

"Mr. McCall, hello. I'm Elisa Roberts." She greeted him with easy confidence.

Leandro had been standing with his back to them, looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows.

He turned at the sound of her voice.

The moment his eyes landed on her face, he froze.

His gaze shifted sharply. His breathing quickened. Shock, disbelief, longing — a rush of emotions swept across his deeply lined face.

Elisa found his stare a little puzzling, but she held her composure and didn't look away.

"You... your name is Elisa Roberts?" Leandro's voice came out rough. He took a large step toward her.

"Yes."

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-six."

Leandro drew a slow, deep breath and closed his eyes.

A full five seconds passed. When he opened them again, the emotion was gone, pressed back down. The authority and calm of a master had returned.

"I read yesterday's translation notes." Leandro walked to the conference table and pointed at the parchment scroll. "That word root from the fifteenth-century Phoenixia Empire manuscript — your reading was precise. Who taught you?"

"My university advisor gave me the basics. Later, when I was doing fieldwork near Marigoldia, I spent some time learning dialectal variations from the elders of a local nomadic group." Elisa answered plainly, without any trace of either pride or deference.

Leandro nodded.

He pulled a pen from his pocket and quickly wrote a string of highly obscure ancient Zephyrian characters on a blank sheet of paper nearby.

"Explain this."

He pushed the paper across. Elisa glanced at it.

"Commercial contract terminology from twelfth-century central desert regions." She didn't pause. She gave the equivalent in modern commercial law directly. "It refers to an irrevocable right of resource exchange."

A sharp light flashed through Leandro's eyes.

"I have a classified document restoration project." He looked at her, his tone turning very serious. "I need an assistant who knows ancient Zephyrian dialectal variants. Would you be willing to study under me?"

Behind her, Marshall sucked in a sharp breath, eyes going wide.

Theron was caught off guard, too.

Then he laughed. "Leandro, you haven't taken a student in twenty years, and now you're poaching someone the moment you meet her?"

Leandro ignored Theron. His eyes stayed on Elisa.

"I have strict rules and high standards. I don't tolerate a single misplaced punctuation mark. If you're willing, just nod."

Elisa didn't hesitate for a second. She stepped back half a pace and bowed deeply.

"I am Elisa, your student. It's an honor to meet you, teacher."

Real classified document decryption took far longer than anyone imagined.

The next two full weeks passed under relentless pressure — verifying, cross-checking, weighing every word.

Leandro was exacting in his work. He would trace the evolution of a single affix all the way to its root. The parchment fragment was filled with obscure dialectal variants from medieval nomadic tribes, making it extraordinarily difficult to decode. But Elisa's foundation was rock solid. Every night she stayed up until past midnight, combing through databases across multiple countries, and every morning she came back with precise textual evidence to support her readings.

The two of them went back and forth at a rapid pace. Marshall sat nearby taking notes, and by the end of those two weeks, he had visibly lost weight — he barely had time to change pen refills.

On the afternoon of the eighth day, at three o'clock, the door to the conference room swung open.

Victor walked in with his think tank team.

He was holding a set of preliminary materials and was about to speak when he looked up and saw Theron and Leandro seated at the head of the conference table.

And between them, pen in hand, revising the core clauses — Elisa.

Victor's expression went completely still. The team members behind him didn't dare breathe.

Just days ago, they had been questioning this young woman's qualifications. Now the two most respected figures in the field had placed her squarely between them.

"Victor." Elisa set down her pen and looked up at him, her tone all business. "The dispute over clause three has been resolved. The final interpretation is on the table. Please review it."

Victor's throat moved. He took the document with both hands, kept his head down, and said nothing.

The fifteenth day arrived. Six o'clock in the evening.

The difficult manuscript was finally done. The last version had been signed off.

Leandro pressed his fingers to his brow and looked at Elisa with open warmth and admiration.

"You've worked hard these past two weeks. Come to headquarters tomorrow afternoon to sign the contract."

"When you're back in the country, come find me immediately."

Elisa let out a long breath and nodded.

At 8:00PM that night, she returned to her hotel room.

The four bodyguards had stood watch in the hallway without fail every single day for the past two weeks. Elisa washed up, leaned back against the headboard, and made her usual video call to Louis.

Two weeks of sustained, intense mental effort had left her extremely exhausted.

She drifted off mid-conversation. Louis shook his head with a helpless smile, said goodnight, and ended the call.

Darkness came.

In her dream...

Black water stretches endlessly in every direction.

Ice-cold currents rushed in from all sides. The waves surged with enormous force, dragging her down toward the deep. The pressure crushed her lungs. The oxygen was running out.

She opened her eyes and moved her arms and legs through the water, trying to find her way out. But there was no light anywhere, nothing to push against.

Then a blurred figure appeared ahead.

"Grab my hand!"

The voice reached her through the water — muffled, absolute.

She stretched out her arm with everything she had.

The moment her fingertips touched the other person's palm, a massive underwater vortex erupted without warning and tore them apart.

"No—"

Elisa suddenly opened her eyes. She sat up in bed.

She gasped for air. Cold sweat had soaked through the back of her silk pajamas. She threw off the covers, stepped barefoot onto the thick carpet, and walked to the bar to pour herself a glass of cold water.

She drank half of it. Her racing heartbeat began to slow.

Then, very faintly, a sound came through the wall and the door into the room.

It was a guqin.

The tone was clear and high, carrying a deep undercurrent of sorrow. Only the finest ice silkworm strings could produce a bass note with that kind of resonance.

This was a five-star hotel. It was two in the morning.

Who was playing a guqin?