Detective Agency of the Bizarre
Chapter 357 - 357 Two hundred fourteen

357: Two hundred fourteen.

The following carriage 357: Two hundred fourteen.

The following carriage “Is the rain too heavy…”

Anna looked up, rainwater passing through her ethereal cheeks.

She had never seen such endless heavy rain.

The relentless rain, day and night, showed no signs of abating, but fortunately, most cities on the Ailen Peninsula were coastal, and the few inland cities were situated on higher ground, so they were not at risk of being submerged by floodwaters.

But the roads became increasingly difficult to travel.

After leaving Himfast a few miles behind, the ground turned back to muddy, waterlogged earth, and as the extended carriage passed, it left behind two deep ruts.

Anna sat by the carriage curtain, covering Annie’s tree trunk with one hand, silently feeling her gradually weakening breath.

She had tried to wrap Annie with her breath, but this action only made the already fragile life’s flame even weaker, causing her to stop immediately.

The carriage moved forward in the pitch-black rainy night, with possibly other carriages on the road as well, but the curtain of rain and the sound of rainfall obscured everything.

After nearly an hour of relatively calm travel, the horses pulling the carriage suddenly stopped.

Anna picked up an oil lamp and held it out of the carriage, spotting a dark carriage stopped in their path.

It was so sudden that only when the horses stopped did Lu Li and Anna become aware of its presence.

Lu Li and Anna exchanged glances, and Anna shook her head lightly, “I don’t feel any presence.”

Which meant that this carriage, or the entity controlling it, was not a ghost.

No horses were visible at the front of the carriage, and the wooden body reflected the gleam of the oil lamp on the water.

“Go around,” said Lu Li.

“Okay.”

Anna picked up the reins, leading the horses to bypass the eerie, unmanned carriage amidst the rainy night.

Anna moved facing the direction of the mysterious carriage, always keeping Lu Li protected behind her until they had traveled a distance away from it, when their carriage abruptly stopped again.

Another carriage blocked their path ahead.

Anna, still keeping an eye on the rear, hastily shielded Lu Li, “Another one!?”

“No, it’s the same carriage.” Focusing his gaze from the carriage to Anna’s silhouette in front of him, Lu Li asked, “Are you sure you haven’t noticed anything?”

“Nothing…”

“Keep going around.”

Lingering on the road was pointless, especially when faced with an inexplicable weirdness.

The carriage once again bypassed the desolate, unmanned carriage and continued forward.

Anna still protected Lu Li while dividing part of her attention to the road ahead.

Just as Lu Li and Anna had anticipated, minutes later, the carriage stopped once more.

The unmanned carriage blocked the road ahead again, and unlike the previous times, this time it lay across the road, blocking their way.

“I’ll go check it out!” exclaimed Anna, as a chill atmosphere began to emanate around her.

Lu Li gently shook his head, restraining her impulsiveness, “No need, go around from the outside.”

“It’s harassing us,” said Anna with a touch of reluctance.

“That’s why we can’t let it catch us.”

After all, if the carriage blocked their way repeatedly, it certainly had a purpose, such as forcing them to get out and check.

Precisely for that reason, Lu Li did not intend to do things according to “its” plans, even if the weirdness bore no malice.

What they could least afford now was to waste time.

Anna nodded thoughtfully and maneuvered the carriage off the road, also using her powers to prop up the carriage to prevent it from tipping over due to the slope beside the road.

The extended carriage passed closely by the obstructing carriage, Lu Li not even casting a glance at the rear curtain of the carriage.

Once back on the road, the carriage continued forward.

This time they encountered no further obstacles.

“Have we shaken them off?”

Anna looked back, but could only see the rear wall of the carriage and the wooden crate sealed with tree roots.

“We should have.”

Anna withdrew her gaze, confusion in her clear eyes, “What was that exactly?”

“There’s no need to delve deeper,” Lu Li said.

“The strange can never be measured by common sense.”

Just like the “cries for help in the alley,” neither running away nor attempting a rescue was the correct approach.

You had to follow their ritual to possibly make it out alive.

These were the more traceable ghosts—at least people were clear that resentful and evil spirits held a sense of ritual.

Upon reflection, it wasn’t necessary to look too far back; even a month earlier, the wilderness wasn’t as dangerously threatening as this.

Traveling by night seemed to have become an extremely perilous act.

Anna’s presence helped Lu Li avoid some trouble.

A cold, ghostly presence wandered nearby, sensing the stronger aura emitted by Anna, they took her for something with an owner and silently hid in the surrounding endless darkness.

At a certain moment, Anna suddenly noticed Lu Li tilting his head slightly, as if he was listening to something.

Feeling Anna’s gaze, Lu Li answered her unspoken question, “There’s some noise behind us.”

“Should I take a look?”

“Hmm.”

With permission, Anna, carrying another oil lamp, floated up, piercing through the carriage’s canopy.

The oil lamp hit the roof and was held up by invisible air as it fell, rushing out of the curtains.

On top of the carriage, Anna, now stable, took the oil lamp that floated to her and held it up high.

In the torrential rain of the deep night, the oil lamp’s limited light illuminated a small area, so she controlled the lamp to float from her hand toward the back of the carriage.

A shape suddenly emerged behind them as the oil lamp moved a few meters away.

A pitch-black carriage, blending into the night, followed behind them.

There were no horses pulling it, yet the dark carriage bobbed up and down as though an invisible horse were pulling the lightless compartment.

The scene was chilling and eerie.

“That carriage is following us!”

Anna’s shout pierced through the canopy to Lu Li’s ears.

“Let it follow,” Lu Li responded.

An increasingly reliable intuition told Lu Li that if they stopped or paid any attention to that carriage now, the ones to lose would definitely be them.

Anna’s eyes grew cold as she gave the carriage one final glance then floated back into the carriage, leaning against Lu Li, facing toward the rear of the carriage and the creepy coach that was following just a few meters behind.

The muddy road and weight restrictions limited the elongated carriage’s speed, but even so, the following carriage never managed to catch up.

On the road, Lu Li came across a slow-moving convoy of carts, whose coachmen, upon noticing the eerie carriage following the elongated carriage, gripped their reins in terror and stopped at the side of the road, not daring to move.

With the eerie carriage in tow, they raced for nearly an hour before the noise behind them started to fade to an imperceptible level, until it disappeared.

After a while, Anna floated out to check and could no longer find any trace of that carriage.

This time they had truly escaped.

Lu Li leaned against the cold carriage wall, covered himself with a blanket, and took a short rest while Anna drove the carriage and kept watch over their surroundings.

No further incidents occurred.

When Lu Li awoke, it was close to five in the morning, and the sky, compared to the deep night a few hours earlier, showed no change, remaining dark and lightless.

They had arrived at the foot of the mountain; perhaps they would reach Belfast before the eve of dawn.

Though Lu Li had never personally witnessed the dawn or the stars of this world.

If one didn’t count the sunrise he saw for an instant when he had once jumped from the ferry of the Undead, returning to the human world’s surface.