Chapter 1 The Matter is Too Uncanny

Annie left happily, seemingly without any suspicion – after all, she was just a child.

The old caretaker, however, stood at the cemetery gate for a long time, watching the direction Annie had left. It was a long while before he suddenly snapped back to reality, his fingers trembling slightly as he reached into his chest pocket, took out a vial of potion, and poured it into his mouth.

He felt much better.

"This matter is too uncanny... I must report it to the Cathedral immediately... May the God of Death be above... This matter is too uncanny..."

The old man muttered to himself, turning and quickly heading towards the caretaker's hut. After entering, he closed the door and went straight to an old, ordinary-looking desk next to the bed – opening a cover on the desk revealed intricate pipes and valves, along with buttons and handles.

Several metal capsules lay quietly in the compartment next to the pipes.

The old man took out stationery from the desk drawer, sat down, picked up the pen, and began to quickly write a report. He rolled it up, placed it in a metal capsule, then opened the secret compartment in the desk and put the capsule into the slot.

"May Bartok bless this pipeline and the surging airflow within... May the valve operate smoothly, without jamming, pressure leaks, or bursts – may the differential machine at the sorting and delivery center not malfunction."

The old man offered a short prayer before reaching out and pressing a button next to the pressure pipe. Only after the green light in the secret compartment lit up did he pull the handle next to the button.

A strange gurgling sound came from the depths of the pipeline, sounding like the noise of airflow being blocked, but soon the sound disappeared, and the hiss of the pressure pipeline operating normally and the sound of the capsule device sliding quickly followed.

The old man glanced at the pipeline with some concern, muttering, "...Could it be because the letter mentioned the affairs of higher beings, affecting the machine..."

After a while, two green lights representing "Express Mail" reaching the upper sorting center lit up, and the old caretaker finally felt relieved, closing the secret compartment cover.

Alice walked down the street carrying a large paper bag, curiously looking at the surrounding buildings, observing this city so different from Pland, and observing the lives of the people in this city.

The paper bag contained the things she had just bought from the corner store – some vegetables, eggs, and rock-hard butter and two pieces of mutton, which were the ingredients for today's lunch.

Alice could now go shopping independently, although she wasn't very skilled, and occasionally got the amount of change wrong, but she was constantly working hard to learn everything – improving every day, albeit not by much.

She lowered her head slightly, holding the paper bag with one hand, and with the other hand took out a piece of paper from the bag, confirming the contents of the paper.

Some letters were written on it in crooked handwriting, which was today's shopping list. Part of the content was words she could read and write, and the other part was replaced with simple pictures – this list was written by herself, with great effort.

She made her own daily menu, planned the ingredients she needed to buy, wrote her own shopping list, and went to the store to buy things – trying to figure out the change as accurately as possible, and then trying to get home on time. If she could do all these things, the Captain would be very happy.

Alice would also be very happy.

After confirming that the list and the things in the paper bag were all correct, the doll girl put away the paper with satisfaction, and continued to walk towards her temporary residence on Oak Street.

But just halfway there, a commotion coming from the street corner suddenly caught her attention.

She looked up in the direction of the sound, and saw about a dozen people gathered next to a rather old-looking residential building, some people pointing at the building, all discussing something, occasionally hearing words like "That woman's gone mad," "Poor thing," and "Even the Church has been alarmed."

Alice couldn't help but slow down, slower and slower, until she finally stopped, looking towards that direction with great hesitation.

That was... liveliness. The Captain said not to join in the fun casually, because if your head fell off in a crowded place, the liveliness would be too great.

But it looked really interesting over there, and the things they were discussing... seemed to be something the Captain would be interested in too.

Alice became conflicted, and in her conflict, she moved her feet a little towards that direction, and then a little more.

"I'll just go take a look at the situation... It's to gather intelligence for the Captain... This isn't just casually joining in the fun, it's seriously joining in the fun..."

Alice used all her wisdom to convince herself, and then she succeeded.

With one hand pressing her head and the other holding the paper bag, the doll girl quickly joined the crowd, and looked up at the residential building in front of her along with them.

