William's resolute declaration shattered the tense standoff between the three n, his support adding significant weight to Lin Jie's proposal.
This wasn't rely an ordinary team mber taking sides;
it was a person marked by the "Mark of Death," about to step onto a fated battlefield, casting a vote of trust for Lin Jie with his very life and future.
Ethan's handso face revealed barely suppressed anger.
He could disregard Lin Jie's "insolence"—in his eyes, that was just an overconfident newcor's desperate attempt to gain attention.
But William's "betrayal" directly challenged his sense of authority rooted in elite status.
He couldn't comprehend why a long-established investigator, a veteran who had endured the baptism of war and should understand the iron rule of "strength above all," would abandon his elite, efficient, and reliable "hunting plan" to believe in so armchair "data analysis" from an Eastern youth.
To him, this wasn't just foolishness;
it was a direct insult to his professional competence.
Ethan's voice shed its pretense: "The fear of death has already begun to corrode your judgnt, Sergeant."
"Would you rather waste what little ti you have left on this aningless, bookish 'research' instead of eting your fate in a more dignified, soldierly manner?"
William responded firmly: "No, quite the opposite."
"Precisely because my ti is short, I can no longer waste my life on aningless, uncertain 'gambling'."
"Mr. Ethan, your plan is a gamble. You're betting we can outrun a 'ghost' across the moors. You're betting we can resist its curse and successfully kill it in that encounter."
William's gaze turned to the calm young man beside him, filled with trust: "But Lin Jie, he's at least trying to turn this damned ga of unknowns into a chess match where we can see so of the cards in advance."
"So I choose him."
These words were plain, but the logic within them left Ethan montarily unable to find a rebuttal.
The atmosphere in the corner of the inn dropped to freezing point.
Finally, Lin Jie took the initiative to break the deadlock.
He spoke in the most conciliatory tone possible: "Mr. Ethan, I have no intention of challenging your authority, nor do I question your capabilities."
"I only hope you'll give us, and Sergeant William, a chance."
"Twenty-four hours. I just need twenty-four hours. If my 'data analysis' fails to provide more valuable clues than a 'large-scale search' after twenty-four hours, then I will unconditionally follow orders, including serving as bait in your plan."
Advancing by retreating, he offered an acceptable way out of the conflict with a clear ti limit and a promise that placed himself in danger.
Ethan stared intently at Lin Jie for a long ti.
Finally, the tense line of his jaw relaxed.
He forced out a single word through clenched teeth: "Fine."
"Twenty-four hours, Mr. Lin. I'm quite curious how much support your intelligence can actually provide for that remarkable courage of yours."
Having spoken, he fell silent, simply picking up his brandy, leaning back in his chair, and closing his eyes to rest.
His aloof posture made his position clear: he would wait but would not participate in what he considered "ridiculously foolish" intelligence gathering.
The conflict was temporarily resolved.
Lin Jie imdiately began working, imrsing himself completely in high-intensity decryption for the next several hours.
He had the innkeeper fetch the most precise survey maps of the entire Devon county and all the newspapers from the past month.
He spread the enormous map directly across the inn's largest communal dining table.
Then he began processing information frantically.
William sat opposite him, serving as the most patient narrator, breaking down and recounting every minute detail of his mories from that day.
From the entrance where he entered the moor to the drop in temperature he felt, from a strange rock shaped like "praying hands" to the abandoned crossroads where he finally encountered the Black Dog—every detail was objectively described.
anwhile, Lin Jie worked like a criminal profiler, listening while rapidly marking and calculating on the large map with different colored charcoal pencils.
He drew William's travel route as a red dotted line, clearly marked the five victims' death sites with black X's, and circled all locations ntioned in Julian's materials related to the "Black Dog" legend with blue circles.
After several hours, the blank map had beco densely covered with complex lines, symbols, and data.
It was no longer a simple geographical chart but had transford into a "predation distribution map" revealing the UMA's behavioral patterns.
From this complex diagram, Lin Jie discovered several astonishing patterns.
First, without exception, all victims' death locations fell within five hundred yards of intersections between two abandoned ancient roads dating back to the Roman era.
This proved the Black Dog's core territory, like its legend, was intimately connected to the concepts of "roads" and "crossroads"—symbols of "choice" and "fate."
Second, the five victims plus Sergeant William seed unrelated—an artist here sketching, thrill-seeking aristocratic youth, local shepherds.
But they shared one commonality: before encountering the Black Dog, their emotional states were all in extre fear wavelengths.
The artist feared creative block, the aristocratic youth feared high-stakes gambling losses, and the shepherd feared bankruptcy after losing half his flock.
Sergeant William was also in panic when he encountered it, fearing for his missing comrade.
Lin Jie reached a conclusion: "It's not just randomly hunting."
"It can precisely sll prey whose souls are shrouded in 'fear,' like a shark slling blood! It uses these intense fear fluctuations as 'lighthouses' to locate its targets!"
