The Bizarre Detective Agency

Chapter 577: Familiar Survivors

If Anna was in the city, where could she be?

Lu Li wondered.

The hotel, the investigators' base, the hills, and Shutes University—these were the few places they had been. Lu Li had already checked the hotel on his way to the university; their former room was now occupied by an anomaly disguised as a woman, who was standing by the window admiring the view when he spotted her.

Walking down the corridor, Lu Li suddenly saw a familiar figure.

Lu Li looked at him, and when the man noticed Lu Li, his expression changed. He averted his gaze and hurried past.

The history professor, Gavril York, was still alive...

Lu Li didn't call out to Gavril York or look back, simply walking on.

Soon, however, Gavril York approached him. He caught up to Lu Li with quick strides and, as he passed, discreetly slipped a note into Lu Li's pocket before turning into the garden.

Lu Li glanced up and, as if looking at the sky, saw the reflection in the window. In the inverted city, there was no one standing where Gavril York had been.

"Is he an anomaly?" Doreen Fule asked quietly. She thought the man's behavior was strange."I don't know," Lu Li replied, lowering his gaze. "You don't need to follow me around."

Doreen Fule frowned. "I'm afraid that if we separate, I'll run into an anomaly... It's safer together."

"I want to look around the university. Together, we'll draw too much attention," Lu Li answered and headed toward the garden.

Lu Li entered the garden while Doreen Fule stopped at the end of the corridor, her toe hovering over the edge of a step. After a moment's hesitation, she said, "Then I'll go back to the lecture hall and wait for you... Be careful."

"Alright."

Lu Li looked up. He didn't see Doreen's silhouette at the edge of the stairs.

After watching Doreen disappear around the corner, Lu Li took the note from his pocket and unfolded it.

On it, a single word was hastily scrawled in dirt: "Office."

Understanding what Gavril York meant, Lu Li put the note away and headed for his office.

Lu Li knocked on the door.

"Who's there?" an agitated voice called from within. After hearing the reply, the sound of furniture being moved came from behind the door.

The door creaked open, revealing a dark room where Gavril York was breathing heavily, an overturned sofa standing by the door.

"You really came..." Relief washed over Gavril York's face. He had feared Lu Li was a disguised anomaly, but his arrival proved otherwise.

Peeking into the corridor, Gavril York closed the door, bolted it, and then asked urgently, "Are you here to save us?!"

Lu Li shook his head. "I'm trapped here, just like you."

Gavril York paled, nervously licking his lips. Once he composed himself, he asked, "Then... what's happening outside?"

"This city is just a reflection of the outside world."

Lu Li's words shattered Gavril York's hopes, and he sank weakly onto the sofa by the door.

"I'm looking for someone," Lu Li said, walking to the window and pulling back the curtain. The office brightened slightly. "Anna, the one who was with me, in the cloak... Has she been here?"

"I don't know... No one has come to see me. Only Kig Fule... but when I saw him again a few dozen minutes later, only half of him was left..."

To be precise, only his legs. He recognized them by the shoes.

The memory nearly broke him. Gavril York didn't want to stay here another second. "Will you help me get out of here?"

"How do we leave?" Lu Li asked.

Gavril York explained that after a few more lessons, there would be an exam, and those who passed would be allowed to leave Shutes University.

However, Gavril York had no idea what the exam would entail.

Lu Li asked what had happened. In a trembling voice, Gavril York recounted how, in the beginning, incessant screams and cries had echoed throughout the city, and the church bells had rung without stopping. But after just a few minutes, the bells fell silent, leaving only the frequent screams.

The hellish nightmare lasted for several dozen minutes. Hiding in a closet with his hands over his ears, Gavril York heard a whisper in his mind.

The voice told him the "rules of the game" and gave him a new role—he was still a history professor.

Only now, his students were anomalies.

It was then that Kig Fule found him. Kig Fule understood what would happen if these rules remained in effect much longer, so he teamed up with Gavril York, and they created passwords for each other.

"My password was 'I have bread,' and his was 'Is one kilo fifteen shillings?'"

Then Fule left Gavril York's office, intending to gather as many survivors as he could. But on his way to a lecture, Gavril York stumbled upon half of Fule's body...

"His... remains should be by the azaleas... in the northwest corner of the garden."

Lu Li asked, "Did Kig Fule have a sister?"

"I've never heard of one... what happened?"

Lu Li told Gavril York about Doreen Fule.

"Wait, you're saying she knows a lot of details about you and Kig Fule?" Gavril York was suddenly horrified, his pale face breaking out in a sweat.

His reaction made Lu Li frown. "You remembered something?"

"I... I'm not sure..." Gavril York stammered.

In truth, he did know something... about the anomaly that had killed and eaten half of Kig Fule's body.

One of the survivors Kig Fule had found told him about it before his death. He said that Kig Fule was killed by an anomaly capable of absorbing souls and memories, which allowed it to disguise itself as those it consumed.

The unfortunate Kig Fule died because he never suspected that an anomaly could possess human memories.

"So that girl, who knew so much about Fule..." Gavril York shuddered, unable to finish his sentence.

Lu Li wasn't convinced; he still had doubts. "If she's an anomaly that gained his memories, shouldn't she have been looking for you?"

"I... I don't know, maybe she didn't eat all of him...?" Gavril York suggested uncertainly. "Half of Fule's body is lying where the azaleas used to be... in the northwest corner of the garden."

It sounded plausible, but memories are stored in the brain. Even if souls in this strange world possessed memories, that didn't mean the lower half of a body could also store them—at least, not for humans.

Lu Li fell into thought, and Gavril York waited for him to finish. Just then, the sound of heavy, approaching footsteps echoed from the corridor outside the door.