chsdbacks Chapter 632 The Second Strange Thing
Chapter 632 The Second Strange Thing
Chapter 632 The Second Strange Thing
The sealing process went smoothly.
The black runes had floated directly above the salt container and began to slowly descend.
The humming of the incantation grew louder and louder, and the air in the storage room resonated with it.
Everything is going according to plan.
Then, something unexpected happened.
"Well----"
The cursed witch suddenly let out a muffled groan.
Her right arm—from shoulder to hand—suddenly twisted in an unnatural posture.
Like someone wringing out a rag, twist your entire arm and hand in the opposite direction.
Muscles, bones, blood vessels, nerves—all tissues emitted subtle tearing sounds as that force twisted them.
The cursed witch's face instantly turned ugly, because she had not spotted the attacker.
She quickly raised her left hand and pressed it against her twisted right shoulder. A black light surged from her palm, attempting to resist the twisting force.
The other wizards instinctively looked at her and became alert to their surroundings.
This is human nature.
When a teammate is suddenly injured, everyone will immediately be concerned about what happened.
But in that instant, as everyone's attention shifted from the fingers to the cursed witch, Jemin's mental power detected the change in the salt shaker.
That finger is still there.
But the strange power that had been clinging to his fingers had dissipated.
One moment it was there, radiating that indescribable "sense of abnormality"; the next moment, it was gone.
The finger had become an ordinary dead person's finger covered with age spots.
Jemin reacted almost instinctively.
He unleashed his full mental power, and his destiny system ran at overclock, attempting to track where the dissipated power had gone.
But that power dissipated so completely that it left no trace, as if it had never existed.
"It got away," Jemin said in a deep voice.
The air in the storage room seemed to freeze for a moment.
The twisting force on the cursed witch's right arm quickly weakened under her resistance and eventually stopped.
Her right arm was severely deformed, with the bones broken into several pieces and large areas of muscle fibers torn.
But she just frowned, and her right arm began to automatically revert to its original position, the bones making a clicking sound as they reset.
Her gaze fell on that finger, and her pale gray eyes narrowed.
"Tsk."
A disgruntled click of the tongue came from under the hood.
"Just one last step." She stared at the finger, a hint of annoyance in her voice. "That arm was twisted to create chaos, and in that instant, it slipped off the finger."
The sorcerer in the dark blue robes also looked rather grim: "Is it still possible to track him?"
"Unlikely," the cursed witch nodded. "That thing's true form isn't even a real entity."
The atmosphere in the storage room became subtle.
The cursed witch's right arm has been restored thanks to the self-healing magic.
She moved her fingers to make sure they weren't damaged, then looked up, her pale gray eyes sweeping over everyone present.
"Did you feel the force that twisted my arm?"
The burly wizard nodded: "I felt it. It was sudden, without any warning."
"It didn't seem to be coming from the finger." The young witch frowned as she recalled, "My mental energy was locked onto that finger, and before it dissipated, there were no unusual energy fluctuations in the finger itself. That power seemed to come from somewhere else."
The blue-robed wizard examined the finger: "Based on our analysis of that salty finger, its abilities should be limited to the concept of 'salty': making food salty, causing kidney failure, and making victims taste salt. It shouldn't have the ability to contort limbs."
"So, either we missed something in our analysis—" the gaunt wizard squinted, "that anomaly has some characteristics we haven't discovered yet..."
""
"Or—" the life-type wizard continued, his body having already shifted from elemental state back to flesh and blood, his expression returning to normal, "something else has intervened."
One of the wizards' eyes lit up: "So, there's actually another strange thing here?"
These words made the air in the storage room suddenly feel scorching hot.
Salty fingers have proven the research value of the bizarre.
For wizards, the more the merrier!
The person who knew the most about what had just happened was, of course, Jieming, who had been observing his surroundings since the beginning!
All eyes turned to him.
Jemin was standing next to the stone platform, his gaze not on the salt jar, but on some uncertain spot in the void.
A golden light slowly flowed deep within his pupils, a sign that the Eye of All Uses and the Fate System were operating simultaneously.
"I've been watching the fates around me," Jemin said calmly. "I did spot an unusual line of fate."
"Which direction? Is it related to the fingers?" the dark blue-robed wizard asked immediately.
"Your guess is correct. That power didn't come from the finger," Jemin said definitively. "That finger is 'dead' in terms of destiny; it doesn't actively exert any influence. That power twisting the arm came from outside. The specific direction—"
He closed his eyes and traced the trajectory of that fate line in his mind, "Northeast direction, about one kilometer from here."
"One kilometer to the northeast." The young witch quickly sketched out a map of the town in her mind. "That's the garden area on the edge of town. There's an abandoned noble manor there, with a long corridor behind it."
All the wizards' spiritual energy surged in that direction, and soon everyone realized that something was wrong.
"Huh?!"
"Let's go take a look," the wizard in the dark blue robe decided immediately.
Nine figures emerged from the fruit storage room and flew northeast, skimming the roof.
A kilometer is but a moment to a wizard.
Jemin landed above the manor gardens, surveying the area from above.
This is a manor that has clearly been abandoned for many years.
The roof of the main building has mostly collapsed, vines are climbing all over the stone walls, and weeds are growing rampant in the courtyard.
However, the garden's structure is still discernible, with regular paths, broken stone carvings, and a long corridor covered by wisteria.
The corridor is very long, about 100 meters long, and the stone pillars are carved with exquisite patterns.
The floor of the corridor was paved with stone slabs, which were covered with dust and dead leaves.
But what really caught Jemin's attention were the walls on both sides of the corridor.
The walls were covered in graffiti.
That's a very common childish doodle with crooked lines and uneven coloring, like something a child casually drew on a stone wall with a rough paintbrush.
