The Bizarre Detective Agency

Chapter 256: The Deal

Back at the detective agency, Lu Li found Anna on the couch, engrossed in the romance novel she'd bought that morning.

He noticed nothing different about her.

"The phone rang shortly after you left," Anna said, without looking up from her book. "It was that odd fellow, Marcus."

"What did he want?"

Lu Li took off his coat and hung it on the rack.

"Hmm... nothing specific. He said he wanted to talk to you in person."

A new case, perhaps, Lu Li thought.

Anna turned a page, then looked up at Lu Li, her voice laced with concern. "Your Mind Level..."

"It's dropped a bit, but I'm still in the first stage."

Lu Li spoke so calmly, you would think he was discussing someone else's problem."So, you won't be taking any new cases for a while?"

"Probably not."

Silence settled over the detective agency, broken only by the rustle of turning pages.

Suddenly, the phone rang.

Lu Li lifted the receiver. A familiar, almost offensively casual voice crackled over the line. "Hey! How's it going?"

"What do you want?" Lu Li asked, cutting straight to the point.

"I have a proposal that might interest you..."

"How much?"

"Two hundred shillings."

"Not interested."

"Uh..."

Lu Li's bluntness seemed to stun Marcus into a brief silence. "The papers recently mentioned you were seeing Baroness Joseph... Is that true?"

Anna, who had been pretending to read, immediately pricked up her ears.

"No."

It was true, however, that Baroness Joseph was pursuing him.

Marcus's voice turned pleading. "Please, I'm the only one left at Prosperity. The other exorcists won't give me the time of day. I've been down to one meal a day for a few days, I'm begging you..."

Two hundred shillings was hardly a small sum; it was half a month's wages for an ordinary family. But Lu Li's weekly stipend was seven hundred shillings, and that was for doing nothing at all.

Given that he was short tens of thousands of shillings, a mere few hundred was hardly enough to capture his interest.

In other words, he could no longer work with Marcus.

"I've become an Investigator," Lu Li stated. "Jobs like these hold no value for me now."

Marcus’s voice shot up an octave, the receiver distorting it into a shrill squeak. "An Investigator? From one of the three big organizations?"

"Yes."

"Excellent! Prosperity is going to be famous! I was wondering why I couldn't find any information on you... Listen, I can line up some special cases for you. An Investigator's status is much more valuable than being just some exorcist. The rich and the nobility will be lining up for you, ha-ha-ha! We're going to be rich, my friend!"

The crackling on the line grew louder, and Lu Li had to pull the receiver away from his ear, waiting for Marcus to finish his euphoric rant. Then, abruptly, the man fell silent.

"Wait... Don't tell me you're not interested..."

"I'll think about it."

As it happened, Lu Li did need money.

Marcus started shouting excitedly again, his words becoming an unintelligible mess, garbled by his thick accent.

Once Marcus had settled down, Lu Li asked, "When are you free? I'll try to adjust my schedule."

"I'm always free."

"It's a deal, then."

After hanging up the phone, Lu Li looked over at Anna, who was watching him curiously. The soundproofing was terrible, and in the stillness of the room, she had likely overheard the conversation.

"Are you going to work with him again?" Anna asked, her eyes narrowing. "He was the one who lured you into that cellar by the sewer."

"He wasn't involved. Richard was the client."

Still, there was one thing Lu Li couldn't figure out. Richard had laid a trap for him before they'd ever even met.

What had been his motive?

Or was someone else behind it?

The rest of the day passed peacefully.

As evening approached, Anna drew the curtains and lit a lamp. After watching Lu Li drift off to sleep on the couch, she quietly retired to her room.

She could go for a whole week without sleeping, of course.

The following day was just as uneventful, though Lu Li did discover at the market that pork had gone up by another shilling. In response, Anna quietly announced she was learning to cook fish.

Fish was also getting more expensive, but not as rapidly as meat and vegetables.

So, upon returning from the market, Lu Li brought back not only pork but also four small fish, weighing about a pound in total.

The fish was for Anna's practice, and the pork was for their meal.

Lu Li’s foresight proved wise. Anna quickly learned a valuable lesson: cooking fish was not as straightforward as other foods. For one thing, you actually had to gut them.

The peaceful day came to a close.

Early morning. The sky had just begun to lighten.

Lu Li awoke to see Anna extinguishing the lamp before drawing back the curtains. The windowpane was streaked and blurred with rain.

Just as the newspaper's weather forecast had predicted, a drizzle was falling.

The water from the tap ran colder than usual. After washing his face, Lu Li took an umbrella and went with Anna to the market. He returned, just as he had yesterday, with four small fish for her to practice on.

If the world became so dangerous that they had to live in a shelter, then fish might become their only available source of food.

Knowing how to cook fish well would be a very useful skill.

Anna went to the kitchen to boil some water. While it heated, she clumsily cleaned the insides of the small fish, tossing the guts into the trash bin.

When the water boiled, Anna put the prepared chunks of meat into the pot, added spices and seasonings, and then went back to cleaning the remaining fish.

Time passed. Fifteen minutes before seven in the morning, someone started pounding on the agency's door.

The sounds from outside were as if someone was throwing their whole body against the door.

The noise caught Anna's attention. She peeked out from the kitchen and saw Lu Li open the door and step aside.

A tall figure in shabby clothes stepped into the detective agency, carrying a square black stone. The figure stooped and placed the stone cube—roughly a cubic meter in volume—near the door. The floorboards groaned faintly under its immense weight.

A cubic meter of stone weighed more than two tons, yet the Trader had carried it as if it were nothing. At the very least, Lu Li heard no sign of labored breathing.

Perhaps that explained why everyone referred to the Trader as "it."

"Deep Sea Stone?"

The Trader nodded.

"Anna," Lu Li called.

Anna understood immediately. She approached the stone, letting the protective field that always enveloped her ghostly form dissipate, and reached out to touch its surface.

Her fingers sank an inch into the block, and Anna gasped in surprise. "I can touch it!"

Anna's fingers, submerged in the stone, met resistance and could go no further.

Unless, of course, she were to unleash her mental projection and her full aura.