She needed to hear more useful details in order to figure out her current situation.

The man finished his cigar and lightly kicked the stretcher where Eric Carter lay: “…Can you still talk?”

There was no answer.

The man didn’t mind, and continued speaking to himself: “I know you and Mike Harris both want me to give you justice, but unfortunately I’m not a judge, nor a policeman, and I don’t care who actually stole the thing. I just want money.”

“Mike Harris’s mother gave me five thousand francs to look after this kid…” The man let out a laugh. “If you can earn me five thousand francs, even if you kill Mike Harris, I won’t say a word, understand?”

Still no answer.

Eric Carter remained silent and motionless, as if he had died on the stretcher.

Lily Bennett, however, felt a chill run through her whole body, her heart suddenly sinking—The man was clearly hinting to Eric Carter that as long as he earned enough money, he could kill Mike Harris.

He was encouraging the two boys to turn on each other.

What kind of place was this?

Or rather, what… era was this?

Lily Bennett was having trouble breathing, breaking out in a sticky cold sweat.

The next second, an extremely hoarse teenage voice sounded: “…Got it.”

“Good boy,” the manager praised, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Smith got plenty of remedies from the Gypsies, you won’t get gangrene.”

Gypsies?

Gangrene?

Lily Bennett felt a bit dizzy.

If before she was only guessing, now she was one hundred percent sure she was no longer in the modern era.

…She had actually traveled through time.

After saying this, the manager thought for a moment, then took out a bottle and placed it in front of Eric Carter: “Whiskey. Drink it, you’ll feel better.”

Lily Bennett fell silent. If she wasn’t mistaken, half of Eric Carter’s body was soaked in blood.

Injured like that, and still able to drink whiskey?

But Eric Carter, as if he’d been waiting for this, suddenly raised his hand and grabbed the whiskey bottle, the movement so abrupt it startled the manager—his fingers clenched so hard they almost cramped, and he practically tore the cork out with his teeth, tilting his head back and gulping it down.

The little boy nearby saw this and didn’t think anything was wrong. Instead, he looked jealous: “That’s Scotch whisky… He stole something, so why is the manager rewarding him!”

Lily Bennett said nothing.

She didn’t want to watch this twisted scene any longer, and instead began to observe her surroundings: wagons, tents, grass, filthy blankets, an old gas lamp, and a murky bucket of water in the corner.

It seemed she really had traveled through time.

And not even to her own country, but to a… completely unfamiliar land.

Lily Bennett was having trouble breathing.

After a while, she realized the reason for her shortness of breath wasn’t just fear, but that her chest was bound too tightly.

The little boy was still sighing intently, not noticing anything unusual about her.

Lily Bennett quietly turned around, slipped her hand into her shirt, and felt a strip of chest binding.

Chest binding?

Why was she binding her chest?

Lily Bennett’s mind was a mess.

The situation was already tricky enough, and this chest binding made things even more confusing.

She closed her eyes, trying to ignore her wildly pounding heart, and continued to feel around inside. Her fingers touched something round.

She took it out and saw it was a gold pocket watch.

Eric Carter hadn’t lied.

He really hadn’t stolen Mike Harris’s gold pocket watch.

She was the one who stole it.

Chapter 2

“Polly?” The little boy called her again, this time sounding a bit impatient. “You’re spacing out again.”

“Sorry,” Lily Bennett snapped back to herself, calmly stuffing the gold pocket watch back where it belonged. “I’m just… tired.”

The little boy shrugged. “You’ve never really been awake. What, is Eric Carter still following you?”

This was a key piece of information.

Lily Bennett replied cautiously: “…What do you think?”

“What do I think?” The little boy pulled a piece of tobacco from his pocket and started chewing it. “I think—there’s no way he could be following you, it’s all in your head.”

He turned and spat to the side. “Dear, if Eric Carter really had the ability to follow you, sneak into your tent in the middle of the night, and stand behind you to scare you, would he have ended up getting messed up by Mike Harris like that?”

“That’s it, I’m off,” the little boy waved at her. “After all that happened today, I’m sure I’ll get beaten in the morning. It’s all Eric Carter’s fault—may his wounds rot and fester with maggots!”

After sending the little boy off, Lily Bennett lowered the tent flap, preparing to carefully check the gold pocket watch hidden in her chest binding.

But just then, she noticed the canvas of the tent was covered in writing.

Large black capital letters, crammed together like a swarm of flies, so dense it was almost creepy at a glance.

The moment she understood what it said, her scalp tingled and a chill shot straight to the top of her head.

“He will follow you.”

“He will spy on you.”

“He will kill you, he will kill you, he will kill you… he will kill you he will kill you he will kill you he will kill you he will kill you he will kill you…”

Some of the words were obscured by grease stains.