“Xia An!”
Hearing Dabu’s hushed call from behind, the girl with pale yellow hair peeked back over her shoulder.
“What is it?”
Dabu struggled to hand over the spirit-measuring instrument in his hand.
It was a strange device composed of intricate brass gears and complex miniature circuits.
At this moment, a black needle inside the instrument was trembling frantically across the dial.
Xia An reached out to take the device, her brow furrowing as she looked at the reading.
“A Moon Lord believer?”
In the very center of the dial, a faint white glow symbolizing the moon was flickering.
That was a unique spiritual residue left only by the attendants of the ancient deity known as the “Moon Lord.”
“Look at the specific reading!”
Dabu pointed at the dial.
He whispered another reminder.
To his surprise, however.
Their small exchange drew a warning glare from Sir Vere at the front.
Cold, heavy, and filled with unquestionable discipline.
The knight’s eyes, hidden in the shadow of his hat brim, swept over their faces like two freshly sharpened steel blades.
That silenced Dabu instantly.
He shrank his neck, immediately swallowing the words he was about to say and standing perfectly still, focusing only on his own business.
Xia An, enduring her superior’s invisible pressure, cast her gaze back to the spirit-measuring instrument’s reading.
With one look, a wave of astonishment flooded her heart.
“That Elias?”
Xia An whispered in surprise.
“He’s back?”
Looking at the unique spiritual wavelength on the dial.
Xia An’s thoughts couldn’t help but fly back to that similarly chaotic investigation from a few days ago.
She remembered investigating the beach a few days prior, where their squad had found traces of an intense supernatural battle.
Among the remains, they had discovered the aura left by a transcendent who had fought against members of the Mist Veil Society and an unknown sea monster.
The squad’s original plan was very clear.
They wanted to find the individual and question them about the details of that battle.
Unexpectedly, that cunning fellow’s anti-reconnaissance awareness was as sharp as an old veteran who had spent decades in the gray areas of society.
After leaving the beach, instead of hiding, he had plunged straight into the Ascetic Society enclave.
Elias’s originally weak spirituality was tossed into the mix, instantly blending with the fluctuations of other ascetics.
Their squad had completely lost the target just like that.
The trail had gone cold right at the entrance of the Ascetic Society.
They had originally thought this mysterious man would vanish from the face of the earth.
However, they hadn’t expected to find a maddened female cultist at the Bay Hotel.
During the subsequent overnight interrogation, they had brought in experts from the Ascetic Society.
After using 【Mental Message】 and 【Detect Thoughts】.
They had unexpectedly learned that this person was not some fanatical cultist at all.
She was the second daughter of the Sorenstein family from the Landon area, Isabella Sorenstein.
This pampered noble lady had, for some unknown reason, become a sacrificial victim for that filthy ritual.
Through the tireless efforts of several ascetics, who used spiritual soothing and mental guidance without rest for days.
They had finally obtained the man’s true name:
Elias.
Following that lead, they discovered that the man was merely a lighthouse keeper employed by Wayland Shipping.
Upon learning this shocking truth.
Xia An had originally planned to publish a missing person’s notice in all the major newspapers of Hastings Port.
As long as the man was still in the city, they could always force him out with a high bounty or official pressure.
Who would have known that plans could never keep up with changes.
On the day after the interrogation yielded results, the Hastings Port Branch received an urgent, confidential letter from Hope County.
It was a letter sealed with a raven wax seal.
The sender was the Landon special envoy, Ms. Ivy Cecil.
The letter specifically requested that the Hastings Port Branch immediately submit a work report on monitoring the Mist Veil Society’s activities in the Moon Bay area.
It was only the day before yesterday, when they received the reply from Hope County.
Xia An had seen a name on the letter that left everyone dumbfounded.
This Elias had actually appeared in Hope County.
Originally, the guy’s Scale rank was low.
In the Seventh Agency’s archives, his danger rating wasn’t even considered medium-risk.
For a low-rank transcendent, as long as they hid their spirituality and left Hastings Port.
In this steam era without large-scale spiritual web monitoring, the Seventh Agency had no way of tracking them.
They could only watch helplessly as he boarded a steam train to Hope County.
Their squad still had no idea what had happened in Hope County.
This fellow had actually returned here once again after taking a massive detour.
And as soon as he returned.
The Wayland Shipping office had been turned into a pile of meat fragments that couldn’t be pieced back together.
If someone tried to claim he didn’t have some personal grudge against the Mist Veil Society, Xia An felt she could swallow the spirit-measuring instrument in her hand right then and there.
