Chapter 367 - 367 Two hundred twenty-four

Words : 1489 Updated : Oct 9th, 2025

367: Two hundred twenty-four. A place where evil spirits dare not tread 367: Two hundred twenty-four. A place where evil spirits dare not tread Anna blinked. It wasn’t because of Lu Li’s words. She probably knew what Lu Li intended, but it was something else that caught her attention. She was somewhat curious about the content of the diary and the items in the Deep Sea Stone box. However, Lu Li had no intention of opening and going through them. “Won’t you take a look?” Anna blinked again. “‘Do not look at notes of unknown origin or casually open boxes from mysterious places,’ it says in the Exorcist Survival Manual,” Lu Li explained. “Exorcist Survival Manual? What is that?” “A very interesting book that I came across in the True Library.” The fact that Lu Li found the book interesting meant he thought its content was very useful. Anna’s attention shifted from the diary and the stone box to inquire about the content of the Exorcist Survival Manual. “Let’s leave this place and then talk about it.” Lu Li looked around to make sure nothing was missed, then stepped out of the basement and back upstairs. After carefully locking the doors of both the basement and the house, Lu Li walked out of the building, opened his umbrella under the eaves, and stepped into the curtain of rain. His steady narrative voice gradually trailed off. ... “Artefact Section, Rule Eight: A good weapon is essential; it can boost your courage and allow you to take your own life before falling into the hands of oddities. As for killing power? That’s just incidental.” The street of the Sailor District was now in sight; they had returned. “But I remember detectives must have curiosity and a spirit of exploration,” Anna questioned, puzzled. “Curiosity and exploration should be measured because diving into water due to curiosity is vastly different from diving into the abyss,” Lu Li replied from under the umbrella, “Do not let curiosity overpower reason.” “Oh.” Anna nodded in understanding, though no one could see her inside the Inner World. As Lu Li approached the Long House, he was stopped by a Coachman who had previously helped Lu Li sell the furniture brought by the Eternal Dreamer; he had since been waiting on the street for Lu Li to return. The Coachman handed over a stack of crumpled Shillings to Lu Li with the highest denomination being just 10 Shillings. A total of 183 Shillings; the Coachman told Lu Li that the old furniture was hard to sell, so he could only sell them to an old goods store owner. As previously agreed, Lu Li gave the Coachman a 10% commission and then went to a bakery next to the Long House to buy 5 pounds of white bread. The bad weather had kept the children off the streets, and Lu Li, with bread in hand, returned straight to the Long House. Most rainproof items in the Long House had already been laid out, sandbags stuffed behind the door to prevent rainwater from flooding the corridor. Doors to most residences along the corridor were wide open, with the smells of cooking and sounds of chatter and movement wafting from inside. Approaching four o’clock in the afternoon, people were starting to prepare dinner. Passing by several rooms brimming with the aura of daily life, Lu Li and Anna returned to the Detective Agency. Anna went to warm up the food while Lu Li picked up the garbage bags piled in the kitchen and living room to throw them outside. When he returned, he heard a relaxed humming coming from the kitchen. There were no lyrics, just humming that carried a sense of freedom and ease. Probably only at this moment could Anna relax a little. The merchant would come by tomorrow, and then Lu Li could take it directly to the house of the Bird Beak Mask figure on Old Cozy Street. That was the destination Lu Li had arranged for the two items from the basement. To be frank, weird artefacts were indeed very valuable. Lu Li did not plan to touch these two things directly, preferring to sell them straight to the merchant and let them be taken away. In the kitchen, a faint smoke from the burning wood made one’s throat tighten. To prevent rain, the chimneys of the houses were mostly blocked, which was why Lu Li saw that the Long House residents had their doors open upon returning. So the Detective Agency joined them. While waiting for the food to heat up, Lu Li took a basket from the kitchen and went to the back street to buy some firewood and coal. Since they were only used for cooking, one basket was enough for a week. There was no need to stockpile these items, as they were cheap and cumbersome to carry. A few minutes later, Anna returned to the living room with a pot steaming with heat. Dinner was finished in a few minutes, and by then, the sky had darkened further than before. At 4:15 pm, the sky began to darken. At 4:30, the Detective Agency lit two oil lamps, and by 5:00, only a dim murkiness remained outside the window. Noises, the sound of children running, talking, coughing, and the faint sounds from other rooms in the Long House mingled with the rain, but as time passed, these sounds gradually faded away, leaving only the constant sound of the rain falling. At eight in the evening, the Detective Agency lit a second oil lamp, and Lu Li lay down on the sofa. “Good night,” Anna said. The night was silent. ... A calm night passed. Perhaps it was calm. When Lu Li opened his eyes, there was a crowd of people under the eaves outside the window, pointing and making indistinct comments in the direction of something, their voices drifting into the Detective Agency. “Did they wake you up?” Anna asked in a cool tone, always attentive to Lu Li. “No,” he replied. Lu Li, who had gotten used to waking up at dawn, sat up and looked outside: “What’s going on out there?” Anna shook her head abruptly; she was only watching over Lu Li. Lu Li moved the blanket aside and sat up, glancing at the event schedule behind the desk: It was already 7:15 am, quite late. The sky outside was similar to a typical morning at 6:00 am, the rain hadn’t intensified, but the sky was even more overcast than a few days prior. Hopefully, it was just an overcast cloud and nothing more. Anna started preparing breakfast, still her specialty stewed pork with expensive carrots and some potatoes. Just before it was ready, a merchant who had been arriving at meal times lately appeared at the door with cut Deep Sea Stones, still not one of the merchants Lu Li had seen before. Lu Li brought up the matter of Old Cozy Street to the merchant, who agreed to accompany him there. “Could you wait a bit?” Lu Li asked, gesturing toward Anna, who was carrying food out of the kitchen. “Please make it quick.” Ten minutes after finishing breakfast, Anna hastily cleared the table, while Lu Li freshened up, donned his coat, and left with Anna and the merchant. The crowd under the eaves had not dispersed yet, and they seemed oblivious to the odd, towering merchant beside Lu Li, occasionally casting friendly smiles at Lu Li. Through snippets of conversation, Lu Li learned that a couple living in the neighboring Long House had died. The police had judged the cause of death to be a nocturnal calamity; when they arrived in the morning, the oil lamp in the house had been extinguished, and there were no signs of man-made wounds on the bodies. The topic of the residents’ discussion was the oil lamp, because after the bodies were discovered, someone found that there was still a lot of kerosene in the lamp— Therefore, the grocery store owner who sold kerosene was also present, explaining to the police. “It all feels so strange...” Anna murmured softly. “Maybe it’s not much related to the oil lamp.” Lu Li responded, his figure gradually moving away from the Long House, as he turned to ask the merchant, “Is it the Shadow Thief of Fire?” “5 contribution points,” the merchant replied. The price was cheap, but Lu Li did not plan to pay. The merchant had already conveyed the answer to Lu Li in some way. Even if the culprit wasn’t the Shadow Thief of Fire, it was some other evil spirit. The more remote the area, the greater the danger, but Belfast had a large population... Had evil spirits already dared to venture here?

Chapter 367 - 367 Two hundred twenty-four

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