The Bizarre Detective Agency

Chapter 578: Disguise

Gavril York held his breath, staring intently at the door as cold sweat dripped from his forehead.

The moved sofa left the wooden door completely exposed, stripping Gavril York of any sense of security, even with Lu Li present.

The footsteps outside the door passed by and gradually faded away.

Not daring to relax, Gavril York gestured for Lu Li to remain silent. Only after confirming that the footsteps had truly receded did he begin to breathe again, his heartbeat slowly returning to normal.

"What did you want to ask?" he asked Lu Li, as if waking from a nightmare.

"Nothing."

"Oh..." Gavril York suddenly remembered that Lu Li had been silent, listening to the sounds in the hallway. "I suppose you need a password too, so we don't mistake each other, right?" he said.

"Where is your Level of Reason counter?"

"What's that... Ah, that's your password, of course..." Gavril York realized his blunder and sheepishly corrected himself.

He was not in good shape. Lu Li's arrival had brought him no relief, and the footsteps passing their hiding place had only shattered his composure further."Stay calm. Don't show any weakness. The anomalies won't risk killing you," Lu Li warned. Gavril York's face practically screamed, "I'm human!"

"Thank you..." Gavril York took a few deep breaths. "I need a moment to compose myself... Are you staying?"

Lu Li shook his head. A quiet whisper in his mind told him it was time for the second class.

Leaving Gavril York's office, Lu Li glanced down the hallway in the direction the footsteps had gone, then headed back downstairs.

On his way to the lecture hall, Lu Li saw Doreen Fule. She was sitting on a bench by the window, watching him as if she had been waiting.

Perhaps the footsteps they had heard in the office had been hers...

Lu Li walked in Doreen Fule's direction, or rather, toward the other end of the corridor.

Suddenly, he felt something cold, sticky, and slimy under his foot.

He had stepped on a bloody piece of someone's entrails. It was clearly not from an animal... From a mouse hole beneath the wall, a clawed paw emerged, gripping one end of the viscera.

The creature in the shadows was trying to pull out what Lu Li had stepped on.

Nearby, Doreen Fule watched him. Was this a deliberate trap, or a mere coincidence?

Lu Li calmly lifted his foot. As the paw, now missing a claw, dragged the entrails back into the hole, he continued on his way, accompanied by the gruesome sounds of chewing.

"I was afraid to go back alone, so..." Doreen Fule stood up and spoke shyly as Lu Li approached, seemingly oblivious to what had just occurred.

Lu Li gave a slight nod, then suddenly looked out the window and frowned, extending a hand outside. "Is it raining?"

Doreen Fule curiously mimicked his gesture and looked up with him at the sky, which was shrouded in fog and clouds. "No... Maybe it's just water dripping from the roof?"

"Perhaps."

Seeing a skeletal hand reaching out from the window in the inverted city, Lu Li calmly withdrew his own.

Doreen Fule lowered her hand and asked casually, as if it were an afterthought, "Lu Li, can you contact the other exorcists?"

"I'm not human," Lu Li replied, seeing no reason to hide the truth from Doreen Fule any longer.

Doreen Fule froze, and a look of clear disappointment crossed her face. "You... don't trust me?"

"I trust you, but you shouldn't trust me."

With those words, Lu Li sat down on the bench. A dark red silhouette suddenly rose up.

A dull thud sounded.

Lu Li's body slumped back onto the bench, his head lolling lifelessly. A translucent, ghostly silhouette appeared above Doreen Fule.

"I'm already dead," he told the girl.

After these words, the expression on Doreen Fule's face began to change.

The smile peeled away from her face like flaking paint, revealing undisguised disappointment and malice, as if she were transforming into a demon.

"How disappointing..."

"Doreen Fule" no longer hid her hostility toward Lu Li, but the rules of "Paradise" restrained her. Glaring malevolently at Lu Li's soul, she whispered something and slowly retreated, dissolving around the corner of the hallway to the quiet sounds of chewing.

Lu Li watched her go, then his soul returned to his body. Slowly stretching his limbs, he headed in the direction "Doreen Fule" had disappeared.

Back in the noisy lecture hall, he saw "Doreen Fule" resting her cheek on her hand just as before, but she was no longer looking at him.

Instead, a portly student behind her was watching him intently, as were a few others.

The second class began soon after.

The instructor was a young woman with a ponytail—a hairstyle that was a rarity in the Kingdom of Ellen, and anything unusual was grounds for suspicion.

Perhaps the young instructor managed to avoid the attention of anomalies thanks to her eyes: they were narrowed, hiding most of her pupils. But this was not the semblance of a smile; it was more an expression of malice.

It was an art class. Without introducing herself, the young woman handed out canvases and paints to the students, placed a rotten apple on the table, and stepped aside without a word, giving the students free rein to create.

To be honest, fresh apples were as much a rarity here as rotten ones. They were a fruit that only the highest nobility could afford, grown in special greenhouses.

And a rotten fruit perfectly matched the current state of the kingdom.

Lu Li slowly surveyed the lecture hall. Fewer than half the students had picked up brushes; most were occupied with their own affairs, such as mechanically rubbing their eyes. And those who had taken brushes weren't just painting the apple. "Doreen Fule" to his right, for example, was painting a skeleton on her canvas. Perhaps it was a self-portrait...

Averting his gaze, Lu Li also began to paint.

At some point, he felt an intense gaze on him, but as soon as he looked up from his canvas, it vanished. The moment he refocused on his drawing, the stare returned.

This game of hide-and-seek repeated several times, and Lu Li, giving up on finding the source of the stare, sketched the outline of the rotten apple on his canvas.

Thirty minutes later, the second class ended.

The next one would start in an hour. The dull whisper in Lu Li's mind told him it was now lunchtime.

Free food was always a good thing.

Lu Li headed to the cafeteria with the other students. On the way, he saw Gavril York with a forced smile. The "crowd" was preventing him from getting close to Lu Li.

When they finally entered the cafeteria and Gavril York tried to approach Lu Li, a sudden commotion broke out in the crowd.

A scream rang out. One of the students, whose true nature had been exposed, was surrounded and torn apart by his "classmates." His resistance was weak and futile.

Gavril York instinctively froze. He then saw Lu Li head toward the commotion, but someone suddenly grabbed him...