Chapter 740: Chapter 628: The First Probe

The burly warlock brought a grain of salt to his nose and sniffed, then licked it with the tip of his tongue: "It’s just ordinary salt, the same as the salt in this jar, nothing unusual."

"I see, I understand." A gentle female voice sounded.

It was the witch who had not spoken until then.

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

She was a witch specializing in curses.

"That finger is using genetic material as a medium." Her voice was soft, but each word was as clear as if engraved in everyone’s ears, "It uses this to impose a curse on the soul level. As for the content of the curse... it should be something like ’body and salt exchange.’

She walked toward the stove and lightly tapped the edge of the salt jar with her pale fingers.

"But this is not a complete exchange. If it were complete, the victim would instantly turn into a heap of salt, which would be straightforward. But the designer of this curse... or rather the phenomenon itself, doesn’t want a quick death. It wants torment."

Her gaze turned to the doorway, where Carl’s view was blocked by Jeming. He couldn’t see her expression under the hood, but the boy’s body shivered instinctively.

"So it designed an ’incomplete exchange.’ A vague and unstable correspondence was established between the victim’s body and salt. While they are alive, this exchange is partial and reversible. Their kidneys start to turn into salted meat but can barely maintain function. Their bodily fluids become salty, but blood can still flow."

"And when they die, this exchange reverses. Salt turns back into flesh, flesh turns back into salt. So we see the bodies in a preserved state. That isn’t the curse continuing to act but rather the curse having completed, leaving only traces of ’having been exchanged before.’

She finished speaking and raised her head, revealing a pair of pale gray eyes under the hood.

"That’s why we can’t detect any anomalies. Because the carrier of the curse is not that finger but the victim’s genetic material itself. The finger is just a... a signal. The signal it emits is not energy, but a ’connection’ based on the Law."

For a while, the kitchen was silent as the wizards quickly analyzed the relevant information.

The warlock in a deep blue robe took a deep breath: "So, when we saw that finger, it had already completed its work. Through the connection of genetic material, it ’wrote’ the curse into the souls of Hans’s family. The finger itself is just a doorbell, useless after being pressed."

"Exactly." The cursed witch nodded.

The last piece of the puzzle finally fit together in Jeming’s mind.

That’s why he and the Fate System couldn’t detect any anomalies with the finger: because there really weren’t any.

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

The truly terrifying thing had entered Hans’s family’s souls before they even saw it.

The wizards exchanged glances; although silent, they could see understanding in each other’s eyes.

It was the first time everyone had encountered such a phenomenon, but through their individual knowledge reserves, they had basically guessed its operational principle.

That is the terrifying aspect of a High Tier Wizard.

They may not have seen a particular phenomenon, but they have seen enough, studied deeply enough, so that when faced with the unknown, they can quickly derive unknown laws using known knowledge.

"So now the issue is..."

Jeming’s words were cut short by a piercing scream.

"Salty! So salty!"

It was Carl.

The boy staggered from the doorway into the middle of the living room, clutching his throat tightly, his face flushed a purplish red.

His lips trembled violently, saliva uncontrollably flowed from the corners of his mouth, his eyes bulged as if about to pop out of their sockets.

"So salty! Water... give me water..."

He stumbled toward the dining table and grabbed the glass of water Jeming had poured earlier, downing it in one go.

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

"The curse is activating." The cursed witch’s voice was still calm, but her speech noticeably faster, "He saw the finger, the connection of genetic material has been activated. That finger pressed the doorbell, now the door is open."

The warlock in a deep blue robe was the first to act.

"Soul protection!"

He shouted in a low voice, forming seals with his hands, a silver-white halo spreading from his palms, enveloping Carl.

Runes emerged densely across the halo, each rune spinning rapidly, trying to peel away the abnormal state from the boy.

The halo stabilized, but Carl’s expression showed no obvious improvement.

He continued to gag painfully, clutching his throat tightly, his nails digging into his skin.

The young witch followed with her own actions.

Blood automatically seeped from her fingertips, and she used it to draw a complex magic array in the air, the array spinning toward Carl, attaching itself to his forehead.

"Decurse." Her voice carried a strange rhythm, "Remove involuntary attachments, cease abnormal state interference."

Carl’s body trembled suddenly, a layer of gray mist surfaced on his forehead, indicating the curse was being peeled away.

