The Bizarre Detective Agency

Chapter 988: The Second Theory

Lap—lap—

The relentless waves lapped against the shore, day and night.

The Andrea cut through the golden shimmer of the waves and pulled into the dock. On its deck was the third party of survivors, their heads bowed in prayer like pilgrims on a sacred journey.

The survivors' leader, the elderly Loben Val, set foot on the dilapidated pier. He looked up at the great ship and asked with reverence:

"Messenger, what are we to do now?"

The Andrea offered no reply—or perhaps, it did. The steamship's whistle echoed across the sky as the great vessel departed from the port, shrouded in a shimmering light, before vanishing back into the darkness.

Sunlight fell upon the bewildered survivors, bringing warmth and chasing away the decay. A figure in clerical attire emerged from the dockworkers' hut and led them to the "worm hut," and from there through a tunnel-like passage to the summit of the mountain.

The survivors helped the stumbling Loben Val to his feet. Covered in slime, he emerged from the hut.

Their eyes were immediately drawn to the shimmering surface of Agate Lake, which seemed sacred and pure beneath the sun's rays.

Wooden boats from the Ancient Era lay beached on the shore. Benches and street lamps had long since rotted away, rendered useless. Of the scattered huts along Agate Lake, few were intact, and most of those were already occupied.In the center of Agate Lake, on a bare, dark-red island that resembled raw flesh, grew a strange, verdant sapling.

And in the distance, a church was under construction on the shore.

The reserved survivors from the third party huddled before the door of the worm hut, waiting.

They saw workers bustling around the church. Were they the survivors from the first two parties?

They watched as some residents of the Land of Light passed by, dressed in cleaner, warmer clothes of coarse fabric, free of holes and patches. These recent arrivals were also thin and listless from prolonged malnutrition—but only in body.

These people were friendly and optimistic, their faces bright with smiles—emotions like sunbeams breaking through the clouds.

A parishioner sorted them out: artisans to the left, farmers to the right, the rest of you, stay here.

"Leader..."

The strongest man among them, wearing nothing but a thin wrap of coarse cloth in the biting cold, glanced hesitantly at Loben Val.

"We are in the Land of Light now. I am no longer your leader, but a lamb of God, just like all of you... Go on," Loben Val said with a slight wave of his hand.

The survivors from the third party hesitantly dispersed, some to the left, some to the right, while the elderly and the children remained where they were.

They didn't know what to do, and they were afraid of being abandoned.

"Friends, repeat after me," Loben Val began to recite a song known throughout the land.

"At the foot of the world's spine walks an exorcist, with hair and eyes of black. The thorns that block his path dissolve in his radiance. Cobwebs drift down from a somber sky, as masks of illusion and reality flicker with an eerie light. The monsters who toy with dreams watch him with greedy eyes. His comrades lie buried in ice and cold; the young spirit hunter pauses, his heart full of despair. Yet after a moment of doubt, he sees the people's suffering and resolves to aid all those who writhe in pain..."

The quiet, collective murmuring attracted the attention of the Distorted Figure and the believers of the Church of the Vine.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

The remaining people stopped their prayer. Loben Val replied:

"We are praying to Lord Lu Li."

"You don't need to pray to anyone. You are the only ones who can save yourselves," said the parishioner.

"The Lord said so himself. Wait here, someone will take you to your new homes."

...

"If one can find the contamination frequency of a specific anomaly, then creating neutralizing agents or potions for the corresponding contamination would allow one to avoid it—or more accurately, avoid its radiation."

In the dim solitary cell, Lu Li temporarily set down his pen, waiting for the ink to dry.

Sterling's radiation theory was highly focused. It didn't target anomalies or their swarms, not even their leaders.

Its targets were the evil gods and the Calamities.

Lu Li thought of the Hour of Silence. Separated by the power of the Night Lady, it was clearly also a form of contamination. If people could decipher its contamination frequency, they would no longer suffer from it—they could even enter the Land of Silence to destroy its very essence.

However, the difficulty was nightmarish. Lu Li, who had once been puzzled as to why no one had solved the problem of the Hour of Silence, now had his answer: the region where the Land of Silence was located was the heart of the Wastelands, surrounded by countless anomaly cities and nests.

And humanity still hadn't managed to find the source of the Plant Calamity or the Dark Calamity. Deciphering their contamination was also a pointless endeavor, because people had already found a way to avoid the Plant Calamity.

The Light Stealer?

After the primordial darkness enveloped the earth, it dissolved into the eternal gloom, like the night itself. It still appeared from time to time, depriving the world of light at noon, but its harmfulness was even less than that of the Shadow Stealing Fire in the age of evil spirits.

It was only in the Land of Light, where the sunlight lacked its former defenses, that it could be blotted out.

Therefore, the radiation theory was currently more useful for combating evil gods, as well as for secondary applications like early warning systems.

Recording the specific frequencies of known anomalies to trigger an alarm when they appeared—the evil spirit radio broadcasts of the Ancient Era and the conch shells of the Age of Anomalies were prototypes.

Perhaps Sterling's radiation theory had been inspired by the legacy of the former Exorcist Association.

Unfortunately, even though the radiation theory had taken shape, it was still just a theory.

What humanity needed wasn't a way to destroy anomalies, but a way to destroy their power.

As he continued to refine the radiation theory, Lu Li came to a new conclusion: humanity was also a form of radiation.

But it was a positive radiation. When Lu Li possessed 20 units of humanity, places where he stayed for long periods of time would allow seeds to sprout and trees to grow.

In any case, on the fifteenth day of his confinement, Lu Li had almost completely finished his theory of humanity and handed the notebook, with its remaining blank pages, to Professor Kris.

"Dear, what do you want me to do?"

As one of the greatest alchemists of human civilization, Professor Kris was not surprised by the implications of the radiation theory.

"Nothing for now."

Just as he expected. Three days after he completed the theory, the newspaper published another article. Although Lu Li had requested that Sterling be listed as his co-author, the paper—in both its headline and its content—focused entirely on Lu Li. The scientist Sterling's name was hidden away in an inconspicuous corner.

Thanks to the emergence of these two theories, public opinion, which had previously criticized Lu Li for his imprisonment, swung to the opposite extreme. The people awaited Lu Li's next theories, and the newspaper editorial boards waited with them.

However, Lu Li no longer needed to complete any more theories.

There were two weeks left until the end of his confinement, and now Lu Li's attention would return to the 6th-level mysticism trials.

The difficulty of the 6th-level mysticism trials corresponded to the most challenging missions of the middle courses—that is, missions with a reward of 4 academic credits and 4 team points.

For comparison, the reward for a solo patrol and clearing mission was one-third of an academic credit.

High-difficulty missions were usually characterized by a lack of clues and tragic events, such as the deaths of people. Although, thanks to the protection of the gatekeepers, the trial participants themselves would not die.

Kiruet had provided Lu Li with some information: her own experience of five failures and six missions while attempting the 6th-level trials.