The Bizarre Detective Agency

Chapter 691: At the Foot of the World's Spine

Early morning.

The villagers stood at the edge of the settlement, their eyes following the exorcist Lu Li and Elena until their figures vanished behind a low hill.

For the inhabitants of the Wastelands, endless disasters and scarce resources had forced them to migrate from the continent's interior. Yet, the mist that shrouded the sky offered some respite, shielding them from the scorching sun that would otherwise parch the land.

Elena was dressed in animal hides, a common attire in the villages of the Wastelands, revealing her bronzed, muscular physique.

After a wearying journey, Lu Li and Elena had traveled more than five kilometers from Helentown.

"Wolves live in that grove. Stay clear of it."

Elena pointed her spear toward a distant grove of poplars.

The withered, dead poplars still stood tall, looming over the parched earth.

Lu Li and Elena circled around the poplar grove, but a hungry wolf pack spotted them nonetheless. A single howl was answered by a chorus of others, and shadows flickered between the trees as the wolves began to run.

"To that rock!" Elena commanded, pointing to a large boulder about ten meters away. She drew the hunting knife from her hip and, without taking her eyes off the approaching pack, scrambled onto the stone.Elena's gaze was as fierce as a she-wolf's as she scanned the pack, searching for its leader.

BOOM!

The deafening report echoed across the plain, and the encircling pack fell back, their tails tucked in panic.

The danger passed as quickly as it had appeared.

Elena turned to Lu Li, who stood with the spirit gun in hand, smoke curling from its muzzle. "You should have killed the leader."

"We're just passing through, not trying to wipe out the whole pack," Lu Li replied. He holstered The Atonement, ejected the spent shell, and reloaded the pistol with new, engraved bullets.

"If they were any hungrier, they wouldn't have backed down so easily," Elena remarked, sheathing her hunting knife.

Shortly after they started walking again, the evil spirit in Lu Li's pocket chimed like a bell: Silence had arrived.

Elena gestured for Lu Li to sit. Standing would make them visible to wild animals or eagles. They didn't need to hide their movements; Silence only targeted humans.

Lu Li and Elena had been lucky. If Silence had descended during their confrontation with the wolves, they would have been in serious trouble.

Twenty-three minutes later, Silence receded, and they resumed their journey.

The vast Wastelands and the northern peaks of the World's Spine Mountains created a majestic landscape. Lu Li occasionally glanced ahead. The Gaussi Highlands were still about fifty kilometers away.

There was still no sign of the Eye-Worm above.

Lu Li guessed that either the time wasn't right, or his own Level of Reason was too high for him to perceive it.

In terms of percentage, Lu Li's Level of Reason, boosted by the Book of the Apocalypse, exceeded 110%. Moreover, his high humanity gave him a strong resistance to mental contamination.

Buzzards circled overhead, and the eyes of vultures perched on the rocks reflected two lone figures crossing the plain.

That afternoon, beside a dry riverbed and under a dead acacia tree, Lu Li unfolded his map and pinpointed their approximate location: twenty-five kilometers northeast of Helentown.

They were slightly off course, but it was correctable. There was a village about fifteen kilometers away where they could spend the night.

If that village still existed.

Elena opened her waterskin and took a small sip. She was drinking sparingly; the skin was still nearly full.

"I know the way from here. You don't need that thing." Elena seemed dismissive of the compass in Lu Li's hand. When he put away the map and compass, she took the lead, spear in hand.

The plain was not entirely dead; small animals and insects still dwelled here. A fox peeking out from a pile of rocks, a beetle crawling across the dirt.

Elena explained that the main threat here was hyenas. They were more numerous and cunning than wolves. A pack wouldn't retreat unless you killed the matriarch hiding at the rear or took out a quarter of their number.

But as they approached the village, no hyenas appeared.

Instead, Lu Li and Elena came across a strange pit. It appeared abruptly in the middle of the plain, just wide enough for a single person, its black walls seeming to swallow the light. As they drew closer, a faint call echoed in their minds.

"We'll go around," Lu Li said.

They gave it a wide berth. The farther they walked, the weaker the call grew, until it vanished completely.

From a safe distance, Lu Li glanced back. The pit was now just a tiny, pitch-black dot on the landscape.

As the clouds to the west began to bleed into a deep crimson, the silhouette of a desolate village appeared in the distance.

People moved among the primitive huts of mud and straw, and a bonfire burned in the center of the village.

Elena led Lu Li into the village. Strangers were perhaps a rare sight here; the inhabitants paused in their tasks, their gazes tracking the newcomers.

"Something's wrong... Be careful." Elena's eyes swept over the villagers' impassive faces, and she tightened her grip on her spear.

"My advice is to fall back."

Lu Li's dark eyes fixed on a gaunt child. The boy stood motionless in a doorway, holding a human finger bone and gnawing the last scraps of flesh from it.

"Too late."

Elena stopped before the bonfire and spun around.

Armed villagers had blocked their path of retreat.

The bonfire blazed, its heat stirring Lu Li's clothes and hair and casting the villagers' faces in grim shadow.

"I know your chief, Abidel," Elena told them. "We mean no harm. Let us leave."

A burly villager stepped out from the crowd and began to speak, his words halting. "The master... is hungry... wants to eat... you... stay..."

At his words, the villagers began to close in on them.

Suddenly, a strange, vicious cackling erupted from behind the villagers.

Lu Li thought it might be their "Master," but the villagers' terrified reactions proved him wrong.

"It's a hyena pack!"

In the firelight, Elena's eyes gleamed.

The hyenas were already attacking the villagers at the back of the crowd. Screams rose from behind the wall of bodies. The child, still gnawing on the bone, was knocked from his feet by a hyena of equal size, his face a mask of stupor.

"Let's go."

Elena grabbed Lu Li and dashed toward the nearest hut.

Running through a hyena pack on the open plain, or running across the plain at night—both were suicide.

Her spear shot forward, piercing the chest of a villager who blocked their way. Elena wrenched it free, coolly flicked the blood from its tip, and plunged into the hut with Lu Li right behind her.

THUD!

Once inside, Elena slammed the door shut just as the villagers began to pound on it from the other side. With a furious grunt, she drew her hunting knife, jammed it through a gap between the planks, and sliced upward.

When she pulled the knife back, half the blade was slick with blood.

"Move."

It was Lu Li's voice from behind her. Elena stepped aside, letting him brace the door with a table.

The screams and vicious cackling of the hyenas were muffled, cut off by the door.

Elena spun around to see a woman standing inside the hut, glaring at them with pure hatred.

"Tell me what's going on," Elena demanded, closing the distance to the woman in an instant and pressing her hunting knife—still warm with blood—against the woman's throat.

"The master... won't spare... you..."

Elena sneered, grabbing the woman's wrist and slamming her against the wall. "You should be more worried," she growled, "about whether I'll spare you."