In the name of the true god

Celestial Rodney, a priest of the Church of the Holy Wind, is dead.

He died silently on the way home while being escorted.

This struck Jude like a thunderbolt, and countless questions popped into his head.

How dare those people in the prison kill a priest? This is far more serious than going against Deputy Warden Steele Fernando.

Moreover, if they dared to kill Priest Rodney, why didn't they target me? Wasn't I their ultimate goal?

Furthermore, Jude had experienced a little bit of the priest's power. In his opinion, even low-level entanglement wizards and resonance sorcerers might not be a match for the priest. How could those mortals in the prison kill Rodney?

"This..." He looked at Connor, who never joked, incredulously. "I had absolutely no idea..."

Connor didn't say much. He first went into the room and closed the door tightly. Then, with an unprecedented seriousness, he spoke: "The Holy Church has intervened in the investigation, but they only know that I had a phone call with Rodney last night. They haven't directly pointed the finger at me."

"What do you mean?" Jude vaguely sensed that Connor wanted to keep this a secret.

"Even if you gave those middle-level guards in the prison a hundred lives, they would never dare to lay a hand on a priest, much less kill him." Connor's speech quickened unconsciously.

"So the people following me aren't from the prison." Jude's guess coincided with this conclusion.

"Who could it be? Tell me," Connor pressed.

"Brother, I don't know." Jude, seeing that Connor suspected he was hiding something, could only offer a heartfelt explanation. "If I knew who it was, and how powerful they were, why would I dare to come back and live here alone?"

This time, Connor didn't believe him easily and kept reminding Jude of the seriousness of the matter: "Jude, this is no small matter. If you've really come into contact with anything you shouldn't have, or provoked anyone you shouldn't have, you must tell me. Because I'm your brother, and only I will do everything in my power to help you get out of this trouble. But if you keep it from me, and the Holy Church finds out later, even the Fernando family behind Steele won't be able to save you."

Jude was well aware of how serious the consequences of this incident would be and how many problems it would bring.

However, he could not reveal to his brother, who was a priest, that he was simultaneously a confederate wizard and a resonance sorcerer.

At the same time, he never caused any trouble and truly had no clue about the mysterious person following him.

Therefore, even though Connor unusually displayed a domineering presence, he still frankly said, "Brother, I'm not lying to you, I haven't provoked anyone, and I have no idea who's following me."

Connor did not ask any further questions.

The two brothers stared at each other silently for more than ten seconds.

"...Nothing is best." Connor's expression softened, and his tense emotions relaxed.

"Brother, how did Priest Rodney die?" Jude immediately asked about the details of Rodney's death.

"His stomach... to be precise, his entire waist was cut open and severed by a sharp weapon, and there are only traces of wind elemental use around it, with no other clues." Connor sat on the sofa, one hand on his forehead, deep in thought.

"Is it on the road from the prison back to Hearthstone Street?"

"Yes."

"Weren't there any witnesses?"

"No, it all seemed to happen in an instant."

There were no witnesses, no traces left by the attacker, only the horrific wounds on Priest Rodney's body...

This looks like an overwhelming, extraordinary battle.

Only heretics dare to oppose priests, and even have the ability and motive to put them to death.

Are they tracking me, a troll or a resonance sorcerer?

Is he really the fat wizard's companion? Here to ask for the Möbius strip ring?

Is it just a coincidence that the timing of his entry into prison coincided with his own?

But that's not right either.

If the other party is really after the Möbius Ring, then since they even killed the priest Rodney, why not just go all the way and steal the ring directly from me?

Now that they've really alarmed them, it won't be so easy for them to steal the ring again.

For a moment, a thick fog enveloped Jude, making him uneasy.

"Brother, what's going on here?" Jude could only inquire about Connor's situation first.

It seems that Connor concealed the true purpose of his phone call to Rodney last night when questioned by the Holy Church, in order to avoid being accused of hiding something.

This is ultimately for one's own benefit.

However, Connor's concealment of the Holy Church from the fact that he was genuinely unaware of it actually made his situation somewhat complicated.

"There's no way to prove the phone call now, but if the church finds the killer, they might still be able to follow the trail and find us." Connor rubbed his nose. "Most importantly, priests must be absolutely loyal to God. If the church suspects me and forces me to swear an oath to God, we'll be completely at a disadvantage."

"That……"

"To prevent problems from arising, I need to hurry up and tell the church the truth." Connor looked up and saw Jude's worried face. He patiently spared some time to reassure him, "Don't worry, when the church asked me this morning, I only said that I had a brief phone conversation last night. That's not a lie. Now, if they suspect you're involved, reporting the full content of the call shouldn't be a big problem. At most, the church will ask you some more questions."

"Just questioning?" Jude was worried that the church might have some means to detect 'heresy,' but he couldn't verify this concern with Connor at the moment.

"As long as it really has nothing to do with you, the church won't do anything to you." Connor glanced at his watch. "Let's go. Now come back to the prison with me and report the situation to Deputy Warden Victor Stanley."

