Having already examined the corpse, Zhang Yuanqing, Zhai Cai, and World Returns to Fire began rummaging through drawers and chests in search of valuable clues. Sun Miaomiao and Zhao Chenghuang continued observing the body, trying to catch anything their companions might have missed.
World Returns to Fire pulled open the wardrobe, tossing out layered, ornate dresses one after another. He took out silver coins hidden inside wooden boxes and scrutinized the pieces of jewelry in detail.
Zhai Cai, meanwhile, searched, inspected, and sniffed around the bed.
Lacking patience for delicate work, Brother Red Chicken stood by the bedside. Watching the sole-heir Knight stick his rear up in the air, peering this way and that across the bed and occasionally sniffing, he asked curiously, "What are you doing?"
Zhai Cai glanced up at him. "I'm looking for proof that Bigfoot committed the murder."
"Huh?" Brother Red Chicken blinked.
"Bigfoot likes to abduct women and devour human viscera. Now that we have evidence of human viscera being devoured, I need to look for evidence of the second habit," Zhai Cai said.
"Why didn't you think of that when you were examining the corpse?" Brother Red Chicken thought that sounded reasonable.
"I am an honorable Knight. That would have offended Ya Lance, even if she is already a corpse!" As he spoke, Zhai Cai pinched a long strand of hair from the pillow. "It appears Ya Lance suffered no other harm."
Never hesitant to ask about what he didn't understand, Brother Red Chicken asked, "Why's that?"
"Because the bedding hasn't been changed, and there are no signs of a struggle around the body. As our Mr. Dong already analyzed, the deceased was devoured while unconscious," Zhai Cai explained untiringly, looking quite fond of playing teacher.
People like that usually loved showing off in front of others.
Brother Red Chicken came to a sudden realization. Looking utterly disappointed, he grumbled bitterly, "Damn it, so I'm not the killer. That makes things harder."
"I never said you were cleared of suspicion. You have Bigfoot blood, but you're only a half-breed. Maybe Monroe doesn't care for women and just likes tearing out women's guts to eat," Zhai Cai said with a beaming smile.
Brother Red Chicken felt like he was being insulted, but he couldn't refute it.
Just then, Zhang Yuanqing's voice drew everyone's attention. "Come over and look at this. There's a set of notes here."
Brother Red Chicken and Zhai Cai by the bed, Sun Miaomiao and Zhao Chenghuang by the window, and World Returns to Fire by the wardrobe all set aside what they were doing and crowded around the desk.
The desk was tidy, holding a bottle of carbon ink, a quill, and several rolls of paper made from flax fiber and diluted pulp. They had originally been bound with hemp cord, which Zhang Yuanqing had now untied.
—In this era, bound books did not yet exist!
The team gathered behind Zhang Yuanqing in a rustle of movement, peering at the crude manuscripts in his hands.
Written on the paper were letters in a rather hasty, scribbled hand:
*"Dong is a charming man. In him, I found emotional comfort and physical pleasure. I wished to keep him by my side and make him the master of this castle, but he developed a fierce curiosity about the Lance family's taboo. That curiosity would reduce my family to ashes. I had no choice but to banish him..."*
Brother Red Chicken unabashedly inquired, "What does it say?"
Zhai Cai chuckled. "It says 'physical pleasure and emotional comfort'!"
Zhao Chenghuang said in a low voice, "Jumang's role, Dong, was the castle owner's lover."
He translated the contents of the page for Brother Red Chicken.
"So you're the killer! You killed the castle owner to get your hands on the Lance family's taboo!" Brother Red Chicken came to a sudden revelation.
No one paid him any mind, however. Zhang Yuanqing set down the page and picked up another to show the group:
*"Every night in the dead of hours, I hear the caterwauling of a cat rising from beneath the castle. She grows more active by the day. Heavens, what am I to do? Our family has lost its magic. O Lord, I pray to You, save my family..."*
Zhang Yuanqing said, "Only these two pages contain useful information. No need to look at the rest—they're just ledgers of the castle's income and expenses."
