The Bizarre Detective Agency

Chapter 241: Official Entry into the Ranks of Investigators

Lu Li and the investigator evaluation committee faced a problem that had nothing to do with them directly—they couldn't find a quiet enough place to record his statement.

Of course, there were plenty of empty rooms at the Investigators' headquarters, but they lacked furniture. To be more precise... due to their unexpected arrival, there weren't enough chairs.

They couldn't very well just start hauling chairs out of other rooms.

Such a thing would have been unimaginable in the Night's Watch, but for the Investigators...

"Then let's just find any suitable spot," the head of the committee said nonchalantly.

They were led to the lounge area.

"A glass of milk," Lu Li said to the Alliance employee behind the counter as they sat down.

There was a new person behind the counter; the previous one was on vacation.

The three committee members ordered coffee and water for themselves. When the employee left, the head of the committee pushed a sheet of parchment and a pen toward Lu Li.

"Write down all the details of the incident here. Please try to write legibly."Lu Li didn't pick up the pen. He had nothing to say.

"You can describe anything you think is related to this case," the committee head prompted, noticing Lu Li's hesitation. As a member of the evaluation committee, he could easily read people's thoughts from their behavior.

Without further delay, Lu Li took the pen and began to write about what happened after he boarded the boat.

[I headed for the designated point. The searchlight from the fishing vessel followed me. After about thirty or forty meters, I heard shouts from the deck. The sailors were pointing to the starboard side and hiding in their cabins. I saw a strange fog rising...]

The pen froze, leaving an inkblot on the parchment. Lu Li lifted it.

Starting from the words "strange fog," everything he had written vanished, even though there was still ink in the pen.

A few seconds after Lu Li stopped, words began to reappear on the parchment. They materialized one by one, as if someone were rewriting what Lu Li had written.

It was as if time for Lu Li and the parchment had become skewed. What he wrote only appeared after a delay of several seconds.

At that moment, the head of the committee spoke.

"This is called Zatuumani paper. Its effect is the opposite of its name: it's impossible to write about the supernatural on it. No information that lowers one's Mind Level, no forbidden knowledge, nothing from the other side can be displayed. Therefore, anything written on it becomes safe to read."

It was thanks to this that exorcists had managed to survive to this day.

They could still cope with the growing power of the supernatural, but if all knowledge became inaccessible, the human world would instantly plunge into an abyss, with no hope of salvation.

The committee head's face grew somber. "Unfortunately, this paper is very difficult to produce, and there is very little of it."

Lu Li looked at the parchment again. He still couldn't distinguish it from an ordinary sheet, except perhaps by its texture—it reminded him of an ancient treasure map that had lain hidden for centuries, old and mysterious.

Thinking about it, perhaps that was why Zatuumani paper was used to record incidents: exorcists chronicled all their encounters with the supernatural, like entries in a historical record.

That would explain why the committee head had asked Lu Li to write legibly.

Halting his train of thought, Lu Li continued writing after the inkblot.

[...from the surface of the sea and, within seconds, enveloped everything. All sound vanished, and the misty surface of the sea became as smooth as a mirror.]

The keywords related to the fog briefly disappeared before reappearing again.

As Lu Li wrote, he wondered what would happen if he wrote "Door," "Bloody Tentacles," and Friday. Would the information about the "Door" and "Bloody Tentacles" that he provided be filtered out by the Zatuumani paper, just like this?

Without stopping, Lu Li briefly described everything that happened next: the dying whale, the unsettling black substance, the clothes in the deep, the ship Returning Souls, Friday, the Isle of Gaze, the dark shadow, the flipper tracks.

Most of the keywords appeared with a delay, but the name Friday, which he paid special attention to, appeared without any hesitation.

Was Friday just a passing investigator, as the old man had said?

"Is the time it takes for the words to appear related to the source of the contamination?" Lu Li asked, noticing the difference in the delay times.

"The more dangerous the subject, the slower the words appear. That's precisely how the difficulty level of an incident is determined. Write the name of the place where the event occurred, and we can determine its complexity by the length of the delay."

[Friday said the rescue ship would arrive in two hours and twenty-five minutes, and then she fell asleep. The rescue ship appeared in about two hours and twenty minutes.]

After finishing, Lu Li capped the pen and handed back the parchment.

"I was about to ask you to stop, but thankfully, you're finished," the committee head said, taking the parchment. He reread it once more before passing it to the other two members. "Zatuumani paper can only withstand a limited amount of otherworldly energy. You've probably noticed it's become more worn."

Lu Li considered this. "Does that mean the fewer words on an old sheet of Zatuumani paper, the more dangerous the subject they describe?"

"You could say that, assuming the paper's worn state isn't caused by other factors."

One of the committee members, after reading the parchment, passed it to the next and said to Lu Li, "We'll look for this 'Friday' among the investigators based on your description."

"Is my trial considered passed or failed?" Lu Li asked.

"A trial is only considered a failure if the investigator observing the novice interferes. Outside help doesn't count," the head of the committee stood up, and a smile deepened the lines around his mouth. "So, congratulations on officially becoming an investigator."

Just then, an Alliance employee rushed over and whispered something to the committee head. "The Night's Watch found traces of influence on old man Kute... some kind of curse..."

The smile instantly vanished from the committee head's face. He frowned. "Follow protocol. I'll be there shortly."

Then he turned to Lu Li. "Further physical and psychological evaluations will be conducted at the local investigator branch. Excuse me, I have to go."

After watching the committee leave, Lu Li finished his milk and followed them down the corridor they had disappeared into.

He rarely saw any investigators at the headquarters. Two of them walked past, speaking in low voices.

They were talking about a vengeful spirit that had been attacking people and ghosts in Belfast for the past two days, and how the Night's Watch was trying to capture it.

Lu Li's gaze immediately turned serious, his eyes lowering.

His steps quickened, but they remained as silent as ever.