Versatile Mage c1-2021, page 429
"We know that all the deaths occurred in cities close to bodies of water like an ocean, a river, a lake, etc.," Lingling was surprisingly very energetic. Her eyes were glittering as if they were saying, "There's finally a case I can work on!"
"Wouldn't it be difficult to solve a mystery that has the whole world confused in a short period of time?" Mo Fan said.
From Lingling's electronic map, the Drowning Curse had taken place in the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, and Indian Ocean. Interestingly, there's weren't many incidents in China, but in other countries, especially Portugal, a lot more deaths had occurred...
"Oh, to be precise, this Tinuoaya City actually has the highest number of deaths," Lingling said.
Mu Ningxue immediately recalled the old man's words. Eight people had already died on the shallow beach!
"It looks like we have found ourselves in the right spot, but then, I wonder if just the few of us are enough to crack the mystery," Mo Fan wondered.
"Don't worry, I'm going to solve it!" Lingling's eyes flickered with the stubbornness and professionalism of a Hunter as she replied stubbornly.
Chapter 988 - Drowned in Blood
Translated by XephiZ
Edited by Aelryinth
Mo Fan and Mu Ningxue proceeded to question the locals. Not just the shallow beach, a few other places close to a body of water also had similar incidents.
If they were murders committed by a serial killer, there had to be some similarities between the deaths, allowing them to identify the gender, occupation, or even a group of people that the killer was targeting.
The Drowning Curse might occur randomly to people living close to a beach, but it did not necessarily mean the victims were not related in some way. Mo Fan and Mu Ningxue wanted to find the key similarity between all the victims. Otherwise, they did not have any clues, apart from knowing that all the victims were killed by the strange curse.
They first went to visit the old man. If he had witnessed eight deaths so far, it was likely that he held some useful information.
The old man went ahead and told Mo Fan and Mu Ningxue a legend, something about presenting sacrifices to the ocean. The God of Sea was only willing to protect the people of the city once they gave it sacrifices.
The legend sounded like some pure bullshit to Mo Fan.
Anything about presenting sacrifices was pure nonsense, and anything that asked humans to sacrifice their lives was not worthy to be called a god, either. It was now the twenty-first century, science was the basis of every belief. Why would anyone still believe in superstitions?
"I've asked the families. The three victims that died this month were strangers to one another. I then looked at their photos, and realized that they were fairly tanned. Their families told me that they liked to swim," Mo Fan said.
"They like swimming?" Mu Ningxue was confused.
"Hehe, I don't think it's useful, either," Mo Fan shrugged.
After learning magic, Mo Fan realized he was more interested in using violence to settle disputes. He was no longer good at solving problems with his brain.
---
As they were walking along an alleyway filled with fresh flowers, Mo Fan saw a man walking toward them from the opposite direction. He was holding a bottle of beer in his hand, and seemed to be enjoying himself.
Soon, the man with the bottle of beer noticed Mu Ningxue walking toward him. His lips raised and he whistled at Mu Ningxue. His eyes were staring at Mu Ningxue's collar bones, and trying to probe deeper.
"Are you seriously ignoring my presence?" Mo Fan glared at the man and snapped in an unfriendly manner.
The man had quite a bad temper too, and snapped in return, "Who do you think you are?"
"Piss off!" Mo Fan waved and shoved the man aside with the Space Element.
Mo Fan was going easy on the man, only trying to teach him a lesson.
To his surprise, the man was no ordinary human. He immediately summoned a Water Barrier to protect himself.
"Space Element? You're an Advanced Mage?" The man raised his brows. He immediately showed a whole new level of respect for Mo Fan.
"Aren't you going to leave yet?" Mo Fan said.
"It's just the Advanced Level..."
Mo Fan swung his hand again. He was not in the mood to listen to the asshole's crap!
Mo Fan did not go easy on the man after learning that he was a Mage too. The force rammed into the man, who failed to hold his ground this time. He immediately went flying across the alleyway.
