Chapter 2676

"Doing that is very correct. If a tree hole really exists there, you might accidentally get sucked in too."

Xia De said this, and the specific location of the incident had already been marked on the map.

Regardless of whether another tree hole had appeared or if there was something strange about Miss Linda Bennett, this matter had to be investigated. Therefore, after temporarily entrusting Little Mia to Miss Danist, the owl immediately grabbed the cat and flew out the window.

"This time, shouldn't it be my turn to go out?"

The red-haired girl remaining in the room muttered to herself, then looked at Miss Jane Alba, who hadn't left yet. The latter naturally didn't want to answer such questions; privately, the girls had talked quite a bit about the relationship between the Great Witch of Death, the "Red Moon Witch" of St. Byrons, and Xia De.

However, Miss Danist only complained softly; she didn't necessarily have to find an answer.

The speed of Owl Airlines was quite fast, and in less than half an hour, it carried the cat down into the forest. There were no iconic buildings or landscapes near the location where Miss Linda Bennett went missing, and simple trace identification couldn't find the footprints of the girl who had suddenly vanished. Therefore, after confirming that neither of them could sense the aura of a tree hole at the first moment, they had no choice but to conduct a carpet search of the vicinity.

Xia De certainly wouldn't suggest splitting up in a place where someone had already gone missing, so the witch followed by his side. She wanted to turn into a cat and jump onto Xia De's shoulder again, but was firmly refused by Xia De:

"Don't become lazy like Little Mia."

"I'm not doing it to be lazy, I just want to..."

The witch's face turned slightly red; she was too embarrassed to continue saying that she just wanted to be closer to him.

Just as Miss Alba had said, there were indeed no traces of spatial anomalies nearby, but Xia De unexpectedly captured traces of some unusual elements.

This didn't look like a new tree hole had appeared, so Xia De guessed that the girl had unluckily encountered some other inexplicable mysterious phenomenon in the forest, but this didn't seem to explain her act of running away from home.

The two observed the surroundings very carefully. Not long after, they discovered a mirror fragment in the grass a hundred meters away from where Linda Bennett had disappeared, and the fragment was still stained with blood. After Miss Winslet's identification, the blood on the mirror fragment belonged to two people, and both were young girls:

"This is the mirror fragment where Linda Bennett cut herself and also cut her maid, right?"

Since there was blood, things were much simpler. Xia De took out an empty wine bottle, used the "Blood Brewing" technique to separate the two different blood samples, and then dripped the blood brew, which was only one drop each, into his eyes one after another and used the "Blood Echo" miracle.

The essence of this miracle was not simply observing blood, but observing the traces left in time and space by other blood of the same origin. Therefore, although ordinary investigative miracles didn't work, Linda Bennett's blood-colored figure appeared almost immediately in Xia De's eyes in the golden forest on an autumn morning.

"Found her, follow me."

He said, grabbing the witch's hand, and led her to follow the string of red figures as they continued to advance through the forest. Miss Linda Bennett was still going deeper into the forest, and the fact that she hadn't gone missing near here proved that her inexplicable disappearance was definitely related to supernatural power; otherwise, Miss Alba couldn't have lost her.

Continuing forward, they had entered a location that neither Xia De nor the witch had reached before. However, Miss Linda Bennett seemed to have a clear goal, as she neither took detours nor walked the same path twice.

Just like that, the two followed her figure for another thirty minutes before finally walking out of the forest and seeing a lake in the woods; the lake looked heart-shaped in outline.

The Vesta Woodlands had a well-developed water system, with the Aronson River that ran through the city and connected to Willendale as the main trunk. Many tributaries flowed through the forest to other parts of Carsonrick, so the forest was densely covered with lakes of all sizes.

The area of the lake before them was not very large, so neither official maps nor the maps of hermits had marked it with a name. The small lake was about the size of St. Deran Square, and the animals in the forest regarded it as an important water source. When Xia De and the witch walked out of the forest, they even startled a group of deer drinking by the creek.

However, they didn't have time to apologize to the deer herd before they both looked up and saw Linda Bennett lying face up on the surface of the lake, slowly floating as the wind in the forest blew across the water.

The blood-colored light in Xia De's eyes extended all the way to the lakeside, and then he saw the girl sink to the bottom of the water and float up. But Linda Bennett hadn't floated up after drowning; she looked like she was still alive, just unconscious.

"There are others."

