stonecrandall Chapter 2 Genius Girl
Chapter 2 Genius Girl
Perfit Brandlis had a dream.
In her dream, she was standing in a room filled with LCD screens, with a television in front of her playing the news.
On television, the presenter reported in a hurried and suppressed voice about the global spread of a new type of virus.
Images flashed across the screen—isolation zones, protective suits, and temporary morgues piled high with corpses.
Then she woke up.
The ceiling was made of wood, carrying the distinctive old house smell of Brandelis Estate.
It was raining outside the window, and the sound of raindrops tapping on the glass was delicate and continuous.
Perfit lay in the darkness with his eyes open, listening to the rain. It took him about five seconds to pull himself out of the dream he had just experienced—that was now in another world.
She sat up in bed, put on a wool coat, and walked barefoot to the window.
The rose garden outside the window was battered by the chill of autumn, and a few rose bushes that hadn't been moved into the greenhouse were drooping and shivering in the rain.
She has lived in this world for four whole years.
It wasn't long, but it was enough for her to learn not to subconsciously reach for her phone on the bedside table every morning when she woke up, enough for her to get used to life without the internet and modern medicine, and enough for her to keep her past life memories deep in her mind like an old book, only turning a few pages when she occasionally dreams.
But tonight's dream gave her a bad feeling.
Four years ago, this manor was almost completely divided up by distant relatives who coveted the Brandlis family title.
At the time, Perfitt had just returned from his parents' funeral and was standing in the reception room dressed in mourning clothes, watching the group of "relatives" register the silverware in the house one by one.
Later, it was Foster's butler who drove them all away, in a way that only a veteran would do.
The roof of Brandelis Estate is now leak-free, not because of the land inherited from their ancestors, but because of the hard work of Perfitt over the years.
The sword rack in the corner is still there—it was left by my grandfather.
Above the fireplace, on a rectangular plaque a shade lighter than the surrounding walls, once hung a painting that her father loved most. Three years ago, she sold it to a viscountess for four hundred gold pounds.
Perfit immediately invested the money into the production line of alchemical dolls.
These alchemical dolls are now the most popular luxury items in Victoria. In Langdon City, if any of the top noble families in the empire doesn't have such alchemical dolls to serve as maids and servants, it's as if they're admitting they're old-fashioned and stubborn paupers.
She reached out and pressed her left eye.
The left eye is emerald green, and the right eye is crimson.
The red eye is the result of the rampaging alchemy ritual that killed her parents four years ago, while the right eye is a cheat code she gained when she traveled to this world.
The Jade Record: The All-Knowing Eye – this is her trump card for surviving in this world.
This is also why she was able to obtain the highest-level Royal Charter Alchemist title in the Victorian Empire's alchemist evaluation system at a young age.
If it weren't for this eye four years ago, she would never have been able to repair that rampaged transmutation ritual, and she wouldn't be alive now.
Footsteps echoed down the corridor, faster and more frequent than usual. They weren't the old butler's usual unhurried pace, but rather carried a low, hurried quality.
The footsteps stopped at the study door, followed by a few short pauses—Popickett could tell that Foster was choosing his words outside the door.
"Miss," Foster's voice came from outside the door, her tone a notch higher than usual, and her words lacking their usual composure, "Lieutenant Commander William of the Navy has just arrived at the manor. He's here on behalf of the Navy—saying there's something extremely urgent that requires his immediate attention."
Perfit turned around.
Foster's words were brief, but she immediately sensed something was amiss.
Foster served the Brandliss family for forty-one years, from her grandfather to her generation.
The old butler would never allow anyone into the reception room without her consent. Even if it was a royal messenger, he would first knock on the study door and ask, "Miss, is it convenient for you to receive a guest?"
Tonight, he simply omitted that question.
This suggests that William's condition—or the news he brought—was sufficient to prompt Foster to transgress the rules he had upheld for half his life.
She put on the wool coat draped over the back of the chair, slipped on her slippers, and went downstairs.
As she approached the door of the reception room, she glanced inside.
William Brandlis was sitting in that armchair.
He was wearing the formal uniform of a naval lieutenant commander, his back ramrod straight, but Perfit noticed two things.
His cuffs showed signs of being repeatedly soaked and dried by seawater, and there was a small dark stain at the elbow that hadn't been completely washed away.
His face was ashen, not from exhaustion or a cold, but from a gloom that seemed to seep from his very bones.
William heard footsteps and immediately turned around.
When he saw her, his lips moved as if he wanted to exchange a few pleasantries, but in the end he simply took an envelope from his briefcase and handed it to her.
"Perfit, I need you to look at this first," he said.
William took a file folder out of his briefcase and handed it to her.
The file folder was a standard dark blue envelope used by the Naval Intelligence Bureau, with two red lacquer fire stamps on the front.
The first badge is the emblem of the Office of Naval Intelligence. The second badge has two words: Top Secret.
Perfit opened the seal and took out the documents inside.
The first line at the top reads "Wilderness," with a line of smaller text in red ink next to it: "Samples delivered to Langton."
She skimmed through the report, her expression shifting from calm to serious, then to something William couldn't describe—neither fear nor surprise.
It's more like a person suddenly seeing a familiar street sign on an unfamiliar street, that brief but intense "pupil focusing".
