The Bizarre Detective Agency

Chapter 692: An Exorcist Helps the Desperate

"Don't even think..."

Swish!

The hunting knife flashed. Four severed fingers, each a different length, tumbled to the ground, bounced once, and rolled away.

The woman's face turned ashen, and a strangled cry tore from deep in her throat.

"We can keep this up," Elena whispered fiercely, lifting the woman's chin with the tip of her knife.

The tragic death of her friend had changed her, leaving her colder, more aggressive.

The woman glared at Elena, her eyes burning with hatred as she cursed, "You will suffer far more than I ever will!"

Elena offered no reply, simply slicing off another piece of a finger.

She whispered coldly, "I can make more than twenty cuts on this hand alone. Then there's the other one. And you still have your legs..."

A primal fear finally broke through her numbed senses, and the woman at last told Elena what had happened in the village.A week ago, one of the villagers found a statue in the wastes. He soon declared that it would protect the village from attack and grant them the power to "feel no pain." In return, they only had to feed the living statue.

But the village's food supplies were limited, and the statue's power made the villagers' minds sluggish. First, they fed the useless elderly to the statue, and then they started on travelers.

"Numbness... you call that power?" Elena scoffed, seeing right through the twisted logic.

"The... Lord... protected... us..." the woman insisted.

"You mean the 'statue' that's killed more of you than any anomaly ever did?" Elena stared at her as if she were an idiot.

The woman fell silent.

As Elena was about to release her, the woman suddenly spoke again, her words halting. "If... you don't feed it... you aren't... changed... by the power..."

"Those who wouldn't feed it... and the travelers... they kept them... near it... They're... still alive..."

With her last words spoken, the woman wrenched free from Elena's grasp, seized the hand holding the knife, and slammed her own neck against the blade.

Elena tried to pull away, but it was too late. Blood gushed from the woman's throat, spattering Elena's face. With a conflicted expression, Elena watched her fall. As the woman collapsed, her gaze fixed on a pile of children's clothes in the corner, and for a moment, her eyes were startlingly clear.

In her final moment, the woman's mind had cleared.

"My... child..."

An indistinct mutter escaped her lips with a wet, gurgling sound, and then the woman lying in a pool of her own blood was silent.

Elena stood in silence, the hand holding the knife hanging limp at her side.

Lu Li walked over and covered the woman's body with a blanket.

Elena's silence didn't last long. She had work to do. Shaking off the woman's tragic story, she moved to the window to check on the situation outside.

The chaotic battle had ended. The ground around the village and the central bonfire was strewn with corpses—both villagers and hyenas.

More than twenty hyenas were hunched over the corpses, a clear sign that the wild beasts had won.

Faith in the statue had given the villagers neither the strength to fight off the animals nor the protection they had been promised.

Perhaps because the attackers were beasts, and not anomalies?

Lu Li lit an oil lamp, preparing for the encroaching darkness of night, while Elena continued her watch at the window.

The eerie cackling of the hyenas echoed through the night. The feeding pack suddenly turned their heads toward an unseen corner near the hut. Then, like soldiers clearing a battlefield, they began to drag the bodies—both human and hyena—away from the village.

"The hyenas are acting strangely. Let's wait a moment," Elena remarked as Lu Li came to stand beside her.

The bonfire crackled, driving away the cold and dark of the night.

The strange fog had not yet reached them.

"Are you always so detached?" Elena's gaze rested on his faint reflection in the windowpane. "I thought you would help the villagers outside."

"I do what I can, and what I must," Lu Li answered calmly.

Clearly, conversation with Lu Li was not an easy thing. People with good rapport usually communicate with ease, instinctively knowing what to ask and how to respond.

Elena wanted to talk, hoping Lu Li might prompt her with a question, but he asked nothing.

"Never mind," Elena said, her tone suddenly much colder. She pushed the door open and stepped out of the hut.

Lu Li followed her.

The village was small. They circled the bonfire and, at the very edge of its light, found the bound villagers and travelers.

"A pigsty?" Elena was stunned to see where they were being kept.

Lu Li looked around and saw a gloomy barn standing nearby.

Wreaths of dried grass hung on its outer walls, making it look like some kind of primitive church.

The statue was probably inside.

Elena had already vaulted the fence and dropped into the dry but still foul-smelling pigsty.

"We're here to rescue you," she announced to the captives, who had stirred anxiously at the sound of her approach.

They were blindfolded, gagged, and bound hand and foot. With a flick of her hunting knife, Elena severed the ropes on the nearest person.

The man tore off his blindfold and pulled the gag from his mouth. "Thank you..." he rasped, his voice dry. "I..."

"Go untie the others," Elena cut him off, in no mood to waste time on introductions.

"Right, of course..." the man stammered and hurried to help free the other captives.

As each person was freed, they helped the next, and soon the entire group was untied. Unaware of what had transpired outside, they kept their movements quiet, afraid to make a sound, but their faces shone with relief and excitement.

Elena saw Elder Abidel in the crowd and walked over to him.

"Is that you, Elena?" The emaciated old man, his ribs starkly visible, squinted to get a better look at her.

"It's me, Elder Abidel," Elena replied, then introduced Lu Li. "This is an exorcist, Lu Li."

Dozens of grateful eyes turned to Lu Li. They assumed he had come just to rescue them.

"Thank you for your help," Elder Abidel said, placing a hand over his heart and bowing to Lu Li in a local gesture of respect. Looking up, he asked Elena, "Is the monster destroyed?"

"No," Elena replied.

Elder Abidel's face tightened, and the brief moment of relief among the survivors vanished at her word.

"Did you sneak past them?" Elder Abidel asked, his eyes flickering toward the brightly burning bonfire.

"No. A pack of hyenas attacked just now," Elena clarified.

"No wonder their howling was so close..." Elder Abidel breathed a sigh of relief.

Even after being betrayed... it was somehow easier to accept that their former neighbors had died at the claws of wild beasts than at the hands of other people.

"What is this statue?" Lu Li, who had been observing quietly, finally spoke.

"Mr. Exorcist."

Elder Abidel bowed respectfully and was about to speak, but Elena cut him off again.

"Are we going to stand around talking in a filthy pigsty, right next to that thing?" Elena slid her hunting knife back into the sheath on her thigh. "Let's talk by the fire."

The rescued people climbed out of the pigsty and returned to the warm, bright bonfire.

A few of the able-bodied young men set off to search the village for clothes, food, water, and any other survivors.

Elder Abidel sat by the fire and told Lu Li everything that had happened to them.