Logan Sullivan frowned, took two sips, and then decisively poured the rest of the bottle over his own head.

"Are you crazy!"

"What are you doing?!"

Holly Harlow and William Sherman spoke up at the same time. William Sherman tried to reach out to stop him, but unfortunately he was too far away—ever since he got caught spying in the middle of the night, he had been carefully keeping his distance from Logan Sullivan.

"Julian West, stay here and look after Mr. Sherman and the others." Logan Sullivan ignored everyone with a stern face, splashed some of the cold water on his face, wiped it off on his clothes, shook out his wrinkled shirt, threw it over his shoulders, and strode outside. With one kick, he sent a skull blocking the way flying three meters away. "The rest of you, come with me!"

Julian West hurriedly asked, "What about all these bones in the yard?"

Logan Sullivan: "Dig them up and smash them."

Julian West was startled. "Won't that... anger something...?"

"If people don't mess with me, I won't mess with them. I won't even toss a cigarette butt on their turf." Logan Sullivan turned back coldly at the gate. "But if people mess with me, I'll dig up their ancestors' graves. We came in politely last night, and they pulled this on us. Now it's morning, and it's time for the tables to turn. Smash them all. If anything goes wrong, it's on me."

Logan Sullivan had a bandit’s temper—when he lost it, he recognized no one, and nobody dared provoke him. Julian West wisely shut his mouth.

Holly Harlow had to jog to keep up with him. After following for a while, she finally mustered the courage to say in a low voice, "Zach Warren... probably has her own reasons."

Logan Sullivan didn't even look back. "Nonsense—do you ever have anything that's not nonsense? If you do, let's hear it. If not, shut up."

Holly Harlow kept quiet for two seconds, but then couldn't help herself: "Can't you talk nicely? Is this how you talk when you’re hitting on girls, you jerk?"

Logan Sullivan finally glanced at her, then said something even more infuriating.

He raised his eyebrows. "When did I ever say I wanted to hit on you?"

"..." Holly Harlow really wanted to slap him across the face, but didn't dare. She gritted her teeth and held back, then said fiercely, "No wonder every relationship you have ends in disaster. Just stay a bachelor for life!"

Logan Sullivan quickly led the group to where they had parked the night before. He rummaged through the trunk of a car and pulled out several small travel bags. "The car can't go any further. We'll have to walk the rest of the way. Open the outermost pocket—inside are high-calorie, easy-to-carry foods, and a small 100ml bottle of water. You can stuff it in your pocket. If we get separated and lose our luggage, you'll still have these for emergencies."

"And these." Logan Sullivan dragged out a pile of supplies for Holly Harlow. "Take them back to the cabin on the mountain and distribute them to the others."

Holly Harlow stared at him in surprise. "You want me to go back?"

"What a shock—just because you look human doesn't mean you're warm-blooded," Logan Sullivan impatiently closed the trunk, locked the car, called Carter Shaw and Charles Gray to follow him, and waved at Holly Harlow. "Alright, woman, before you freeze and go into hibernation, hurry up and get back—oh, and take this. Don't drink it cold, warm it up before you drink."

He tossed a small bottle into Holly Harlow's arms. She looked down and saw it was a small bottle of low-alcohol yellow wine—something warm and comforting, not found in the northwest, and obviously prepared by him before coming here. It was clear who it was meant for.

Holly Harlow suddenly felt a bit moved... even though someone’s way of showing kindness was so exasperating.

To save their strength, Logan Sullivan and the other two didn't say a word for the rest of the way. Fortunately, the weather had cleared up. Although the north wind was biting, at least in the sunlight, it didn't feel quite so harsh.

Charles Gray felt they had crossed at least three or four mountains, long since straying from their original destination of "Qingxi Village." By the time it was past noon, they finally reached a sheltered mountain hollow.

Carter Shaw tore open a few packs of beef jerky and divided them among the three nearly frozen people. Then, Logan Sullivan pulled out a map covered in dense markings, sat cross-legged on a rock, and studied it carefully.

"Do you actually know where we're going?" Carter Shaw asked.

Logan Sullivan made a new mark on the map without looking up. "Zach Warren and her people don't live in the same place as the current Qingxi Village. Honestly, when she first mentioned it, I thought she meant Qingxi Village too—until later, when I checked her file."