The burly warlock joined in.

His body modification witchcraft played its role at this moment, dark green light covered Carl’s body, his muscle fibers slightly expanding, and a tough membrane appeared on the surface of his skin.

He was strengthening Carl’s body’s ability to endure, ensuring that his body wouldn’t immediately collapse under this wave of curse impact.

Other wizards also stepped in.

Some released a calming spell to ease Carl’s fear and pain; others set up an isolation barrier around Carl to sever the link between the curse and that finger.

Jeming stood on the outermost edge, watching these Sixth Level Wizards each display their methods, not rushing to make a move.

Even though the casting energy level was limited to the Third Level, and the enemy’s methods seemed quite bizarre, these wizards still easily saved this little fellow.

In fact, the reason they took turns instead of removing the curse all at once was purely to deliberately reduce the effectiveness of various witchcrafts to probe all aspects of the curse’s data.

It could be said that as soon as these wizards took action, they had basically understood seventy to eighty percent of the circumstances related to this curse.

To be honest, Jeming indeed wasn’t very adept at lifting curses... after all, he was better at enduring things head-on.

However, since the other wizards had all reached out to test data, he couldn’t just stand idly by.

His right hand reached into the storage space, grabbing a fist-sized piece of Liquid Refined Gold.

Utilizing alchemy, his spiritual power penetrated the Liquid Refined Gold, decomposing its internal structure to the most basic microparticle state, then constructing an extremely precise "coating" model in his consciousness.

The very thing he arranged on himself back when he first refined Refined Gold.

However, Jeming’s control precision was now higher, capable of integrating it from the molecular level with Carl’s skin, muscles, and even cell membranes.

Without affecting normal physiological functions, he constructed a dual barrier of physical and spiritual layers.

After the others performed their respective witchcrafts, Jeming flicked his hand.

The Liquid Refined Gold turned into a silver stream of light, accurately shooting toward Carl, exploding upon contacting the boy’s skin, turning into countless microscopic particles invisible to the naked eye, evenly covering his entire surface.

From the outside, Carl’s skin just looked like it had an almost transparent gloss, as if washed with a thin layer of water.

But Jeming knew this coating had already penetrated the surface of every cell of Carl’s.

Even if this bizarre attack occurred again, the curse could be easily blocked.

Carl’s body suddenly stiffened.

Then, he stopped struggling.

His eyes, bloodshot from pain, slowly regained clarity, his hands unclenched from his throat, his chest heaving heavily as he took huge gulps of air.

"I..." His voice was hoarse, carrying a dazed feeling after surviving a disaster, "I don’t feel salty anymore."

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

After comforting Carl for a while, Jeming suddenly thought of something and turned his attention to the salt jar that had just been opened.

"Strange, that finger hasn’t reappeared. Didn’t the intel suggest that even if destroyed, it could continue to appear?"

Jeming’s spiritual power scanned the salt jar.

The jar contained only pure white salt grains, with no foreign objects among them.

He expanded his spiritual power to cover the entire kitchen, the entire house, still finding nothing.

Other wizards were doing the same thing.

A moment later, everyone’s spiritual power was withdrawn.

"No new emotional fluctuations detected," said the young witch.

"No new life signals either," remarked the sturdy warlock.

"I scanned the entire town," came the voice of the Cursed Witch from under her hood, "Within a radius of five hundred kilometers, there’s nothing matching the finger’s characteristics."

"Not underground either."

The wizards exchanged glances.

The combined spiritual coverage of nine individuals was enough to turn this area inside out.

If that finger was in any corner of this town, it couldn’t escape the joint search of nine High Tier Wizards.

But it had simply vanished.

No, it should be said it hadn’t reappeared.

"Is it because it confirmed it couldn’t inflict fatal damage on the last person, so it gave up on its own? Or did the strange mechanism determine that the slaughter was complete, so it naturally disappeared?" speculated the blue-robed wizard.

Jeming walked to the salt jar, reaching inside to pinch a small amount of salt grains.

The salt grains rustled between his fingers, fine and dry, with nothing unusual about them.

He brought the salt to his nose, sniffing it, then lightly touched it with his tongue.

It’s just ordinary table salt.

(An extra Chapter today, another one to come.)

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