Zhai Cai stroked his chin. "Let's sort through the plot, combined with the character details Jumang shared earlier... Hmm. The ancestors of the Lance family were skilled in magic and sealed 'her' beneath the castle. 'She' was the family taboo. Not long ago, the seal weakened. Ya Lance heard a cat crying every night; the caterwauling must symbolize 'her' revival. With the Lance family's magical lineage broken, Ya Lance had no choice but to turn to her old flame, Sorcerer Dong, for help—even though Sorcerer Dong had once coveted the taboo sealed beneath the castle."
"I didn't expect us to be lovers either." Zhang Yuanqing looked at Sun Miaomiao. "Am I your daddy?"
Sun Miaomiao snapped, "Piss off!"
Zhao Chenghuang frowned.
"Now that the castle owner has been brutally murdered, does that mean 'she' beneath the castle has already escaped? If that's the case, the killer who murdered the castle owner should be 'her.'
"If so, what we need to do next is find 'her' name, chant it aloud together, and clear the trial."
Zhang Yuanqing said, "Then let's follow the plot. Let's search beneath the castle and see what's actually down there. In any case, our skills and inventories aren't sealed, so even if we run into a monster, we have the strength to fight.
"Sigh, Guan Ya got plot-killed right at the drop. We'll have to investigate this case on our own."
His proposal met with the team's approval. The group left the castle owner's chamber, descended the stone stairs back to the ground floor, and found a wooden door plated in sheet iron at the far end of the left corridor.
The iron-plated door's lock had been picked open.
Zhang Yuanqing gave it a light push. The iron-plated door creaked open, revealing pitch-black darkness beyond and granite-hewn steps descending into the depths.
Damp, decay-laden air rushed into his nostrils.
"I'll send a wraith to scout the way," Sun Miaomiao said.
Once her teammates nodded, she exhaled a Transcendent stage spirit servant dressed in a filthy cloth skirt, sending it floating down into the basement.
About ten minutes later, Sun Miaomiao whispered, "There's no danger down there. It really is a place of sealing."
Hearing this, Brother Red Chicken nudged past the others, conjuring a basketball-sized fireball in his palm, and led the way down the stone steps.
The fireball flared, casting a fluctuating orange glow across the stone masonry walls like rippling water.
Their footsteps echoed in the silent basement. In under three minutes, they finished descending the steps and entered the castle's cellar.
No one had set foot in the castle basement for many years. Cobwebs clung to the corners, and the stone floor tiles were marked with irregular muddy stains—the result of dust accumulating over time and soaking in the ambient moisture.
The basement was enormous, and a basketball-sized fireball was not enough to illuminate it. Brother Red Chicken raised both hands, conjuring a massive fireball one meter across, which finally lit up the entire space.
The chamber was largely empty, save for a stone coffin resting in the center upon a circular array made of countless overlapping hexagrams of varying sizes.
The coffin lid had already been pushed aside, lying askew on the ground.
*Runic characters?* Zhang Yuanqing recognized at a glance that the array was strikingly similar to the one drawn by the Cardinal in the "Thriller Cruise" dungeon. They likely shared the same origin.
By the firelight, Zhai Cai examined the circle on the floor, his brow furrowing. "Black magic, a variant of Runic characters! I get it now—the Lance family is a witch family. Black magic stems from Runic characters. Compared to pure runic magic, black magic is far more sinister and cruel. And because it isn't orthodox, its practitioners can only be women, which is why so many witch families emerged during the Middle Ages."
Sun Miaomiao pointed at the stone coffin. "There's something inside."
The group gathered around, peering into the stone coffin by the firelight. Inside lay a skinned cat. Its tender red flesh was startlingly grotesque, and its amber slit-pupils were wide open in sheer horror.
"A cat? Guan Ya wrote that she heard a cat crying every night. Was it this one? But why is it dead?" Brother Red Chicken asked, puzzled. He had already forgotten the castle owner's name; foreign names never stuck in his head no matter how many times he saw them.
Unable to answer, the others fell silent and turned to look at the Holy See's sole-heir Knight.
Zhai Cai looked around, then flipped the coffin lid over. In the flickering firelight, he saw twisted, bizarre incantations painted in fresh blood across its top surface.
