I, a cultivator, have ended up in the wizarding world

Chapter 629 First Probe

The burly wizard brought the salt grains to his nose, smelled them, and then licked them with the tip of his tongue: "It's just ordinary salt, the same as the salt in this salt jar, nothing unusual."

"I see, I understand now." A soft female voice came from behind.

The one who spoke was the witch who hadn't uttered a sound until now.

She stood in the darkest corner of the kitchen, wearing a black cloak. The hood of the cloak covered most of her face, revealing only a pale chin.

She is a sorceress specializing in curses.

"That finger uses genetic material as a medium." Her voice was soft, but every word was so clear it seemed etched into the ears of everyone present. "It uses this to cast a curse on the soul level. As for the content of the curse... it's something like 'replacing flesh with salt.'"

She walked to the stove, stretched out her pale fingers, and gently tapped the edge of the salt jar.

"But this isn't a complete replacement. If it were a complete replacement, the victim would instantly turn into a pile of salt, which would be much simpler. But the designer of this curse... or rather, this very thing itself, doesn't want a quick death. It wants torture."

Her gaze shifted to the doorway. Carl's view was blocked by Jemin, so he couldn't see her expression under her hood, but the boy's body still involuntarily trembled.

"So it was designed as an 'incomplete replacement.' A vague and unstable correspondence is established between the victim's flesh and salt. While they are alive, this replacement is partial and reversible. Their kidneys will begin to turn into salty flesh, but can still barely maintain function. Their bodily fluids will begin to become salty, but their blood can still flow."

"And when they die, this substitution reverses. Salt becomes flesh again, and flesh becomes salt again. So we see the corpses in a preserved state. It's not that the curse is still in effect, but that the curse has been completed, leaving only the traces of 'being substituted'."

After she finished speaking, she raised her head, revealing a pair of light gray eyes beneath her hood.

"That's why we can't detect anything unusual. Because the carrier of the curse isn't the finger, but the victim's genetic material itself. The finger is just... a signal. The signal it emits isn't energy, but a 'connection' based on laws."

The kitchen was quiet for a moment as the wizards quickly analyzed the relevant information.

The sorcerer in the dark blue robe took a deep breath: "So, when we saw that finger, it had already done its job. Through the connection of genetic material, it 'wrote' the curse into the souls of the Hans family. The finger itself was just a doorbell; once it was pressed, it was useless."

"That's right." The cursed witch nodded.

The last piece of the puzzle in Jemin's mind was finally complete.

This is why neither he nor the fate system could detect any abnormality in his finger: because it truly had no abnormality.

It is merely a carrier, a container, a one-time-use "key".

The truly terrifying thing had already entered the souls of the Hans family before they even saw it.

The wizards exchanged glances, and although they didn't speak, they could all see the understanding in each other's eyes.

It was the first time anyone had encountered something so strange, but based on their own knowledge, they had basically figured out how it worked.

This is what makes high-level wizards so terrifying.

They may not have seen something before, but they have seen enough and studied it deeply enough that when faced with the unknown, they can quickly deduce the unknown patterns using their existing knowledge.

"So the question now is..."

Jemin was interrupted halfway through his sentence by a piercing scream.

"Salty! So salty!"

It's Karl.

The boy staggered from the doorway to the center of the living room, clutching his throat tightly with both hands, his face turning purplish-red.

His lips were trembling violently, saliva was dripping uncontrollably from the corners of his mouth, and his eyes were so wide they seemed to pop out of their sockets.

"It's so salty! Water...give me water..."

He stumbled to the dining table, grabbed the glass of water that Jemin had poured, and gulped it down in one go.

But the water did not alleviate his pain; instead, it made his expression even more distorted, as if the water had turned into salt water.

"The curse has taken effect." The cursed witch's voice remained calm, but her speech was noticeably faster. "He saw the finger; the genetic connection has been activated. That finger rang the doorbell, and now the door is open."

The male wizard in the dark blue robe was the first to make a move.

"Soul Protection!"

He gave a low shout, formed a hand seal, and a silver-white halo spread out from his palms, enveloping Karl within it.

Dense runes appeared on the halo, each one spinning at high speed, attempting to peel away the abnormal state from the boy's body.

The halo stabilized, but Karl's expression did not improve significantly.

He was still retching painfully, his hands gripping his throat so tightly that his fingernails dug into his skin.

The young witch then joined the fray.

Blood automatically seeped from her fingertips, and she used the blood to draw a complex magic circle in the air. The circle spun and flew toward Karl, sticking to his forehead.

