It was already late at night when Sean returned to Jack's attic, which served as both his law office and bedroom.
He had expected a shantytown to greet him—winding roofs, damp beds, and drawers empty except for rat droppings. But when he lit the wobbly kerosene lamp, its glow sweeping across the entire west wall, his heart, that of a 'top-tier legal elite,' skipped a beat involuntarily.
"God..." Sean let out a heartfelt sigh, which might be the only sincere prayer he had uttered since arriving in 1885.
Beneath the weathered wall with peeling plaster, nearly a hundred volumes of legal texts were neatly stacked. Their completeness was not merely 'numerous' but astonishingly complete. From Klein's *American Law Review* to the complete *New York State Laws*, from the original Latin *Justinian's Code* to the latest standalone *Homestead Act*—though the book spines were worn and dusted, they represented Jack's spiritual fortress, built over ten years by saving every penny he could scrape together.
Sean reached out his rough hands, his fingertips trembling as he ran them over the spines of the books.
"Jack, you idiot! You've got the sharpest weapons in town, yet you're just using them to wreck your own life." Sean took a deep breath, his eyes blazing with a madness that seemed almost obsessive under the lamplight.
For the next seven days, the old wooden door of the attic remained closed.
Sean had cast himself into the world of old legal documents. He turned down every law firm's offer, even taking the iconic' Jack the Lawyer' sign and pinning it to his desk. It felt like reliving his grueling prep for the bar exam—sleeping just three hours a day, devoting every spare moment to devouring those 19th-century legal jargon.
He must unravel this: How could the chain of evidence be fabricated through logical closure without DNA testing? How could the concept of 'force majeure' in contracts be interpreted as 'natural disaster' or 'divine oracle' in this era without modern contract law? Like a greedy parasite, he must thoroughly reconstruct the legal framework of this barbaric age.
During this time, many neighbors were peeking outside their doors.
"Is Jack dead in there?" Harry the blacksmith across the street asked in a hoarse voice. "Nate said he was drunk as a barrel that day."
"Maybe the sheep was lost, and he felt too ashamed to face anyone." A few washerwomen passing by whispered with a laugh.
The only person who truly cared for him was Aunt Martha, who lived downstairs. This elderly woman, with her wrinkled face, had once fed Jack porridge when he was a child. Every morning, she would place a small basket of fresh bread and a bottle of still-warm milk at the door.
"Jack, my dear, have something to eat," Aunt Martha said softly, knocking on the door. "If you lose the lawsuit, you lose it. But you're still alive."
There was no response inside the door, only the sound of pages being turned wildly and the sharp crack of a quill pen across the paper.
At this moment, Sean was huddled in a tattered single sofa, his eyes bloodshot with horror. He pushed his shattered glasses aside, his pen darting across a sketch—depicting the gray area of 'movable property encumbrances' in 1885 case law.
The bread Aunt Martha had brought had turned as hard as stone from being left out too long, its surface covered with a thick layer of curd. Shawn mechanically tore off a piece and stuffed it into his mouth, not even bothering to lift his head.
For him, this pathological thirst for knowledge was not merely for survival, but a reclaiming of destiny. In 2026, he ruled money by law; in 1885, he too ruled the wilderness by law.
As the sun set on the seventh day, Sean finally closed the last thick volume of Evidence Science. Closing his eyes, he envisioned a vast, intricate web of legal evidence in his mind, with every node and loophole clearly visible.
He abruptly opened his eyes, and the previously dilated pupils instantly coalesced into a lethal, piercing glare.
"Jack, it's over," he said hoarsely, a smile so chilling it could make the darkness shudder. "Starting tomorrow, this town—and Wyoming as a whole—will learn to play by my rules."