Inside the Igwinte Charity Association's venue, the innocent and sweet children's choir echoed through the theater space, and everyone was immersed in the childlike singing.
Bill, wearing a half-mask and a theater staff uniform, slowly paced the edge of the venue, constantly scanning the numerous audience members with his eyes, seemingly searching for something.
What Bill was searching for was a scent, the scent he had noted at the scene of the bloody massacre at Buck's house that day.
Bill was an Extraordinary of the "Cup", but with a slight difference; his advancement ritual was personally presided over by the adult he was loyal to, and the ritual performed was slightly different from the standard advancement ritual for a Thirster.
In the hidden world, even if the accumulated Spirituality is the same, different advancement rituals can lead to relatively different outcomes.
After paying an additional price, Bill advanced to a subspecies rank of Thirster, named "Taster".
Tasters are a subspecies of Thirsters; while their physical fitness and vitality also surpass ordinary people, they are still some distance away from Thirsters. Instead, Tasters gained some sensory expressions of the "Cup".
Thirsters became stronger and more resilient in life because they gained the material expression of the "Cup", which is the flesh and blood expression. The Tasters' "Cup" is not as strong as the Thirsters' in material expression, but they have additional sensory expressions.
Sensorily, the "Cup" is expressed as smell, taste, and sexual pleasure, etc...
And Bill's advancement brought him an additional sensory expression: smell. Therefore, his sense of smell was greatly enhanced, allowing him to distinguish and remember scents that ordinary people cannot discern.
That day at Buck's house, although Bill didn't make a move, he knew someone was hiding in the darkness of the collection room, and he noted the scent in the darkness before leaving.
At the time, because too many people had died at the scene and the smell of blood was too strong, Bill's scent memory process was disturbed, making it difficult to distinguish more information from the smell. He could only barely sniff out that it might be a female; further information could not be discerned. However, he firmly remembered this disturbed scent information.
And then he didn't expect to smell it again today.
Bill slowly paced the edge of the venue, walking around the perimeter of the audience seats, wanting to capture that scent again, but had no success. He had noted the scent information, but it was incomplete due to the disturbance. To identify it, he had to get close and smell it.
But doing so would be conspicuous. Even though his current identity was a theater staff member, wandering back and forth repeatedly among the audience seats and smelling each person would still be an extremely impolite behavior, which would attract attention and thus alert the target.
Therefore, Bill now had to think of other methods to confirm the target's location without alerting them.
After thinking for a moment, Bill had an idea.
Next, he quickly walked to the edge of the venue's entrance, found someone who seemed to be a foreman, and then took off his half-mask.
"Ah, it's Mr. Bill. Do you have any instructions?" Seeing Bill's face, the foreman said with a smile, and Bill spoke directly.
"Gather all the attendants and have them collect the audience's invitation letters according to my method. Just say there's a problem with the invitation letters and we need to collect them for re-examination."
...
In the venue, the children's singing gradually came to an end. Amidst the audience's warm applause, the children, like lambs, bowed for their curtain call, and the wide red curtain slowly rose again.
In the audience seats, Dorothy also clapped along with the surrounding audience. Although she had a smile on her lips, her heart was very heavy at this moment.
'"Lamb Song"... The song Anna and the others sang is a secret transmission, a secret transmission in the form of a song... Why is this happening...'
After the system's prompt just now, Dorothy realized that the chorus she was listening to was actually a secret transmission. Although it was very incomplete and seemed to have been adapted, greatly reducing its mysterious components, it was still a secret transmission.
After hearing this secret transmission, Dorothy immediately extracted it into Spirituality. Although the extracted Spirituality was so weak that not even 1 point could be accumulated, Dorothy could still recognize that this was the "Cup".
In other words, the "Lamb Song" is a secret transmission of the "Cup". However, the version these children are currently singing has been greatly cut and adapted. Its purpose... is definitely to avoid excessive Spirit Sight pollution and also to deceive others.
If it weren't for Dorothy's system's accurate identification, Dorothy wouldn't have discovered that this song had such a problem.
'Why is the song sung by the children from Cien Orphanage at the charity event a "Cup" secret transmission? And according to the host's words earlier, they seem to have a chorus performance every year. I wonder if it's always this song. Is there something wrong with Cien Orphanage? I've attended classes there for so many days and haven't found anything?'
Dorothy thought with confusion, and at this moment, she not only had questions in her heart but also a hint of worry.
'There's openly a "Cup" secret transmission being performed on stage... Regardless of the truth behind the scenes, this charity event is too problematic. Although I mainly came to see Anna and the others perform, I feel it's a bit risky now...'
Dorothy thought this way. Encountering such an unexpected situation, her heart couldn't help but become cautious, and she began to feel a hint of suspicion about everything around her.
Then, Dorothy took out a gold coin from her pocket. The front was engraved with the sun, and the back was engraved with the Shining Light Church's mark. This was a "Light" Spirituality storage item she got from Brandon. With this, she could perform divination.
Now, she needed to use divination to ascertain the situation around her.
Among the basic divination techniques Aldrich sold to Dorothy, many required setting up rituals beforehand. There was no opportunity for that now. However, there were a few very simple forms of divination that did not require rituals.
One of them was coin tossing.
'"Am I currently in danger?"'
While reciting the divination phrase inwardly, Dorothy tossed the gold coin as low as possible, then covered the back of her hand with her hand. After feeling the consumption of Spirituality, Dorothy slowly moved her palm away.
Then, on the back of Dorothy's hand appeared a coin that had lost its luster. The side engraved with the sun was facing upwards; this was the front.
'"Whew... it really is..."'
Looking at the coin's appearance, Dorothy let out a long breath. Then she shook her head, ignoring the host on stage who was introducing the next act, and settled her mind to think carefully.
'"Danger, danger... What kind of danger is it, where does it come from, in what form... when will it come..."'
Dorothy pondered, then realized that she had too little information at this moment. She closed her eyes and began to carefully recall and reflect.
Now, she began to retrieve memories, recalling everything from arriving at the theater entrance until now, to see if she could find any clues.
Dorothy was a Knower; she could completely remember all perceived information within half a day, even how many weeds were by the roadside. This kind of super memory would gradually fade into ordinary memory after half a day, but consuming a little Spirituality could permanently preserve some important content.
Therefore, Dorothy began to meticulously examine every detail of the theater in her memory, every corner, and even every person she had inadvertently glanced at, and every sentence she had inadvertently heard, attempting to extract useful parts from this seemingly meaningless information.
Since Dorothy was a Knower and possessed the ability to read and process information at high speed, this ability was also effective when processing memory information, so she flipped through her memories very quickly.
Before long, Dorothy found an important piece of information in her recent memory.
That was the memory from when she had just entered the theater entrance and was walking with the crowd in the corridor behind the door.
By carefully examining her visual memory from that time, Dorothy discovered that among the crowd walking towards her, there was a slightly familiar figure.
That was a theater staff member. He seemed to be a young man, wearing a half-mask, with only his chin exposed.
This figure, upon careful inspection by Dorothy, felt a bit familiar. It seemed to have similarities with another figure in her memory.
That was the young man named Bill who rescued Buck at Buck's house that day.
At that time, Dorothy hid in the shadows and gazed at this young man. By consuming Spirituality, she used her Knower ability to completely and meticulously remember him, comparable to an ultra-high-definition photograph.
Now Dorothy felt that the young man wearing a half-mask she encountered in the corridor seemed a bit too similar to that Bill.