The witch reminded him in a low voice again. Only then did Xia De see that there were actually three people floating on the lake. Besides Linda Bennett, there was also a man and a woman. Looking from afar, they were also young people dressed decently, only Xia De didn't recognize them.

All three were floating on the lake with their eyes closed in a face-up position. But since there were animals drinking by the lake, it meant this was definitely not a saltwater lake, and the density of the lake water shouldn't be enough to support a human floating in a coma without auxiliary objects.

"Can you feel anything? I can feel that the traces of elements nearby are a bit richer than in other areas, but other than that, everything looks normal."

Miss Winslet said softly again. After seeing Xia De shake his head, she reached out and pointed at a stone by her feet, and the stone turned into a puppy with its tongue out, running happily toward the lake water.

She certainly hadn't turned a dead object into a truly living creature; this was just shapeshifting. And the puppy successfully entered the lake. After trying to swim for a few minutes with a doggy paddle, it approached Linda Bennett, who was closest to the shore, under the witch's control.

It successfully reached the girl's side, opened its mouth to bite Miss Bennett's sleeve, and then dragged her toward the shore. Everything looked quite smooth. The puppy successfully dragged the girl onto the shore, and the cautious pair waited until Miss Bennett was completely out of the water before walking over.

The puppy turned back into a stone by the lake, and Miss Winslet, still worried, cast a soul purification miracle on Miss Bennett before turning to say to Xia De:

"It should be fine now."

Together, they raised their hands, controlling Miss Linda Bennett's body to float up, and moved her to a position far from the shore before putting her down again. Xia De, still worried, sprinkled holy water on her, and after confirming that she was still fine, he squatted down to check her condition.

There were no traces of curses on Miss Bennett, and even traces of elements were almost non-existent. She indeed hadn't died; her breathing and heartbeat were still present, but she just couldn't be awakened.

Xia De tried many methods, and the Great Witch of Death even tried to briefly separate her soul from her body, but her soul was also in a state of deep sleep.

And while miracles like the "Wall of Sighs" for forced interrogation might also work on sleeping souls, they would directly pollute the soul of an ordinary person. Unless it was a last resort, Flora Winslet wouldn't use it on an ordinary person.

Seeing that the time was approaching noon, Xia De used a small piece of gold to cast "Traveler's Camp" and summoned lunch with "Fiona's Housekeeping Servant" to share with Miss Winslet.

After lunch, the witch "salvaged" the other two strangers according to the morning's method, and then confirmed that the strange man and woman were in the same condition as Linda Bennett.

The two of them looked like young nobles from Vesta City, but their specific identities were unknown. Because a light rain began to fall in the forest in the afternoon, Xia De went to chop down some trees to make a simple wooden hut to temporarily house them.

He and Miss Winslet never dared to go directly into the water, and they tried many methods to wake them up in the afternoon, but it never had any effect.

However, at least the time spent together and talking to each other was quite interesting. When evening approached, Xia De took the initiative to hunt two rabbits in the forest, while Miss Winslet was responsible for picking wild vegetables, and then they cooked delicious broth and roasted rabbit meat together by the campfire.

There was no time left today to build a larger wooden hut, so that night, the witch, with a red face, crawled into the double tent with Xia De, but fortunately, the two were well-behaved all night and didn't cross the line.

It was just that when they woke up the next morning, the shy Miss Owl still had Xia De build a wooden hut that could be lived in for a long time while there was still time today; she still preferred resting in a bed.

So Xia De went to log and make the wooden hut and furniture, and the witch herself wasn't idle either, taking the initiative to take on the work of hunting and picking wild herbs today, and even asked Xia De for a fishing rod to fish by the lake.

Neither of their workplaces was far from the shore, so although they were doing different things, they could still chat and talk to each other.

Lunch and dinner that day were still sumptuous, and before resting at night, Xia De also rushed to complete the main body of the wooden hut and two single beds.

Flora Winslet wanted to express her reserve, so she pushed the two beds apart. She slept on the bed against the east wall, and Xia De slept on the bed against the west wall:

"Don't come over in the middle of the night... I trust you very much."

And so the days passed one by one. During the day, Xia De hunted and did carpentry work, while the witch was responsible for making textiles and decorating the new home they had built with their own hands, and their relationship also grew closer day by day in this life that was hard but not boring.

The two small beds displayed in the wooden hut didn't know when they had moved away from the wall. First, they were separated by some furniture, and then only the bedside table remained as a barrier. On the night worth celebrating when Xia De hunted a bear, the two beds were pushed together, but the shy witch still used a curtain to separate the two.