chsdbacks Chapter 627 Analysis
Chapter 627 Analysis
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Nine people stood on the hillside, looking each other over.
The silence lasted for a few seconds, then one of the middle-aged wizards, dressed in a dark blue robe, spoke.
"It seems you've all chosen this place." His voice was calm as his gaze swept across the faces of the crowd. "I didn't expect so many people to choose this place."
"Because they might have chosen a more obvious target," another young witch chimed in, her voice carrying a cold, analytical quality. "The eeriness of this location is the slow-killing type, not the violent kind that destroys the city right away. Many people might think this kind of 'gentle' eeriness isn't very valuable."
"Not valuable?" a burly male wizard scoffed. "Do we really judge the value of such rule-based creatures by the speed at which they kill?"
The young witch glanced at him, did not refute, and simply said, "I am only analyzing other people's psychology, it does not represent my own opinion."
Jemin stood at the edge of the crowd, not in a hurry to interrupt.
He found that the atmosphere among these wizards was not as tense as he had expected, but it was not very enthusiastic either. They were more like a group of temporarily assembled colleagues testing each other before officially starting work.
No one who manages to snag a spot is a fool.
They all knew very well that in this battlefield where output levels were limited and large-scale destruction was prohibited, fighting alone was not necessarily the optimal solution.
Especially when faced with such mysterious and unpredictable characteristics, having more people means having more protection.
The middle-aged male wizard in the dark blue robe, as the one with the strongest mental energy fluctuations, seemed to have become the temporary convener.
He spoke again: "Now that everyone is here, I suggest we go find the android in charge first, get some firsthand information, and then decide on our next step. What do you all think?"
No one objected.
Nine figures rose from the hilltop and flew towards the center of the town.
To avoid causing panic among ordinary people, they lowered their altitude before entering the airspace above the town, gliding close to the rooftops, and finally landed in front of a three-story stone building.
A wooden sign hangs at the entrance of the building: "Township Office".
An old man was standing at the door.
Or rather, he looks like an old man.
He was hunched over, wearing a faded gray coat, his face was covered in wrinkles, and his gray beard was neatly trimmed.
His eyes were amber, exactly the same color as the sky in this plane.
Those who had just learned about this dimension knew that this was a hallmark of the administrators of the androids.
"Old Herman?" The wizard in the dark blue robe stepped forward.
The old man bowed slightly, his gesture carrying an old-fashioned politeness: "Indeed. Gentlemen, you have finally arrived."
His voice was hoarse, carrying a tone that was hard to discern as either exhaustion or helplessness.
"Let's go inside and talk. It's not convenient outside."
The town hall has a spacious conference room on the first floor, with a dozen chairs on both sides of a long table.
The nine wizards took their seats, while old Herman stood at one end of the long table, his hands resting on the tabletop, his amber eyes scanning everyone present.
"Let me first confirm the information you all already know," he said. "The reports you see on the Magic Network terminal are from three hours ago. In those three hours, two more people have died."
The atmosphere in the meeting room grew a little heavier.
"The same household?" Jemin asked.
Old Hermann looked at him and nodded. "Yes. That finger appeared in Hans the blacksmith's salt shaker yesterday. Hans and his family of five had dinner last night. Early this morning, Hans and his eldest son passed away first. This morning, his wife and youngest daughter also passed away. The youngest son is still struggling, but..."
He shook his head and didn't continue.
"Take us to see the body," the young witch said, standing up.
Old Hermann glanced at her, said nothing, simply nodded, and immediately turned to lead the way.
The basement of the town hall was temporarily converted into a morgue.
Forty-nine corpses were neatly arranged on a metal platform, each covered with a white cloth.
A strange smell permeated the basement, but it didn't smell like rottenness; rather, it was a... salty, fishy odor.
"It smells like a fish drying yard by the sea."
Jemin lowered his gaze and thought silently to himself.
Old Hermann lifted the white sheet covering the most recent corpse.
Jemin and several wizards stepped forward.
The deceased was a middle-aged man whose body was severely swollen and whose skin had a translucent pale white color, as if he had been soaked in water for a long time.
But what's even more striking is the texture of the skin's surface, which resembles cured meat, with an unnatural contraction and hardening between the muscle fibers.
"Wasn't a more detailed autopsy performed?" the wizard in the dark blue robe asked.
"The conditions are not available here at the moment, and the corresponding technology is not installed in my soul."
Old Herman shook his head regretfully and looked up at the earlier corpses:
"At this stage, relying on the basic anatomical knowledge provided by the doctors, we were able to conduct a preliminary examination, but we are unable to do anything more detailed."
Without hesitation, Jemin listened.
He raised his hand, and a fine wisp of wind blade condensed at his fingertips, which he gently sliced along the deceased's abdomen.
The skin is turned back.
The condition of the subcutaneous tissue changed the expressions of all the wizards present.
The subcutaneous fat of a person who has just died should be pale yellow and soft in texture.
However, the subcutaneous tissue of this corpse was grayish-white and hard like wax.
Jemin didn't stop; his wind blade continued to penetrate deeper, cutting open the kidney.
The kidney had shrunk by almost half, its surface was wrinkled, and its color was dark red or black.
He used the tip of the wind blade to pick up a small piece of tissue and examined it closely.
"Interesting. The sodium content inside this tissue is normal," Jemin said. "But the tissue's condition definitely looks like it's been pickled. It seems the other party's methods weren't simply altering the substance, but rather..."
He paused for a moment, searching for the right way to express himself.
"...It's a change at the level of existence."
The young witch also came over, extending her right hand with a faint blue glow at her fingertips, and gently touched the kidney tissue.
A few seconds later, she withdrew her hand, her expression turning serious.
"My detection magic tells me that this person's kidneys have become salted meat in a 'conceptual' sense." Her tone was calm, but what she said made everyone present feel a chill. "It's not that it's been salted, but rather that some force has redefined 'what it should be.' In that force's perception, this tissue should inherently be salty, hard, and pickled."
There was a few seconds of silence in the basement.
The sorcerer in the dark blue robe took a deep breath: "So it's the same with those foods. It's not that too much salt was added, but rather that the food itself became salty in a 'conceptual' sense."
“That’s right,” the young witch nodded. “And it’s not just the bodies. Feel the remnants of soul on these corpses.”
The other wizards subconsciously extended their mental energy to sense the situation.
Jemin's mental power penetrated deep into the traces of the soul remaining on the corpse, and he felt an unprecedented "distortion".
There was no fear or pain in the fragments of the deceased's soul... or rather, those emotions had been completely covered up by some force.
They are covered by a pure, almost "natural" saltiness.
It's like asking a piece of salted meat, "Do you think it's salty?" The salted meat won't answer you because it's salty by nature.
Saltiness is its essence, not its sensation.
Jemin withdrew his mental energy and exchanged a glance with the other wizards.
At that moment, the nine people reached a consensus.
“This isn’t a curse,” another wizard said, his voice low but clear. “It’s a redefinition of the concept of ‘salty.’ That finger isn’t poisoning the food; it’s saying… ‘You are inherently salty.’”
The meeting room was quiet.
Old Herman stood to the side, his amber eyes watching the high-ranking wizards draw their conclusions, a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth.
He then turned and walked towards the stairwell, leaving behind a single sentence.
"That finger is currently in the blacksmith Hans's salt pan. If you gentlemen are ready, I can lead the way."
The wildly popular online novel, "I, a Cultivator, Ended Up in the Wizarding World," is a heartfelt work by author Herbivore Caiman.