The Bizarre Detective Agency

Chapter 165: The Ghost Prison

"What is your definition of a human?" Tesla asked. "Yesterday, when Old Pick and Old Rain posed that question to you, your answer was, 'One who feels they are human.' After that, you saw through the test's deception, and the questioning ended. I'm quite curious about what came after. Would you be willing to tell me?"

Tesla was already aware of all of Lu Li's answers and actions from that day, which was one of the reasons he had taken a liking to the young exorcist.

"I've already said all there is to it. The phrase is to be taken literally," Lu Li replied succinctly.

"You mean, 'one who feels they are human'?"

"Yes."

"That's far too broad a concept. You need to be more specific. For instance, can a being that becomes a ghost after death be considered human? Or, let's say, an Evil God revived through a ritual who believes itself to be human—is it human? And what about a familiar that possesses human memories or thought processes?"

"What is a familiar?"

Lu Li never missed an opportunity to acquire new knowledge.

"A servant or follower of an Evil God. As you know, Evil Gods are born from certain rituals or similar acts. People who believe in them, or are merely near them, can have their forms uncontrollably altered by the birth of an Evil God. Some of them retain their human minds and ways of thinking, while others regress to an animalistic state. It all depends on the nature of the worshipped Evil God... In short, there are too many kinds of familiars and servants for me to list every example," Tesla, as usual, was long-winded.

His answer brought something to Lu Li's mind—namely, the familiars he had encountered in the Shadow Swamp.The family of four, the six-armed savage, the woman who had become part of a tree... Had they all once been ordinary people?

Pulling himself from his thoughts, Lu Li nodded to the waiting Tesla. "Yes. In a broad sense, I consider them human."

"Wonderful..." Tesla murmured, his eyes filled with unconcealed admiration. "That explains why you keep a ghost girl by your side."

Lu Li's pupils contracted, and he glanced around. "Did she follow me?"

"No, no, not at all. I'm simply referring to the information we've gathered. You have a ghost for an assistant."

Lu Li nodded and asked, "Do the current exorcists—Spirit Hunters, Investigators, and the Night's Watch—have a bad relationship with ghosts?"

Tesla smiled and said gently, "No need to list them all... You can just call them exorcists. In the future, if you meet someone from any of those four categories and aren't sure of their affiliation, feel free to call them an exorcist."

"As for your question... yes. Most exorcists view ghosts very negatively and harbor complex feelings about them. It’s a sort of deep-seated hatred mixed with hesitation. After all, aside from the fact that they're dead, many ghosts are no different from the living in how they think."

"However, despite the complexity of their feelings, they will exorcise any ghost they encounter without hesitation, avoiding all unnecessary communication. Only a small minority feel any sympathy or pity for ghosts. They might choose to leave harmless spirits in peace, and as for those hostile to humans, they treat them just as they would living people—they lock them up in prison."

"Lock them up in prison?"

It sounded like some kind of joke.

Tesla seemed to think so too and said with a laugh, "It sounds funny, doesn't it? The idea came from... from... forgive me, I've forgotten the name of that first-generation exorcist. All I remember is that it was incredibly long—it took up an entire line in the book."

Tesla's own storytelling could have filled more than a few lines itself, but Lu Li needed his verbosity. The more Tesla talked, the more Lu Li learned.

"This first-generation exorcist with the long name, much like Isaac Einstein, specialized in studying Evil Spirits. After discovering that souls couldn't penetrate a particular kind of stone mined from the deep sea, he began to consider the possibility of imprisoning Evil Spirits. And so he made the attempt."

"Of course, he failed. Otherwise, hundreds of years later, you and I likely wouldn't have become exorcists. The Evil Spirits simply ignored the stone's properties. But the research wasn't a total failure, as he discovered that ghosts and some vengeful spirits were unable to pass through or damage this stone. So, he shifted his research from containing Evil Spirits to containing ghosts."

"The world was in a relatively normal state at the time. With the exception of ghosts and a few Evil Gods, the spirit hunters generally had the situation under control. Most people back then thought it was pointless to build a prison for ghosts. Why waste the effort when a single silver bullet could solve the problem?"

"Nevertheless, the ghost prison was built, with help from a few sympathetic exorcists and politicians. The main reason was that the stone was readily available back then—some people even used it to build their homes... My apologies, I've strayed from the topic again. After that, driven by either pity or curiosity, exorcists began to place ghosts in the prison."

"Don't they attack each other?"

"They do, but the prison is designed to keep them from congregating. You can think of them as... solitary cells."

"Who guards the prison?"

"An Evil Spirit."

"...So this was also the work of the first-generation exorcists?"

Lu Li was beginning to understand their way of thinking. The first-generation exorcists had skillfully used and studied ghosts. In other words, they treated ghosts as mere tools, no different from wood, stone, or water.

"Precisely. It was an era of astonishing ideas."

"They placed an Evil Spirit known as the 'Evil Eater' in the prison—a spirit that manifests in places saturated with malice. Thanks to it, the malevolence of the imprisoned ghosts is consumed, keeping them from growing any stronger."

"And what if the Evil Eater leaves the prison?" Lu Li asked.

"Over several centuries, hundreds, if not thousands, of ghosts were placed there. Although a portion of them have self-destructed from despair over the years, and no new 'inmates' have been admitted in recent decades, there are still about a thousand of them left. A thousand ghosts, confined to a prison with a perimeter of only two or three hundred meters... How could it possibly get out?"

Lu Li still considered it a profoundly bad idea, but thankfully, it had little to do with him.

"Let me tell you something that might surprise you," Tesla said mysteriously. "That prison is right here in Belfast."

Now Lu Li could no longer afford to be indifferent.

"That's like burying your head in the sand at low tide," Lu Li remarked emotionlessly.

Twirling his mustache, Tesla reassured him, "Don't worry. The prison was built by the first-generation exorcists. It's extremely sturdy and secure."

Lu Li's premonition of disaster only grew stronger.

He had a feeling that one fine day, the prison would fail, and thousands of ghosts would burst free to wreak havoc on the city.

It seemed his future shelter would need to be built far from Belfast. And perhaps, he should use that very same stone in its construction.