The Bizarre Detective Agency

Chapter 210: Clothes, Fainting, and a Fishing Net

Something brushed against his face—a fleeting touch, like an eddy in the water or the passing of some sea creature.

Icy, dark seawater swallowed the falling figure. Lu Li clamped his lips shut, narrowed his eyes, and kicked his legs, driving himself toward the surface.

His light raincoat slid from his shoulders. Abruptly, something seized his left leg, yanking him downward. He glanced down into an abyss of infinite darkness.

In the sunless depths, all sense of direction vanished; even the line between up and down began to blur.

Squinting against the gloom, Lu Li reached into his pocket, pulled out his flashlight, and switched it on.

A dim beam cut through the water, illuminating a small space and pushing back the lurking menace of the dark. Coiled around Lu Li’s left ankle was a swath of black, billowing cloth.

It was his raincoat.

Lu Li drew his Spirit Gun. He aimed the rose-engraved barrel downward, but after a moment’s hesitation, he chose to wield it as a club instead.

Slicing through the water, the Spirit Gun descended slowly toward the black raincoat clinging to his ankle. An incredible thing happened: the moment the gun made contact, the raincoat—as if it were a living thing—vanished like a shadow pierced by a sunbeam, dissolving without a trace.

Having swiftly dealt with the raincoat, Lu Li kept the Spirit Gun in hand and resumed his ascent to the surface.He could feel other, similar entities rising from the depths, closing in on him.

Lu Li had no idea how far he was from the surface, but he thought he could hear a sound from above. Before he could determine whether it was real or a hallucination, an old sweater overtook him, coiling around his ankle and dragging him down.

Lu Li repeated the maneuver, striking it with the Spirit Gun. The sweater disintegrated, crumbling to dust like a collapsing building.

But from the remnants of the sweater, two new tendrils of darkness emerged, wrapping themselves around Lu Li’s legs. His ascent halted once more.

Lu Li destroyed them, but more garments were rising from the depths, swarming and tangling around him.

A stream of bubbles escaped Lu Li’s lips.

The air he had gulped before hitting the water was nearly gone.

His lips still sealed, Lu Li continued to use the Spirit Gun as a bludgeon. Each swing obliterated one article of clothing, only for new ones to take its place.

Another burst of bubbles escaped his mouth. Worse, he was beginning to drown.

His control broke, and he involuntarily inhaled a mouthful of seawater.

His lungs and airways convulsed, trying to expel the water, but a cough requires air...

A terrible, vicious cycle began. Lu Li, calm until now, started to cough violently, each spasm forcing more water into his lungs.

Bubbles streamed from his mouth and nose. He curled into himself, no longer able to fight the garments dragging him down. With his last ounce of strength, he holstered the Spirit Gun.

Gradually, the bubbles ceased. Layer upon layer, the clothing cocooned Lu Li, pulling him into the bottomless depths.

In his last moments of consciousness, Lu Li clamped the flashlight between his teeth.

His arms drifted uselessly at his sides, and his eyes, as dark as the abyss itself, lost their light.

...

“Haaah...” Anna yawned, resting her head on the table.

She was sitting in Lu Li’s chair, watching the hands on the clock.

It was only eight in the evening. Eight more hours until dawn.

“Such a long night,” Anna murmured.

...

The clank of chains, the stench of rot, the thud of heavy footsteps.

These three sounds painted a deeply unsettling picture.

They seeped into Lu Li’s hazy consciousness, accompanied by a profound sense of cold and weakness.

For a long time, these three sensations were all he could perceive. But slowly, pain and a crushing pressure began to join them.

It was a good sign. It meant Lu Li was regaining consciousness.

As the chains clanked once more, Lu Li managed to pry his eyes open.

The flashlight he had clamped between his teeth before blacking out was gone. He couldn’t tell if his Spirit Gun was still with him, either.

All he could see was a hellscape of rotting bodies.

With some effort, Lu Li realized they were the carcasses of fish. He was lying among them, almost indistinguishable from the dead things.

Fish of all sizes, long dead. Every carcass was coated in a sticky black substance, and he was likely covered in it too.

Lu Li’s gaze drifted past the heap of fish. The world beyond was a blur, crisscrossed with black threads—a fishing net, its mesh the size of a man’s fist.

Slap.

A fish’s tail slapped Lu Li across the face.

Lu Li shook his head—the only part of his body he could move—and nudged away a large fish nearly the size of his forearm.

The chains grated again. They hung from somewhere above, holding the net full of fish—and Lu Li. A sea breeze filtered through the gaps between the carcasses, carrying the foul stench of decay.

So he’d been hauled out in a net...

His body still refused to obey him, but feeling was slowly returning. He turned his head, taking in his surroundings.

The net was suspended over some kind of boat. Lu Li could hear the thud of heavy footsteps on the deck—a dull sound he had heard many times during the day.

Every so often, the net would sway with the boat’s motion, granting Lu Li a glimpse of the outside world through the mesh and the dead fish.

Everything was black: the fish, the deck, the sea, even the wind. Yet within that blackness were countless shades—pale, light, deep, and saturated.

Lu Li looked down at himself and saw that he, too, was black.

The conclusion was obvious. Either there was something wrong with his perception, or this boat was an Anomaly.

The Contamination Detector on his wrist was still clicking, ruling out the first possibility.

Suddenly, the clanking of the chains overhead grew more rapid. The net began to shake, and the rotting fish carcasses shifted as if they were alive. Lu Li, who had been near the top, was gradually buried beneath them.

The fish, just like the clothes before them, pressed in on Lu Li, obscuring his view of the outside.

The shaking lasted for several minutes before the net suddenly dropped, sending Lu Li and the fish plummeting downward.

THUD!

Before Lu Li could process what was below him, he landed hard on a pile of slippery fish carcasses. A sharp pain lanced through his chest, likely a cut from a stray fin.

He immediately lifted his head and scanned his surroundings.

The fish from the net had been dumped onto a moving conveyor belt. At the far end, several dark, massive figures with cleavers were swiftly hacking at whatever came down the line...