“Hey, Kevin, do you have some time right now?” After trying to vince Master Liaoran to let him give them a ride but was eventually turned down, Marcus had to stand beside the sinkholes and dialed the number of her than the only forensic tei in his prect: “I’m at a se here and I’d like you to take a look at it first before calling others.”

  “Okay, what do you wa?” Kevin asked after but a very short moment of silence.

  “Do you have something to date human bones?” Marcus hesitated then asked: “I remember, you have some kind of test paper right? Would it work?”

  “That is not super reliable but serve as some initial clues. Only a few bs iy run clear diagnostics to date them. But we could ask Dr. Flemmings for help.” Kevin sipped on some tea and said: “I think I could call her for help, but she might be asleep at this moment. Do you wao call her?”

  “That - ” Marcus thought for a brief moment, then decided to support this idea: “That would be a great. If you could, Kevin, call her for help as well. There’s plenty for both of you. But please, just you and her for now, I’ll call for backup ter. Oh, yeah, bring some talismans with you. I’ll text you the address.”

  “What did you find?” Kevin asked with a curious tone.

  “You’ve gotta e here to see for yourself. But it’s bad.” Marcus shook his head as he carefully stepped into one of the sinkholes and looked around with his fshlight. The bottom of the sinkhole still felt loose, there might be more bones hidden underh, so he had to be careful. Though Master Liaoran had firmed to him that this pce would not be dangerous anymore, he would still rather be safe than sorry.

  The sinkhole he was in right now had barely enough room for him to look around without much hindrance, and with just a quick sweep around, he spotted more than ten pieces of human bones around him, including three skulls. There was ahing that had been on his mind ever sihe first time he entered the spirits, and now only seemed more bizarre and ominous to him now that he had a ce to look closely at the bohere were roots of vegetation ing all around the bones, and some traces of fungi on them, most disturbing of which was the fungi and roots in the skulls. Just like many of the spirits, the three skulls also had vegetation and fungi growing in their eye sockets, all of them looked like some kind of dark, round mushroom or crooked roots with a woodeure and reflective exterior. This was a stratern, ohat needed expnation.

  There was a cracked rib cage beside Marcus’ left foot, and i there were once again dark, hardened roots iwined with the rib bones. Marcus slowly k down and tried to pick the rib cage up. The entire rib cage was lifted off the ground for a short distance, before the three rib bones clutched by Marcus’ fingers broke off and the rest of it fell ba the ground, crag into a few dozen paper light pieces.

  fused, Marcus took a look at the broken bohat remained in his hand - these bones were thin and brittle, and upon close iion, full of small holes. They just remained mostly in the shape of bones, yet were already heavily weathered and weakehis was strao Marcus, because the exterior of these bones did not look heavily corrupted, and if not for his failed attempt at grabbing them, they would probably just stay in shape under ground for much longer.

  He k down once again and picked the dark roots from the now crumbling rib cage. These roots, uhe bones, were quite dense and hard. Marcus held the biggest piece of the roots closer to his eyes and pointed his fshlight right at it. The piece appeared to be semi-transparent under a bright enough close-by light source, and inside of it there appeared to be some kind of vein-like patterns. It gave off an uling aura after Marcus had it in his hand for a prolonged period of time. He could not tell what it was, but he somehow felt that this piece of roots had something deeply un and disturbing about it.

  Before Kevin came, Marcus had already circled around the area - all the fighting, lightning strikes and explosions in the area seemed to have raised the arm of no ohe houses around seemed to be in simir states of abando. The only house that showed signs of beily occupied stood alone in a er, with its backdoor dangling and some water marks and littered garbage indig that the squatters living here had escaped, probably due to the noises of their fight or just simply the flooding spirits.

  Kevin arrived at the site along with Dr. Ayer Flemmings, who seemed to be in a not-so-friendly mood but somehow agreed to e anyway.

  “This’d better be good.” Dr. Ayer Flemmings yawhen stared at Marcus: “And like I told Kevin here, you’d better call in support soon. ”

  “Of course, Doctor. But I’d like to show you everything first.” Marodded and poi the sinkholes behind him: “I’m sure you’ll uand why I did this soon.”

  Dr. Flemmings shrugged, then looked at Kevin, who responded also with a shrug and said: “I told you I trust Marcus. So I’m just gonna look into it here before calling anyone else.”

  “Thank you Kevin.” Marcus smiled: “And Doctor, I believe you’ll agree with me. Kevin, did y what I asked you t?”

  “Yeah. Here’s one for you.” Kevin took out a red cloth poud ha to Marcus, but Marcus just pushed it back, while showing Kevin that he had many talismans on him.

  “Doctor, do you have one?” Marcus turo Dr. Flemmings.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Dr. Flemmings turned on her fshlight and poi down one sinkhole that was closer to her: “Wait - are those - ?”

  “Human bones, yes.” Marcus sighed: “Possibly up to hundreds of them.”

  “What the - ” Dr. Flemmings was in disbelief at first, but just when her fshlight shone upon some of the skulls, rib cages and shin bones, she finally started to take things more seriously: “How could this be possible! For this mahs, you’d think we’d at least heard about it?”

  “Which is why I wanted you to e here first.” Marcus sighed: “If we have some forensic testimony or early reports, things would be harder to cover up. Sorry, Doctor, and sorry to you too, Kevin.”

  “Meh, if they want they’d still cover it up.” Kevin shrugged and jumped into another sinkhole: “You’re sure you don’t want Mie? He seems like the righteous type. Aaaand he’s got the es.”

  “Yeah, well. I don’t feel like I could trust him with this.” Marcus shrugged. “Not yet.”

  “These bones are - abnormal, to say the least.” Dr. Flemmings shook her head while looking at a piece of bone in her hand: “Their brittleness indicates to me that it has been buried for quite a while, but bohat are buried for long wouldn’t look like this. Not buried in normal earth, anyway. ”

  “ you date them? Maybe just a rough date?” Marcus asked while standing on the edge of a sinkhole.

  “I’ll try. But I’ve gotta say, don’t expeu the accuracy.” Kevin shook his head as he grind a small piece of boo powder and put it into a vial of clear, transparent liquid, then swirled the vial a couple of times: “Just like Dr. Flemmings said, the situation and dition of these bones are not normal, and this kind of test is far from accurate as it is.”

  “Have you seen these weird roots, Kevin?” Dr. Flemmings asked while still keeping her head down in the sinkhole: “What do you think they are?”

  “Seems to me like just normal roots of trees, grass and maybe some ferns. But they seemed to have somehow bee ambered.” Kevin raised one piece of root up higher in an attempt to see things more clearly uhe moonlight.

  While Dr. Flemmings was writing things down in her personal note, Kevin took a look at the vial of liquid, the liquid seemed to have bee dark, with some particles floating iheook out a strip of testing paper with some red lines on it from a small bag and dipped one end of it in the liquid.

  After about five minutes, Kevin climbed out of the sinkhole with the help of Marcus and started examining the testing paper strip uhe light. Doctor Flemmings also came over and waited by their side.

  The lines were not equally spaced, the closer they were to the end of the testing paper the more sparse they were. A strip of pink crawled up from the dipping end of the paper, and stopped just a hair’s width uhe sixth line.

  “About thirty years.” Dr. Flemmings nodded: “Judging from the pigment around the line, erre could be give or take five to six years.”

  “Probably 30 years then?” Marcus and Kevin asked at the same time.