The Bizarre Detective Agency

Chapter 719: The Abandoned Shelter

A signpost, support beams, a mine shaft.

The appearance of man-made structures meant Lu Li had finally left the unknown depths of the underground.

He could have followed the mine shaft straight to the surface.

If the shaft hadn't collapsed.

Evidently, the mine, named Kolayen, had long been abandoned—or at the very least, this thirteenth shaft had. Lu Li realized this when he spotted a sign labeled "12th Shaft".

The twelfth shaft, though dilapidated, wasn't as badly damaged.

Lu Li extinguished the Beacon in front of the sign, letting the darkness envelop him. There were no soul-chilling gazes, no whispers—the evil spirits couldn't penetrate this far.

It was safer underground than on the surface, but survival here was far more difficult.

The city of the "predecessors" had once been an ideal sanctuary. A sea of lava provided light, warmth, and fuel, while an underground river offered water and food.

But everything was destroyed when they clashed.The twelfth shaft connected to the eleventh, as well as to a side tunnel with no sign.

Perhaps someone had removed the sign, or perhaps the tunnel had never been named.

The shaft was about six hundred meters long, a walk of roughly ten minutes. The entire time, Lu Li had to continuously burn his humanity to keep the Beacon lit; otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to spot any changes along the tunnel's edges.

Such as branching tunnels.

Muffled footsteps echoed through the dark and silent shaft.

Walking barefoot on the rubble-strewn floor was painful, forcing Lu Li to move slowly.

The seemingly endless subterranean corridor might have been unsettling, but for Lu Li, this place felt more comforting than the deeper reaches of the underground.

At the end of the eleventh shaft was not the tenth, but the ninth. The tenth shaft branched off in another direction.

This meant Lu Li wouldn't have to walk all the way from the thirteenth shaft to the first—the surface was closer than he thought.

But in the eighth shaft, a "wall" blocked Lu Li's path.

A smooth slab of black stone completely obstructed the passage. Its dark, obsidian-like surface seemed familiar to Lu Li.

It was Deep Sea Stone.

The wall was over a meter thick. Lu Li knew of only two places where Deep Sea Stone was used so extravagantly.

The Mountain of Deep Sea Stone and the shelters. The Ghost Prison had also once been such a place, but it had been dismantled, and the stone had become Lu Li's property.

The Mountain of Deep Sea Stone was in the depths of the sea, the shelters were underground, and this mine shaft was also underground...

Lu Li examined the stone wall again and noticed a barely perceptible seam in the shape of a door.

He leaned his shoulder against the stone door and tried to push it.

There were rollers at the bottom of the door. The heavy stone slab slowly receded into the wall, revealing a dark opening.

Holding the Beacon, Lu Li slipped sideways into the space behind the wall of Deep Sea Stone.

The floor was paved with thick slabs of Deep Sea Stone, as were the walls. The subterranean space was like a stone box.

On the ceiling, dozens of meters high, were the glowing fluorites Lu Li had seen before. But here they weren't embedded in the rock; instead, they hung in clusters from lampshades, like chandeliers, beneath the stone vault.

But they were too high up, and their light didn't reach the floor.

The outlines of buildings were vaguely visible on the ground below, as if shrouded in a black veil on a moonless night.

This was a shelter.

Lu Li glanced at the area around the stone door. The brackets that should have held a locking bar lay discarded on the ground.

Apparently, this shelter wasn't guarded, or rather... it was abandoned.

There were no lights in the windows of the houses, and the entire shelter was plunged into silence.

Approaching the buildings, Lu Li confirmed his suspicion. The road paved with Deep Sea Stone was clean and tidy, and the houses were empty.

Creak...

Lu Li pushed open a wooden door coated in a thick layer of dust. The shelter itself was dust-free, making it difficult to gauge how long it had been abandoned.

The Beacon illuminated a small room, and a few specks of dust danced in its rays.

A dining table by the window, a bookshelf and a wardrobe against the wall, a bed and a nightstand in the corner.

Lu Li opened the wardrobe—it was empty.

Why had the shelter's residents left this place?

Lu Li looked around. Everything was in order; there was none of the chaos that usually accompanies a hasty departure. Even the sheets on the beds were neatly made—the residents had had time to make their beds before they left.

So where did they go?

Lu Li patiently searched the houses one by one.

Although some rooms were messy—blankets thrown in a heap, chairs overturned—compared to the overall tidiness, it seemed more like the carelessness of the former occupants.

In one of the houses, Lu Li found a gray canvas shirt in a wardrobe and put it on. In the house across the way, he discovered a pair of boots in his size under a bed.

Lu Li found clothes in several other houses, but they were either women's garments, the wrong size, or unwashed, so he left them.

As he searched for clues, Lu Li pondered what had happened since he had awakened.

Friday, existing between illusion and reality; the epic journey into the underworld; the shelter in the mine.

Thinking of Friday, Lu Li still wasn't sure if she had been real, and could only hope that she wasn't the "door" he'd been looking for.

The events in the underworld had seemed similar to the ritual of the Rope of Descent, but could the residual power of the Rope of Descent accomplish such a thing in the depths of the earth, where evil spirits couldn't penetrate?

Was Naslam Alaya, the one who reached the great hall, a resident of this shelter?

It seemed there were no answers to any of these questions.

Only the shelter was real.

Rustle...

Lu Li pulled open a desk drawer, and a pen and notebook rattled inside.

Thinking he had found a clue, Lu Li took out the notebook and opened it. The handwriting was childish; it was a diary.

After flipping through a few pages and finding nothing of interest, Lu Li slipped the diary into his pocket and, not wanting to waste any more of his humanity, headed for the shelter's exit.

The main gates of the shelter were wide open, with traces of dust and a mess of footprints visible around the edges.

Just then, a noise approached from the depths of the shaft, and a point of light appeared.

"Help!" a woman shrieked. She had spotted Lu Li by the gate.

The Beacon flared brighter, illuminating the running figure and the strange noise behind her.

Lu Li immediately started to close the stone gate.

"No!" the woman cried, but seeing the gap, she slipped through into the shelter.

Lu Li slammed the gate shut.

The woman turned, and seeing Lu Li closing the gate, she yelled, "That gate won't stop the monsters! Run!"

The moment the words left her mouth, the ghostly figure of a giant insect passed through the Deep Sea Stone, materialized directly in front of Lu Li, and plunged its sharp, two-meter-long, sickle-like limbs into his chest. They pierced through him as if he were made of paper, the bloodied tips of the sickles emerging from his back.

"Damn it!" the woman cursed, seeing the mantis abandon Lu Li and rush toward her. She turned and ran for the houses.