The Bizarre Detective Agency

Chapter 910: The Second Mutilated Body

However, achieving the other two goals felt increasingly remote: the harsh winter and the clouds.

While the harsh winter cold threatened the trees' survival, it was unlikely to wipe out the entire forest. The real problem lay with the unending clouds and the hidden menace: the Plant Calamity.

These were insurmountable obstacles preventing Lu Li from retrieving the mutilated body. Without its power, an ordinary forest could not withstand the devastation wrought by the calamities.

"What makes the clouds form?"

Ophelia couldn't answer Lu Li's question. As a scholar and a former library employee, she could have given the simple scientific explanation—that they form from water vapor.

"Protection."

The Deep God, who had approached them unnoticed, was watching the clouds that shrouded the earth.

"What?"

Lu Li's gaze fell upon the unwavering darkness beneath the Deep God's cloak.

"The clouds protect the world, shielding it from the starry sky...""If... it were... exposed... what... would happen?" Ophelia asked.

"The world... would fall... into stillness..."

Ophelia disliked the Deep God imitating her halting speech, but it undeniably lent his words a certain gravity.

Lu Li recalled what he had witnessed in the Royal City of Allen: an awakened Ancient God roared at the cosmos, and the boundless sea of stars coalesced into a single eye. It cast its gaze down, and the Ancient God was reduced to ash.

"Are the clouds easy to disperse?"

"It is a rule, created by... I cannot remember."

"The power that the eye wielded was limited."

The clouds, which the Deep God had called a rule, existed at the highest level. The black ring hanging in the void over the Fallow Lands was not above them; neither was the sky rent by the Light Stealer, nor the Sky of Illusions.

Lu Li returned to the matter at hand:

"Can you tell the difference between saltwater and freshwater?"

"You insult my divinity," the Deep God whispered coldly.

"Can you?"

"I... cannot. But perhaps, after reclaiming the mutilated body..."

Before the conversation could continue, the Shadow People relayed a message: the great worms burrowing around Tenebrae had uncovered a burial site.

Leaving the Deep God to continue draining the water, Lu Li and Ophelia headed to Tenebrae.

A few hundred meters from the ruins, a group of Six-limbed creatures and Shadow People had gathered. A mound of soft, swollen earth marked where one of the great worms had surfaced, bringing with it a rotten, mud-caked wooden coffin.

The issue wasn't the body inside, but the iron nails hammered into the coffin's edges. The wood was so rotten that many of the nails had lost their grip, barely preventing the lid from falling off as it was moved.

"Open it."

Moving faster than the cultists, the Six-limbed creatures silently scuttled to the coffin and lifted the decaying lid.

Inside, gray bones were scattered around the tattered remains of noble attire, too jumbled to ever be reassembled. A faded notebook had fallen into a boot, which was now filled with what looked like thigh bones.

Ophelia retrieved the notebook.

The author identified himself as Johnson, the first mayor of Tenebrae. He claimed he had been framed by cultists who then took his place. He wrote that he had been knocked unconscious, nailed into the coffin, and buried alive.

The brief, hastily scrawled entry described the suffering of the self-proclaimed mayor, Johnson. It seemed that by the time he awoke, the air in the coffin was nearly gone, and he had died an agonizing death from suffocation.

Ophelia placed the notebook back on the chest of the noble's attire. A wave of heat radiated from her charred palm, incinerating any lingering impurity.

"Bury him in the Tenebrae cemetery."

Lu Li said. There was no point in chasing events from a century ago.

The people involved were long gone, and so was their world.

The Six-limbed creatures carried the sealed coffin to the cemetery on the edge of the ruins. They buried it beside a grave whose headstone read "First Mayor Johnson". Then, they pulled up that headstone and set it before the grave of the true Johnson. In front of the false mayor's new grave, they erected a headstone bearing a single word: "Liar".

"I was the one who commanded my servants to do that..."

The Mother of the Swamp appeared in the cemetery, answering the questions from Prusius and Ophelia.

"Has the eyeball that was left on the coast of Locou been used?"

Lu Li asked the Merchant, and after receiving a negative reply, he ordered the cultists to erect a dozen more headstones. As he spoke each name aloud, Prusius engraved the headstones for the cultists who had perished underground.

The cultists behind them fell to their knees in prayer. The sight of their deity's consort personally seeing to the fallen transformed their devotion into fanaticism. Only the Mother of the Swamp could see the powerful waves of faith washing over Lu Li, only to be repelled.

"Do they believe in Anna, and in you as well?" the Mother of the Swamp asked.

"To them, I am the deity's consort."

Even though Anna wasn't actually a deity.

"Why are your trees able to grow?" Lu Li asked her suddenly.

"Faith brings power... I am strong through them, and they are strong through Me."

The cultists' faith empowers the deity, and the power the deity returns allows the cultists' domain to flourish.

It was the only way for the forest, having lost the power of the mutilated body, to survive without light.

"Then would you mind if the forest became your followers?"

...

Lu Li and the Mother of the Swamp journeyed deep into the distorted forest, offering its consciousness the Mother's faith in exchange for a chance at survival.

Surprisingly, the giant tree readily agreed to Lu Li's proposal. It simply could not believe that a friend would bring it harm.

The Mother of the Swamp, in turn, showed her own humanity. She forgave the distorted forest for the twenty-year war it had waged and did not demand that it become Her servant.

The Shadow Swamp would no longer be divided into north and south.

The Shadow People, the Six-limbed creatures, and newly emerged fireflies darted about their new home. The giant tree quickly accepted its new family—or rather, was accepted by them—rejoicing in a forest now teeming with life.

Amidst all this newfound harmony, only one being was displeased.

"Why not let it... believe in Me?"

Sensing the Mother of the Swamp's gradually growing power, the Deep God voiced his displeasure. But after a moment's thought, He took back his words.

"No... it is better that it does not believe in Me."

During the Deep God's long decline, His powerful servants had proclaimed themselves new gods, and their followers had been corrupted. If the forest were to pledge its faith to Him, these new followers would be usurped by the old ones, who would then learn of the Deep God's return—

A young heir, lacking the strength to protect his inheritance, can only watch as it is seized by greedy relatives.

Within five days, all the saltwater had been drained from the swamp, exposing vast stretches of bare, damp mud. A breakwater, already half a meter high, was being constructed around the clock. The great worms had also cleared the land to the east, and the quarry of crushed stone could now be expanded.

Meanwhile, the forest had resolved its own crisis of survival through faith.

...

Everyone gathered before the giant tree.

"Will I go back to how I was before, knowing nothing?"

Its trembling voice echoed through the forest.

"You are My follower now. You will no longer be swayed by the influence of the mutilated body," the Mother of the Swamp said softly.

The Deep God ascended to the crown of the great tree and touched the remnant—a single phalanx bone.

An indescribable aura spread outwards. The roar of the surf sounded impossibly close. For a brief moment, all illusions scattered. The Deep God descended to the ground, landing where only channels carved by the receding water remained.

"I... have grown stronger again," the Deep God whispered.

The change was visible in His silhouette. The black cloak had grown even darker, faintly outlining a form that was still impossible to discern.

Now that the conflict in the Shadow Swamp was resolved and the Deep God's mutilated body had been recovered, it was time for them to part ways.

On the eve of their departure, Lu Li gave the giant tree a parting gift: a collection of fairy tales, along with books on geography and biology.

The Mother of the Swamp glanced down at Lu Li.

"And what of My gift?"