The Thornwood Rose Garden was one of the Butler Family's largest estates, so ordinary people were not allowed to enter the private aristocratic plantation.
But Ye Yan and Watson were no ordinary people.
With Cyril Butler's case currently on trial, the Butler Family had no time to spare for anything else, and their control over their own estate had weakened considerably.
After knocking out the guards here, the two took over the entire estate with ease.
The scent of damp earth mingled with the fragrance of roses, brewing a drowsy languor in the glow of the setting sun.
Ye Yan's boots pressed into the soft earth.
The dark green stems made the unopened buds look all the redder, like beads of blood seeping from a young girl's tender skin where thorns had pierced it, slowly dripping along the brambles.
Most of the roses in the Rose Garden were ordinary.
Yet hidden deep within the garden was a special kind of rose. Its fragrance was cloyingly sweet, like the final perfume of ripe fruit on the verge of rotting.
It was an irresistibly sweet and enticing scent.
[Color-Changing Rose]
[Category: Tier-One Material (Gatherable)]
[It was once pure as snow, but turned red as flames after being watered with heart's blood.]
[Aspect: Honey, Cup]
He had unexpectedly discovered a new Tier-One Material.
But that was not the most important thing. The Color-Changing Rose had introduced Ye Yan to two new Principles.
Cup was a Principle concerned with reproduction and feasting, and was closely associated with food, sex, and all kinds of sensual desire.
Ye Yan's mouth twitched.
It sounded like a seriously wicked Principle.
He couldn't help thinking back to when he had killed that cultist and formed the eerie mass of flesh. The Abomination's aura had affected his body, giving him an inexplicable hunger he could barely resist.
By the sound of it, that Abomination had possessed the Principle of Cup.
Reproduction, temptation, agony, blood and yearning, along with sensual desire.
He was now quite certain that most of the cases of bodily mutation and mass loss of control recorded in the Beginner's Guide to Occultism had probably been influenced by the Principle of Cup.
As for the description of Honey...
"The evergreen treasure in the world's veins, the throbbing pulse of the turning seasons."
Did Honey represent vitality and healing?
Ye Yan wasn't sure.
Still, although the description of the Principle of Honey was rather cryptic, it seemed much safer than the Principle of Cup.
Ye Yan stopped and raised a hand to halt Watson behind him. "Dr. Watson, I think this is where Cyril Butler killed those girls."
Roses watered with heart's blood.
He didn't think the "heart's blood" in the description meant nurturing them with care. It meant exactly what it said.
Watson hesitated. "Are you sure?"
Ye Yan nodded.
He had more than one bottle of Salt Trace on him. Even if he was wrong, he could look again.
The Rose Garden wasn't that large. Even if he used the clumsiest method of elimination, he had enough Salt Trace with him to search the whole place.
Watson said nothing more. He turned and opened a case he had brought with him. A delicate glass bottle lay on the velvet lining inside. "Inspector Lestrade asked me to bring this."
The doctor spoke softly, as if afraid of disturbing something. "He hopes Daphne can witness it with her own eyes."
Ye Yan silently took the glass bottle from Watson. His boot ground a carpet of withered rose petals into the earth, and he carefully placed the bottle among the rose bushes.
Then he stood and pulled the cork from the Salt Trace bottle. The faintly glowing salt poured out through its mouth.
The grains fell onto the black soil and sank into it as naturally as raindrops returning to the sea. Only the faint rustling of salt crystals entering the earth remained, like countless tiny claws crawling beneath the surface.
Suddenly, a dull cracking sound came from underground, as though something were awakening.
White luminescence burst through the earth, like crystals of salt forming in black seawater. The lights flowed as if alive, gradually gathering into a huge, strange pattern resembling a pupil.
Almost as soon as the pattern formed, tiny points of light began appearing all over the rose bushes.
On the ground, on the branches and petals, in the air...
Some were splattered, others appeared in droplets, until at last they came together into handprints.
The small, twisted prints showed fingers splayed wide or clenched into fists. Most terrifying were the unmistakable drag marks left by those who had struggled, stretching from the ground deep into the thorny rose bushes.
"Oh my..."
Watson was too shocked to speak.
Standing amid the densely scattered lights, Ye Yan's eyes clearly reflected the countless handprints.
"One, two, three..."
Ye Yan's breathing quickened as he mechanically counted the prints. "Seventeen, eighteen..."
Soon, the count had passed thirty-seven.
When he reached forty-seven, a faint sobbing sound interrupted him.
At first, it was like the moan of wind blowing through thorns. Gradually, it became the clear, overlapping cries of girls, closing in from every direction.
The rose bushes began to shake violently.
The Color-Changing Roses in the flowerbeds all bloomed at once. Like faded color photographs, they changed from bright red to pure white, then finally became mottled black and white.
It was as if the entire flowerbed had been splashed with ink.
Blackness spread down the stems, staining even the green leaves with dark hues.
One flower, one vision.
Like a thin sea mist, Sorrow of the Abyss Ocean.
The roses' fragrance turned the warm twilight into a white haze. The lights on the ground became bright moonlight in the fog, outlining the graceful silhouettes of dozens of girls.
"W-what is this?"
Watson looked at Ye Yan in astonishment. "Is the Enchanted Trace you made really this powerful?"
"No. It's probably because of those special roses."
Before Ye Yan had finished speaking, the mismatched eyes belonging to Daphne, placed among the rose bushes, suddenly changed.
A young girl's voice came from the glass bottle.
The eyeballs, which had been dead, came to life in that instant. A soft, lilting song, accompanied by the sound of waves, drifted out, and the shadows on the ground flowed toward the glass bottle like a tide.
When the last shadow had entered the bottle, the mismatched eyes vanished, and a translucent figure slowly rose.
The golden-haired girl's outline gradually grew clearer in the twilight. Ye Yan saw dark stains on her ethereal white dress and a distinct ring of bruising around her neck.
Her mismatched eyes shone with astonishing brightness.
"Who am I?"
The girl's voice rang out with an ethereal echo, like one heard beneath the sea.
"I'm Daphne, Daphne Crowley..."
Watson stared in shock.
"A complete spirit. This violates the Principles of Mediumship!"
Even the mediums and witches of Witch Lane could only contact the dead if they had been dead for less than twenty-four hours. They couldn't summon a complete spirit and speak with it.
Daphne Crowley had been dead for twenty years. Her soul should have long since faded away. How could she possibly have been summoned?
All sound in the garden seemed to vanish.
The girl floated a foot above the ground. After a brief moment of confusion, her mismatched eyes fixed on Ye Yan.
"You summoned me from the deep sea." Daphne Crowley's skirt stirred though there was no wind, and she floated closer to Ye Yan on her own. "What would you have me do, Master?"
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