He fell onto the ground. The beer bottle in his hand smashed into pieces too, leaving foam on the ground. The man was not really injured, and rose to his feet furiously. Knowing that he was no match for Mo Fan, he pointed his finger at Mo Fan and said, "Kid, this is my territory! Just you wait, I'll make you kneel down and apologize to me!"
After saying that, he turned around and left. The alleyways were pretty complicated, so Mo Fan soon lost him even though he wanted to teach him a lesson.
"Coward!" Mo Fan found the fellow quite amusing.
"Just ignore him, it's no use wasting your time on a person like him!" Mu Ningxue did not agree with Mo Fan's approach.
"You're good-looking, so it's normal to catch people's attention, but he dared to act like a jerk and whistle! Not only was he disrespecting you, he was provoking me too! I'm already being very merciful, since I didn't beat all his teeth out," Mo Fan declared firmly.
Mo Fan always had his reasons. Mu Ningxue was too lazy to argue with him. As a matter of fact, Mo Fan was pretty much a jerk to her too, if she compared him with the man!
---
Mo Fan and Mu Ningxue came to a residential area. It was the seventh family they were visiting.
If the only similarity between the victims was they liked to swim, Mo Fan suddenly felt like it was better to go back to the inn and take a nap...
As they arrived at the place and walked past the little garden full of wisterias, Mo Fan suddenly picked up a foul smell.
Mu Ningxue smelled it too, and immediately covered her nose. She was confused why the nice-looking garden would have such an unpleasant smell...
"Anyone home?" Mo Fan walked into the house and pushed the wooden door open.
"Anyone? The whole place stinks!" Mo Fan yelled.
There was still no response. Mo Fan and Mu Ningxue exchanged glances.
Mo Fan quickened his pace and entered the living room.
"Hey, what are you two doing? Asshole, you dare come to my house! I swear I'm going to take you down!" a familiar voice came from outside the house.
Mo Fan and Mu Ningxue turned around and saw the same Water Mage they had stumbled into before.
This was his place? Mo Fan and Mu Ningxue were speechless. How small is this world?
"This is your house?" Mo Fan asked.
"Of course, don't be ridiculous! Even if you're an Advanced Mage, you can't just sneak into my house just because I took a few extra glances at your girlfriend!" the Water Mage shouted.
"Something absolutely stinks in your house, don't you smell it?" Mo Fan asked.
The Water Mage took a deep breath and immediately started coughing. He was so focused on Mo Fan and Mu Ningxue that he had simply ignored the smell.
"Why does it stink so much?" the Water Mage said.
"You should ask yourself that, I think it's coming from this big room," Mo Fan pointed at a locked room.
The room was locked from the outside. Even the gaps were sealed with nails. It did not look normal to Mo Fan, as the door would only be sealed to trap someone inside the room.
The man was startled, and his face immediately turned pale.
He quickly took out a key and unlocked the room.
As soon as the door flung open, a disgusting smell burst out from it. The three immediately held their breaths!
"Norke, Norke!" the man screamed as he rushed into the room.
Mo Fan followed after him, but he was stunned as soon as the disgusting sight filled his eyes!
The man was dumbfounded too. He fell to the ground feebly...
Mu Ningxue quickly turned around, as she did not dare to look at it further.
Mo Fan had seen horrible things before, but even he felt uncomfortable after seeing the sight in the room.
There was a man in the room. He had been tied up, most likely by the Water Mage they had stumbled into.
However, the man inside the room was dead!
His wrist was sliced open, and lots of blood had poured out into an iron pot. The man had shoved his face into the pot and drowned himself in the blood.
It was difficult to tell if the man had died from losing too much blood or drowning. Either way, his body was pale and dried up, the same symptoms shown by the victims of the Drowning Curse!
---
The man cried for a long time. It seemed the man called Norke was his younger brother!
