The Bizarre Detective Agency

Chapter 813: On Anna's Trail

A cabin in the woods.

The wind rustled through the trees, a sound like the distant roar of ocean waves.

Or perhaps it was the coast itself, the sound carried inland, funneling through the gorge.

The wooden door swung open without a sound.

"Meow!"

An elegant black cat sitting by the door lifted its head and meowed softly.

The silhouette of a girl stood beyond the threshold, as black as the cat, as dark as the night.

"I've found a way..."

The girl lowered her gaze.

"He won't come back...""But I will bring him back."

...

Elder Sister stopped translating.

The story was fragmented. Elder Sister had done her best, but the Flowing Cat couldn't convey any more detail.

It seemed Anna had plunged into the earth with Lu Li, remaining silent for twenty-four years.

The oil lamp cast shadows that loomed like frozen figures.

The Flowing Cat didn't know where she had gone either.

After a brief silence, Lu Li asked the priest if any anomalies had occurred in Wigtown that day.

"Actually, something did happen... Moni's dead daughter came back to life."

The priest recalled the funeral he had conducted half a month ago.

...

"The venerable Flowing Cat protects our bodies and our souls. Even if the body rots, the soul remains immortal..."

At the foot of the Hillerwig Mountains, during a humble funeral held with a simple wooden plank coffin, the priest conducted the ceremony in an open clearing.

"Bebess, who dedicated her life to the mountains, will be guided by the Flowing Cat to the resting place of the dead..."

Wigtown's population was less than a thousand, mostly elderly. The young were few and precious.

But today, a young life had been extinguished.

No one wanted something like this to happen.

Besides Bebess's father and the clergy of the Church of the Flowing Cat conducting the funeral, a few townspeople stood at the edge of the clearing, whispering about the deceased's fate.

"Poor Bebess... she never even had the chance to know love..."

"She was too careless. Her wound came into contact with the meat carpet..."

"Poor Moni, he's nearly cried himself blind..."

The quiet whispers drifted across the forest clearing like the rustling of the wind.

The meows of wild cats could also be heard.

A multitude of wild cats had gathered around, waiting for something.

"The Lord's messenger has arrived!"

The priest suddenly raised his hands and exclaimed:

"They will take her soul!"

A middle-aged man named Moni wept even more bitterly, and the parishioners had to support him.

The people were overcome by this sorrow. No one noticed as a black shadow moved gracefully across the muddy, footprint-covered ground in the torchlight and slipped into Moni's own shadow.

Moni stopped crying. The parishioners supporting him thought he was just exhausted, but they didn't see the panic that had surfaced deep in his eyes.

The panic quickly spread, filling his eyes and rising to his face, and then Moni realized his body had recovered.

And then he saw his daughter, lying in the crude coffin, her body covered in a flesh-like fungal growth that suddenly opened a cloudy, bloodshot eyeball.

The priest and parishioners saw it too. They had never encountered anything like it. But their faith prevented them from screaming and running away, and the townspeople watching from a distance couldn't see what was happening, so the disturbance didn't spread.

"Who am I?"

"I am Moni."

"I am not Moni..."

"I am Bebess."

After a few indistinct, eerie mumbles, the head turned toward Moni.

"Father..."

Moni made out the word, and along with a flicker of joy, an even greater terror washed over him.

"You... who are you?!"

"Father, I'm Be—"

The body that called itself Bebess began to melt, instantly dissolving into an indistinct, bubbling substance. All that remained in the coffin was a formless mass of red and white.

...

"Not only did Moni cry himself blind, but he also went mad. Wigtown lost two of its people in a single day..."

The priest sighed. He had watched Moni grow up, just as he had watched little Bebess...

Lu Li remained silent.

Outside the window, the sky was growing dim as dawn approached.

Knowing Lu Li and the others hadn't rested all day, the priest prepared several rooms for them, but Katerina declined, asking for just one large room.

The priest personally escorted them to a large house in the center of town, watching with reverence as the Flowing Cat followed them inside.

Thud.

Katerina, who was last, threw the bolt.

Katerina and Prusius had many questions, and now it seemed they could finally ask them.

"The Anna you're looking for, is she the Shadow Maiden... an... an Evil Spirit?"

"Yes."

"Can people become Evil Spirits too?"

"It's always been people."

The sharp, sarcastic voice of the Fallen cut in.

Katerina ignored the Fallen, looked at Lu Li, and asked:

"The funeral the priest mentioned... was that her?"

"Possibly."

It didn't seem like Anna's ritual—she wouldn't have left behind a pool of minced flesh. She would have dissolved into shadow, consuming everything without a trace.

"It's hard to imagine..." Katerina whispered.

It was unclear if she was talking about Lu Li searching for an Evil Spirit or the unimaginable cruelty of one.

Then she suddenly remembered Lu Li loading the spirit gun in front of the hunter's cabin.

"So you... you're still going to look for her... for Lady Anna?" Prusius asked.

"Yes."

"But where could she have gone?"

The trail seemed to have gone cold, yet at the same time, it was still there.

If Anna's shadow was involved in the incident with Bebess, she wouldn't have stopped there.

"What's the name of the station before Wigtown?"

Katerina asked suddenly.

"I'll look..."

Prusius was about to get the map from his suitcase.

"Haughtown," Lu Li said.

"The Evil Spirit... I mean, Anna, might have gone to other towns," Katerina said, finally seeming to put the pieces together.

The probability was high.

However, the steam train wouldn't arrive until the afternoon, and now was the time to rest.

The anomalous fog quietly receded. They lay down on the single beds the priest had brought, letting sleep wash away the fatigue of a full day's journey and the shock of the secrets they had learned.

Lu Li didn't go to sleep. There was something else he needed to ask the Flowing Cat.

And whether she intended to leave with them.

The Flowing Cat refused to leave. She had to stay to fight against the evil.

The frog-fish they had seen last night in Nis.

If not for the Flowing Cat's resistance, they would have landed in the Hillerwig Mountains, occupied the area, and perhaps one day even crossed the mountains into Wigtown.

The very end of the railway line would have been lost forever.

That afternoon, awakened by the whistle of the steam train, they said their goodbyes to the Flowing Cat and the priest and boarded the empty train.

There were no other passengers on today's run.

A short while later, the train pulled away from the platform at a speed slower than walking, while station workers shooed away wild cats lounging on the warm rails.

Katerina watched for a moment, then looked away, yawned, and leaned back in the soft seat, ready to fall asleep again.

Lu Li was still awake, trying to understand what Anna was doing.

For the others, it was simple, almost too simple: this Evil Spirit was performing its ritual.

Toward noon, the steam train stopped at the station in Haughtown, located far from the Hillerwig Mountains.

Haughtown was a little more lively than Wigtown, or at least not as dreary.

They asked if anything strange had happened in town recently and received confirmation from the townspeople. The story was similar to what had occurred in Wigtown.

It seemed Anna's presence had left its mark here as well.