"There's something wrong there," Klein said, pointing to the section of steps that separated the living room from the dining room, speaking seriously and deliberately.
He had seen in the internal materials of the night watchman that if a situation like this appeared in the inspiration, it often meant that there were evil and filthy things hidden in the target location. If he wasn't sure, it was best not to try to touch it; otherwise, it was very likely to lose one's life - sometimes, even just looking at it could cause irreversible damage.
Dunn followed and looked over. With his high inspiration level, he immediately noticed something was wrong. Turning his head to look at Klein, he calmly commanded, "You do a divination to see if it will be smooth to explore that place."
Before entering the castle, the captain didn't ask me to do the divination. He was quite confident... This indicated that he thought the hidden thing might be more dangerous than the ghosts... Klein nodded silently, put away his revolver, and handed the cane to the one beside him, Frye.
Then, he took off the yellow crystal pendant inside his sleeve, held the silver chain with his left hand, and deliberated on the appropriate divination sentence.
In an instant, his eyes turned dark, and there were invisible gentle winds swirling around.
"Exploring the hidden place of the castle will be smooth."
"Exploring the hidden place of the castle will be smooth." ...
After repeating the incantation seven times, Klein's eyes returned to normal and he saw the yellow crystal pendant rotating clockwise.
Although the movement was not very significant, it was indeed rotating clockwise!
This meant that the exploration would proceed smoothly.
Having become a true seer, Klein immediately nodded to Dunn and Fry:
"The danger is within the solvable range, or it doesn't exist."
Dunn placed the "Variant Sun Holy Emblem" on his left chest, touched his silk hat with his hand, and walked quickly towards that step, familiarly searching for the mechanism.
After retrieving the iron glove, Fry returned the walking stick to Klein and, holding the revolver, cautiously guarded the surroundings, seemingly afraid of enemies suddenly emerging.
I'm not professional enough... in the realm of night watchmen... Klein gathered himself, drew out his left revolver again, and began to be on guard.
After a few minutes, Dunn Smith, who was squatting down, didn't know what he had pressed, and the step position suddenly made a heavy clicking sound.
The floor there cracked open, revealing the downward steps, a cold and filthy sensation filling the air, almost solidifying into a substance.
Dunn glanced at it, removed the seal "3-0782" from his chest, and directly threw it into the secret door.
After a few thuds, the "Variant Sun Holy Emblem" stopped somewhere.
If there were undead creatures inside, they would surely pick it up and throw it back... That would be interesting... Klein gazed at the downward steps, patiently waiting.
The lingering cold and filth quickly melted like ice meeting the sun, warmth and purity enveloped the entrance of the secret door.
"Klein, the two of us go down, Fry stays where he is to prevent other enemies from disrupting the mechanism," Dunn made an experienced decision.
"OK." Klein didn't flinch anymore and took two steps forward, walking to Dunn's side. Fry nodded gently and didn't relax his vigilance.
Click, click, click, Dunn led the way down the steps, the footsteps echoing silently.
He didn't prepare things like lanterns or torches because for the extraordinary individuals of the "Waker" sequence, darkness was not an obstacle but a favor.
In such an environment, their vision was not affected.
After a few steps downward, Dunn suddenly turned around and looked at Klein, saying, "I forgot you don't have dark vision. I'm used to not preparing those lighting items..." "... Captain, don't worry about it. I have clairvoyance." Klein found that he didn't feel the slightest bit surprised.
The captain who was so handsome just now was definitely not in his normal state!
In his clairvoyance, the darkness ahead was filled with a dull gray color. Although it was very blurry, it allowed him to barely make out the steps.
Well, the captain is very healthy and in good spirits... Klein carefully stepped forward and descended slowly.
This staircase wasn't very long. After going down fourteen or fifteen steps diagonally, it reached the ground.
The seal "3-0782" was lying right here, emitting warmth, spreading purity, and shining with a faint light.
With the help of this light, Klein could see more clearly. He looked around and found that it was a not very large basement. The original shade of darkness was gone, but the dampness remained.
In the center of the basement, there was a black coffin, with the iron nails on it turning dark red.
The lid of the coffin had been pushed open a crack, allowing him to see a white skeleton lying inside, a headless white skeleton.
Dunn looked around first, then bent down and picked up the "mutated Sun Holy Emblem".
"Captain, this coffin... well, its function is to prevent the deceased inside from turning into zombies or evil spirits..."
Klein examined the dark red iron nails on the black coffin, examined their arrangement, and using his relatively decent knowledge of mysticism, identified it as an ancient ritual, a ritual to prevent the transformation into a corpse.
At the same time, he muttered to himself: But, normally, who would be so careless as to be on guard against their own relatives' transformation into evil spirits? Er, the person helping with the burial wasn't necessarily a relative... Well, placing the coffin in the basement instead of the tomb was probably to avoid being discovered...
