Chapter 620: Inspection

Hans the blacksmith's house was on the eastern edge of town, a two-story stone house with a courtyard.

The iron anvil at the gate was rusted through, and the yard was piled with half-finished farm tools and scraps of scrap iron.

The usual clamor of hammering was gone, replaced only by the wind's moan as it swept past the eaves.

Old Hermann walked at the front, his hunched figure casting a long, thin shadow across the stone path.

He stopped at the gate and turned to look back at the nine wizards behind him.

"Hans's youngest son is inside," the old man said, his voice hoarse and calm. "His name is Karl. Fourteen. This morning, he watched his mother and sister die. Now he's alone, refusing to come out."

The male wizard in the deep blue robe nodded. "We go in. Be careful not to startle him."

The group crossed the courtyard and pushed open the slightly ajar wooden door.

The first floor was the kitchen and parlor, the air thick with a salty, fishy stench.

Gao Jie Ming noticed a half-full pot of soup still on the stove, its surface hardened into a gray-white film.

The dishes on the table were untouched, utensils scattered across the floor, one chair overturned beside them… likely knocked over when someone rose suddenly.

In the corner of the parlor, a boy huddled on a chair.

He looked younger than his age, his thin frame swallowed by an oversized coarse linen shirt, arms wrapped tightly around his knees, face buried between them, shoulders trembling slightly.

At the sound of footsteps, the boy jerked his head up.

His face was streaked with tears, eyes swollen and red, pupils holding something beyond fear—doubt in the world itself, born from watching loved ones die one after another.

He stared at the nine wizards entering, lips trembling, but no sound came out.

"Karl," Old Hermann stepped forward, his voice unexpectedly gentle. "These are here to help us. They're powerful—they can deal with that damned finger."

The boy said nothing, only fixed his gaze on Gao Jie Ming and the others, eyes as if seeing some alien, incomprehensible creature.

The wizards did not rush forward. They exchanged glances, then stepped forward together—Gao Jie Ming, the most composed, and a female wizard as representatives.

Gao Jie Ming took a clean cloth from his storage space, poured a cup of water from the table, and placed it on the small table beside the boy.

"Drink some water," he said softly, his tone calm and soothing.

The boy hesitated, reached for the cup, then pulled his hand back the moment his fingers touched the rim—as if fearing the water, too, might carry that bitter, salty taste.

"Where's the kitchen?" the young female wizard asked.

Old Hermann pointed to a door beside the parlor.

The wizards entered the kitchen.

It was a typical craftsman's kitchen—stove, sink, cabinets—all simple and plain.

The cabinet doors hung open, spice jars toppled and scattered, clearly ransacked.

Gao Jie Ming's gaze settled on the salt jar beside the stove.

It was a coarse ceramic jar, unevenly glazed, its lid half-open.

Judging by its condition, the jar was clearly new.

Through the gap in the lid, white salt grains were visible.

And among them, half a finger protruded.

Pale skin, speckled with age spots, fingernails damp—as if just pulled from water.

It lay there, planted in the salt jar, like some random object tossed inside.

Exactly as the report described.

Gao Jie Ming did not move closer. He stood with the other wizards, forming a circle around the small ceramic jar.

Nine men, nine directions, enclosing the tiny vessel at its center.

"I'll go first," said the male wizard in the deep blue robe. He extended his hand, palm facing the jar, and closed his eyes.

A pale blue light spread from his palm, enveloping the entire salt jar.

The glow held steady for several seconds, then he opened his eyes, frowning slightly.

"No energy response detected," he said. "It emits no form of energy fluctuation. Spiritual sense scan results… it's just an ordinary dead human finger."

The female wizard beside him released a detection spell. Blue light swept over the jar. She shook her head. "No anomalies at the law level. In my perception, it's merely dead organic matter—no law entanglements whatsoever."

Gao Jie Ming said nothing. He silently activated the Destiny System.

The information-processing network of the Incense Dao churned at high speed within his consciousness.

Using his rudimentary knowledge of the Destiny system, Gao Jie Ming "saw" countless streams of information converging from all directions, weaving into a vast web of cause and effect.

He focused this network on the finger inside the jar, seeking its fate trajectory, causal threads, any anomalous information flows.

The result made him frown.

