Adam endured his discomfort and walked into the block, almost picking his spots carefully.
Although everything was made of accumulated faeces, there was still a difference between dry and wet faeces.
After entering the slums, subsequent tracking became difficult, as the smell was too strong, and Adam felt his nose would break trying to desperately trace a faint scent of potion here.
Fortunately, Adam wasn't entirely clueless; he had already memorised some characteristics of the person, especially when they washed their hands.
People of this era believed water was impure, almost never washing their hands or drinking water; if they needed to hydrate, those with means drank wine, and those without drank beer or various soups.
There were multiple reasons for this, with a major one being public health issues.
The water here, except for a few wells, was not of good quality, and people of this era had not formed the habit of boiling and drinking water; if they drank natural water, a serious illness was inevitable.
Once the notion that water was impure formed, most people were unwilling to even wash their hands, so generally, you rarely saw clean hands.
Adam's frequent body cleansing, though not explicitly commented on by the Cooper family, was somewhat considered a strange habit.
"I guess I'm still not ruthless enough…" Adam mocked himself slightly; true ruthlessness wasn't just towards others but also towards oneself.
He could eat holy bread as if nothing was wrong to avoid suspicion, enduring the pain so as not to reveal any flaws in front of the abbot, but he still couldn't accept falling into a cesspit and reeking all over.
In contrast, most church priests were clean, as they used holy water.
Holy water was divided into several types; the simplest kind was the clean water drawn from the well beneath the church clock tower, and the Holy Sound Church's bell was perhaps one of the few items in the church related to the extraordinary, thus giving the water a slight trace of holy power.
The water used by believers for worship, hand cleansing, and other rituals was this type of holy water.
When that Otherkind worshiper washed his hands, a wooden splinter and some wood chips were dug out from under his fingernails; the splinter was new, not looking like it came from touching any wooden objects.
Generally, a person with so many wooden splinters and chips under their fingernails is either a carpenter or a logger.
Adam leaned towards the latter, as the edges of the person's shoes had mossy dirt clinging to them, though all of this was just speculation.
Along the way, Adam dared not fully unleash his sense of smell, moving towards the forest-adjacent part of the slums, and after quietly circling a few times, he finally found a new clue.
It wasn't a scent but a sound.
In the silent night, Adam heard a sound coming from a secluded wooden hut near the forest, like a mad beast wanting to bark loudly, yet suppressed by fear, daring not to truly make a sound, only a low growl.
In Adam's expanded perception, the person was like a powder keg ready to explode, and as he gradually approached, Adam also heard what the low growl was truly saying.
"Blood~ Blood~" These words made Adam frown; as far as he knew, werewolves did not have any craving, and among most Otherkind, only vampires had a particular fondness for 'blood'.
Pure vampires were beings created by sorcerers who studied werewolves and transformed themselves through certain rituals.
But thinking about it, it was clear that the person inside was certainly not a pure vampire.
Some werewolves could spread lycanthropy through bites, transforming ordinary people into non-pure werewolves, and vampires transformed from werewolves also seemed to have a similar ability, capable of transforming ordinary people into non-pure vampires, also known as blood slaves, through some means.
That the Otherkind was a vampire was not the issue; the problem was how he was transformed into a blood slave.
"Could it be that a pure vampire once appeared in Roya? Or was this person transformed elsewhere and escaped to Roya?" Adam couldn't help but ponder.
Adam would not, as common rumours suggested, want to kill a vampire on sight; for Adam, there was no benefit in it, and he generally wouldn't do things without benefit.
But Adam had to consider what kind of threat a pure vampire, if still in Roya, could pose to him.
A pure vampire must be a sorcerer and one who has deeply researched werewolves; Adam would not causelessly hate vampires, but he couldn't guarantee that a vampire wouldn't, on a whim, capture him for experiments.
"The situation in Roya is becoming increasingly complex." Adam frowned but decided to proceed with his plan.
Silently arriving at the door, Adam did not intend to enter but instead entered a state of heightened perception, beginning to sense everything around him comprehensively.
The blood slave inside was consumed by an endless craving for blood, his bestial instinct, and at this moment, the only thing suppressing this instinct was another instinct: the survival instinct.
Just as Adam had analysed, Adler was terrified; ever since the witch doctor was arrested and put on the stake, he had fallen into deep fear.
Because of his fear, he even did some things that could be called foolish.
Adam did not disturb the blood slave in that state but quietly went to one side of the house and directly pried open the cellar lock with his sharp claws.
Covering his mouth and nose, Adam gradually entered the cellar; although he had dim vision in his werewolf form, the cellar was too dark to see clearly, so he followed the smell of lamp oil, lit the lamp, and the entire cellar came into view.
Although he had expected it, Adam still felt slight discomfort at the gruesome sight in the basement.
Several wooden pillars supported the cellar, and there were some wooden cabinets inside, where some bottles could be seen, some empty and some with a little left.
Unsurprisingly, those were the potions.
But the potions were not the most eye-catching thing now; it was a rotting, twisted, and deformed corpse.
From the shackles, ropes, and marks on the pillars, although werewolves had a problem of going mad under the moon, vampires did have their own issue—a pathological craving for blood.
In Roya, even in the slums, if people were frequently attacked and had their blood drained, it would attract investigation from the church priests; conversely, a missing person was less likely to draw the church's attention, as disappearances were too common in the slums.
Imprisoning someone in a cellar to be a stable source of blood was not surprising for a cautious blood slave.
"Did uncontrollable rage arise from fear?" Adam mourned the passing of this person; from his twisted corpse, it was clear that he had suffered unimaginable torment even after death.
"Was he not very conscious before death?" Adam observed that the wooden pillars initially had some carvings recording something, but later only chaotic bite marks remained, concluding that the person imprisoned there had gone mad before dying.
Do not imagine vampires as elegant; their essence is still that of Otherkinds, sometimes more like a beast than werewolves, and those infected as blood slaves even more so.
Adam made no secret of his disgust for that blood slave; Adam knew very well that he himself was a scumbag, but this blood slave was merely trash, worse than a scumbag.
"I truly am a scumbag!" Adam recognised himself once again.
He did not turn to deliver death to that humanoid trash but instead tapped a few times on a wooden cabinet nearby, pulling out a book from a hidden compartment.
After a quick glance, Adam put it away, extended his claws, and began writing on the cabinet.
After finishing the pre-prepared message, Adam hesitated slightly, then added a sentence: "Bury the corpse quickly; you probably don't want to go to the church for worship smelling of decay and be discovered by the priests!"
Having done all this, Adam extinguished the oil lamp with his hand, quickly left the slums with the book, and came to a small clean riverbank, where he placed the book on the bank and jumped directly into the river to wash himself clean; everything about that blood slave made him nauseous.
Looking at the crescent moon high in the sky, Adam suppressed the urge to roar, picked up the book, and disappeared into the night.