After explaining his funeral affairs, the detective on the bed closed his eyes. Shade pursed his lips and waited for a while, then freed his hand and tested his breath and pulse.
“Dead?”
He couldn’t believe that the other party died so easily, and it really took almost ten minutes.
Before he could make any further reaction, a black light suddenly flashed across the corpse’s face. Shade’s heart tightened for no reason, and extreme terror instantly overwhelmed him.
But when he came back to his senses, the black light dispersed in the air and disappeared.
As the light disappeared from the corpse, the body, which was as thin as if it had been starved to death, gradually became fuller at a speed visible to the naked eye, as if someone was inflating the inside of the corpse until it turned into a normal corpse.
“How is this normal? What is the situation now?”
In the silence of the room, Shade looked around with some uneasiness. The uneasiness was not about being alone in a room with a corpse, but about being in a strange environment. This world is not the world before. He has seen a corner of the truth about the mysterious and dangerous world.
The woman’s voice in his mind sounded again, as if to remind Shade that this was not a “person”:
[You have come into contact with ‘Whispers’. 】
“What contact? What whisper? Can you elaborate on it?”
But the voice still didn’t give an answer.
[Whispers] is one of the “four mysterious elements” that the detective just said. Obviously the so-called “Relics” and “Whispers” are the truth that led to his death.
Although Shade was overwhelmed by the suppressed and unknown truth, looking at the corpse on the bed, he surprisingly didn’t feel too much panic.
“It would be great if someone was joking about this.”
At this moment, he hoped that this was an act, but he knew rationally that it couldn’t be an act.
Standing beside the bed in silence for a while, he tried to stay as quiet as possible and walked around the four-poster bed to the window. Carefully and calmly he opened the heavy curtains. Immediately, the weak morning sunlight filtered through the gray fog on the street. And the glass on the window shines in.
This light seemed to temporarily dispel the uneasiness in my heart.
“Is it morning now?”
Because of the heavy fabric curtains, he thought it was night.
Bang bang bang~
The sound of knocking on the door suddenly sounded at this moment, which startled Shade. He subconsciously let go of the curtain, but he immediately held it and opened it completely. He squinted his eyes and looked out the window. Outside this window was the street. He had no time to look at the strange scenery of the steam age in the fog. He first looked down to make sure that the person knocking on the door was the corpse carrier. He could see the carriage pulling the corpse. Turn around and open the door.
“Being able to accurately know the time of his death is why the body transporter contacted can arrive so accurately.”
He said in his heart and opened the bedroom door. Outside is the living room, which also has gas pipes that appear to be from the steam era climbing up the walls. Hand-polished solid wood furniture and various stacks of letters, books, and documents are scattered everywhere.
The small blackboard hanging on the wall, the very formal combination of coffee table and fabric sofa also resemble the style of a detective agency.
The curtains were not drawn in the living room, allowing the dim morning light in the fog to shine in, and the light shone obliquely on the floor in front of Shade’s feet.
In the light, the floating dust is floating quietly, like strange tiny creatures swimming. This sense of reality made Shade a little creepy.
Open the cold latch and anti-theft chain of the door. Directly opposite is the dark staircase that spirals downwards, and there is a door next door. In other words, there are a total of two residences on this floor, somewhat like those in Sherlock Holmes novels. apartment.
I couldn’t find a light, so I could only spiral down the dark and oppressive stairs, my heart seeming to tremble crazily with every step. In the dark environment, Shade, whose thinking was too divergent, felt that there was some terrible existence peering at him.
From the second floor to the first floor, the stairs lead directly to the foyer. On one side of the foyer, the passage connecting to the first floor was completely blocked by wooden boards, as if it were a sealed coffin, leaving only the foyer available on the first floor.
This scene made the already nervous foreigner even more confused:
“Why do you want to seal up the first floor? What is going on here?”
He passed by the shoe cabinet, held up the fallen umbrella, and glanced at the gas lamp on the wall above the shoe cabinet. After carefully unscrewing it, the light made my heart calm.
Take a deep breath and open the door.
The silent old man in a black coat stood at the door, with a sign of overlapping leaves hanging on his chest. Behind him was the gloomy sky and choking fog. The old man raised his eyes and glanced at Shade, and his voice was as low as leaves scraping against the wet ground:
“Shad Hamilton?”
The language he spoke was consistent with the dead detective’s, so-called Delarian.
“Yes.”
Xia De nodded somewhat cautiously and motioned for the numb-looking old man to follow him upstairs.
So the old man called to the depressed middle-aged man behind him who was calming the horse. The latter’s face was gloomy, just like the current weather.
The three of them walked up the stairs together. Shade didn’t know what to say, so he led them silently to the bedroom on the second floor with the door number “No. 1”.
Almost no one spoke during the whole process. The old and middle-aged people all smelled of corpses. They first put on gloves and confirmed that the corpse of the detective on the bed was really dead. Then they handed Shade a document that he needed to sign. .
It was a confirmation document confirming that the body was handed over to the City Public Cemetery Management Office for processing. Below it were two official seals from the City Public Cemetery Management Office and the City Funeral Committee. At the bottom is a prayer for the dead. The translated meaning makes the living Shade very uncomfortable.
