Project GB is an official initiative by Re:Library.

After expending tremendous effort, Lilith finally managed to calm the chaos among her clones. Only after she promised that each of them would get a chance to read a lewd novel did they finally agree to settle down and read their books properly.

Meanwhile, Lilith continued walking upward. She had a strong intuition that certain things would never be placed so casually on the lower floors. After casually dismantling a few warning barriers along the way, Lilith arrived at the ninth floor.

Compared to the spacious first floor, the ninth floor felt much smaller. However, the number of books stored here was also very limited, occupying only a single bookshelf. Lilith randomly pulled out one of the volumes: Ninth-Tier Technique: Heavenform Battle Art.

Another cultivation technique? Lilith immediately lost interest, her gaze drifting around the room instead. Aside from that lone bookshelf, there was also a small, inconspicuous partition tucked away in a corner of the floor.

Anyone who had come here solely in search of techniques would likely never even notice that tiny compartment. But Lilith had a feeling. What she was looking for was inside.

Lilith walked over.

The door to the partition was tightly shut, yet there was no visible lock or latch anywhere. She pushed against it slightly, but it did not budge at all. A faint aura of spirit power radiated from the wooden door.

“A formation?” Lilith’s eyes flickered faintly. The formation was extremely crude, yet precisely because of its simplicity, forcibly breaking it would certainly destroy the entire formation outright. Moreover, Lilith could sense another mysterious presence hidden within the formation itself.

“A formation within a formation? Interesting.”

Someone had not only set up this simple formation on the door, but had also embedded another unknown formation beneath it. If someone were to recklessly break the outer formation without realizing this, it would likely trigger some unexpected consequence.

Lilith had no interest in stirring up trouble. She glanced around for a moment before her gaze eventually fell to the ground beneath her feet. The person who had arranged all the safeguards had focused entirely on the door, yet overlooked another inconspicuous detail.

The gap beneath it.

Lilith smiled faintly. In the next instant, her entire body melted away, dissolving into a pool of black liquid. The dark fluid slowly seeped through the crack beneath the door and into the room beyond. Just as she had expected, it triggered no alarms whatsoever.

Moments later, the black liquid gathered itself together and reformed into Lilith once more. Her gaze swept across the room.

“So this is… a study?”

The first thing she saw was a sunlit window. Beneath it stood a wooden desk with natural grain patterns, clean and orderly. Upon the desk rested a finely crafted set of writing tools: brush, ink, paper, and inkstone.

Private bookshelves lined the walls on both sides. Unlike the densely packed shelves outside, these held only a scattered collection of books bound in black covers.

“Who would build a study here?” Lilith looked around in confusion. A study inside a library. What kind of strange arrangement was this? “Could it belong to that old man from earlier?”

However, the aura emanating from the formation on the study door was completely different from the old man’s. Most likely, it wasn’t his.

Lilith walked over to the desk. Then she paused. Because of her angle earlier, she had not noticed it before, but a sheet of rice paper was pressed beneath a paperweight on the desk.

On the paper was a painting of a woman, delicate and elegant, vivid as though alive. Yet the woman’s features looked very familiar to Lilith.

It was Liana. No, more precisely, the face painted there was the same one she had seen on the puppet that represented Liana’s *mother.* This was a portrait of Liana’s mother.

“Then whose study this is… doesn’t really need guessing.”

Landon. Other than him, Lilith could not imagine anyone else who would place a portrait of Liana’s mother inside their private study.

“Looks like I’ve hit the jackpot.” A faint smile curled at the corner of Lilith’s lips. Where else could there possibly be more secrets than in the study of the head of the Ye family?

‘I can’t wait to see what kind of little secrets that normally serious-faced man has been hiding.’ Lilith rubbed her hands together excitedly and reached out to pull open one of the desk drawers. But suddenly, as if remembering something, her hand stopped halfway.

“That was close. I almost left a trace.” She waved her hand, and the shadow beneath her feet began to writhe slowly. Several slender tendrils extended from it, then carefully pulled open the drawer of the desk.

There was not much inside the drawer, only a painting and a small booklet.

The painting was extremely lifelike. It depicted a small red sphere that looked somewhat like a pill. At first glance, the crimson pill appeared completely ordinary, yet it gave Lilith an unsettling and inexplicably eerie feeling.

Lilith could not determine what it was for the moment, so she shifted her attention to the booklet held by the tendrils. She opened it, and the very first line of description immediately caught her eye.

“Blood Demon Pill. Cold in nature, difficult to integrate into conventional medicine. It feeds on human blood. Those who consume and refine it may break through to the Saint Realm without side effects.”

……

“I see. So this is what happened five years ago.” Lilith closed the booklet and used the tendrils to carefully place both the booklet and the painting back exactly where they had been.

A faint trace of emotion crossed her face. The root of Liana’s current state traced back to five years ago. Five years ago, a strange celestial omen descended. A Blood Demon Pill fell into Maplefall Town.

Although the three great families wielded tremendous power within Maplefall Town, none of them had produced a Saint Realm expert to this day. As a result, their influence had never extended beyond the boundaries of this single city.

For that reason, the Blood Demon Pill, which could allow someone to break through to the Saint Realm without side effects, held unimaginable temptation for the three great families, all of whom desperately wished to break free from the limits of Maplefall Town.

Thus, in order to seize the Blood Demon Pill, a shocking and brutal battle erupted among the three great families that very night.

Liana’s mother died during that battle. But in truth, she had not been destined to die in that fight. Yet at the most critical moment, her father, Landon, chose the Blood Demon Pill instead of saving his wife.

“Perhaps this is why Liana fears her father.” She feared his ruthlessness, feared that for the sake of benefit and power, he could abandon even the life of the woman who had once shared his bed.

Yet from the perspective of the head of the Ye family, Landon’s decision could hardly be condemned.

The gap between the Saint Realm and the mortal realms was like heaven and earth. If the Blood Demon Pill had fallen into the hands of an enemy family, his own family might have faced the fate of being completely swallowed up.

For the sake of his family, he had no choice. And yet, fate seemed determined to mock everyone involved. The Blood Demon Pill disappeared. Yes, none of the three great families managed to obtain it. That very night, right before countless witnesses, the Blood Demon Pill suddenly vanished.

After exhausting all their strength, the three families ended up grasping nothing but empty air, leaving only a battlefield littered with corpses. The three great families were gravely weakened by that battle, and even now they had yet to fully recover.

Among them, the ones who suffered the most were undoubtedly Landon and his daughter. One had witnessed her father indirectly cause her mother’s death and, unable to bear the shock, lost her sanity.

The other lost both the woman closest to him and the trust of his daughter. In the end, he gained nothing from it all, left with only regret and sorrow, aging before his time, his temples already streaked with white.