To make things even worse, the person that had died to the Drowning Curse three months ago in this household was his elder brother...
In other words, two members of his family had died to the Drowning Curse!
"Tell us what you know. I believe you have a stronger urge than anyone else to find the real cause of their death." Mo Fan brought the man some bottles of beers to help him calm down.
The man emptied two bottles of beer in an instant. It was obvious that he was having trouble accepting the truth.
"Norke likes to surf. I didn't let him go, so he was grabbing and scratching me like he had gone insane. I thought he was out of his mind, so I locked him up in the room. I didn't come home last night, I planned to lock him up for a day hoping that he would come to his senses. I didn't expect him to drown himself in his own blood. What did I do wrong?" Bobby cried.
"I don't think it has anything to do with me, but it's indeed strange that two members of your family died to the Drowning Curse. Even though people across the world have died to it, I can't believe it's a coincidence that it has happened to the same household twice. Did your elder brother and Norke go to some place together? Or did they recently do something together, or eat the same thing?" Mo Fan asked seriously.
"They were always together. I'm a Mage, so I barely come home. I spend most of my time at the Magic Association. My elder brother always take Norke with him, but I'm not too sure where they went," said Bobby.
Bobby was grieving, and struggling to speak properly. Mo Fan did not feel like asking him more questions, either. He had no choice but to wait for the man to calm down, so he could try and get some useful information from him.
Mo Fan and Mu Ningxue went to the side. They could see the shock and uneasiness in each other's eyes.
"This is really scary," Mu Ningxue said softly.
"Yeah, I think this Norke was affected by the Drowning Curse, too. Normally, he would have run to the ocean and drowned himself, but he was locked in the room by Bobby, making it impossible for him to find any body of water. In the end, he managed to complete the drowning ritual with his own blood. It's not as simple as a disease, it's like some kind of mental torture, or brainwashing," Mo Fan said.
"But what could it be that it's able to person to drown himself in his own blood?" Mu Ningxue said.
"I've already notified Lingling. Let's keep the place as it is. I believe we might be able to find some useful clues here!" Mo Fan said seriously.
Mo Fan was initially interested in the Drowning Curse because of the reward pool, but after witnessing the terrifying death, he was no longer at ease!
Where the hell did this curse come from? It was absolutely terrifying!
Chapter 989 - The Jellyfish Evil Maggot
Translated by XephiZ
Edited by Aelryinth
It did not take Lingling long to arrive.
When Bobby saw a little girl coming into the house, he quickly rose to his feet and said, "Little girl, don't come in here, it's too scary!"
Lingling continued on her way, her eyes displaying intelligence unfitting her age, staring right at the gory scene.
She went closer and felt the blood in the pot with her fingertips, before lifting Norke's head to inspect it closely.
Bobby was stunned. He stared at Lingling with a blank face, and it took him quite a while to recover.
"Don't tell the cops or the Magic Association yet, we won't be able to find what we want if they come," Lingling said.
"I've used the Space Element to quarantine this place, it will stop the smell from leaking out too," Mo Fan complied.
"What's this?" Lingling pointed at some strange-looking thing stuck to the pot and asked curiously.
"No idea, it looks like dander," Mo Fan said.
Lingling cautiously collected the dander stuck to the pot into a vacuum bag so she could experiment on it.
"Find a skilled pathologist and let him dissect the body," said Lingling.
"Di...dissect?" Bobby immediately began to reject.
This was his younger brother. How could he let them dissect his corpse? He had to give him a proper burial!
"If you think a proper burial is more meaningful than finding the true cause of his death, or the real culprit behind it, you can ask the Magic Association to send someone over now. Those bunch of idiots will only tell you that it's safer to cremate him," Lingling said firmly.
Bobby did not expect to hear such words from a little girl. He looked at Lingling with a blank face.
