Lin Huai and his group walked out from the charred ruins of the hotel; Danitz's face was darker than the bottom of a pot.
"Shit! All the clues are gone. What a bunch of cowards!" He kicked a pebble by the roadside in frustration. "What now? We can't just go straight to that haunted coast, can we? We don't even have any preparations!"
"To the next scene," Lin Huai's tone was calm, as if the fire just now was merely an insignificant interlude. "The Sailor Tavern. The files say two drunks dueled over a woman, and a black ring is key evidence."
The group arrived at the bar where the murder occurred. Even during the day, the bar was quite bustling.
As usual, the tavern was a mix of rum, sweat, and cheap perfume. A few drunken Sailors were surrounding a curvaceous barmaid, telling dirty jokes.
Lin Huai walked straight to the bar and tapped on the counter.
The woman looked up and saw Lin Huai's group. Her eyes lit up, especially at Thor's magnificent armor and Kaelan's face, which was so beautiful she didn't seem real.
"What would you all like to drink? It's on the house."
"We're here about the two Sailors who died the night before last," Lin Huai said bluntly. "The files mentioned a black ring."
The woman's face turned pale. She pulled a chain from her neckline with a ring hanging on it and handed it over. "Are you talking about this? It originally belonged to Jack, but he... it's just an ordinary silver ring now. The black on it faded long ago."
Lin Huai took the ring. It felt ice-cold to the touch, and it truly felt like just an ordinary silver ring.
He spun the ring around his fingertip and then naturally handed it to Danitz beside him.
"Pay."
"Why is it me again?!" Danitz's cry rang out, but seeing Lin Huai's unquestionable gaze, he reluctantly pulled out a few measly copper pennies and bought the now worthless ring.
"Stupid," Loki commented elegantly from the side. "Buying a medium that has already lost its power—is Midgardian money really that easy to earn?"
"Shut up! What do you know, you pretty boy!" Danitz retorted immediately. "You think you're worthy of bickering with me?"
Lin Huai didn't explain, only saying calmly, "The last place, the Tidal Church. That upside-down Angel statue is still there."
The Church of Storms' Tidal Church was located on the other side of the city. Compared to the grand new building of the Church of the Fool, it appeared somewhat old and desolate. Since the rise of the Church of the Fool, the Church of Storms seemed to have moved its high-level combatants away from this "City of Sin," leaving only some low-Sequence Beyonders to maintain the faith.
The moment Lin Huai and his group stepped into the church grounds, everyone felt something was wrong.
It was too quiet.
The church was empty, without even a single praying believer. It was so quiet they could hear their own heartbeats.
"Something's wrong," Kaelan stopped, her expression grave. "The spirituality of faith here... is being drained dry."
"A powerful existence is here," Loki's smile vanished, a look of alertness flickering in his green eyes. "The air is full of the scent of death."
Lin Huai motioned for everyone to follow and pushed open the heavy wooden doors of the church.
Inside the hall, the light was dim. Beneath the Holy Emblem of Storms in front, a figure stood quietly, as if he had been waiting for a long time.
It was a young man dressed entirely in black, with short black hair and a handsome face that held a sickly pallor. He lowered his head, seemingly staring at the ground. Behind him, an old man in simple linen clothes stood like a shadow, whispering a report to him.
The young man in black didn't speak, just listening quietly, though it looked as if he wasn't really taking it in.
Just then, the church doors were pushed open.
"Lord Saint!"
A terrified scream escaped Kaelan's mouth. The Demoness first looked nervously at the old man, then at the young man with a face full of terror, as if she had thought of something. Her face was written with unbelievable fear, and her body was even trembling slightly.
Thor immediately took a step forward, shielding Kaelan behind him. mjolnir in his hand began to flicker with electricity as he glared at the two people ahead.
Hearing her voice, the young man in black slowly raised his head.
He opened his eyes.
They were a pair of... eyes with no pupils, no whites, composed purely of deep Darkness!
His gaze bypassed everyone and fixed firmly on Lin Huai.
"The aura on you... is truly disgusting."
His voice wasn't loud, yet it seemed to ring directly in the depths of everyone's soul, carrying a high-and-mighty disdain.
"The ritual is more than half complete. If you want to stop me, then try..." He paused and continued, "The debt from before, you haven't paid it back yet? What do you say... Mysteries."
After saying that, he stopped looking at Lin Huai and turned his head to the statue-like old man behind him.
"Let's go, child. We have other things to do."
"Don't forget, this is the fate of the Prisoner."
Before his voice had even faded, the figures of the young man in black and the old man faded quickly like ink in water, completely vanishing as if they had never appeared.
"Shit! They... they're gone!" Danitz's voice sounded particularly loud in the empty hall, carrying a hint of a tremor.
Thor roared, slamming his hammer onto the ground. Lightning blasted a large crater into the floor. "Damned coward! Only knows how to play tricks!"
"It's useless," Loki's face was pale. "Even standing before him, I felt my soul in terror. I didn't even dare to investigate how they left. But hey, mortal, what exactly did he mean by 'the fate of the Prisoner'... it sounded more like a declaration."
Lin Huai composed himself and forced himself to calm down, saying to everyone, "Never mind that for now. Let's search the whole church carefully first!"
In the prayer room at the deepest part of the church, they found the upside-down black Angel statue mentioned in the files.
Below the statue, four people wearing the robes of the Church of Storms' clergymen lay on the ground. Their deaths were exactly the same as the victims of the previous three murders: eyes pitch black, devoid of all life.
"They are also sacrificial offerings..." Kaelan looked at the tragic scene, her voice weak.
"We'll talk about other things later," Lin Huai said, his voice turning cold as he looked at the tragic scene. "Let's go to the coast. It's closer to here. Let's see what's really going on."
The group didn't stay any longer, rushing out of the church without stopping, heading toward the coast from which the strange vibrations were coming.