Chapter 326: Soul Tide |
“What?”
Hearing Saul’s words, Sander froze in place. It took three breaths before he could react, and even then, he repeated the question in disbelief.
“Do you remember anything unusual that happened before getting off the ship?”
“I…” Sander’s eyes kept twitching.
The long-buried truth was finally surfacing, and he was close to losing control of his emotions.
“Calm down. Don’t you want to know what really caused Middor’s death?”
Sander sniffled hard and spoke in a trembling voice, “I remember now, I remember. Before the ship docked, there was a Soul Tide at Bluewater Bay. So we waited on the sea for a night and only disembarked at dawn.”
“Soul Tide? What’s that?” Saul had never heard of the term.
“It’s said that many years ago, a brutal war broke out on the western continent, involving numerous nations. An entire empire nearly fell. At the time, two armies clashed at Bluewater Bay.”
“Whenever a Soul Tide appears, someone disappears. So the captain told us to anchor offshore for the night and wait until morning to dock. Could it have been that night?”
“Did Middor act strange that night?”
“No… we were both exhausted from the journey. After she lay down to sleep, I dozed off in a chair beside her. Oh, right!” Sander seemed to recall something. He suddenly turned and stared at Saul. “In the middle of the night, I heard my sister calling me, but when I woke up, she told me to go back to sleep, that everything was fine. I thought she was just playing around. I was too tired, so I went back to sleep.”
“If I’m not mistaken,” Saul softened his voice, “she was already dead before getting off the ship.”
“That’s impossible! I spoke to her before we disembarked,” Sander protested, waving his arms. “I even saw her crawl into the box with my own eyes. I sealed the box myself!”
Right now, he looked like a lost child, completely forgetting to show respect to the Wizard before him.
“Maybe what you saw was an illusion. Or maybe she still had some remaining consciousness at the time. But if someone suffocates to death, her skin wouldn’t be in that state.”
“She wasn’t… suffocated…” Sander stared blankly at his sister. She looked just like she had years ago, as if merely asleep—not dead.
Saul lowered his gaze, propping himself up with both hands on his knees as he slowly stood. He said offhandedly, “In any case, you didn’t accidentally suffocate her.”
Sander snapped his head up. His already dry eyes turned crimson.
His lips trembled, but he couldn’t say a word.
Saul didn’t give him the chance either, cutting in directly, “Enough. I’ve already inspected the house. You’ve retrieved your missing item. Let’s not waste more time—sign the sublease agreement now.”
Sander hadn’t yet recovered but nodded fiercely.
After repacking the box, the two of them returned to the carriage and signed the agreement.
Then, Saul asked the mushroom coachman to take Sander back to Outpost Town while he himself returned to the lakeside cabin.
“Bluewater Bay. Soul Tide… If that’s the case, there should be plenty of soul fragments. With something of that scale, there might even be a few wraiths.”
Saul closed the door behind him and stepped back into the main hall—the very spot where the box had appeared.
“I should go there in a few days to replenish my soul energy. Sitting idle and living off what I’ve saved will turn me into a dried-up husk.”
At this point, Saul suddenly stomped his foot. “But first, I need to deal with the problem inside this house. Are you coming out on your own, or do I have to drag you out?”
The room remained silent.
Saul wasn’t in a hurry. A black tentacle extended from the back of his neck, dropped to the floor, and slithered across it like a black python.
“A trunk appearing out of nowhere—was it trying to scare us off?”
Little Algae’s head stopped at a corner, then extended upward, slithering along the wall. It went straight, turned at a right angle, went straight again, and then turned once more.
Saul walked over and saw Little Algae use its body to trace out a square on the wall.
“Alright, so the one controlling the trunk doesn’t seem to have a clear consciousness.”
He didn’t find the wraith he thought was hiding here, but he did find a strange passage. Saul touched his nose, an awkward expression flickering by.
He recalled Little Algae, who was extremely sensitive to the aura of death, and stepped forward to inspect the wall himself.
“A well-hidden secret chamber.” Saul gently brushed the wall with his hand but didn’t feel anything unusual.
He closed his eyes, trying to recall the size of the cabin from the outside.
“There is a hidden room, but it should be small. What’s being hidden inside?”
His hand on the wall gradually turned translucent, and his fingers suddenly passed through the wooden surface.
But he didn’t reach in—he withdrew his hand quickly.
For a moment, the vague image of a gray-white tentacle turned into a human hand as it came out.
“There’s nothing inside. Not even a defensive spell.” After a brief exploration, Saul traced the square Little Algae had marked.
Magic flowed from his fingertips and turned into a black Touch of Torment.
Its corrosive power quickly broke through the formation on the wall, revealing a hidden door.
Saul opened it, only to see another formation inscribed behind it.
“What a complicated formation.” Even a glance made Saul dizzy, despite his current level of mental strength.
But as soon as he began channeling his meditation method, the dizziness lessened. Then, opening his diary, the mental backlash disappeared completely.
“This formation focuses on concealing fluctuations. The formulas used… I’ve never seen them before. What was the previous owner of this house trying to hide?”
Saul stepped inside and found a layer of dust had already settled.
He used magic to remove it and finally revealed a pattern on the floor that had been sealed away for who knows how many years.
“Another formation? Using a formation to hide another formation?” Saul didn’t move closer right away. He inspected the sides of the room, and only after confirming there were no other formations did he cautiously approach the center.
“Using forest to hide a cabin… haunting illusions to hide a secret chamber… and the secret chamber to hide a formation… I want to see just how valuable the thing being hidden is.”
Saul examined the formation carefully, and his brows gradually furrowed.
“Why does this formation look familiar?”
A light suddenly clicked on in his mind, and his confused expression turned into one of shock.
To confirm his memory, Saul quickly pulled out one of his notebooks.
It wasn’t a particularly important one—just a collection of rare magic knowledge. He flipped to the first few pages and stopped on a diagram of a formation formula.
It was the soul-extraction formation he had once obtained from a wandering wizard in Grind Sail Town!
And this haunted house’s formation… was clearly an upgraded version of that!
(End of Chapter)