The third point, and the one that most puzzled Lin Jie, was that all attacks occurred at night, yet no traces of the UMA could be found at the scenes during dayti.
It seed to evaporate from the physical world before dawn arrived.
Where was it hiding? Did a "ghost" need rest too?
All clues seed to point toward the core region deep within the moor.
But even with the area identified, their nightti hunt remained extrely risky against an enemy that could "disappear" during the day.
They lacked the most critical elent: a thod to provide early warning at night and precisely lock onto the "ghost's" specific position for targeting.
Night fell again, the cold wind wailing like ghosts, sweeping through the town and stirring up dead leaves.
Ethan Redgrave glanced at the wall clock and rose from his armchair.
His eyes held mocking amusent as he looked at Lin Jie.
He said softly: "Twelve hours left, Mr. Lin."
"I hope your map learns to speak for itself before dawn."
At that mont, the inn door was violently blown open by a gust of wind.
A local shepherd, ragged and soaked through with rain and mud, stumbled inside.
His face was twisted with a ghost-seeing expression of ultimate terror.
Pointing incoherently at the dark wilderness outside, he scread in a voice sharp with impending breakdown: "B-black... black dog!"
"I saw it! At Broken Neck Pass! That black dog from hell! It... it's heading that way! God! Who's going to die tonight?!"
Broken Neck Pass! Lin Jie's gaze snapped back to the map! That location was less than three miles from their current town and right within the "high-risk activity zone" he had delineated!
The opportunity had arrived!
Ethan's eyes instantly flashed with predatory excitent. He snatched up the ornate "Lovers" from the table and, without hesitation, was the first to rush out of the inn, disappearing into the wind and rain.
He intended to claim this heaven-sent achievent single-handedly.
Lin Jie imdiately said to William: "We're following too!"
The two rushed into the dark moor after him.
They caught up with Ethan at a treacherous pass ford by jagged rocks.
The proud nobleman was currently kneeling behind a large boulder, perfectly concealed in shadow.
One of his [Morning Stars] was loaded and aid distantly at the other end of the pass.
In that direction, they could see nothing, only hear the wind.
Ethan made a silencing gesture, mouthing soundlessly: "Shh... it's nearby."
"I can feel it... that damned scent of fear in the air."
Before his words faded, Lin Jie's shoulder was gripped firmly by William beside him.
Lin Jie turned and saw William's unusually grave face in the night, but what startled him more was William's current action.
The veteran took from his chest a primitive tribal-style pouch made of rough animal hide, retrieving an ancient-looking telescope Lin Jie had never seen him use before.
It wasn't a precise instrunt of the civilized world made of brass and glass.
Its barrel was crafted from two polished, yellowed leg bones of so unknown creature, with two thumb-sized, irregular, eerie purple crystals embedded at the eyepiece position.
Even more horrifying, the component connecting the two barrel sections at the center of this "telescope" was a miniature human skull with intact dentition!
Dark red dye painted primitive shamanic symbols resembling Zulu tribal war patterns on the skull.
This was William Keane's never-before-seen core Grotesque Armant!
A product of disgraceful colonial warfare, originating from the darkest corners of Africa, crafted from relics of a cannibal tribe's head witch doctor he had killed with his own hands!
"I never intended to take out this utterly shaful product of war in this lifeti."
Ignoring Lin Jie's astonished gaze, William raised this telescope he had nad [Zulu's Gaze], pressing the two eerie purple-glowing crystal eyepieces against his grey eyes.
The next second, the world changed in William's vision.
In his sight, the reality composed of rocks, dead grass, and darkness faded, becoming a grey-white background like an old photograph.
Against this grey-white background, countless colorful smoke-like "lines" began to appear and flow.
Blue represented the "life" trails of streams, green represented the "sleeping" trails of plants, and most conspicuous were the crimson trails full of anxiety and fear—the "emotional echoes" belonging to the shepherd who had just fled.
[Zulu's Gaze]!
It saw not physical entities but the "spiritual trails" and "emotional spectra" of all living beings' movents.
Unlike Lin Jie's [Reverberation Touch], which retroactively viewed historical fragnts of objects, William saw not a static past but a dynamic, real-ti scanning, tracking, and prediction!
William slowly swept the telescope across the seemingly empty dark pass ahead.
Then he stopped.
His pupils contracted sharply.
Because he saw it.
Right in the center of the pass, a thick, massive black "trail" coiled there, filled with desolation, despair, and ancient resentnt.
That was the Black Dog's spiritual trail!
It had been right there monts ago!
What made his heart stop was that a thinner but equally malicious black thread was branching off from the main trail, bypassing a massive blind spot in an extrely stealthy manner, quietly extending toward the side and rear of the boulder where the three of them were hiding.
The damned ghost wasn't in front of them at all;
it was executing a perfect flanking ambush!
William hastily lowered the telescope and issued a warning in an urgent voice: "Flank!!"
At the exact mont his words fell, a terrifying spiritual energy, imnse as a collapsing mountain and tidal wave, erupted explosively from less than ten ters to their side!
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