The cold, silver link charm lay quietly in Cecil's palm.
The complex, twisted occult patterns on its surface reflected a faint, ghostly light under the gas lamp.
Ms. Cecil's expression didn't change in the slightest.
But in her deep consciousness, a high-level air-raid siren had already been triggered!
She calmly closed her eyes, using the motion of lowering her head to examine the amulet as a cover to completely release the spirituality within her body.
Her invisible Arcane Detection, amplified by the chain on her wrist, spread out like a fine net.
With her as the center, it instantly and frantically expanded in all directions!
It swept through this warm guest room.
It swept through the hallway outside with its thick carpets.
It swept through every dark corner of the White Bank Hotel's upper and lower floors.
Three seconds later.
Cecil's tense back slowly relaxed.
Whew.
Nothing.
She didn't sense anyone disguised as a transcendent.
The surroundings were clean.
After confirming absolute safety, Cecil let out a long sigh of relief in her heart.
Immediately after, she deduced a conclusion that best fit the current logic.
Elias Rockland.
This unaligned Scale One transcendent.
The reason he secretly slipped this link charm into his sister's skirt was not to monitor the Seventh Agency at all!
This guy was just someone who lacked a sense of security!
Cecil let out a cold laugh in her heart.
As a young man who had just stepped into the supernatural world at Scale One.
It seemed all too normal to take such measures to protect his family.
Especially since that guy Elias was clearly a slippery fellow with many schemes.
Cecil recalled what had happened at the train station earlier.
It was likely that at that time, Elias had already vaguely confirmed her identity as an official transcendent!
That was why the boy had developed such a strong wariness toward her, the female professor!
He was probably terrified that she, an official agent, would drag his precious sister into some deadly occult incident.
“Truly an over-cautious, foolish boy.”
Cecil made her final evaluation in her mind.
She looked up again, a gentle smile returning to her face.
“It's nothing, dear. Don't be afraid.”
Cecil casually placed the silver amulet on the table and patted the back of Charlotte's slightly trembling hand.
“This is just an ordinary piece of craftwork. It probably got hooked onto your skirt by accident.”
“I'll help you ask around to see if some careless guest in the hotel dropped it.”
“Just leave it to me to handle.”
Cecil spoke with a firm tone, immediately telling Charlotte to set her mind at ease.
“Really? That's great...”
Hearing Ms. Cecil say this, Charlotte felt relieved.
She had one hundred percent trust in this knowledgeable and elegant professor, so she naturally agreed readily.
However.
In the middle of this warm conversation between teacher and student.
An untimely knock sounded at the door.
It was a knock with a specific frequency!
Charlotte looked at the door in confusion.
Hearing that familiar knocking rhythm.
Cecil's brow furrowed tightly.
Why at this time?!
Unless...
Something major had happened over at the Golden Rose Hotel!
Cecil's heart sank abruptly.
One had to understand.
After that explosion in the East District.
She had immediately dispatched her two experienced senior investigators—who had been specifically assigned to stake out the Golden Rose Hotel on Knight Lane—to handle the aftermath of that mess.
And while she was returning to the hotel by carriage.
She had already left a message for all her subordinates through the Origin Web nodes.
They were not to disturb her unless it involved the core of the Golden Rose Hotel murder case.
Of course.
This prohibition naturally granted special privileges to the investigators who had been swapped in to keep watch at the Golden Rose Hotel.
Recalling the chaos of the entire day, Cecil felt her temples throb.
And because of this rotation.
She had also received the latest news about the Golden Rose Hotel this afternoon.
When the two veteran investigators reported to her, they claimed to have seen a detective from the Old Palace Yard's detective department swaggering into the Golden Rose Hotel like a greenhorn.
She naturally knew who that fool was!
Who else could it be but that unlucky detective she had conveniently saved at the train station?!
Regarding the intervention of such secular police.
Cecil had simply chosen not to interfere, adopting a hands-off attitude.
Why?
Because an ordinary detective with a magnifying glass could never ruin real clues!
Therefore, she wasn't worried at all about Brian Fisher going to the crime scene to mess around.
Moreover...
To be honest.
Deep down, Cecil hadn't held much hope for this murder case at the Golden Rose Hotel in the first place.
That containment object had been missing for a whole month!
During this month.
