The old man personally examined the resurrected corpse. After confirming that it had returned as a walking corpse, he sniffed the air around him, then beckoned a palace maid over to question her. "Is this fragrance the incense Her Majesty normally uses in her residence?"
The maid shook her head decisively. "No. I've never smelled this fragrance before."
The old man's gaze fell back on the struggling corpse being held down. He immediately reached a conclusion and murmured, "Death-Defying Incense..."
He turned to someone nearby. "Go find a medicinal master to confirm the fragrance."
He then questioned the black-clothed man he had brought earlier about the Soul-Capturing Bags. The man told him that all the bags contained captured souls. This time, they were not dogs, but human souls.
The old man asked him, "Are you certain the soul in that earlier bag was a dog?"
The black-clothed man hurriedly replied, "Not necessarily a dog, but its shape was definitely something resembling one."
The old man glanced sidelong at the resurrected corpse and murmured again, "Could they originally have intended only to resurrect someone, without knowing there were captured souls nearby or that they would draw me here? Was it my sudden intervention that prevented them from cleaning up in time?"
He did not know the precise workings of resurrection through Death-Defying Incense either. This was merely his conjecture.
Hearing this, the black-clothed man beside him hastily agreed. "An astute judgment, Right Saint. That is indeed possible."
The old man glanced at him. If they really could have cleaned everything up without anyone knowing, provided they were not exposed, had the strange happenings in the Queen's chambers truly been an isolated incident? Had no one ever noticed anything unusual before? He did not even dare pursue that line of inquiry.
So