Diary of a Dead Wizard-Chapter 258: Grave Formation

A rough count revealed there were several hundred.

“Don’t go any closer. Wait here,” Saul ordered, and the moment the words left his lips, he shot out of the carriage like a gust of wind.

He moved swiftly, his gray cloak flapping wildly in the wind. His hood fell back, revealing short black hair and pale gray skin.

It was the height of summer, and even the morning breeze should have felt warm on the skin.

But Saul could feel only a bone-deep chill.

He stepped onto a ridge between fields, sending a few pebbles tumbling into the furrows below. They clinked against the hardened earth with a sharp clack.

The land had cracked dry like stone. Not even a weed remained.

Standing at the edge of the field, Saul was immediately hit by a heavy stench of death.

These mounds really were graves.

In just a few months, this once-vibrant field had become a burial ground.

The scattered soul fragments lingering in the air were as obvious as ghostly flames to Saul’s eyes.

He narrowed his gaze, sweeping the entire grave field with a frigid stare.

“After I left, a massacre took place here. Not only that—they shattered the souls of the dead. Were they afraid someone proficient in dark-element magic would try to question the soul?”

But something felt off.

As far as Saul knew, destroying the souls of ordinary people didn’t require any special magic formations.

That made these neatly arranged graves all the more disturbing.

Each mound was identical in size and height, aligned in perfect rows and columns, forming a square matrix.

And yet, within this eerie formation of graves, Saul could detect no magical fluctuations.

“Is this a magic formation? Or some kind of ritual sacrifice? Could the barbarians have returned? Or was this display set up by someone else to deceive outsiders?” Saul sneered coldly, then looked toward the nearby town.

The town gate was tightly shut. The lazy guards who had once loitered outside were nowhere to be seen—most likely, they’d become part of this field of graves.

Truthfully, before he arrived, Saul had suspected that something might have gone wrong in Grind Sail Town.

But he had figured that if the person who’d been secretly taking the Grinding Sound Fruit wanted to keep a low profile, they wouldn’t draw attention by targeting the town.

Or… could it be that the secret within Grind Sail Town was even more important than someone stealing the Grinding Sound Fruit?

“I wonder how Ada and Penny are doing. I remember telling them to get out of here as soon as possible,” Saul muttered with concern.

Ada, with his simple-minded ways… and the sweet little girl Penny, wrapped in her nightmare cocoon.

Ordinary people who wanted to live safely in this world were better off staying far away from wizards.

Though they were no longer traveling the same path, Saul still didn’t wish for the ones who once took him in to meet a horrible end.

But reason told him that if a wizard had truly wanted to wipe out the entire town… those two probably wouldn’t have escaped.

“Do I just walk away and pretend I saw nothing? Or…”

Saul looked at the town gates again. The doors were shut tight. Behind them, utter silence.

No breakfast smoke curled above the rooftops, no birds chirped, no insects buzzed.

“Maybe there are still clues about the Grinding Sound Fruit inside,” he told himself.

But instead of heading straight to the town, Saul stepped down from the field and walked directly to one of the graves.

He carefully cast a detection spell. The grave didn’t react.

“Even if there was once some magic formation or ritual here, it’s already been abandoned. Not a trace of magic power remains.”

After confirming this, Saul crouched down, shoved his hands into the earth, and began digging, scooping out a large pile of grave soil and setting it aside.

He intended to open the grave and see what lay beneath.

“Master, please let me handle this kind of work,” called the coachman from afar, standing on tiptoe to watch and panicking when he saw Saul digging with his bare hands.

But Saul didn’t even turn his head. He simply raised one hand to signal the coachman to stay back, and continued digging.

His body had been enhanced—his skin now looked human again, but his strength and toughness far exceeded that of ordinary warriors.

Digging barehanded was effortless—faster than using a shovel.

As for why he didn’t use magic? He was afraid that the energy from a spell might destroy any hidden secrets.

After a few minutes of careful digging, he cleared the grave and uncovered a bundle.

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It was wrapped in a tattered garment, soaked with fresh red blood.

“The blood’s still bright, as if it was spilled just now… This grave formation really is strange.”

Judging by the size of the bundle, it definitely wasn’t a complete corpse.

Saul frowned and opened it.

Inside were chunks of flesh, so fresh they could’ve been placed on a butcher’s counter at the market.

Saul used the cloth to carefully move the meat aside.

Beneath the flesh, he found an eye.

“Dismembered?”

It was starting to look more and more like the work of barbarians.

Saul stood up and went to inspect other graves.

He chose them at random—some near the center, some at the edges.

Every grave contained flesh wrapped in a simple garment.

In one grave, Saul even found three severed hands. From the shape and size, they clearly came from three different people.

At this point, Saul could be almost certain: the flesh in each grave didn’t come from the same person.

The victims had not only been dismembered—they’d been mixed and buried together.

Saul rewrapped the limbs in their original cloth and returned them to their graves, but didn’t immediately cover them up.

He returned to the ridge and stood there silently for a long time. Then he finally raised a hand and summoned Mage Hand, using it to brush the soil gently back over the graves.

“There weren’t any magical artifacts or formations buried beneath the graves. Was this all really just someone using human remains for an art installation?”

There was nothing more to learn from the graves. Saul decided to enter Grind Sail Town.

Using a Cleanse spell, he removed the dirt and dust from his body and hands. Then he pulled up his hood and walked slowly toward the town.

But just as he got within a dozen meters of the town gate, it suddenly creaked open a crack.

An old man poked half his body out from behind it.

His hair was wild and greasy, his face smeared with grime, yet Saul instantly recognized him.

“The Mad Old Man?”

Saul hurried forward, but the man thrust out a skinny, withered arm and gestured.

“Go back,” he said. “Don’t come in.”

Naturally, Saul wasn’t about to leave just like that.

He stepped forward. “Mad Old Man, you’re still alive? What about the others? Ada and Penny—what happened to them?”

The old man trembled all over. He raised his head and looked at Saul, his face a tangle of emotions, eyes gradually filling with madness.

“I told them—we shouldn’t have made a deal with the barbarians… Shouldn’t have, shouldn’t have… The village is gone. Everyone’s dead… The village is gone. Everyone’s dead…”

Before Saul could say anything else, the old man suddenly darted back inside and slammed the gate shut with a bang.

Saul walked up to the gate, put a hand on it, and was just about to push when he heard it—

A sound like rushing water.

Whoosh… whoosh… whoosh…

Grind Sail Town was located in the northern desert, where water was scarce.

Saul remembered clearly—there were no rivers in the town.

So where was the sound of the tide coming from?

(End of Chapter)