She had chased it like a mad dog all the way from Landon City to Rockaway, then bit onto the clues and followed them all the way to Hope County!
During this period, she had investigated almost all supernatural murders and abnormal incidents along the way.
Every time she thought she had caught the killer's tail, she ended up empty-handed.
After experiencing hope and disappointment countless times.
She was now exhausted to the extreme. She simply didn't believe that this low-level supernatural murder at the Golden Rose would finally hit the bullseye!
But now.
The urgent knocking outside was clearly reminding her that a variable she couldn't control had appeared.
The person knocking was definitely a rookie from the Hope County branch who was staking out Knight Lane!
Cecil took a deep breath.
She turned and gave Charlotte on the sofa a gentle, apologetic smile.
“I am so sorry, Miss Rockland.”
She pointed toward the door, her tone carrying a hint of helplessness.
“It seems my colleague has come to find me.”
“You know how it is. For those of us in academic research, even when we're away on business, we're always tied down by various sudden projects and meetings.”
“Ah! It's quite alright!”
At this, Charlotte immediately stood up, waving her hands repeatedly to show she completely understood.
The girl's face even carried a hint of trepidation, fearing that her venting just now had taken up Ms. Cecil's precious professional time.
“Please go ahead and attend to your work, Ms. Cecil. Thank you so much for your guidance today!”
The two of them exchanged a few more polite apologies and pleasantries in the room.
In the meantime.
Cecil had already strode to the door and twisted the handle.
The moment the door opened, it was exactly as she expected.
Standing outside was indeed that young man who looked clear-eyed but foolish.
“M-Ms. Cecil!”
The young investigator was so nervous he started to stutter.
He rubbed his hands together awkwardly and said in a low, urgent voice:
“We were just on the street at Knight Lane...”
“Come out and talk!”
Cecil's face darkened slightly as soon as she heard the first half of the sentence.
She ruthlessly interrupted him and pulled the tactless rookie out into the hallway.
Under the dim wall lamps of the corridor.
“Speak.”
“What exactly happened?”
“It's—it's like this, ma'am!”
The young man swallowed hard and immediately straightened his back to report.
“We were staking out the street across from Knight Lane when suddenly, without any warning, we heard a conversation between two transcendents in our heads!”
“They are definitely high-Scale transcendents!”
“We couldn't reverse-track their location at all.”
“And from the content of their discussion, they seem to be Moon Lord believers...”
The young man's expression became strange and unbelievable at this point.
“The most critical thing is, their Mental Message seemed to...”
“It seemed to have crossed lines! It was broadcast directly into both of our brains!”
“Crossed lines?”
Hearing this utterly absurd term, Cecil almost couldn't resist the urge to kick this idiot down the stairs.
She rolled her eyes hard.
A Mental Message between Moon Lord believers could cross lines?!
What kind of international joke are you playing with me?!
In this supernatural world, who didn't know that transcendents of the Moon Lord pathway held a monopoly on 'spiritual communication'?!
Unless the casters had drunk three bottles of fake liquor on the spot and were dead drunk, or their brains had been kicked by a donkey and they had gone completely insane.
Otherwise, how could these masters of manipulating mental power make such a low-level, appalling mistake as 'crossing lines'?!
It was like sending money to your own home—there was no logic in it ending up at someone else's house!
“Whew...”
Cecil suppressed the urge to curse and felt a brief moment of speechlessness.
She reached out to rub her frantically throbbing temples and tilted her chin at the young man.
“Fine.”
“Keep talking.”
“Oh, right!”
The young man immediately felt as if he had been granted a reprieve and quickly poured out the information he had memorized, like beans spilling from a bamboo tube.
“In that bizarre conversation, they mentioned the crime scene at the Golden Rose Hotel!”
“And one of them said very clearly...”
The young man's eyes instantly became fanatical, and his voice even trembled with excitement.
“They said that hidden within the Golden Rose Hotel is the absolute clue regarding the legendary 'One Piece'!”
“That thing was taken by the killer!”
The air fell into a deathly silence at that moment.
Cecil's brain flashed through countless ancient texts and the containment object codenames of the Seventh Agency in an instant.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing!
In her knowledge base, she couldn't find a single supernatural item that matched this pronunciation!
“?”
She blurted out, momentarily losing her composure:
“What is One Piece?”
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