"How did these Ross soldiers escape?" she asked.
"They hijacked a cruise ship, sailing directly from St. Petersburg. Our escort ships spotted them during a patrol and found seven lead containers in the main cargo hold. Each contained a..."
"A living corpse," Perfit continued, his fingertips unconsciously tracing the edge of the report.
Her mind was racing, and memories of her past life were surging up from the depths of her consciousness.
Zombies, zombie movies, zombie viruses, everything about zombies.
She knew better than any alchemist or naval officer in the world that if what was described in the report was indeed working as she suspected, then it would no longer be a calamity for the Ross Empire—it would be a natural disaster that all of humanity had to contend with.
But she couldn't say it directly.
A seventeen-year-old noblewoman shouldn't know these things.
"Where is this now?" She closed the report and looked at William.
"The samples have been sent to the Royal Society, and they have formed a joint research team." A fleeting hint of sarcasm crossed William's face as he said this, but it was quickly replaced by helplessness. "Currently, there are five experts in charge of the analysis—three chartered masters from the Alchemists' Guild and two medical professors from Langton University."
The church also sent a judge to participate.
"What conclusions did they reach?" Perfit asked.
"They spent four whole days and came to no conclusions other than confirming that those things were 'difficult to kill.' The church thought it was some kind of soul curse, the medical professor thought it was an unknown acute illness, and the three alchemy masters each had their own opinion."
One of them even believed it was some kind of out-of-control human transmutation creation and suggested we send someone to the Ross Empire to investigate whether alchemists were conducting forbidden experiments.
Perfitt couldn't help but shake his head when he heard the last sentence.
Explaining wilt disease as a loss of control of the human body is like explaining lightning as Zeus's tantrum—it sounds reasonable, but it's actually meaningless.
"Then why did you come to me?" She handed the documents back to William and asked in a flat tone, "I am just the daughter of a baron who has not yet inherited the title, and I can't even get a teaching position at Langton University."
Two years ago, Perfit, who had already obtained the Royal Charter Alchemist title, was looking for a job. She was the most capable and highest-ranking applicant for a faculty position at the University of Langton's Alchemy Department, but she failed to get the job because of her age and gender.
"Because you're smarter than all of them combined." William's voice held no flattery; he was simply stating a fact. "Two years ago, when you wrote that paper on bacteria and disinfection, the entire Royal Society of Medicine was laughing at you."
The hydrogen peroxide they use to disinfect the lab now was invented by you.
The Naval Intelligence Agency didn't want to repeat the same mistake—leaving the truly knowledgeable people out of the loop and listening to a bunch of stubborn old men arguing about whether this thing was a curse or not.
He took another letter from his briefcase, sealed with the Navy's dark blue wax seal.
Perfit opened the envelope and quickly scanned the contents of the invitation.
The invitation letter detailed the research base's address, the security check procedures for entry, and all the experimental resources the Navy could provide. At the end of the letter was the handwritten signature of the Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence.
"My carriage will pick you up first thing tomorrow morning." William closed his briefcase, stood up, and said, "If there's anything else that needs to be prepared in advance, you can tell me tonight."
Perfit did not answer immediately.
She stood in the center of the reception room, her fingers gripping the edge of the invitation, her mind processing several different pieces of information simultaneously.
The transmission methods of wilt disease, the special condition of Sample No. 7, the current predicament of the Royal Academy of Sciences, and the attitude of the Navy.
Then she looked up and spoke in a decisive tone.
"I need a few things." She picked up a blank sheet of paper from her desk, took out a pen, and quickly wrote a few lines on it. "First, I need a list of all the people who have been in contact with the samples and their health records, including those who have not yet shown symptoms of infection."
Second, I need you to set aside a separate dissection room at the base, and all personnel entering and leaving must wear breathing masks and double gloves.
Third, I need you to start now to thoroughly disinfect all used equipment with hydrogen peroxide.
William took the letter and glanced at the handwriting.
He can understand the first point.
He could barely understand the third point—after all, Perfit had mentioned the concept of disinfection before.
But the second one made him frown.
"A breathing mask? You think that thing can be transmitted through the air?"
"I'm not sure," Perfit answered readily, "but I'll keep the protection level at its highest until I figure out how it spreads."
"What if it can't be transmitted through the air at all?" William countered.
"So it was a false alarm." Perfit picked up a shawl from the coat rack and wrapped it around himself, then turned and walked toward the door of the reception room. "But what if it could? You've already wasted four days discussing whether it's a curse or not."
I don't want to waste any more time regretting why I didn't wear a mask beforehand.
William stood there, suddenly remembering what Lieutenant General Chertsov had written at the end of that letter.
Please treat it as a curse.
One general, Ross, considered wilt disease a curse because he had personally experienced the despair that could not be combated by any military means.
Standing in the rainy night in Langdon, Perfitt had only read three pages of the report when he saw the source of that despair in his mind.
But he would never know that this wasn't the first time Perfit had seen this kind of thing spread through his mind.
Deep in Perfit's memory, there was a world that had been depicted to her by hundreds of films, thousands of novels, and countless news reports.
She was familiar with the name—it was called zombie.
What she needs to do now is to make the people of this world understand before it's too late that when they talk about wilt disease, they shouldn't be praying, but rather putting on protective gear.