Anne left happily, seemingly unsuspecting anything—after all, she was just a child.

The old guard stood at the gate of the cemetery for a long time, looking in the direction of Anne's departure, and it took a long time for the spirit to react at once, and then his fingers trembled slightly and touched his breast pocket, and he took out a tube of potion from it and poured it into his mouth.

He felt much better.

"It's too wicked..... Gotta report to the cathedral immediately... The god of death is above.... This is too evil......

The old man muttered, turned and walked quickly in the direction of the guard's hut, and when he entered, he closed the door, and went straight to the bed, looking at an old, ordinary desk—when one of the covers on the desk was opened, the delicate pipes and valves, and the buttons and handles were revealed.

Several metal capsules lie silently in the lattice next to the pipes.

The old man took the letterhead out of the desk drawer, sat down and picked up the pen next to him, and began to write a report quickly, then rolled it up and stuffed it into the metal capsule, then opened the pipe in the hidden compartment of the desk, and placed the capsule into the groove.

"May Bartók bless this pipe and the air currents that rush in it.... May the valves run smoothly without jamming, venting or bursting – and may the differential machines in the sorting and delivery centers not go wrong."

The old man gave a brief prayer, then reached out and pressed a button next to the pressure pipe, and only after the green light in the dark compartment lit up did he pull the handle next to the button.

A strange grunt came from the depths of the pipe, sounding like the movement of the air flow when it was blocked, but soon the sound died down, followed by the hissing of the pressure pipe and the rapid sliding of the capsule device.

The old man glanced at the pipe with some concern, and muttered, "... It can't be because the letterhead mentions the existence of the higher position, and it affects the machine..."

After a while, the two green lights that represented the delivery of the "Xun Mail" to the higher-level sorting center lit up, and the old guard finally relented and closed the cover of the dark grid.

Alice walks down the street with a large paper bag in her arms, curiously looking at the buildings around her, observing a city that is very different from Prander and observing the lives of the people in it.

The paper bag contained something she had just bought from the corner store--— some vegetables, eggs, and frozen hard butter and two pieces of lamb that were the ingredients for today's lunch.

Alice was already able to buy things on her own, and although she wasn't very skilled and occasionally misunderstood the amount of money she was looking for, she had been trying to learn it all - improving every day, though not much.

She lowered her head slightly, holding the paper bag in one hand, and with the other hand pulled out a note from the bag, confirming the contents of the note.

Letters were written in crooked handwriting, a list of the day's shopping, some of which was words she could read and write, and another part of which was replaced by simple drawings — a list she had written herself, with great effort.

Make your own daily menu, plan your own ingredients to buy, write your own shopping list, go to the store and buy things yourself - try to figure out the amount of change, and then try to get home on time, and if you can do it all, the captain will be happy.

Alice will also be pleased.

After confirming that the list and the contents of the paper bag were all right, Miss Doll put away the note in satisfaction and continued walking towards her temporary accommodation on Oak Street.

But just halfway through, a commotion from a street corner suddenly caught her attention.

She looked up in the direction from which the voice came from and saw about a dozen people gathered around an old-looking residential building, some pointing at the building, all talking about something, occasionally hearing words like "that woman is crazy", "poor man", "the church is alarmed".

Alice couldn't help but slow down, slower and slower, and finally stopped, looking in that direction with great hesitation.

Is that.... The captain said not to join in the fun, because if the head falls off in a crowded place

, the excitement is too big.

But it looks really interesting over there, and what they're discussing... … It seems that this is also something that the captain will be interested in.

Alice struggled, and in the tangle moved her steps to that side, and shifted again.

"I'm going to check on the situation..... It's to help the captain gather intelligence......... It's not just a casual fun, it's a serious one.......

Alice put all her wisdom into convincing herself, and she succeeded.

With one hand on her head and the other on a paper bag, Miss Doll quickly approached the crowd and looked up at the residential building in front of her.

Unlike the two-story building that the captain rented temporarily, the building in front of him looked more old and cramped, with narrow windows and external gas pipes looking crowded and chaotic, and it seemed that there were many independent residents gathered in this building.

The discussion of the surrounding crowd was chaotic, and Alice didn't understand what was going on after listening for a long time, so she cautiously patted the shoulder of the person next to her, and asked politely, "Excuse me.... What's going on here?"

The person next to him was startled, but when he saw that it was only a young woman wearing a veil who spoke, he relaxed and looked up and pointed up: "A woman is crazy and wants to kill her husband and strangle her child..... First the sheriff was alarmed, and now even the church people have arrived, and I don't think it's a big deal."

As soon as he finished speaking, another man next to him said, "Even the people from the church have arrived..... Could it be something that isn't really good?"

「.... I hope nothing happens," muttered a woman in the crowd, "I live downstairs from them, and if something happens, we have nowhere to go......

"Whether it's okay or not, it's better to go to church today, and let the priest help with an exorcism, it's always good to be careful."

The crowd around her began to talk again, and soon to the realm that Alice did not understand, she was a little distracted by the messy discussion, and her gaze slowly drifted into the air.

Light and fluttering threads floated in her field of vision, and more thin threads extended from nearby residential buildings, fluttering in the air, like strands of hair swaying in the wind, silently churning the sky.

Alice blinked suddenly.

She suddenly noticed that some of the lines floating above the city-state seemed unreal, transparent, and even flickering like ill-touched electric lights.

The faint musty smell of old residential buildings, the slight leakage of old plumbing systems, the sound of dripping water from time to time, and the gathering of black-clad guards with canes and lanterns in the living room made the already inspacious room even more cramped.

A long-haired woman with stray hair nestled in the corner of the couch, her head bowed as if frightened, occasionally muttering slurred sentences.

Two black-clad guards stood beside her, guarding the insane woman.

The guards are checking for clues left in the house, where they have been busy for two hours.

Just then, a gray wind blew through the hallway, through the open door, and whirled into the living room.

The Guardians stopped what they were doing and saluted the gray-white whirlwind.

Agatha's figure stepped out of the whirlpool, her gaze sweeping across the room.

"What's going on now?" She looked up at one of the highest-ranking guards on the scene.

The captain of the guard, a sleek woman with short black ear-length hair, stepped forward in response to the gatekeeper's inquiry, "We have collected a small amount of 'mud and samples' on the floor of the Coalition Bathroom, and confirmed that they are consistent with the samples we have collected before."

"Elementals.," Agatha whispered, then frowned, "A small number of samples? How many? Only so many?"

"About the size of a test tube," the female captain with short hair gestured with her hand up, "That's all the samples—we've searched the entire building, except for the Washroom."

There's a little bit left on the ground."

Agatha was silent, then turned to look at the long-haired woman curled up in the corner of the couch.

"She's the party?"

"Yes," the team leader nodded, "She lives here, we have investigated, she has a clean background, she has no previous criminal record, she is an acting accountant for a nearby firm, and her husband worked in a boiling gold mine, and according to the information, he died in a mining accident three years ago."

Boiling gold mines. Mine...

Perhaps influenced by recent events, Agatha instinctively noticed these words, and then she settled down before she came to the woman who was still chattering.

"Ma'am—I'm the gatekeeper of the city-state, and you're safe now," Agatha said in a calm voice, quietly using the power to calm the spirit, "Tell me, what's going on?"

The long-haired woman on the couch heard the voice, and the trembling on her body suddenly stopped, and then she muttered something indistinctly before she suddenly raised her head.

A pair of eyes that still lingered on fear and madness stared at Agatha.

"He's back, he's back... I killed him, I killed that monster..... In the bathroom! It melted in the bathroom!"