“The negative spirituality here...”
In the center of the ruins, Sir Vere’s voice echoed through the empty hall with a cold, metallic quality.
He looked pointedly at the marks all over the floor.
“Just how many Mist Veil Society members had to die to leave behind such a thick concentration of negative spirituality?”
Sir Vere turned his head, staring intently at Marcus’s hypocritical face.
“The one who came here... it couldn’t have been a deacon, could it?”
Marcus shrugged.
“Perhaps.”
“However, you can also look at the damage to the scene.”
Marcus pointed to the cracked load-bearing walls nearby and the massive hole in the ceiling.
“Look at the force of this explosion... it’s quite impressive.”
“Ordinary fanatics couldn’t cause such a massive disturbance, could they?”
His tone was as relaxed as if he were critiquing a special effects magic show in a theater.
The two of them continued to trade barbs like this, their words filled with the probing and hypocritical bickering typical between officials and capital moguls.
Sir Vere snorted coldly, wasting no more time on words.
He gestured with his hand for the investigators behind him to begin their work.
The investigators in black dispersed immediately, taking out test tubes and powders to begin collecting the spiritual debris floating in the air.
“Sir.”
Just as Sir Vere was about to turn and leave, Marcus spoke again.
His voice rose slightly, and the smile on his face vanished, replaced by a very deceptive look of concern.
“I hope your Seventh Agency can place some importance on the safety of Wayland Shipping.”
“After all, we are a law-abiding enterprise that pays its taxes on time.”
“As an insane cult, the Mist Veil Society targeting us is not our fault; we are also victims.”
Marcus sighed softly, brushing the wrinkles on his vest with a hint of helplessness.
“Naturally, a low-level manager like me has no idea what the big shots up there are thinking every day.”
“But at the very least.”
“I truly do not wish to see casualties like today’s ever again.”
As Marcus said this, a genuine look of pain appeared in his eyes.
However, it wasn’t out of compassion for human life, but rather a pure resistance to the increase in business costs.
“You know as well as I do that in these damn times.”
“Hiring a skilled employee now...”
“Is not easy!”
Sir Vere narrowed his eyes at him, standing perfectly still without saying a word.
His gaze was like that of someone looking at a vampire wearing human skin.
After a full half-minute, the knight finally curled his lips coldly. He didn’t speak, merely giving a slight nod.
It was a perfunctory official response.
This continued until the full force of the Seventh Agency arrived.
After countless black waterproof tarps had thoroughly cleared all the gruesome corpses from the hall and sent them to the morgue.
Because the residual pollution at the scene still exceeded safety levels.
The investigation team was temporarily settled in a relatively intact manager’s office at the back of the building to rest.
The room was filled with the faint scent of ink and the smell of cold black tea.
“Sir, something isn’t right about this.”
Dabu said with a frown.
He held the spiritual energy waveform chart they had just compiled, pointing at several twisted lines on it.
“The explosive force and residue at the scene prove that there were a total of five Mist Veil Society members who launched the attack.”
“Except...”
Dabu took a deep breath, his expression slightly horrified.
“On the spirit-measuring traces, there are only two people’s spiritual readings.”
“Yes.”
Xia An leaned against the wall, her pale yellow hair somewhat disheveled from the recent busywork.
She rested her chin on one hand, her eyes full of doubt.
“And... don’t you all find it a bit too coincidental?”
“Why is it that whenever the Mist Veil Society is involved, that Elias fellow is always there?”
“The man is practically a walking lightning rod.”
“Isn’t he a lighthouse keeper for Wayland?”
A black-haired young man sitting on the arm of a sofa suddenly spoke up.
He was playing with an exquisite pure silver letter opener, spinning it nimbly between his fingertips.
“According to Wayland’s employee handbook, it’s perfectly normal for him to be here, right?”
The black-haired youth curled his lip.
“Maybe the guy was just coming back from a vacation in Hope County and stopped by the main office to get his travel expenses reimbursed, only to run into cultists tearing the place down?”
“Besides, I checked earlier. His body isn’t among the dead.”
The room fell into silence for a moment, with only the dull ticking of the mechanical clock on the wall echoing through the space.
Sir Vere, sitting in the main seat, had not participated in his subordinates’ debate.
He lowered his head slightly, staring at the complex marble patterns on the floor, lost in some deep contemplation and suspicion.
After a long time, he murmured in a raspy voice:
“What exactly are the Wayland people trying to do?”
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