Jemin's mental energy swept over the graffiti, and his brows furrowed slightly.
He landed at one end of the corridor, and the other wizards followed suit.
"These graffiti—" the young witch approached the wall and examined it closely, "look very old. The paint has seeped into the stone; it's at least several years old."
"But it's not all old," the cursed witch said, pointing to a section of the wall. "This part wasn't there before."
Jemin looked in the direction she was pointing.
It was a relatively clean wall, and the paint on the graffiti looked new and the colors were more vibrant. There were several human figures in the picture.
There are nine human figures in total, each with a different posture. Some are standing, some are sitting, some have their arms crossed, and some are sitting cross-legged.
Although the art style is childish and the lines are simple, the features of each figure are surprisingly clear.
The color of the clothes, the outline of the body, and even some subtle posture features are highly consistent with the nine wizards.
Jemin found himself.
The human-shaped figure sat cross-legged on the ground, with its back against the wall, and its posture was indeed very similar to his.
The human figure's face is not drawn with facial features; only two dots are drawn at the head position.
Jemin remembered that he had kept his eyes open and maintained his mental scan while in the storage room.
The cursed witch's human form is also easy to recognize; she wears a black cloak with a hood covering her head, just like her appearance in the storeroom.
But what truly made everyone's pupils contract was the humanoid's right arm.
The right arm of the humanoid figure representing the cursed witch, from shoulder to palm, was painted over with some kind of dark paint.
It's as if someone has roughly smeared the entire arm off the canvas with black paint.
"This—" The burly wizard's eyes lit up with interest. "When was this drawn?"
Jemin crouched down, activated his all-seeing eye, and carefully observed the dryness and penetration depth of the black pigment. Then, he used his mental power to analyze the chemical composition of the pigment.
"It's newly painted," he said, his tone flat. "The paint isn't completely dry yet. Judging from the rate of penetration and evaporation—it was probably painted a few seconds ago."
A few seconds ago.
It was precisely at the time when the cursed witch's arm was twisted.
"So," the sorcerer in the dark blue robes spoke slowly, as if chewing on each word, "there is something we don't know that painted our portraits on the walls of this corridor. Then, it painted over the cursed witch's arm on the portrait. And then, the cursed witch's arm twisted in reality."
"It's highly likely," said the gaunt wizard. "This graffiti—or rather, the thing that created it—is capable of rewriting reality."
All eyes were once again drawn to the graffiti.
Nine wizards, nine portraits.
Except for the right arm of the cursed witch, which was painted over, the other eight portraits are complete.
But Jemin noticed that some of the portraits had subtle, incomplete traces of alteration along their edges.
For example, the fingers of a portrait were drawn, or the feet of a portrait were lengthened, but those modifications were later erased.
It looks like they're testing the waters.
"This thing seems to have a mind of its own." Jemin pointed to the alterations. "Look here, here, and here."
It modified the portrait more than once. It was experimenting, testing, and evaluating how much influence its power could have on wizards.
His gaze turned serious: "And judging from these traces, it has tried many times. It's just that the wizard's resistance to the laws is too strong, so those minor modifications didn't produce any noticeable effect."
"It only intensified its power when we deliberately lowered our resistance to experience the effects of the curse, that it smeared the entire arm and finally caused real damage."
"Although it's just a twisted arm, it's not a serious injury for a level six wizard." The cursed witch moved her fingers, which could now bend and straighten normally again. "But what if it keeps increasing its force? What if next time it smears my head off?"
"I don't think it's that it doesn't want to erase your head, but that it can't. After all, you can't expect this thing to have any good intentions." Jemin shook his head.
The others thought about it and silently nodded in agreement.
The ability of this thing is already quite obvious: it can modify reality through graffiti.
Unfortunately, the wizards are well aware that no matter how powerful a mechanism is, it still needs to be supported by numerical values.
If the numerical values are insufficient, the mechanism will not function when faced with stronger numerical values.
Based on the previous situation, it is clear that the wizards' stats far surpass those of the wizards.
"Looking at it this way, although both are bizarre, Salty Fingers and this graffiti are clearly different." The young witch walked to the other side of the corridor and looked at the graffiti in other areas of the wall. "Salty Fingers operates mechanically. It kills people one by one, but it doesn't adjust its strategy according to the situation. It just executes some fixed rules."
"But this graffiti is different," Jemin continued. "It tested us first, and then, based on the circumstances, chose the cursed witch as its first target."
After all, the cursed witch was the main force behind the seal.
If she gets injured, the seal will break, and the salty finger will escape.
"So it's helping Salty Fingers escape?" The wizard in the dark blue robes frowned deeply. "These things can cooperate?"
"I think it might just be a coincidence. After all, I didn't think of a second strange possibility before, so when I was adjusting the fate lines, I moved all the fates that might be related to the strange." Jemin shook his head.
"So this thing was essentially brought there by us. The real point to watch out for is its strength."
He looked at the cursed witch's right arm.
"It can injure a level six wizard. Although the injury isn't severe, and it only occurred after the level six wizard lowered their defenses, it did cause some damage. And its ability is the kind that alters reality—this kind of power is several levels more dangerous than that finger."
Jemin turned to look at the crooked children's graffiti on the corridor walls, his expression serious, his eyes showing a hint of caution.
The other wizards nodded in agreement.
"The question is—where is it now? Is it attached to these graffiti, or is it hiding somewhere, remotely controlling these graffiti in some way?" a wizard asked.
Jemin reactivated the Fate System, spreading his mental energy to its fullest extent, attempting to capture any unusual clues in the surrounding network of fate.
A few seconds later, he opened his eyes.
"The fate lines are a mess." Jemin shook his head. "I can't find its true form yet."