Wangdu Heavy Prison has two deputy wardens.

One was Steele Fernando, and the other was Victor Chambers, a senior priest from the Church of the Holy Wind, who was Connor's direct superior.

"Alright." Now that things had come to this, Jude had no choice but to bite the bullet and fully cooperate with the Holy Church's investigation.

Admittedly, during the two days of surveillance, the mysterious figures clearly had countless opportunities to kill him. The fact that they didn't suggests they didn't intend to kill him.

But since there is hostility involved, letting it continue like this is definitely not a solution.

6:40 a.m.

Connor drove Jude to the Royal Capital Heavy Prison, then headed straight for the administration building, arriving at the office of another deputy warden, also located on the top floor.

"Knock knock knock".

"Enter."

Connor pushed open the door and entered, followed closely by Jude.

The layout of this office is basically the same as Steele's, but with a stronger religious flavor. A portrait of the wind god Viridian hangs in the most prominent position on the wall.

Meanwhile, Victor Chambers, the deputy warden of the Royal Capital Heavy Prison and a deacon of the Holy Wind Church, was pacing back and forth in the reception area.

"Butler," Connor bowed to Butler Chambers, "I have some new information to report to you."

Chambers, a deacon around fifty years old, dressed in a blue robe embroidered with the emblem of the Holy Wind Church, looked solemnly at Jude beside Connor and said, "Speak."

"This is my brother, Jude Viera. He officially started working at the prison two days ago. According to him, from the moment he finished his first day off, he felt someone was following him. For his safety, Deputy Warden Fernando even granted him a handgun for self-defense—"

"What does this have to do with Rodney?" Butler Chambers interrupted impatiently.

"Yesterday, my brother still felt someone was following him and immediately told me what was happening. I was on duty at the time and couldn't leave, so I thought of asking Rodney to secretly protect my brother." Connor recounted the whole story in an orderly manner, "Unexpectedly, this morning I received the news of Rodney's death."

"Your phone call last night, was it to ask Rodney to come to the suburbs to help?" Butler Chambers's eyes gleamed. "Why didn't you tell me about this earlier?"

"I was so worried that Jude might have gotten into trouble too, so I rushed to find him first to verify what happened last night," Connor said, having prepared a plausible explanation.

"and then?"

"My brother said there was nothing unusual on his way home last night," Connor said truthfully. "Therefore, it's not certain whether Rodney was killed by the people who were following my brother, or whether he encountered some other accident while protecting my brother."

Deacon Chambers approached Jude, his short stature forcing him to tilt his head back to cast a scrutinizing glance: "Who have you offended?"

"I haven't offended anyone, so at first my brother and I suspected that it was a colleague in prison who wanted to take revenge on me..." Jude looked directly at Deacon Chambers and truthfully confessed his suspicions from last night.

Even Deacon Chambers couldn't help but feel puzzled.

What trouble could an ordinary person like Jude possibly get into?

Even if the people in the prison were dissatisfied with him, it wouldn't have warranted the priest Rodney's tragic death in the street.

There are only two possibilities.

Either Jude was hiding something, or Rodney's death and Jude being followed are two different things.

"Connor is your brother, you should know the consequences of lying to the Holy Church." Deacon Chambers narrowed his eyes, trying to discern something from Jude's subtle expression.

Is he just putting pressure on himself verbally?

It seems that the Holy Church doesn't have any very strong means to target them.

Thinking of this, Jude's panic subsided considerably: "Please believe me, I have neither the courage nor the reason to stand against the Holy Church."

"So you wouldn't mind if we conducted a series of investigations surrounding you, would you?"

"certainly."

Deacon Chambers was decisive and efficient, and he made no attempt to hide his suspicions about Jude, even in front of Connor.

He strode to his desk and dialed a number, speaking loud enough for Connor and Jude to hear: "This is Victor Chambers. Request that a wizard involved be transferred to the capital's heavy prison. Yes, the higher the rank, the better. This will be of great help in determining the cause of Rodney's death."

Please involve the wizard?

Jude recalled that Connor had said that, apart from those imprisoned, some captured wizards and resonance sorcerers had chosen to join the Holy Church.

As a deacon of the Holy Wind Church and the highest-ranking priest in charge of the capital's heavy prison, it was not difficult for him to summon an implicated wizard to assist in the investigation.

Jude wasn't afraid of this at all.

He was also a wizard of entanglement, and was well aware of the first three levels of the Law of Contact.

Unless a fourth-tier or higher-level wizard gets involved, the chances of them accidentally discovering their "heretic" identity are negligible.

As for whether the fourth-tier wizards will actually be involved.

It's also unlikely.

First, even a fourth-tier wizard might not be able to directly access information selectively through physical contact with living beings.

Secondly, if there really was a wizard of this caliber who had defected to the church, then when the arson at the docks occurred, he should have already taken action to "apprehend" himself.

Thinking of this.

When Jude met Chambers' suspicious gaze again, he became more and more confident, waiting only to implicate the wizard and clear his name.