A look of realization washed over the sole-heir Knight's face. "The cat was sacrificed."
He pointed to the incantations on the lid. "This is a sacrificial spell specifically used to summon or resurrect foul entities. In black magic, cats symbolize the night, and blood is an ingredient rich in yin energy. To witches practicing black magic, a cat serves as both a tonic and an excellent vessel. In the Middle Ages, witches always liked to keep a cat around for emergencies."
"So 'she' really has gotten out," Zhang Yuanqing nodded. "The entity sealed in the coffin must also be a witch—one with a grudge against the Lance family."
Just as he finished speaking, a system notification rang in everyone's ears:
[You have successfully unraveled the taboo secret of the Lance family. You have drawn 'her' gaze. Every half-hour, she will unleash an ability, plunging the castle into night, during which she will randomly kill one member. Please identify the killer within three hours.]
[Note 1: Skills and items are forbidden during the night.]
[Note 2: Under the influence of her power, score time limits are nullified. You may choose to spend or withhold your points.]
*I knew it wouldn't be that simple...* Ten thousand curses galloped through Zhang Yuanqing's mind.
*Getting more and more interesting, getting more and more interesting!* Ten thousand curses also raced through Zhai Cai's head.
The difficulty had spiked!
"Half an hour! We still have half an hour!" World Returns to Fire spoke rapidly. "We don't have enough clues yet. We need to hurry."
"We don't have half an hour," Zhang Yuanqing said, shaking his head. "Remember the rules we saw when we came in? The scroll's duration is only three hours. Guan Ya is dead, leaving six of us. A night every half-hour means one death per interval, ending exactly when the time limit expires. So the timer started the moment we entered the trial."
"There are only ten minutes left!" Zhao Chenghuang's expression shifted slightly. As a Night Walker, he was acutely sensitive to time.
Counting from the moment they received their roles, they had already spent twenty minutes inside the scroll.
Brother Red Chicken panicked at once. "What do we do, what do we do? We haven't figured out who the killer is yet. Ten minutes isn't nearly enough! Combat trials really are the best after all. How about we take a gamble and everyone just chants my name?"
"What's the rush?" The harder the trial, the calmer Zhang Yuanqing became. "One person dies every half-hour. There are six of us, meaning we can afford five deaths. As long as the last person solves the case, we'll survive."
His calm tone and steady composure grounded the others.
"But we don't even have a direction to investigate," Sun Miaomiao said, frowning.
Zhang Yuanqing replied, "The prompt already gave us the direction. Points are the key to this case. The rules outside told us to spend points early, and the prompt emphasized points once again."
"How do we spend them?" Sun Miaomiao asked.
"No idea!" Zhang Yuanqing stepped toward the stone stairs. "Let's head back up first."
This time, instead of taking the stairs step by step, they bounded upward in a single leap, returning to the castle.
Without a moment to lose, they rushed to the second floor. Rather than re-entering Ya Lance's room, they tacitly split up to search the other chambers.
There were seven or eight rooms on the second floor.
Brother Red Chicken kicked the door of the first room to the left of the stairs, but failed to force it open. The crude wooden door was secured by a rust-encrusted iron padlock that looked flimsy, yet proved utterly indestructible.
Brother Red Chicken took hold of the lock, and after a few seconds, item information popped up.
"Sorcerer Dong, this is your room! It takes points to unlock!"
The team swarmed over, crowding in front of the crude wooden door. Zhang Yuanqing gripped the padlock and read the item information:
[Name: Ordinary Door Lock]
[Type: Metal Object]
[Function: Theft Prevention]
[Description: The lock to Sorcerer Dong's room. A ward has been placed upon it, requiring the owner to open it personally.]
[Note: Unlocking this door requires 10 points.]
A dialogue box appeared in Zhang Yuanqing's field of vision:
[Pay 10 points?]
"Pay!" He chose to open the door without hesitation.
The rust-crusted iron lock popped open with a click.
At that exact moment, a shrill, piercing cat's wail echoed through the castle. Immediately after, the light plunged into darkness, and night fell.
Chapter 740