the culprit

The wind came at dawn, blowing the lush leaves, and Cyril walked towards the center of the village with a soft rustling sound.Generally speaking, there will be a well in the center of the village. This place is not as rich as the town, and there is hardly any advanced water supply system. Cyril knows that someone will go to the well to get water in a while.

The first villager who came to fetch water was a solid middle-aged man, with deep furrows on his forehead and the corners of his eyes, and a simple and comfortable countryman's attire.The village is very small, and the villagers have lived here for generations, few people go out, and almost no foreigners come.He looked at the stranger by the well with the bucket in his hand. He was a little at a loss for the well-dressed man. He scratched his hair. He averted his direct gaze and hung the bucket on the hook of the rocker without making a sound. superior.

Cyril waited for the man to fetch water before finally walking up to say hello, the man responded politely but embarrassed, speaking with a heavy accent, Cyril had some difficulty listening.He asked if any strangers had been here recently, such as men in black cloaks.The other party tilted his head in confusion, saying that he was the only foreigner who came here recently.The young man looked into the man's eyes, almost examining them.This made the man even more embarrassed. He lowered his head, picked up the bucket, turned around and left.

Cyril did not catch up.

Men don't seem to be lying.

The young man stood by the well and waited for a while. He asked several people one after another, and they all said that he had never seen any foreigners.Everyone looked at him with unconcealable curiosity, as if they had never seen a few outsiders in their life.The goldfinch hidden among the branches screamed in the morning light, and more and more people came to fetch water. Cyril knew that he would not get an answer if he stayed here, so he started to look for clues elsewhere, when suddenly A dull bell was heard not far away.

The sound of the bell soon spread throughout the village of Hengge, and the villagers walked out of their houses one after another upon hearing the sound, and gathered towards the place where the bell sounded with confusion on their faces.Cyril stopped and thought for two seconds, then turned his head and followed.

The sheriff of the village was a squat squire with a rustic top hat and a rustic morning coat, standing there with his belly out, like a black tumbler.Standing under the bell, he looked around the village where he had come, and announced with a solemn face that another person in the village had disappeared.

"The ones missing this time are Maggie and Giffen. There is blood in the room. I don't know what happened."

What the sheriff said caused a commotion among the villagers. Many people were discussing in low voices. Everyone had a terrified expression on their faces. Countless eyeballs slid left and right in their eye sockets, secretly spying on the people around them, as if every day Individuals could be the masterminds of this bloody conspiracy.

Cyril, who was standing outside the crowd, noticed the squire's words and learned that this was not the first disappearance case in recent days.

Might really have something to do with EG.

EG is likely still waiting around here.

But the whereabouts of Felix Cyril still can not be determined.

He sneaked around behind a row of houses while people were talking about it. The village is not big, and there are only dozens of families living there. Even with the most stupid way of checking house by house, he could find Maggie and Giffen's house immediately. .

Even though he was worried about Felix, since he was here, Cyril decided to find EG first.He firmly believes that EG must have clues to find Felix.

It took him a while, and finally he found a few bloody handprints on the door of a house.The door was half open, and he pulled down the brim of his hat and stepped in, holding a cane in both hands, as if he could draw a knife to fight at any time.The furnishings in the room are very simple, the living room is not big, and the two rooms on both sides are so small that you can bump into the wall when you turn around.On the ground, a line of bloodstains was clearly identifiable, running across the living room, entering from one room to the other.Then another line of bloodstains came out of the room on the east side, extending all the way to the door.

Cyril turned back and went out, following the intermittent blood marks all the way to the banks of the Doma River.On the way, the bloodstain suddenly cut off the road for a long time, and he happened to meet a three-way intersection. He took a detour, but fortunately, he finally found a new bloodstain.

Presented in front of him at this moment is not only the Doma River sparkling in the sun, not only reeds and waterfowl, but also a cross pile surrounded by stones—a large cemetery.The stakes stood in a haphazard manner, some of the graves were close together, and some were far apart.The cemetery occupies a large area, and the flow of the Idoma River extends a long gray belt along the river. Cyril even suspects that the corpses of people who died hundreds of years ago may still be buried here.There is hardly a clump of weeds to be found in the entire cemetery, and the ground is covered with a thick layer of grass ash, and the bottom of the stones surrounding the wooden piles are mostly pitch black. It seems that people often come here to set fire to weeding.

The blood stain disappeared here.

Cyril walked into the cemetery and saw several crows perched on the same stake.From time to time, they lowered their heads and combed their feathers with their hard beaks. When they saw someone approaching, they flapped their black wings and flew into the sky.

Crows in cemeteries are nothing new, they follow the smell of dead bodies.To these scavengers, cemeteries are like slaughterhouses that smell of fresh meat.