The old man and the middle-aged man checked the condition of the body. Shade sat at the desk in the bedroom and picked up a cold pen.
He is a little confused now, but he can also realize that he can understand and understand, but he can’t write. Fortunately, the knowledge I just received not only has the ability to speak, but also has the ability to write. Translating the name into the similar-sounding “Dralion, the common language of the North,” he planned to sign it.
On the cold page, there was nothing noteworthy about the content. It was probably to confirm that the body had been handed over and that the money for the funeral had been paid.
“But judging from another signature on the document belonging to the committee secretariat, the name of this world is very similar to the West in the previous life. It is divided into three parts. The middle name must be added to the official document. The name is ‘Xia De’, Last name can follow ‘Hamilton’, but middle name…”
The confused and uneasy strangers do not yet know whether the dead Mr. Hamilton gave the original owner of the body a middle name. But now is not the time to rummage through the room, you must immediately come up with a name to deal with it temporarily.
[Suellen. 】
The whispering voice sounded in his mind again, and the whisper made Shade almost jump. The voice gave a word that existed in both the ancient language spoken by the woman and the Common Tongue of the Northern Kingdoms used by the detective, and its meaning was “Silver Moon.”
“I can use this as my middle name, but you’ll have to explain it.”
Xia De tried to communicate again, feeling extremely nervous, and the woman’s murmuring voice really sounded:
[This is fate, stranger, the silver moon is your destiny. When you gather the four elements, open the door to the extraordinary, and see this terrifying world, the meaning will naturally appear. 】
Frowning, Xia De suppressed the panic in his heart, thought about it, and signed his name vigorously:
Shade Suellen Hamilton.
The body transporter did not ask Shade to provide a death certificate or cause of death report, let alone notify the police of an autopsy. It’s as common as the death of a detective, like the departure of a wild dog on the street.
After retrieving the “Power of Attorney for the Transfer of the Body” from Shade, he gave him a receipt with the location of the grave, and then silently moved the body of Mr. Hamilton, who was wearing pajamas.
Xia De sent them to the door downstairs, but he did not go out. Watching the body being put into the narrow coffin in the carriage, the coffin was covered with brown cloth, which seemed to be stained with blood.
The middle-aged man drove the carriage, carrying the coffin and the old man, deep into the thick fog far away in the street.
“Well, goodbye, Mr. Sparrow Hamilton.”
Thinking silently in his heart, he closed the door and Shade stood in the dim light of the foyer for a while, and then went upstairs again along the dim stairs that frightened him. The steps of the outsider were a little heavy, but there was no one else around, and there was an inexplicable sense of relaxation amidst the tension:
“It’s simpler than I thought. I didn’t ask about the cause of Mr. Hamilton’s death. I didn’t even care about whether I was really Shad Hamilton. I didn’t even ask for a tip for moving the body… Detective Hamilton has indeed taken care of it. Everything.”
The corpse left here with many secrets, leaving Shade, a despicable foreigner who had taken over someone else’s body, with countless mysteries. In fact, he still has many questions that he wants to ask Mr. Hamilton, and countless questions waiting to be answered.
But people cannot be resurrected after death. He must accept the fact that the other person is dead and try to gain a foothold in this world that seems very wrong.
The only good news is that the house on the second floor that used to belong to Mr. Sparrow Hamilton now belongs to Shade. He suddenly became a homeowner in this different world that resembled the Victorian era in the mid-19th century. person.
The first floor was boarded up, the room “No. 2” next to the second floor was locked from the outside, and the stairs leading to the third floor were completely broken. Therefore, Shade was the only one left in this empty house at the moment.
He returned to the room numbered “1” on the second floor and carefully checked every corner of the study, living room, bathroom and bedroom with the lights turned off. After confirming that there was really no one in the shadows, he grew a He sat on the sofa in the living room, tilting his head and looking at the morning fog outside the window with a slight peace of mind.
Xia De finally has time to sort out the current situation:
“I traveled through time and inherited a detective agency. The original owner of the body may have a brain problem, and was trained by the former detective to help him complete a seemingly simple task after death… Spy Detective Luo Hamilton has a secret. There is a mysterious power in this world. The death of the detective and the voice in his head prove this. What I need is to gather the four elements. The death of the detective has brought me into contact with ‘Whispers’… ….”
I rubbed my face. Although I was worried, the current situation was at least not bad. Although Mr. Sparrow Hamilton died suddenly, at least Shade had a foothold in a new world.
This is enough to support him to live, explore the secrets of this world, and maybe find a way home.
Xia De is not a person who takes things as they come, but he is also not a person who complains about everything. It was unfortunate that he had left his hometown inexplicably and came here. All he could do for the time being was to accept it, live well here, and try to live a better life.
“By the way, let’s go and see this extraordinary world, the mystery of the steam age, those secret rituals and spells… How can you be willing to be ordinary?”
Xia De sighed softly, and the woman’s laughter sounded in his mind, as pleasant as the breeze blowing through the lavender field.