“My employer is Lady Vyn, her full name is Lucias Vyn. She’s one of the six High Brokers of the Exalted Bondsmen.” after finishing two cups of tea, Natalie finally felt the warmth and courage to tell Jianmen in a calm voice: “She’s very old, even by magic wielder standards. But the thing is, she’s not a magic wielder - at least not one by common definition. No one I know has ever seen her use magic. And the few times I’ve met her up close, I was never able to sense any hint of magical power - no magical energy field, no magical energy signature - nothing.”

“I see. So that’s what ‘she was abandoned by magic’ means.” Jianmen nodded and refilled Natalie’s cup with tea: “But she’s a High Broker of the Exalted Bondsmen, if she doesn’t have any sort of power, she wouldn’t be able to hold that position.”

“It’s because of her family, the Vyn family.” Natalie said: “The Vyn family has a lot of connections, and she has control over a - a really deadly assassin force. Though she was not known for her magic wielding abilities, she was very feared for her experience and knowledge in training deadly assassins.”

“The Vyn family - that does sound familiar.” Jianmen narrowed his eyes: “Do they have connections to people at the Grant Academy?”

“Yes, yes they do.” Natalie sighed: “And they have a very important member from her family there. I just don’t know who.”

“That’s fine, I think I may have an idea.” Jianmen waved his hand in an attempt to tell Natalie not to worry: “Do you happen to know what her full name was before? Or just the family name.”

Natalie stared at Jianmen and asked: “So … so you knew?”

“No, I just kinda figured it out. It’s kinda funny, my students kinda did a research paper on her.” Jianmen chuckled: “And it was a pretty good paper, with decent detective and academic work. I would imagine for people like her, being born inside the magical world but did not have a noticeable affinity to magic would face a lot of hardships. And I can certainly imagine the kind of horror it would bring when you managed to pull off a series of murders. Which logically leads to the conclusion that ‘Vyn’ is not her real family name.”

“It’s Hellinger. Nobody told me that, I just sorta - figured it out myself.” Natalie sniffled and wiped her nose with a piece of tissue: “You’re the first one I’ve ever told. Oh god...”

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“Hellinger...” Jianmen paused for a short moment: “That family’s line was broken a couple of decades ago, is it not?”

“Yes. Due to a lot of mysterious circumstances. But to me, Lady Vyn probably has a lot of things to do with that.” Natalie answered: “It was a cursed family - they had a lot of very talented and very powerful mages or just general power wielders - before the civilians had the word ‘superpower’, but on the other hand a huge portion of their family was born with below mediocre or even absolutely no magical talents. ”

“And you think that Lady Vyn was one of those unlucky ones.” Jianmen nodded.

“I think so - she did not hide the fact that she has no affinity to magic, nor did she hide the fact that she orchestrated those murders. Since, well, the family line was broken many years ago, and the investigation into the culprits of the murders has stopped due to the killers’ inactivity.”

“Okay. Fair enough.” Jianmen nodded: “Then tell me about this codex you are trying to find. What is it? What does it decode or solve?”

“I - I actually don’t know much about the details of what it is or what it does.” Natalie stammered: “You need to understand - we just know that it’s important and Lady Vyn was determined to find it. She sent out several groups already, but - ”

“Just tell me everything you know.” Jianmen smiled: “If you have your speculations or theories, tell me those as well.”

Natalie proceeded to tell Jianmen everything she knew, she theoried and speculated. It turned out, before the incident at the Grant Academy happened, Lady Vyn had already started looking into the whereabouts of the codex. And finally, she was able to find that it was put somewhere in the Grant Academy library - it was presumed that it was crafted by magic but did not serve any specific magical purpose, so it was placed there as an item of exhibition inside the library’s mini-museum.

After Lady Vyn found out about it, it was also during a time right when the contaminated material incident of the Grant Academy became serious and was facing a lockdown. So with a slew of careful orchestrations and manipulations using her connections in the Grant Academy, she installed the two external investigators, who were there to investigate in name only, but to collect the codex.

According to Natalie, when the codex fell into the hands of two audit students with civilian backgrounds and later kind of “disappeared”, the whole family and core crew witnessed fury and wrath from Lady Vyn unlike anything they saw before.

Thus, multiple groups of people were sent out, some were sent to infiltrate the Grant Academy again to see if it was still there during the escape, some were sent to infiltrate different departments of the Division because there were rumors circulating that the Division had got the codex. And this team of three was one of the “just in case” teams, where their purpose was to check on the places where the audit students had stayed at before and report back if they had any clues or findings. And the fact that Xianshi Inn was apparently magical but not widely known as such just made it much more likely that the codex was actually here instead of anywhere else.

It was all thanks to Carmen, the sorceress in red and the leader of the team, who insisted that they should investigate and try to find the codex themselves instead of reporting back immediately.