The Bizarre Detective Agency

Chapter 610: The Cleaners

Lu Li and Anna landed outside the walls of Flarand.

The blood dandelions around them had not diminished; they still shrouded the land. It was clear the city had been overrun by them.

However, they feared fire, so perhaps Flarand had not suffered the same fate as the Kingdom of Ellen... it was not yet a hopeless cause.

Peering through the crimson haze, they could make out plumes of smoke rising from various points within the city. It meant there were survivors, and they had discovered the dandelions' weakness.

Lu Li, and Anna, who had donned a black cloak, entered the city through the gates. The city met them with a dead silence. Like a thick fog, the blood dandelions enveloped them, only to part way. The streets were littered with desiccated bodies, as if they had been dried out by intense heat. A layer of red fuzz grew on their withered remains, and one didn't need to get any closer to know what it was.

They had arrived after dawn, just as the residents would have been starting to leave their homes.

Lu Li scanned the buildings along the street, searching for a police station sign. There, he should be able to find a map of the city to locate the Flarand Sanatorium.

However, after walking a couple of blocks, several silhouettes slowly emerged from the crimson haze ahead.

Figures in strange, beak-like masks and heavy cloaks roamed the street. They would approach the bodies on the ground, whisper something, douse them with kerosene, and set them ablaze, sending both the dead and the fertile ground for the blood dandelions on their final journey. They were like the cleaners of this city.

The figures spotted Lu Li and Anna on the street and moved toward them. It was only when they drew close enough to make out the tall and short figures, standing completely unprotected amidst the blood dandelions—which parted before them as if recoiling from an enemy—that they stopped in alarm."Senior Investigator Lu Li," he said, taking out his badge to allay their fears.

These cleaners readily believed Lu Li's words and approached. Anna was surprised for a moment, but then she remembered that things were different here, unlike in the Kingdom of Ellen, which was consumed by universal distrust.

"Are you from the United Exorcist Organization, sent to help us?" a muffled voice from beneath one of the beaked masks asked hopefully.

"I'm here on other business." Lu Li's gaze drifted to the burning bodies behind them. The blood dandelions hastily retreated from the area. "As for dealing with these things, I have no better method."

The cleaners looked disappointed, but they still asked, "How can we help you?"

This was exactly what Lu Li needed. "Where is the Flarand Sanatorium?"

"A sanatorium..." They exchanged glances, conferred quietly, and then replied, "There's no sanatorium by that name in Flarand. Are you sure it's here?"

The Flarand Sanatorium wasn't necessarily in Flarand—just as the Tikhokhod was located in the west of the Main Continent, a thousand kilometers from the Plain of Repose.

"It was built decades, or even centuries, ago. Perhaps other buildings stand on its site now," Lu Li explained.

The cleaners suggested, "Perhaps you should ask at the city hall. They would know best about the past."

"Which way is it?"

"We're just heading to the supply point for more kerosene. We can show you the way, sirs," one of the cleaners offered, shaking the empty canisters in his hands.

"Thank you."

Following the cleaners through the crimson haze, Lu Li inquired about the situation in the city.

"It's serious, but under control. They can't get through the walls of houses or our cloaks, and they're terrified of fire. As long as you lock yourself inside and seal all the gaps, they can't break in," the lead cleaner replied.

"You still intend to stay in this city?" Lu Li asked.

"Of course... Why do you ask?" The cleaner was taken aback. As residents of Flarand, it was only natural that they would remain in the land of their ancestors...

"Even if you cleanse everything, if just one dandelion remains and finds a body, it will spawn tens of thousands more and spread like a plague," Lu Li stated.

Unless the people of Flarand resign themselves to only ever going outside in impermeable cloaks and masks, with not a single crack left unsealed in their homes, the blood dandelions lurking somewhere will sooner or later begin to spread again.

They were easier to deal with than a plague, but the terror they brought was incomparably greater.

"Then we'll destroy every last dandelion!" a young, defiant voice rang out from beneath one of the cleaner's masks.

"Even burning down the entire city won't work," Lu Li's words were blunt and hard to accept. "They'll hide in the water, in cellars, in high places, on the outskirts. A single gust of wind is all it would take for them to return."

Cities and villages that survived plagues often remained deserted for decades—out of people's fear of the disease, and because the plague itself might still be lurking in the land.

After half a block of walking in silence, the troubled lead cleaner said to Lu Li, "I ask that you report this to the mayor. He will decide whether we stay... or leave."

"I will."

It was no great burden.

Lu Li's directness had a downside: a certain distance had formed between him and these people, who wanted to save Flarand, not flee from it. Twenty minutes later, they approached the city hall—a marble building surrounded by a burning hedge that kept the dandelions at bay.

The lead cleaner told Lu Li that they could enter the building to find the mayor, and the group parted ways at the hedge. Before leaving, the young voice that had challenged Lu Li asked quietly, "Is it an evil spirit?"

"I don't know either," Lu Li replied, shaking his head.

They had physical bodies and seemed more like mutated plants. But before the invasion of anomalies, blood dandelions had never existed.

The youth regretfully caught up with his group, while Lu Li and Anna headed toward the hedge.

Although torches burned all around the city hall—on the roof, by the doors, and in the windows—to ward off the dandelions, people still wore their heavy cloaks. The two unprotected figures drew the attention of those busy around the building. Under their stares, Lu Li spoke to an official by the hedge, "Senior Investigator Lu Li. I need to see your mayor."

"The mayor is in the main hall, attending to business. You'll see him as soon as you go in," the stunned official said, not even glancing at the badge. Recovering himself, he asked, "Your method for repelling these dandelion monsters...?"

"It's not applicable."

Not unless they could cooperate with ghosts.

The official looked disappointed. Lu Li and Anna walked past him, climbed the steps, and entered the city hall's main hall.

The mayor of Flarand, a graying, middle-aged man with a weary face, was writing something at a desk set up before the main rostrum.

An attendant approached him and whispered something. The mayor stopped writing, raised his head, and looked at Lu Li and Anna, who had just entered.