At this moment, Dunn, who had put on the seal "3-0782", moved closer to the coffin and examined it carefully for a while:
"The deceased probably died from poisoning."
"That means the person who poisoned him used ritual magic to prevent him from transforming into a zombie or evil spirit... This must have happened over a thousand three hundred years ago? He actually ended up becoming an evil spirit... This thought is truly astonishing!" Klein also walked up to the coffin and said, "Where is his head? That ritual doesn't require cutting off the head... "
Dunn thought for a moment and said:
"I have a theory. This evil spirit is not always there, but it has appeared recently. It only takes a quarter of an hour to walk from the town to the castle. The generations of troublemakers must have come here frequently, but before this incident, there were no rumors of evil spirits appearing in the castle."
Klein gave a barely visible nod and said:
"Captain, you mean that someone came here recently, opened the coffin, and took away the deceased's head?"
"Well, that ritual prevented the deceased from transforming into a zombie, but it also locked the evil spirit within the coffin, preserving it in a way, and when the coffin was opened and the ritual was lifted, those evil spirits would quickly transform into evil spirits through their own iron gloves..."
"The person who opened the coffin didn't leave a body, and they weren't ordinary people... And what did they do with the deceased's head?"
Dunn gazed at the white skeleton corpse inside the coffin and said: "The evil spirit can remain for such a long time, apart from the reason of the ritual, there must be something about the deceased himself. He might have been an extraordinary person, or a descendant of at least those within the middle sequence of extraordinary beings, well, I mean the middle sequence as defined before, sequence 6 or sequence 5."
"And such a corpse has some special features. His head, perhaps, could, perhaps, be useful in certain rituals, certain occasions."
After saying this, Dunn paused and said: "What I said earlier were all speculations, but some of them can be verified. We'll split up and do investigations in the town next, to see if anyone came to the castle as a child and was injured here. Well, if he's still alive, it proves that the evil spirit did indeed appear recently."
"Logical thinking."
Klein praised, and then searched the basement again, not finding any other items. He attempted to depict the "guest" who had once entered the basement using ritual magic, but since it had been at least a month since then and the vengeful spirit had been lingering here, affecting the environment, no effective result was achieved.
Later, he replaced Fry and asked this expert in the field of corpses to conduct a more thorough examination.
After fifteen minutes, when the sun was about to disappear below the horizon, Dunn and Fry returned to the ancient castle hall along the stairs.
The former groped to close the secret door, and the latter briefly described:
"It was indeed a poisoning death. The marks on the neck appeared only in the last three months."
This means that the possibility of someone having been there is quite high... Klein thought and nodded.
Next, the three night watchmen rushed back to the town of Ramde before it got dark, and booked two rooms at the hotel - the members who received the sealed item "3-0782" needed to take this dangerous item for a walk in an uninhabited place outside the town, changing shifts every two hours, so only two rooms were needed.
After a simple dinner, Klein and Dunn, and Fry immediately went to different parts of the town to inquire about the long-term residents.
In similar scenarios, police identification documents were particularly useful. ...
"Officer, why are you asking about this? I remember that when I was a child, I often visited that abandoned castle... Hurt? There must have been, of course. How could a child not have fallen or something like that? I remember, well, I was scratched by the sharp stones on the castle's outer wall... " A man in his forties, with soft blond hair, looked at Klein doubtfully and answered the questions truthfully.
This was the fourteenth person Klein had questioned. Two of them clearly remembered being injured in the castle when they were children.
The captain's speculation was correct... Klein made a judgment, returned his ID, and smiled, saying:
"Thank you for your cooperation. I have no more questions."
Without his cane, he was about to leave. The man in his forties rolled his eyes and said: "Officer, are you interested in that castle? My family has a portrait of the first baron of the castle. It's from my grandfather's grandfather's grandfather... Well, it's a long time ago. He took an oil painting from the castle, which is said to be a portrait of the first Ramde baron."
"Do you want it? This is a real antique!"
If it were a genuine antique, your family would have sold it long ago... This guy is very bold, the police dare to lie. Should we pull out a gun and scare him later? Klein muttered to himself. With a look of wanting to see it without spending any money, he said:
"I don't know if it's a genuine antique. I believe in my eyesight and judgment."
"Take it out for me to see."
The man with blond hair immediately smiled, returned to the house, and began rummaging around.
After a while, he came out holding an oil painting.
Klein casually glanced at the portrait on the painting and saw that the first baron, wearing a curly white wig, had soft features, a bronze complexion, and eyes filled with an indescribable sadness.
This... seems like Mr. Azk! Klein's eyes suddenly widened, and he instinctively looked at the so-called first baron's right earlobe.
Then, he saw an insignificant black spot nearby.
This was exactly the same position as the black spot on the teacher Azk's ear!