In a lavish restaurant in Northland City's southern district, a handsome young man with blond hair and blue eyes, dressed in luxurious clothes, leaned back in his chair with a glass of pale red fruit wine in hand.
Holding the glass in his right hand and resting his left naturally on the armrest, he calmly looked ahead. "Holmes, did you botch it?"
Before him, the captain of the guards responsible for handling the extortion ring's corpses wore a somewhat gloomy expression. "Judging by the outcome, yes. But it wasn't my fault. That kid was a complete desperado! From the start of the operation to my arrival at the scene, only a few minutes had passed, yet all I saw in the end were the punks' corpses. Under Northland Province law, the City Guard does have the authority to rule on matters like this. If I had caught him at the scene and both sides were stubbornly arguing their own cases, I could have 'invited' them all to the Public Security Bureau in the name of mediating a dispute. But in the current situation, if I want to make a move against him, I have to label him a suspect. Those are entirely different matters! The former would merely entangle him in trivial affairs and leave him no time to cultivate, at most making him unbearably annoyed... But the latter would create a life-or-death grudge! I don't want a powerful Soul Master to regard me as a mortal enemy."
The young man tapped the wooden armrest lightly with his index finger. "Can't you make him cooperate with the investigation?"
Captain Holmes shook his head. "The law favors Soul Masters. If it's only cooperating with an investigation, he can refuse completely unless I directly point the finger at him."
The young man