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

In the Destiny System, the finger was a blank—no past, no future, no causal connection to anything.

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

In the Destiny System, the finger was a blank—no past, no future, no causal connection to anything.

It existed, but its existence generated no information.

Gao Jie Ming activated the All-Seeing Eye.

Since his ascent to Void Refinement's peak, the All-Seeing Eye's perception had sharpened further.

A golden flash flickered deep within his pupils.

Everything in the kitchen transformed in his vision: walls became semi-transparent energy grids, embers in the stove glowed with fire-element trajectories, countless microscopic elemental particles drifted through the air.

But the finger inside the jar…

It had no energy flow.

No trace of anything "special" detectable by the All-Seeing Eye.

It looked exactly like an ordinary, dead, slowly decaying human finger.

Gao Jie Ming shut off the ocular technique and shook his head.

"I see no anomaly either," he said.

All nine wizards frowned.

If one wizard failed to detect anything, it might be due to limited ability.

But nine wizards, each skilled in different fields, using different detection methods—all reached the same conclusion: the finger showed no anomaly.

Yet it was plainly planted in the salt jar, having killed forty-nine people.

Silence stretched for several seconds.

"Wait." A thin-faced male wizard in a gray robe suddenly spoke.

He had been analyzing the finger's microscopic structure with a spell since the beginning; now his expression shifted subtly.

"I tested its genetic material."

All eyes turned to him.

"What about the genetic material?" asked the deep blue-robed wizard.

The thin wizard lifted his head, scanning the faces around him, voice cautious: "Its genetic material… is highly similar to that of Hans's family—including the surviving son. Not identical, but far beyond normal stranger-level similarity."

The air in the kitchen froze for an instant.

A thought flashed through Gao Jie Ming's mind. He looked at the thin wizard: "Elaborate."

"Simply put—if you ran a genetic analysis, this finger shares bloodline ties with the Hans family."

"That's impossible," the young female wizard frowned. "Unless this finger came from someone in Hans's household."

"Did anyone in Hans's family lose a finger?" another wizard asked.

Gao Jie Ming recalled the corpses he'd seen in the basement.

Not just Hans's family—his spiritual sense had scanned all forty-nine bodies during autopsy. None were missing a finger.

He turned to Old Hermann.

The old man shook his head. "Hans's family had five members—all fingers intact. I checked the other dead too. No one was missing a finger."

So the finger did not belong to any of the dead.

Yet its genetic material matched Hans's family closely.

Gao Jie Ming now understood roughly how the finger operated.

"Let me see." A low voice rose from the crowd.

The speaker was a burly wizard in tight leather armor.

He had said nothing until now, not even participated in the earlier scans.

The burly wizard stepped forward, reached into the salt jar without hesitation, and plucked out the pale finger.

The finger trembled slightly in his grip, water droplets from its nail beds dripping onto the stove with faint "plops."

"What are you doing?" asked the deep blue-robed wizard.

The burly wizard did not answer.

He stared at the finger for a moment, then, before all their eyes, opened his mouth and shoved the finger inside.

The wizards were startled by his action, but since the finger would regenerate even if damaged, none moved to stop him.

Yet while the wizards remained calm, others could not accept it.

Old Hermann stepped back, his amber eyes wide with shock.

Even more terrified was Karl in the parlor.

The boy, during the wizards' inspection, had quietly crept to the kitchen doorway—just in time to witness this.

Watching a strange, burly man shove that terrifying finger into his mouth, his face turned instantly pale, his lips trembling, unable to utter a sound.

Gao Jie Ming glanced at the boy, unable to help recalling his own awkwardness when he first encountered anatomy.

He sidestepped to block the boy's view, his voice still calm: "It's fine. He's examining the finger. Don't be afraid."

The burly wizard chewed twice, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed the finger.

Then he closed his eyes, pressed his palms against his abdomen, and dark green light glowed from his palms.

It seemed the wizard was using his own body as an experimental platform to directly perceive the properties and reactions of the ingested substance.

The kitchen was so quiet you could hear the faint sound of salt grains rolling inside the clay jar.

A few seconds later, the burly wizard opened his eyes, his expression strangely altered.

The salt grains were crystal clear, indistinguishable from ordinary table salt.

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