Alchemists do not need self-cultivation

……

Ten years have passed since then.

time flies.

It's your turn now.

The boxes are ready.

bring it on……

Hare, run!

……

"Waaaaaaah!!"

The fat man beside him seemed to be affected by his panic and shouted:

"That invitation...!"

"A miniature garden dinner...!"

"The main course is wild rabbit...!"

"We're not the ones watching the hares run. We...we are the hares!!"

The men were in various poses: some sat down, some held their heads, and some were furious.

They muttered strange words to themselves and made terrifying noises. The others were completely bewildered and looked at them with strange expressions.

"It's a ghost! The boys are back, and they want to use us as living sacrifices!"

"These words written in blood are irrefutable proof!"

Isaac looked at the terrified middle-aged men speechlessly, then turned to Victorique and asked, "If you were reading these words, would you feel scared?"

"You can feel the terrifying atmosphere in the context of the scene, but it's not enough to warrant such a strong reaction as they did."

"I think so too."

Isaac smiled as he looked at the crowd, who were nearly driven mad by fear.

These individuals, whether officials or capitalists in the Kingdom of Suvar, were definitely involved in some event that was directly related to the murder of the diviner and the 'ghost incident' on the ship today.

"Then let this decide the outcome."

"sure."

Isaac and Victorique laughed at the same time.

"Whoever solves this puzzle first wins."

Chapter 1075: Unreachable Clues

"It's them...that pack of 'hares' has come looking for revenge!!"

One of the fat men immediately tried to open the door to the rest room after seeing the blood-red words, ignoring the fact that the girl in the dress had found the door unlocked when she opened it earlier.

"and many more!"

"The door is now..."

Surprisingly, the door didn't become impossible to open as expected; it opened the moment the fat man turned the doorknob.

Just as he was about to run out, a whooshing sound rang out in the air.

Something flew past the side of the corridor, forming a straight line in the air.

The line pierced straight through the man's brow, stopping after protruding a small portion from the back of his head.

It was a crossbow bolt. It flew in from the corridor.

Everyone stared blankly at the scene from afar, and no one moved.

The man's head seemed to be made of soft material, pierced effortlessly by the crossbow bolt.

A crossbow bolt, stained with blood and brain matter, protruded from the back of the head.

The force of the arrow caused the man to freeze for a moment before falling backward.

thump.

After a second of silence—

"...Aaaaaaah!"

The girl in the dress let out a scream that sounded almost like crying, then hurriedly tried to explain herself.

"I...I was just trying to open this door! It wouldn't open! Really, believe me. But if I had, I would..."

Victorique seemed to have noticed something, staring intently at the woman without uttering a word.

The remaining men didn't listen to what the girl said at all. They just stood there for a moment, then one of them led the way and ran into the corridor.

They were saying strange things one after another.

"The door is safe! The trap has been disarmed!!"

"Deck, toward the deck!"

"Run! ...You'll be killed by the ship!"

They stepped over the corpses and ran into the corridor, scrambling up the stairs and rushing toward the deck.

All that remained were Isaac and Victorique, the girl in the dress who was too frightened to move, Ned, and the man who had been knocked unconscious by Isaac.

Of course, that corpse counts too.

Watching the fleeing crowd, Isaac muttered to himself, "A trap? Their first reaction to someone being killed wasn't that an assassin had appeared, but that it was a 'trap'? They sounded quite certain about it."

Isaac could tell from the behavior of those few people that they must have encountered similar situations before.

"And what is the connection between the 'wild rabbit' they mentioned and the case of the fortune teller's murder?"

The fortune teller liked to keep wild rabbits and send out hunting dogs to kill them, and the men who escaped said that "the rabbits came to seek revenge on them," which must be related to something.

“Did you see anything?” Victorica asked.

"I haven't seen anything except the real culprit behind the various bizarre phenomena on the ship... If I were to find the real culprit directly, I'd probably win, but if it's about investigating the truth behind this whole series of events..."

Although I'm reluctant to admit it, the strange phenomena that have occurred since I boarded the ship suggest that things are probably not as simple as they seem.

Although Isaac, who possessed night vision, knew from the beginning who was behind all these ghostly events, the guests' reactions revealed the complexity of the situation—a complexity that even finding the culprit behind the ghost story wouldn't help.

The key to determining the winner between Isaac and Victorique lies in uncovering the truth of this event, that is to say...

Neither of them reached the finish line, and neither knew how far the other had run.

'Hmph, at least I've caught the person who did these things. I have a head start, and this time it looks like I have a much bigger advantage. I don't know how I could lose.'

"The problem now is this blood-written word on the wall."

Victorique looked at the red lettering on the wall and said.

"It says 'Ten years have passed since then.' What happened ten years ago?"

“This year is 1924, and ten years ago was 1914,” Isaac said. “There were quite a few things that happened in history in 1914. On June 28 of that year, the Austro-Hungarian Crown Prince was assassinated in Sarajevo, which was the fuse for the outbreak of World War I. The war broke out in the same year.”

"It seems to be a big event, and it might even be similar to this case."

Isaac lowered his head, his mind racing.

The identity of the real culprit, the Arab maid who committed the crime of murdering the fortune teller, the box, the hare, the trap on the ship, the Sarajevo incident... these can all be considered clues, but they cannot be connected in any way.

“Um… Lord Isaac.”

Ned said somewhat weakly from the side.

"What are you doing? Can't you see I'm thinking about something?"

"No, I'm sorry to bother you, but... we're both in danger right now, we should think about how to escape from this ship."

"Oh, then you can run away."

"I mean... we should think about how to work together to escape from here."

"You're not escaping with that group because you think it's safer to stay with me?"

"That...that's indeed the case."

Ned laughed somewhat sheepishly.

“A very wise decision. If you had escaped with them, you would probably be dead.”

"what?"

"Six people escaped just now. Two of them died on the way. The remaining four found a lifeboat and finally escaped from the ship, but a wave capsized their lifeboat and sank to the bottom of the sea."

"How...how did you know?"

"That's just a guess, but you can go check the second floor of the ship. Maybe you can find the bodies of the two 'lucky ones' in the corridor leading to the captain's cabin."

"How could this be..."

Isaac could detect the aura of everyone on the ship, and their every move was under his monitoring. A minute ago, when all their aura disappeared, Isaac knew that they had perished.

"Hey."

The girl in the dress also recovered from her shock. She looked at Isaac with confusion, then glanced at Ned.

"I've been wondering since just now, who exactly are you? This stage actor seems to know you."

“Oh, Your Excellency Isaac is…”

“I’m just an ordinary international student and an ordinary part-time worker,” Isaac interrupted Ned.

"Really."

“I am Julie Gale, occupation… none. My father owns a coal mine.”

"The girl in the dress, Julie, introduced herself."

"I see, you must be rich."

"What a strange statement!"

Are you familiar with the situation on the ship?