Lord Bals Has a Problem?

The dim moonlight provided the courtyard with pitiful illumination, but in the firelight, Aaron saw Alice's face pale several shades. He could even feel the helplessness that came from the depths of her heart.

"Miss, do you still want to go in and take a look?" Ed stepped forward and asked Alice carefully.

"Master Sart?" Alice did not answer directly. Instead, she looked toward Sart.

Sart coughed, lowered his head to glance at the leather pouch around his waist, checked the amount of Spirit Powder remaining, then looked at Aaron before nodding at Alice. "If Lord Aaron wants to go in and take a look."

Alice unconsciously turned toward Aaron, a complicated mix of emotions showing in her eyes.

If there had still been room for mediation before, then with the appearance of this Crawling Hand, she knew that Tien's death could no longer be explained away.

Rather than wanting to see Tien, she simply wanted to confirm everything with her own eyes.

The appearance of this Crawling Hand was definitely no coincidence.

She hoped her guess was wrong, but reason told her that the possibility was slim.

Although Aaron did not know what she was thinking, he could sense the disappointment in her eyes. His heart softened, and he nodded.

"The guards should have informed the city lord about this. He should be here soon." Ed held up his torch and shield as he walked at the very front of the group, reminding them of this.

The brief battle with the Crawling Hand had taken very little time. On the one hand, the Heretical Cult's main forces were not here; there had only been a Bronze Tier Crawling Hand. On the other hand, Aaron's group had a full three Bronze Tier transcendents participating in the battle.

Although Sart, as the son of a tower master, had not directly injured the Crawling Hand and had relied entirely on various forms of support, the simple rituals he cast several times had disrupted the Crawling Hand's attacks at precisely the right moments.

With Alice and Ed working alongside him, the Crawling Hand had still failed to make much of a splash.

Of course, aside from Aaron, no one counted the death of that attendant as part of the splash.

When Ed approached Tien's room, Aaron finally noticed that the door had originally been completely nailed shut with wooden planks. Someone had later forcefully chopped through the planks, breaking the barrier apart.

Ed raised his torch and leaned closer. After examining the marks on the planks, he said without turning his head, "A human did this. Someone used an axe or something similar to break through the planks."

"Wasn't anyone keeping watch here?" Alice could not help complaining, but then she remembered something and quickly stopped herself.

Leaving ordinary people to keep watch here would only result in them being controlled by members of the Heretical Cult.

As for leaving a transcendent here, unless they were a Bronze Tier or even Silver Tier transcendent, their fate would probably be no better than that of an ordinary person.

But Leyden City's special geographical location meant that it was impossible for it to possess many transcendents—or rather, many transcendents whom Lord Bals could command.

As far as Alice knew, even though Lord Bals was a Gold Tier transcendent, the total number of Silver Tier and Bronze Tier transcendents he could mobilize was no more than ten.

And clearly, transcendents would not enjoy doing something as dull as keeping watch, especially when the surveillance involved the Heretical Cult. Who knew whether they might encounter members of the Heretical Cult?

Thinking this, she drew her longsword and one-handed shield again and pushed open the door in Ed's place.

Because even the windows had been sealed shut, the room was pitch-black, and nothing inside could be seen.

However, as the wooden door opened, a faint stench of decay reached Aaron's nose, making him frown.

After repeatedly probing the room and confirming that there were no traps, Ed and Alice finally entered and immediately lit the candleholder on the table.

Perhaps because some time had passed since Tien's death, most of the traces and scents had already faded considerably. However, a large, conspicuous patch of purplish-black remained on the floor, covering nearly half of it.

The furnishings in the room were almost identical to those in Sart's room: simple and practical. The only difference was that Tien's room also contained a small bookshelf, on which several books with assorted covers had been haphazardly stacked.

Sart then led Aaron into the room. He drew a deep breath of the slightly foul air and murmured to himself, "The spiciness of Snake Gall Flower, the chill of Concentration Grass, the sour stench of Rotten Soul Flower, and Awakening Root, Sleepless Grass..."

Aaron listened from the side with a blank expression. Sart rapidly recited a long string of terms he could not understand at all, as if he were reading out a menu. Several question marks appeared above Aaron's head again. "Those are..."

"Those are the incense materials needed for a ritual, but there's a problem..." Sart sighed and shook his head at Alice. "I'm sorry, but I can confirm that at least two rituals were held here. The latest one was approximately two or three days ago. If I'm not mistaken, it was the Hand-Chopping Ritual used to create the Crawling Hand."

"Two or three days ago?" Aaron could not help interrupting. "Then what we just..."

"The primary material for the Crawling Hand's Hand-Chopping Ritual is the victim's soul. Only this can accelerate the Crawling Hand's formation. Otherwise, one must wait for some time while the Crawling Hand slowly absorbs the corpse's vitality and supernatural aura."

Sart patiently explained this to Aaron while Alice and Ed had already walked to the foot of Tien's bed.

Although Alice had mentally prepared herself, she still could not help snorting coldly. A trace of anger involuntarily appeared on her face.

A severely emaciated corpse lay on the bed. It was almost as if a layer of human skin had been stretched over its bones. It looked like a mummy, and its appearance in life was nearly impossible to discern.

Its vitality had even been drained to the point that Tien's body had visibly shrunk. He had originally been at least a middle-aged man, but now he was only as tall as a boy of fifteen or sixteen, making him look extremely strange.

The most eye-catching feature was naturally his right arm, severed at the elbow and nowhere to be found.

Of course, everyone knew exactly where it had gone.

"A few days ago, we came to Tien's room. We watched Colin nail Tien's door shut." Alice turned and said this to Sart.

Aaron curiously craned his neck and caught a glimpse of Tien's corpse on the bed. He could not help clicking his tongue.

Fortunately, after experiencing the two Heretical Cult incidents involving Rat-Faces and the Crawling Hand, his resistance to horrifying scenes had clearly improved. At the very least, corpses no longer affected him.

"A few days ago?"

"Three days ago."

"Wait, that's not right!" Aaron suddenly said. "Lord Bals might have a problem!"