"If you want to know what killed your brothers, just like we do, then just do as she said," Mo Fan patted Bobby's shoulder and told him earnestly.
Bobby was a rational person. He nodded to give his consent, and let Lingling take care of the body.
---
While Lingling and the pathologist were dissecting the body inside the house, Mo Fan and Bobby sat in the garden, each holding an iced bottle of stout beer, taking sips at times. They did not look like they had just gotten into a fight not long ago.
"How did you take care of your elder brother's corpse? Did you burn it?" Mo Fan asked.
"Mmm, on the same day. An old pharmacist from the Magic Association said it might be some kind of contagious disease, so they had to burn it. I tried to stop them, but they insisted on burning it anyway," Bobby confirmed.
"Your brother Norke, when did he... turn..."
"Lose his mind?"
"Yeah, when did you realize he wasn't himself?" Mo Fan asked.
"Around a week ago, his temper suddenly worsened. I thought he was only behaving like that because of what happened to my elder brother," Bobby said.
"Did he show any peculiar behavior?"
"Nothing in particular… he seemed pretty normal, although he did have a better appetite recently," Bobby said.
"Better appetite?" Mo Fan immediately recalled the families of the victims he visited. He remembered them mentioning the same thing.
Lubi was picky when it comes to food, but he's been eating everything lately. I thought he was finally going to grow a lot stronger. His feeble body was going to improve too, but to think that he would die all of a sudden...
Mo Fan remembered one of the victims' mum saying the same thing!
"Xue Xue, can you go pay the families a visit again and ask them in particular about the appetites of the victims?" Mo Fan asked Mu Ningxue.
Mu Ningxue nodded and immediately headed out.
---
It did not take long for Mu Ningxue to revisit the families with the speed of her Wind Element. She soon returned to Bobby's house.
Mo Fan already knew the answer when he saw the look on her face.
"Every victim had a better appetite prior to their deaths. The amount of food they ate was around two to three times their usual amount, with not a single exception," Mu Ningxue said seriously.
"It's likely that the cops and the Hunters would disregard a tiny detail like this. They won't assume there's any problem with it, but it might actually be the clue we're looking for," Mo Fan opened Lingling's database and searched it using the keyword 'appetite'.
Even though not every record of the victims of the Drowning Curse had taken note of their appetite, he did find some other information about sudden changes to a person's appetite!
"Appetite? What does that have anything to do with the curse?" Bobby asked in confusion.
"An increase in appetite isn't necessarily a good thing, especially when each victim did not seem to gain weight despite eating a lot more than they usually do," Mo Fan replied.
---
While they were discussing the victims' appetites, Lingling walked out of the house. She looked at the three sitting in the garden with glittering eyes.
"We found something," Lingling said.
"So did we!" Mo Fan immediately told Lingling how every victim had a sudden increase in appetite before they died.
Lingling pondered for a while before sharing her discovery, "Norke's body is extremely feeble, like a person who hasn't eaten for more than ten days. He only looks normal on the outside. The inside of his body is actually swelling because of taking in too much water."
"That's...that's impossible!" Bobby screamed.
Norke had clearly eaten a lot. How was it possible that his body was like an empty shell only full of water? That didn't make any sense!
"I can feel my head hurting," Mo Fan smiled wryly. He simply could not find any possibility to explain it.
The victims were starving when they ate more than they usually did… it was simply impossible, no matter how fast a person's metabolism was!
"I think we've found some clues," Lingling said. She went into the house and returned with the pot filled with blood.
Mu Ningxue and Mo Fan were confused. Why did she bring the pot of blood out?
Lingling asked Mo Fan to hold onto a filtration net.
Mo Fan did as she asked and held out the net. Lingling started pouring the blood through the net.
The viscid blood flowed through the tiny gaps of the filtration net. Bobby had a complicated feeling watching it. How daring was this little girl? Even a Mage like him was frightened by the gory sight, but the little girl seemed perfectly normal.
