Saul clutched the puppet tightly in his hand. Its red crystal eyes had now turned completely black.
It was sensing the influence of another's ntal force!
Saul imdiately looked around.
“There’s no way anyone else is here. And from the ti I picked up the puppet to when its eyes changed, it’s only been a few minutes.” His expression grew more serious. “So whatever changed it, happened within those few minutes.”
His gaze swept across the lab table, the candlelight, and the group of corpses—finally landing on the corpse of Nick right in front of him.
“Agu, were you watching the puppet the entire ti?”
[Agu: Apologies, Master. I was observing Nick’s body when I happened to notice a trace of unusual ntal fluctuations on you. It was different from your usual patterns.]
“You were paying close attention while I was probing the other corpses just now, weren’t you?”
[Agu: Yes, Master.]
“Then it’s almost certain—it was Nick that affected the puppet.” Saul withdrew his gaze, eyes locking on Nick’s corpse.
Nick had died due to a failed advancent, so his body hadn’t suffered much damage. And because there weren’t many usable materials left, his appearance hadn’t changed much either.
Saul had the diary emit the Soul Devouring Flower’s signal. Sure enough, the faintly glowing mark began to blink in a steady rhythm.
“So the ‘sustainer’ could be a corpse.” Saul didn’t move away from the signal. Instead, he leaned in closer. “If I hadn’t had multiple ways of detecting the ntal energy directed at , who would ever be wary of a corpse standing in the storage room?”
“Soone definitely tampered with Nick’s body—embedding the signal transmission thod within him like a beacon. Whoever did it knew the corpses in the morgue rarely get dissected a second ti. For any Third Rank apprentice or above, that’s common knowledge.”
Saul had initially assud that locating the mark’s sustainer would lead him straight to the enemy. He hadn’t expected the other side to use a proxy—leaving the true manipulator still hidden in the shadows.
[Morden: Master, I advise you not to tamper with the body. Otherwise, the person manipulating it may beco aware.]
Saul nodded. “But if the ntal mark placed on is designed to take effect soon, then showing no signs of influence at all might be suspicious too.”
[Agu: In that case, we’d best try to decipher the information encoded in the mark.]
Saul sat on the edge of the stone coffin, staring at Nick’s corpse. “Since the ability to maintain the signal was assigned to a corpse, and corpses can’t adapt on their own—not to ntion outside forces might interfere—the signals it emits are likely very simple. Maybe we can decode them.”
Saul imdiately ordered his ntal projections to be on high alert. He was going to try infusing the mark with energy to amplify its signal and capture its unique ntal wavelength.
Little Algae hurried to hand him paper, a pen, and so instrunts for asuring ntal force.
The souls didn’t need paper or instrunts—they would morize and analyze everything internally.
Saul carefully transferred the mark from beside the diary onto one of his spirit tendrils, then slowly brought it toward Nick’s body.
As it drew near, the foreign ntal fluctuations beca more and more distinct.
Saul ignored the others and focused on deciphering the patterns. But ntal fluctuations weren’t a language—they felt more like code.
And without a cipher, cracking it would be incredibly difficult.
So he decided to start with the emotional impressions carried by the waves. ntal energy wasn’t cold and emotionless—it carried intent.
But even the sa emotion could an different things—just like watching a film without subtitles, the aning could be completely misinterpreted.
“Wait a second… visual imagery?” Saul’s mind wandered, and he suddenly thought of a more intuitive decoding thod.
He set aside the paper and pen, leaned in, and closely examined Nick’s corpse.
“According to the records, Nick died after I left the Wizard Tower. But his body only arrived recently—not even two days ago. A lot of people might’ve co into contact with it. For example, ntor Kaz who handled the autopsy, his assistant, the people who transported the corpse, and even Kujin who manages the storage room now. If during this ti, Nick’s body—like the other corpses—retained so active state, could it also have a playback function like them?”
It had been so ti, though, and Saul wasn’t sure if the body could still "recall" what happened that long ago.
But it was worth a try.
With his mind made up, Saul turned his attention to the diary in his spiritual body.
“Good. Old Diary Bro doesn’t object.”
Without hesitation, Saul sat directly on the ground—ignoring the surprised looks from his souls—and began circulating his ntal energy using his ditation diagram, moving counterclockwise.
Soon, he felt his body beco weightless. When he looked down, he saw he’d already separated from his physical form.
This out-of-body experience was even easier than usual. His modified body functioned like an intelligent system, helpfully guiding him out of itself.
Saul raised his translucent hands to his face and confird that his soul form still looked like his past life. A thought flashed through his mind, and the transparent figure quickly shifted shape—once again taking on Saul’s current appearance.
He rose and floated above Nick’s body, feeling a faint pull from below. Without resistance, he followed the force and entered the corpse.
BOOM—
It felt like teleporting thousands of ters in an instant. The scene before him spun wildly. Dots beca lines, lines twisted into abstract images.
Everything lost its original shape.
But Saul didn’t panic. He focused hard, trying to discern sothing aningful in the rapidly distorted visuals—sothing or soone familiar.
Finally, his eyes settled on a certain spot. Sothing about it struck a chord of recognition.
There was a sense of familiarity.
“That’s a place I used to spend a lot of ti in!”
Saul hadn’t shared much of his life with Nick, either in life or death. That made the list of places that felt familiar all the more limited.
Which ant this was a breakthrough!
He focused his mind on that familiar scene. But the images continued to spin at high speed, making it extrely hard to identify anything specific from the blur of impressions.
“The distortion is because the scene is moving too fast relative to . To see it clearly, I need to match its speed—beco relatively still compared to it.”
It was like trying to make out the inside of a train car from a station platform—nearly impossible. But once inside the car, it beca easy.
Narrowing his eyes, Saul let his spiritual body vibrate again. His vision began to rotate rapidly, syncing with the spinning images.
Because he was forcing his soul to accelerate, the strain was imnse. If not for the diary acting as a locator to keep his mind clear, he wouldn’t have been able to attempt this at all.
Finally, Saul could make out the image before him.
He saw a ceiling inscribed with runes, a workbench lined with tools at his side, and beneath him, a conveyor belt covered in black leather.
What he was seeing didn’t co solely from the corpse’s eyes.
It was the environntal feedback that Nick’s body had absorbed—and that feedback was being transmitted to Saul’s consciousness. Combined with his own familiarity with the place, the rged impressions ford a complete image.
This was the Third Morgue!
(End of Chapter)
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