Carter Shaw was surprised. He had thought Logan Sullivan had been too busy dealing with all his brothers-in-law and being distracted by lust to do anything else, but apparently, he had still managed to get some real work done. He couldn't help but ask, "So what about her file?"

"Zach Warren herself is a Hangga tribesperson. Her original name was Glen. She chose her current name when she joined the Soulbound Order." Logan Sullivan said, "Hangga people are neither warm nor hospitable, very xenophobic. There's no way they'd live in a place like Qingxi Village, so close to the road and tourist spots."

"There are actually records of them in historical documents?" Carter Shaw was surprised.

"Not historical documents," Logan Sullivan tapped three points on the map, "but in the 'Ancient Evil Arts Compendium' (Codex of Dark Rites)."

He unfolded the old map and tapped a spot with his pen. With Carter Shaw's sense of security, he immediately recognized it as the location of the mountain cabin where they had stayed.

Logan Sullivan continued, "When I first went in, I thought the human heads in that yard must be related to the legendary Forbidden Rites of Robra. '罗布拉' in the Hangga language actually means 'undead.' The '禁术' here doesn't mean 'forbidden,' but rather 'imprisonment'... Charles Gray, why are you standing so far away? Get over here! You're past your probation period—now that you're a full employee, can you show a little more enthusiasm?"

Charles Gray hurried over in small, shuffling steps.

"So, it's a spell to imprison the undead," Carter Shaw summarized.

"Right. The Hangga people have always had customs of beheading and controlling the undead," Logan Sullivan said. "I think it probably has to do with their social structure. The Hangga people were in a kind of slave society until their extinction. According to records of the Forbidden Rites of Robra, the Hangga believed they had absolute control over their slaves, whether alive or dead. So dead slaves would be beheaded, their heads sent to the altar at the mountain top, and through the forbidden art, their souls would be imprisoned forever, serving their masters even after death."

Carter Shaw asked, "Is there a special meaning to burying the heads at the mountain top?"

"Yes. The Hangga people once lived among many other ethnic groups. Although they didn't intermarry, they inevitably absorbed some religious influences. Among the things passed down from the Hangga, a small part inherited the ideology of the native religion, though the core is different. The Hangga's sacred beliefs also contain traces of evil gods from other legends. Unlike the native religion, they clearly didn't believe everything had a spirit, but perhaps because they lived in the mountains and had witnessed avalanches, they acknowledged the existence of mountain spirits and believed them to be very powerful, able to suppress the undead. So they built altars at the 'mouth of the mountain spirit'—that is, the shaded side of the mountain peak. Influenced by Buddhist ideas of reincarnation, the Forbidden Rites of Robra states that three points form a circle, creating the deepest well in the world, from which nothing can escape its shackles."

Carter Shaw was very smart and immediately caught on: "So, there should be three identical altars, not far apart, at similar elevations, forming a symmetrical triangle!"

Talking to smart people was easy. Logan Sullivan nodded. The three points he had drawn on the map formed an almost equilateral triangle. Then he drew a small circle in the center: "The undead are imprisoned here, to be driven for all eternity... I think this must be the old site of the Hangga tribe."

"Let me see." Carter Shaw had an excellent sense of space and direction—some people just have the ability to read maps in three dimensions. He turned the map, studied it for a while, and asked, "Look, isn't this the valley where we saw firelight last night?"

"Then it must be," Logan Sullivan quickly put away the map and stuffed two strips of beef jerky into his mouth. "Hurry up and eat. As soon as we're done, we move out."

Carter Shaw chewed his jerky unhurriedly, was silent for a while, then glanced at the clueless Charles Gray. After some thought, he finally asked, "I know we're here to investigate the background of this visit, but Director Sullivan, did you already have a deep understanding of these dark arts to be able to figure things out so quickly?"

Logan Sullivan replied lightly, "If you can't even tell the difference between ecstasy and heroin, how can you be a narcotics cop?"

Carter Shaw thought for a moment, and for once, managed a smile. But with his gloomy face, he still looked unlucky no matter how he smiled. "If that's the case, why haven't we 'narcotics cops' had any internal training?"

Logan Sullivan slowed his chewing and stared at Carter Shaw for a moment.

Carter Shaw met his gaze calmly.