The Bizarre Detective Agency

Chapter 227: Lu Li's Odyssey

Bzzzzzzzz!

The ringing of the alarm clock filled the entire detective agency. Outside, the street stirred with the sounds of morning.

The translucent figure lying on the sofa stirred.

Her head lifted, and strands of hair fell away, revealing a delicate, sleepy face.

"Ah... it's ringing..." Anna mumbled, her tongue heavy with sleep. She sat up on the sofa, still half-asleep, like most people who had just woken up.

"So, I can sleep after all..." Anna muttered, suddenly noticing the alarm was still ringing. She glanced over at it.

The alarm clock shifted slightly, and the ringing stopped.

Anna leaned her head back. Gazing at the sprouting seedling in its pot and the bustling street outside the window, she whispered softly, "It's already dawn, and he's still not here..."

"But he should be back soon..."

...The morning seawater was icy, and clouds hung low on the horizon, making the dawn light that pierced through them seem like a fleeting illusion.

Two figures dropped onto the lead-gray surface of the sea. For a moment, it seemed as though an enormous black shadow swept beneath them before disappearing into the distance.

After a brief plunge, Lu Li broke the surface. Another figure emerged beside him, sending up a fountain of spray.

Lu Li kicked his legs, trying to stay afloat. He turned his head and asked, "What now?"

"We wait until someone sails by and rescues us." The woman's black cloak billowed around her, a dense, dark stain on the water.

A wave lifted and dropped Lu Li, and he managed to ask, "And if no one comes?"

"If we're lucky, we'll wash ashore. If not, we're off to the afterlife." Her hood clung to her, her face still concealed in shadow, but he could see a flash of a snow-white smile and the line of her chin. "Think positive. Maybe a wave will carry us to some island."

The scene was rather strange. Neither Lu Li's voice nor the woman's changed in volume or intonation.

They spoke as if they were sitting in a swaying carriage, not adrift in the middle of a vast, empty ocean.

After a brief silence, Lu Li paddled over to the woman in black and grabbed her arm.

The hood turned, and Lu Li thought he could feel a questioning gaze on him from beneath the shadows.

Lu Li spat out a mouthful of seawater. "I can't swim."

That was precisely why he had put on a life vest and grabbed a lifebuoy before jumping in, though it hadn't done much good.

"Whoever assigned you this case clearly wanted you dead," the hooded woman said, allowing Lu Li to hold onto her arm.

Lu Li's thin shirt clung to his body, its color white once more. The exposed skin on his arms and hands had also returned to its natural shade.

It was unclear whether the seawater had washed the black substance away or if it had vanished along with the ghost ship.

The water Lu Li had carefully saved was now useless.

A hundred nautical miles from shore, in the middle of the vast ocean, two lone figures drifted at the mercy of the waves.

The water temperature was a little over ten degrees Celsius, and the waves and undercurrents forced them to expend a great deal of energy just to keep their balance and stay afloat.

"I can't go on much longer," Lu Li told the woman in black after about half an hour.

The icy water was sapping his warmth, and after a sleepless night, Lu Li had almost no strength left. He could feel the symptoms of hypothermia setting in.

"Hold on, we'll be on shore soon," came the voice of the woman in black.

His face pale, Lu Li replied, "You should save words like that for when I've lost consciousness."

"I'm telling the truth."

Feeling the woman in black tighten her grip on his arm, Lu Li raised his eyes and looked in the direction she was facing.

On the horizon, visible between the crests of the waves, was a light-brown sandy beach dotted with trees.

It was no mirage or hallucination, but a real island.

Lu Li showed no joy at this unexpected salvation. He calmly looked at the woman in black. "Did you foresee this?"

"I only knew that the ghost ship, with the souls of the dead, approaches the shore at dawn. It seems we were lucky."

It was hard to tell if she was telling the truth, but Lu Li didn't press the matter. Everyone had their secrets.

"We need to reach the shore before our strength gives out."

The woman in black shifted her position and began to paddle vigorously toward the island.

Lu Li couldn't swim, but he knew how to tread water, and he continued to cling to the woman's arm.

The waves helped push them toward the island, but it still took them more than ten minutes to cover the few hundred meters.

When their strength was nearly gone, the brown sand was only twenty or thirty meters away. Lu Li’s feet touched soft silt on the bottom, and then solid ground. For him, used to only treading water, walking was much easier than swimming. But then a wave rolled in, lifting him off his feet again.

And at that moment, he saw a distinct black silhouette on the beach.

The silhouette was the size of an elephant but shaped like a smooth, oval beetle. Instead of legs, it had hundreds of writhing tentacles that propelled it across the sand.

Lu Li froze for a moment, then continued moving.

A few more meters, and the water was only up to Lu Li's neck. He supported the seemingly exhausted woman in black, moving step by step toward the shore.

His body grew heavier and heavier. When the water was only knee-deep, Lu Li stumbled, leaving a trail of haphazard footprints on the brown sand.

"Ha..." A soft chuckle came from beside him.

Lu Li ignored her and glanced at the spot on the sand where the black silhouette had been, but the waves had already washed away all traces of it.

It had been too real.

Lu Li thought that perhaps it was because his Mind Level had dropped even further...

After walking another fifteen meters up the beach, he felt the sand beneath his feet turn dry.

The island was less than half a kilometer in diameter, and were it not for the bare trees, he could have taken it all in with a single glance. The trees, like everything else in this world, were devoid of greenery.

This made the island seem completely lifeless.

A damp sea breeze blew at their backs. Neither of them stopped to rest on the beach. They headed toward the left side of the island, making for a twenty-meter cliff where a small hollow at its base offered shelter from the wind.

The woman in black bent down and entered the shelter. Her wet black cloak clung to her body, accentuating the seductive curves that Lu Li couldn't help but stare at.

One... three... five... eight...

Counting the ones she'd left on the ship, she really did have a lot of Spirit Guns.

She leaned against the cliff, exhaled with satisfaction, and looked at Lu Li, who had remained outside. "Is something wrong?"

Lu Li didn't answer. He just took off his shirt and wrung the water out of it.

The woman in black wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Ugh... You're so filthy."