The strange thing is that all the crows landed on the same stake.

Cyril went up and found that the soil behind the stake seemed to have been turned over. The black plant ash was not spread on the top but was accompanied by the soil, and the grass seeds in the soil were also turned up, and some of them had grown. The buds have sprouted, revealing a few stubbles of green that have just emerged.

There was no one around.

Cyril took off his morning gown and threw it aside, rolled up his sleeves, picked up a wedge-shaped stone from the stake, and leaned over to dig the soil. After a while, the stone struck a hard object, making a dull sound.He threw away the stone and scraped away the soil with his hands. It was a coffin, but usually the coffin is not buried so shallow when the dead are buried.

The mahogany coffin was painted with ochre-colored paint, and it could be seen that it had aged. Cyril half-kneeled by the pit and stretched out his hands to touch it, always feeling a little weird.He stared at the coffin for a while, his fingers brushed the edge of the coffin lid, his face changed suddenly, he picked up the walking stick in his hand, and pried open the coffin without any effort—the coffin was not nailed, and there were still holes under the coffin lid. There is a gap.

Lifting the lid of the coffin, Cyril discovered that there was no corpse in the coffin, the bottom was sawed open, and the dark cellar was connected underneath.The cellar hidden under the coffin in the cemetery itself is suspicious enough, and the few crows sitting on the stake just now hinted at the possibility of a hidden mystery.Cyril raised his head and looked around to confirm that no one was around, then he took out a small bottle of concentrated sulfuric acid that was tightly sealed from his pocket, and took out a slender wooden stick wrapped in sugar from another pocket. He quickly dipped the end with sugar in concentrated sulfuric acid and took it out. Flames rose from the top of the stick. He tightly covered the bottle of concentrated sulfuric acid with one hand, and carefully descended into the cellar with the cane.

The underground space was deeper and wider than he had imagined. The wooden stick used for lighting would burn out in no time. s things.Suddenly, he tripped over something under his feet. After stabilizing his body, he held up the fire and bent down, and found that it was a small piece of candle. He immediately picked it up and lit it, and successfully picked up the candlestick at the bottom of the wall.There were a few messy scratches on the candle and the brass candlestick, and there were bump marks on the side of the candlestick. He suspected that they were thrown here.

Cyril held a candlestick in one hand and a cane in the other, and cautiously walked deep into the cellar.There was a musty smell in the confined space. He frowned uncomfortably, but found that the deeper he went, the more ominous the smell of blood could be smelled.The smell was too strong, and the young man's brow furrowed, wishing Felix better not be here.

Just as he was thinking, he saw a thin and small figure suddenly jumping out from the darkness, pounced on him like a small animal, and aimed straight at his throat.Cyril subconsciously raised his cane to block, and severe pain came from his arm. The black figure failed to bite his throat, and turned his head to bite his arm.He moved the fire closer, the jumping fire light illuminated the attacker's face, the pale figure flinched in the light, Cyril took the opportunity to lift his foot and kicked away, the sharp teeth of the opponent almost tore off his flesh.

It was a girl, about eighteen or nineteen, but from the way she had just attacked and her teeth, Cyril suspected that she might not be human—or that she wasn't human anymore.After a brief gasp, the opponent rushed over again, this time, the target was still Cyril's throat.The young man hastily threw away the cane, endured the pain and took out a small bottle from the outermost pocket, lifted the bottle cap with one finger and splashed it in the opponent's eyes.

A shrill scream suddenly exploded in the dead cellar.The poison eroded the girl's eyes and burned the skin around the eyes. She fell to the ground and screamed. As soon as she covered her eyes with her hands, the flesh on her palms that were contaminated with the poison was eroded away immediately.Losing her vision, she howled madly in the severe pain, and rushed towards Cyril with her sense of smell.Cyril dodged the first blow with a short body, took out the silver knife in the cane, and pierced the opponent's calf with one knife.

The blood slid down the arm from the fingers to the blade. Cyril held the candlestick and stood still in the severe pain, panting heavily and looking at the monster who was rolling on the ground with his lame leg in pain.But he didn't kill her right away, he just kicked her on the back of the neck.She passed out.

Not caring about the wound on his arm, nor the sheath still thrown on the ground, Cyril speeded up and walked deeper, only to hear another sound before going far.He didn't care about hiding his whereabouts, and rushed away with the candlestick in his hand, only to see Felix with disheveled hair spreading his arms, with a silver knife inserted into his left and right wrists and nailed to the cross stake behind him, his head was weak Hanging down, seems to have passed out.There are two bodies clinging to him, one on the left and the other on the right, biting his neck to suck blood.And at his feet, lay a woman's body, her eyes were wide open, her neck was bitten to a bloody mess, and she was already dead.