Old days, dice and investigator's manual

The man stared at Isaac, trying to determine whether his words were genuine cooperation or if he had ulterior motives.

"Deer Lane, Warehouse No. 3. Once you get there, someone will naturally make contact with you." The man lowered his voice, paused, and added, "Of course, if you dare to try anything funny, you won't escape the cult's notice."

He said no more, pushed open the door of the coffee shop, and strode away.

Li Jiehao let out a long sigh of relief: "Damn, I thought you were going to fight him."

"This is a public place. If we really fight, it will be troublesome if innocent people get hurt. Moreover, since he came to follow us and his actions were rather crude, the people behind him probably see him as a pawn. Even if we capture him, we probably won't be able to get much useful information out of him."

"By the way, that person's 'great technique' sounded pretty impressive. Could it be that there's actually some powerful method involved?"

"Well, those ancient texts you've read are actually part of his so-called 'great art,' especially since you actually created a walking corpse."

"Ah..." Li Jiehao never expected that he would also be considered someone who had mastered the "Great Art".

Isaac paid the bill and left the cafe, but the man was no longer in sight.

"Should we go after them?" Li Jiehao asked, holding Fenli's hand.

"There's no need for now. Let's go back to the FBI and discuss it with the boss first," Isaac judged.

He thought for a moment, then squatted down and looked at Fenri: "Fenri, about that person just now, will you be able to track him down later?"

Fenri nodded slightly, and Isaac breathed a sigh of relief; at least there was a backup route for the investigation: "That's good. If necessary, I'll have to trouble you."

Fenrir wagged its tail, indicating "no trouble at all," or rather, it actually hoped that Isaac could make the most of its abilities so that it wouldn't be replaced by other guys in the future.

Back at the FBI, in the Ninth Division office, Carlo was already back. There was a newspaper on the table and a cup of tea beside him.

"Boss, you're back!" Li Jiehao stepped through the door. "What were you up to this morning? We just ran into a big problem!"

"Let's go boating with Rano on Lake Perth."

"Boating? Lake Perth? No...you went boating?" Li Jiehao's expression was full of confusion.

"We also talked about the case," Carlo said. "Let's exchange information. First, tell me what major event you've encountered."

"Someone was following us, claiming to be from the cult," Isaac recounted the process of being followed and communicating with them.

Li Jiehao added from the side, "That person also called us some kind of short-lived species, and said they were some kind of immortals, possessing some kind of great art. He was very arrogant."

"If you don't talk big, how can you fool people?" Carlo picked up his teacup. "This rhetoric is quite typical of the Ghoul Cult. They call members who extend their lifespan through various means 'immortals,' while ordinary people are naturally seen as short-lived creatures."

"Then you must be considered an immortal, boss, right?" Li Jiehao asked curiously.

"Well, if I really joined the Ghoul Cult, I might just become a big boss," Carlo waved his hand. "But the Ghoul Cult came to us, which saves us the trouble of looking for them."

"Should we follow this line and infiltrate it?"

Carlo placed the teacup back on the table: "Since they've extended such a warm invitation, it would seem rather unromantic to refuse outright. We might as well go along with them. Anyway, the ring is in my possession, and it doesn't require FBI approval. Let's use it as bait and see how big a fish we can catch."

Li Jiehao blinked: "So, we're going to go undercover?"

"There's no place for you, Asa can go. Even if the other party has malicious intentions and wants to kill you, Asa at least has a certain chance of escaping. As for you, you'd probably cough up blood after just one punch."

Li Jiehao shrank his neck.

Isaac said, "I have no experience as an undercover agent. What if I mess things up?"

"It's alright, I'm a top-notch support. Even if I can't guarantee a successful reconnaissance, I can at least guarantee a smooth escape," Carlo said. "As for me and Lano... tsk, it's such a hassle to repeat myself. I should have brought you along to listen in earlier."

From the Vester people's primitive worship of the tree in the lake, to how the Vikania faith overshadowed old traditions after the Empire's conquest, and then to the target that the ring pointed to in the wasteland—a tree located at the bottom of the lake—Isaac and Li Jiehao listened in a daze.

"So this is how the faith of Morzur originated..." Isaac pondered.

He was familiar with this academic viewpoint, just as Lano had attended Edward's lectures, and Isaac had often heard Edward's research framework.

Li Jiehao was more concerned about something else: "Wait, boss, you mean there's a tree at the bottom of Lake Perth, and that tree is Morzur?"

"You could say it's a facet of Morzul, the first lake tree worshipped by the Westerians. As for whether that thing is Morzul itself now, or what state it's in, I'm not sure."

Li Jiehao scratched his head: "This... isn't right."

Carlo looked at him: "What's wrong?"

Li Jiehao hesitated for a moment: "Well, isn't Morzur supposed to be a guy wrapped up like a mummy?"

"Mummy?" Isaac didn't understand.

Li Jiehao realized that this term was unfamiliar to the people of this world, so he explained, "It's a method of disposing of corpses. After a person dies, their internal organs are removed, they are soaked in preservatives, and then they are wrapped up layer by layer with bandages to make a mummy... It's said that it can be preserved for a very, very long time. There's a civilization in my hometown that particularly likes to do this; they make pharaohs and nobles into mummies."

Isaac found it a bit strange, but said he understood.

Carlo then asked, "Why do you think Morzul should be a mummy?"

Li Jiehao said, "The books the Ghoul Cult gave me depict Morzul in this way: he's wrapped in bandages, standing in the middle of a pile of skeletons, holding a scythe or a scepter, and they don't mention trees or lakes at all."

Isaac frowned: "The image of Morzul circulating within the Ghoul Cult is that of a mummy, not a tree in the lake, but now this ring points to the tree in the lake..."

"This raises several possibilities." Carlo held up a finger. "One possibility is that the Ghoul Order knows the ring points to the Tree in the Lake, and their purpose is to support that being."

"In other words, for some reason, the Morzul figure within the Ghoul Order has reverted to its original form and found Morzul existing in this form."

"Or perhaps they don't know that the ring points to the tree in the lake, and still think it points to the mummy version of Morzul."

"As for these two Morzur with different appearances, they may be splits of the same being. Or it may be that something put on the skin of the early Morzur and used His name."