Unlike the two-story building that the Captain was temporarily renting, the building in front of her looked older and more cramped, the narrow windows and external gas pipes looking crowded and chaotic, as if many independent households were gathered inside this building.

The discussions among the surrounding crowd were chaotic. Alice listened for a long time but couldn't understand what was going on, so she cautiously patted the shoulder of the person next to her and asked very politely, "Excuse me... What happened here?"

The person next to her was startled, but after seeing that the speaker was just a young girl wearing a veil, he relaxed and pointed upwards, "A woman has gone mad, insisting that she killed her husband, and even wanted to strangle her child... First the sheriff was alarmed, and now even people from the Church have arrived, I don't think this matter is minor."

As soon as he finished speaking, another person beside him opened his mouth, "Speaking of which, even people from the Church have arrived... Could it really be something not so good?"

"...I hope nothing major happens," a woman muttered in the crowd, "I live downstairs from them, if something really happens, we'll have nowhere to go..."

"Regardless of whether something has happened or not, it's best to go to the church today and have the priest help with an exorcism, it's always better to be careful."

The surrounding crowd started discussing again, and soon it was in a field that Alice didn't understand. She became a little distracted in the chaotic discussion, and her gaze slowly drifted into the air.

Thin, fluttering lines floated in her vision, and more thin lines extended from the nearby residential buildings, swaying in the air like strands of hair shaking in the wind, quietly stirring the sky.

Alice suddenly blinked her eyes.

She suddenly noticed that some of the lines floating in the sky above the city-state seemed particularly illusory and transparent, even flickering like faulty light bulbs.

The old residential building reeked faintly of mildew, the old piping system had a slight leak somewhere, and the sound of dripping water occasionally entered the ears. Guardians dressed in black, holding canes and lanterns, gathered in the living room, making the already cramped room even more so.

A long-haired woman with disheveled hair was huddled in the corner of the sofa, lowering her head as if frightened, occasionally muttering garbled sentences.

Two black-clad guardians stood beside her, watching over this deranged woman.

The guardians were examining the clues left in the house, and they had been busy here for two hours.

A gust of gray wind swept through the corridor at this moment, passing through the open door and swirling into the living room.

The guardians stopped their work and paid their respects to the gray-white whirlwind.

Agatha's figure stepped out of the vortex, her eyes sweeping across the room.

"What's the situation now?" She looked up at the highest-ranking guardian on site.

The guardian captain was a neat woman with black, shoulder-length bobbed hair. Facing the gatekeeper's inquiry, she immediately stepped forward, "We collected a small amount of 'Sludge' sample on the floor of the lavatory. It is confirmed to be consistent with the samples collected previously."

"Primal Essence..." Agatha said softly, then frowned, "A small sample? How much? Is that all there is?"

"About a test tube's worth," the short-haired female captain raised her hand and gestured, "That's the entire sample – we've searched the entire building, and only the floor of the lavatory has a bit of residue."

Agatha pondered in silence, then turned to look at the long-haired woman huddled in the corner of the sofa.

"Is she the person involved?"

"Yes," the squad leader nodded, "She rents here. We've investigated her background, and she has a clean record. She has no prior criminal record and is a proxy accountant at a nearby firm. In addition, her husband used to work in the Boiling Gold Mine – the records show that he died in a mining accident three years ago."

Boiling Gold Mine... Mining accident...

Perhaps influenced by the recent events, Agatha instinctively noticed these words, then she steadied herself and came to the side of the woman who was still constantly muttering.

"Madam – I am the gatekeeper of the city-state. You are safe now," Agatha said in a steady voice, quietly using her power to soothe her mind. "Tell me, what exactly happened?"

The long-haired woman on the sofa stopped trembling when she heard the sound, then muttered something inaudibly again, before suddenly raising her head.

A pair of eyes that still retained fear and madness stared intently at Agatha.

"He's back, he's back... I killed him, I killed that monster... in the bathroom! It melted in the bathroom!"