"Break the curse. Explore the infinite possibilities of fantasy novels, all in the category navigation." Her voice carried a strange rhythm. "Remove involuntary attachments and dispel interference from abnormal states."

Karl's body trembled violently, and a layer of gray mist appeared on his forehead, a sign that the curse was being peeled away.

The burly male wizard also joined.

His body-modification magic came in handy at this moment. A dark green light covered Karl's body, his muscle fibers swelled slightly in the light, and a tough membrane appeared on the surface of his skin.

He was strengthening Karl's physical resilience so that his body wouldn't immediately collapse under the impact of this curse.

Other wizards were also involved.

Some cast spells of mental soothing to alleviate Karl's fear and pain; others set up isolation barriers around Karl to sever the connection between the curse and the finger.

Jemin stood on the outermost edge, watching these level six wizards use their abilities, without rushing to make a move.

Although their spellcasting power was limited to level three, and the enemy's methods seemed quite bizarre, the wizards still managed to easily rescue the little guy.

The reason these people acted one by one, instead of removing the curse all at once, was entirely to deliberately reduce the effectiveness of various witchcrafts in order to test the various aspects of the curse.

It can be said that once these wizards took action, they basically understood most of the situation related to the curse.

To be honest, Jemin isn't very good at breaking curses... after all, he's better at enduring them head-on.

However, since the other wizards had already reached out to test the data, he couldn't just stand by and watch.

He reached into his storage space with his right hand and pulled out a fist-sized piece of liquid refined gold.

Using alchemy, he infused his mental energy into the liquid refined gold, breaking down its internal structure to the most basic particle state, and then constructing an extremely precise "coating" model in his consciousness.

It's the thing he put on himself right after he refined the refined gold.

However, Jemin's current manipulation precision is higher, allowing him to integrate with Carl's skin, muscles, and even cell membranes at the molecular level.

Without affecting normal physiological functions, a dual barrier is constructed, both physically and mentally.

After everyone else had finished casting their spells, Jemin raised his hand and flicked it.

The liquid adamantite transformed into a silver streak, shooting precisely at Karl. Upon contact with the boy's skin, it exploded, transforming into countless invisible particles that evenly covered his entire body.

From the outside, Karl's skin simply had an almost transparent sheen, as if it had been washed with a thin layer of water.

But Jemin knew that the coating had penetrated the surface of every single cell in Carl's body.

Even if this strange phenomenon strikes again later, it can easily block the curse.

Karl's body stiffened abruptly.

Then, he stopped struggling.

The eyes, bloodshot from the pain, slowly regained their clarity. The hands that had been choking her throat slowly loosened, her chest heaving as she gasped for air.

"I..." His voice was hoarse, carrying a sense of bewilderment from surviving a disaster, "I don't think it's salty."

In the kitchen, the wizards secretly recorded the data they had just collected.

After comforting Carl for a while, Jemin suddenly remembered something and turned his attention to the salt shaker that had just been opened.

"Strange, that finger hasn't reappeared. Didn't the intelligence say that even if it's destroyed, the finger should reappear?"

Jemin's mental energy swept across the salt shaker.

The jar contained only pure white salt grains, with no foreign matter between them.

He then extended his mental energy to the entire kitchen and the whole house, but still found nothing.

Other wizards were doing the same thing.

A moment later, everyone withdrew their mental energy.

"I didn't sense any new emotional fluctuations," the young witch said.

"There are no new signs of life," the burly wizard said.

"I scanned the entire town," the cursed witch's voice came from under her hood. "Within a radius of five hundred kilometers, there is no object that matches the characteristics of that finger."

"There's none underground either."

The wizards exchanged glances.

The combined mental power of the nine individuals was enough to turn this area upside down.

If that finger were still in any corner of this town, it would be impossible for it to escape the joint search of nine high-ranking wizards.

But it simply disappeared.

No, it should be said that it never reappeared.

"Was it because it realized it couldn't kill the last person, so it gave up? Or did it, based on that strange mechanism, determine that the killing was complete, and thus disappear naturally?" the blue-robed wizard speculated.

Jemin walked up to the salt shaker, reached into it, and pinched up a small handful of salt.

The salt grains rustled between my fingers; they were fine, dry, and showed no abnormalities.

He brought the salt grains to his nose and smelled them, then touched them lightly with the tip of his tongue.

It's just ordinary table salt.

(Bonus chapter today, one more chapter to go.)