Chapter 6

"Father, Leon Pat has invited us to his manor for tea tomorrow evening." Eaton finished reading the invitation, a look of confusion flashing across his eyes.

The old man with the white beard was also taken aback by the invitation for a moment, but soon chuckled softly, "It seems that this family is not destined to perish tonight."

Eaton was taken aback, realizing that his father no longer intended to have him raid the manor that night. He smiled and said, "It can be considered a wise decision, but I wonder why he changed his mind?"

The old man with the white beard smiled and pointed to the wooden box, "Perhaps, it's because of this wooden box."

As the night gradually faded, the bloody night did not descend upon Pat Manor. The sun of the next day still shone warmly on every inch of the manor's land.

No one knew that they had escaped a massacre. This naturally included Anger.

Early in the morning, Anger brought several maids to the tea garden to pick the freshest tea leaves. Although it was a freezing winter outside, the tea garden remained warm and spring-like thanks to Jon's greenhouse improvements.

To prepare for the evening tea party, Anger instructed the maids to pick many tea leaves with morning dew after the rain. Part of them would be used for the evening tea, while the other part would be handed over to Mana for processing. Only by using high temperature to ‘kill’ the tea leaves could they retain their original fragrance for a long time. The processed tea leaves were intended as gifts for Earl Eaton.

Seeing the tea leaves enter the processing stage, Anger left the tea garden with peace of mind and returned to the stilt house courtyard.

Jon sat on the balcony on the second floor, basking in the rare warm winter sun, humming a tune contentedly.

Anger approached, took the ointment from the mute servant, and began to apply it to his mentor's body. Jon glanced at him but said nothing. Even though he had explained the reason for his limb atrophy to Anger the day before, Anger seemed not to believe it much. Jon didn't care; he considered it a way for his disciple to show filial piety... After all, the time he could enjoy his disciple's filial piety was not long, perhaps not even through the month of frozen earth?

Jon smiled and faced the wind, humming an unknown tune.

It was a bit melancholy, a bit carefree, and mostly filled with endless longing.

"If I could return to Earth, I would be willing to die the next moment," Jon used to not understand the meaning of returning to one's roots, but now he did.

Anger's eyes were filled with worry. He didn't know what to say to comfort his mentor at this moment. 'Parting' was the most painful, especially when it was the distance between two worlds.

The quiet moment didn't last long. Jon suddenly pointed to a transparent crystal half-exposed in a pot on the balcony, "Can you help me get it?"

Anger nodded, dug the transparent crystal out of the damp soil, wiped it clean with a handkerchief, and handed it to Jon.

The transparent crystal was oval-shaped, looking like a piece of glass from a distance.

Jon held the 'glass bead' and stared at it for a long time. His expression alternated between anger, sadness, and bitter smiles.

"Three years ago, I discarded it in the forest, never expecting it to appear in the pot." Jon shook his head, "Perhaps this is fate?"

Anger, seeing his mentor talking to himself, blushed and hesitated for a moment before stammering, "I picked it up... I saw you often playing with it, often crying while looking at it. I guessed it might be something from your family. That day, I saw you throw it into the forest, thinking you didn't want to be reminded of them. Later, I picked it up and buried it in the pot, thinking that if you ever regretted it, it could still be useful."

Jon was taken aback and muttered to himself, "Perhaps it has a connection with you?"

After a while, Jon looked at Anger, "This glass bead is not from my family, but... it can be considered something from Earth? I don't know its origin."

"Let me tell you a story, the story of the glass bead."

...

As Jon narrated, Anger's expression became increasingly surprised.

He thought it was just a glass bead with sentimental value, but he never expected it to have such a miraculous origin!

The story began twenty years ago, when Jon was still on Earth, working as a researcher. Born in China, he later moved to New York's Long Island, USA, with his wife and daughter to participate in a long-term secret research project due to a world-renowned mysterious topic.

This research project was called the Montauk Project.

The Montauk Project is a famous topic in space physics on Earth. Jon was born in the mid-23rd century, and the Montauk Project had already been initiated two centuries before his birth. It had been suspended several times, with a research period exceeding 50 years. The Montauk Project Jon participated in was the sixth initiation.

The predecessor of the Montauk Project was the Philadelphia Experiment in 1942. At the time, radar had just been invented, and the U.S. military conducted experiments on the destroyer USS Eldridge to make it invisible to radar. The ship's main mast was equipped with omnidirectional antennas, and two energy coils were placed on the deck, powered by the ship's generator. The experiment went awry from the start, and the second and third experiments resulted in even greater disasters. The generator went out of control, and the USS Eldridge disappeared from sight, instantly moving to a place 7,000 kilometers away. The Philadelphia Experiment was forced to stop, but it led to the discovery of long-distance teleportation.

In short, the Montauk Project was a physics project aimed at studying space travel.

Initially, the research direction of the Montauk Project was still closely tied to the Philadelphia Experiment, but unfortunately, there was little progress. Until the early 23rd century, an extraterrestrial object excited all the scientists!

This extraterrestrial object landed in the southwestern part of the Sahara Desert in Mauritania, right in the center of the famous Eye of the Sahara.

This extraterrestrial object caught the attention of various countries. As a small African nation, Mauritania could not compete with world powers. Ultimately, the object was kept in New York's Long Island, with China, the UK, France, Japan, Russia, and other countries participating in the research, naming it the "Eye of the Sky."

During the research, scientists discovered that the Eye of the Sky emitted energy waves that defied most known physical laws. When stimulated with high-energy rays of a certain frequency, the Eye of the Sky could even teleport objects over short distances.

It was this discovery of spatial teleportation that led to the sixth initiation of the Montauk Project.

In the Montauk Project, Jon was just an ordinary researcher, recording the effects of the waves emitted by the Eye of the Sky on plants.

One day, Jon, as usual, brought several sealed plant seedlings to the heavily protected area of the Eye of the Sky for recording and sampling.

At first, everything was normal. Most of the plants withered and died under the waves emitted by the Eye of the Sky, except for one tea seedling from China.

While Jon was recording the tea seedling using a parasitic chip, something went wrong with the control panel, and several high-energy rays hit the Eye of the Sky. The laboratory then underwent a dramatic change.

Space collapsed, darkness enveloped everything, and the terrifying aura emitted by the Eye of the Sky instantly covered the entire laboratory. In the next second, before Jon could react, he was swallowed by the darkness, still holding the tea seedling.

With the Eye of the Sky, he traversed numerous barriers and arrived in the current world, battered and bruised.

Later, Jon was saved by the old Viscount Pat.

Later, the Eye of the Sky lost its miraculous properties and became an ordinary... glass bead.