The drowning victim was white, so the handprint around her ankle was extremely conspicuous. It wasn't a bruise; it looked as though someone's palm had been stained with ink and then pressed onto her skin.
Her breathing had already steadied. Her eyes were tightly shut, as if she were having a nightmare, and her eyeballs could be seen moving beneath her lids.
There were marks on her left foot. The only other traces on her body were the wrinkles caused by prolonged immersion in water. Lu Ban examined them carefully and suddenly felt that the handprint didn't look human.
He placed his hand over the mark for comparison and discovered that the handprint was much larger. It also seemed to have six fingers.
"This isn't a human hand."
Lu Ban reached his conclusion.
As a professional Chosen of the Gods, he dared to make such a judgment.
"Not a human hand?"
Xiya was somewhat astonished. Under normal circumstances, one would assume that the mark had been left by some kind of tool. After all, a human hand couldn't possibly leave such a trace. The force involved had far exceeded what a normal human could exert in the sea, but Lu Ban's conclusion was simply too outrageous.
"You saw it too. That thing in the sea definitely wasn't a diver. A normal human couldn't move like that underwater."
Lu Ban explained.
"According to Occam's razor, entities shouldn't be multiplied beyond necessity. I still believe it was a diver."
Xiya replied.
"Right, when I was talking to them just now, I asked about the children here."
She added this as a follow-up to what Lu Ban had mentioned earlier: the local child who had shouted "die" at him.
"They said they'd also heard children shouting near the beach yesterday, but they assumed