PATH OF THE STAR HUNTER

Gradually the pressure around Mei calmed down and both her ki and her appearance returned to normal, Desmond on the other hand although he calmed down like Mei, looked visibly exhausted by his small display of power.

It was not only about his wounds that had not yet fully recovered but also the stress that his body had undergone in the last twenty-four hours and being unable to regain his mana reserves also added a degree of pressure on him.

Ignoring his exhaustion Desmond approached the place where Xiauyue’s men secured the body they found and there it was ... what little was left of a person, of a poor girl, someone with dreams and desires like every human being that had now been reduced to just a bloody remnant of what it once was.

And as cold as Desmond could be at times, at this moment his heart filled with a genuine sense of pity, what had been done to this person in front of him was simply inhuman; something Desmond would only wish on his worst enemies.

The skin on her face was ripped away, her eyes gouged out, some teeth forcibly extracted, the girl’s scalp seemed to have been cut from the base with some spots showing the upper part of the girl’s skull.

The girl’s arms had been broken into at least three sections, all of her fingers showing some type of injury, whether cut or broken, with her fingernails being removed.

The girl’s legs were broken similarly but the thighs showed what appeared to be at least hundreds of small shallow cuts and the girl’s private parts were so damaged that it was not even possible to determine if there were any kind of sexual abuse.

But what bothered Desmond the most, what make him turn all the grief he felt into intense fury was the blood, the way all the wounds on the body showed some bleeding; Desmond was almost certain that the girl suffered all of these injuries while she was still alive.

.....

Unfortunately in addition to all the above, there was nothing else that Desmond could discover about the body, with barely some clothes or any kind of possession it was not possible to identify the body with all the damage done to it.

“Did you discover something?” Asked Mei who was standing next to him all this time watching with a somewhat disturbing stillness.

“Not really, all the damage done to the body was done while the person was still alive and it doesn’t seem to have any other purpose than to cause pain, added to the way the body was disposed of in a not too hidden public place; I can assume that the person who did it is not only a sadist but is also an extremely confident person.

Another thing that strikes me is that he managed to leave the body in this place without being seen so he must be very good at stealth or he must be a person of significant strength.

Given the degree of damage to the body, this person took his time torturing his victim so he had to have a place that was secluded enough or large enough to have the privacy necessary to do this. ” Desmond explained in detail.

His explanation touched on topics and details that normal people had not even considered which took Xiauyue and Mei by surprise who were not related to the forensic investigation methods and criminology that people from a civilized world would be relatively more familiar with.

“And that is what you call not discovering anything?” Xiauyue replied reflectively as she took a mental note of the thought and deduction process that Desmond had just briefly explained.

Desmond smiled bitterly and customarily shrugged as he replied, “It may sound like a lot but it’s no use if I don’t even have a starting point from where I can find a suspect; luckily I have a little trick that can help ”

Under the confused gaze of both girls Desmond reached out to take the hunter’s book and focusing his intention on it, Desmond withdrew a small pendant made of what appeared to be bronze, with intricate patterns carved into the pendant; it carried what looked like a small piece of the amber set.

A bit reluctant Desmond hesitated for a moment but ended up putting the pendant on his left ear and reciting the incantation necessary to activate it: “Show me a memory from the distant past, with the world as a witness, no secret remains hidden.”

Small particles of the arcana are always present in the world but hidden from those who do not know its secrets and are oblivious to its gifts began to gather in the piece of amber on the pendant before forming what looked like a cloud of luminous dust in the area where the corpse was.

While some of the luminous particles settled on the ground in a kind of amber mist, other particles condensed and clung to what appeared to be two fuzzy shadows.

Just a couple of seconds later the enchanted spell in the pending term of being conjured and the three people present were able to contemplate what seemed like an accelerated recording of all the events that occurred in this place in the last hours.

Of course, being an enchanted spell on such a low-level item, its effects had many limitations, in the first instance the spell only worked in an area of ??a couple of square meters, the spell could only reproduce events that occurred in the last eight hours in the place where it was activated; lastly, the memories displayed by the spell were always amber in color and it couldn’t reproduce any sound at all.

Even though such limitations seemed quite restrictive, the ability to see what happened at a given moment in time in a given place was still extremely useful; especially when it came to conducting research.

The strange scene of shadows and ghosts of amber appearing and moving quickly caused a great fright to Mei and Xiauyue but after noticing Desmond’s calm, they came to the understanding that this was Desmond’s doing.

Ignoring the reaction of both girls, Desmond manipulated the illusion generated by the spell to begin to see the events that occurred in this place from the present and backtracking at high speed as he tried to find the moment when the body was abandoned.

Desmond only hoped that the scene he was looking for would occur within eight hours or he would run completely without clues but it seemed that luck was on his side because after a few moments of turning back time in the illusion Desmond saw the scene he was looking for.

By then both Mei and Xiauyue had come to deduce roughly what Desmond was doing so they also paid close attention to the scene.

Needless to say, the trio was quite disappointed that the scene where the corpse was abandoned lasted only a couple of seconds and that the person who left the corpse was covering their appearance quite well leaving little to observe.

In addition to an approximation of height and complexion, Desmond could not obtain anything else, so disappointed he could only put his hopes in his two beautiful companions, hoping that they would notice something that he overlooked.

Xiauyue who was paying close attention to the arcane projection seemed to notice something that made her move closer to look in more detail as she asked Desmond to replay a specific moment of the recording.

“A tool that allows you to see the past,” Xiauyue said but after seeing that Desmond refused to comment on it, she only rolled her eyes for a moment before pointing to something and saying: “You see that insignia, there embroidered on the sleeve of the tunic that he wears under the hood; it’s pretty well hidden and I can only look at part of it but I’m pretty sure that’s the insignia of the treasure and medicine pavilion. ”

With Xiauyue pointing to the partially hidden insignia both Desmond and Mei came closer to see it, it was subtle but certainly part of an embroidered pattern although probably only someone quite familiar with the different insignia and ranks within the sect would have recognized it.

In Mei’s case, she didn’t usually pay much attention to this sort of thing and Desmond on her side was simply too foreign to the sect to know, if it weren’t for Xiauyue commenting on it, Desmond would have thought it was merely a random pattern on a tunic.

“Well, now we have a clue, the problem is that the treasure and medicine pavilion has hundreds of members” Mei commented.

To which Desmond quickly replied: “A few minutes ago we had thousands of possible targets, now there are only a couple hundred, we just have to narrow the list a little more”

“Desmond is right, for now, we know that he is someone from the Treasure Pavilion, and from what we know so far it is unlikely that he is neither an outside servant nor disciple, simply neither the ability nor the resources to do something like this so we can discard them which greatly reduces the list; even inner disciples would not necessarily have a residence private enough to have a torture room in it. ” Xiauyue chimed in continuing Desmond’s line of thought showing that the girl had a sharp enough mind as ever.

Mei nodded in acknowledgment and continued: “That leaves us with core disciples and sect staff with some kind of status as elders or deacons, that greatly narrows the list of suspects but also makes things difficult; none of those people are easy to deal with ”

“Mei is right, it will not be easy to directly investigate those people unless you have some plan in mind,” Xiauyue said directing her attention to Desmond.

“Well I have some kind of plan but I don’t know if it will work and even if it does it will take time and the first time it did not work very well” Desmond explained with a bit of irony.