Detective Agency of the Bizarre
Chapter 444 - 444 Three hundred and one

444: Three hundred and one.

We are the offerings.

444: Three hundred and one.

We are the offerings.

The oil lamp that barged into the cellar disturbed the pervasive darkness, scattering it as it fled to hide at the edges of the light, forming an abyss-like gloom.

The oil lamp could only illuminate a small area.

Unable to make any noise, Lu Li seemed to have no choice but to go down himself.

Lu Li withdrew his arm, and the darkness swarmed back, reclaiming the cellar.

But then, he hoisted the oil lamp onto his wrist, turned around, shared a brief look with Jojo, and stepped onto the cellar ladder.

Jojo started to speak, then remembered they couldn’t talk and covered her mouth with her hand.

Lu Li descended step by step into darkness, the feeble glow of the oil lamp only able to protect his upper body, with everything below his waist shrouded in obscurity.

Crack—

Suddenly, a sound of wood snapping echoed, and Lu Li’s steadily descending figure abruptly slid down, his arm catching on the wooden ladder to prevent him from falling.

Jojo almost cried out in alarm, frantically gesturing to Lu Li below.

The scene looked tense and dangerous, but only appeared so.

With Anna’s secret protection, even if Lu Li let go with both hands, he would float down slowly and land safely.

After steadying himself, Lu Li gestured to Jojo above that he was fine, stepped over the broken ladder, and continued to descend.

A few seconds later, Lu Li set foot on the cellar floor.

The cellar was roughly four meters high, its floor covered with a layer of dry straw.

Turning his head to explore the cellar, he found Jojo had also climbed down.

Lu Li could only kick away the broken wood beneath the ladder and raise his arm, ensuring Jojo stayed in the light, keeping the darkness at bay.

The raised oil lamp followed Jojo’s movements.

When only the last two rungs remained, she simply jumped down, gracefully landing.

“You shouldn’t have come down second.” Still not upright, Jojo heard Lu Li’s low whisper in her ear.

Confused, Jojo looked towards the man whose outline was clear under the oil lamp: “What do you mean?”

Without responding, Lu Li narrowed his eyes and looked up at the cellar entrance where blood seemed to rain down.

For some reason, the man remained on the ground with his head lowered, his features in the shadows silently watching the two of them.

A feeling that something was terribly wrong came over Jojo, and she waved to the man above.

He responded by taking something out of his pocket.

“What’s he going to do…” Jojo had never seen the object before, but as she watched the man hold it solemnly in his hands, a sense of foreboding overwhelmed her.

As someone whose Sanity Value had decreased, granting him a special intuition, Lu Li’s feelings were clearer and more profound.

A mysterious and eerie consciousness seemed to descend upon the place.

The man was calling out to some entity.

It was then that Lu Li suddenly spoke to the man on the ground: “Are you a Follower of the Mother of the Marsh, or a Believer in that unknown Evil God?”

Lu Li no longer tried to keep his voice low; both Jojo and the man heard him clearly.

“Heretics must not utter my lord’s name—” The man on the ground suddenly cursed, then abruptly stopped.

Astonishment spread across his face in the shadow: “Why do you dare—”

He couldn’t finish his second sentence either as a cold presence enveloped him from behind.

In front of the two in the cellar, faceless figures materialized behind the man, and in the instant he turned his head in panic, they hollowed out his face.

Seeing this unfold, Jojo quickly adjusted her somewhat skewed wings.

There was no scream; the man had no chance to do anything, and the last sound he made was the thud of his body dropping.

The consciousness attempting to descend was forcibly interrupted due to the man’s death, and the bizarre and mysterious aura dissipated.

The object in his hand rolled to the edge of the cellar, bounced on the wooden stairs, and after several rolls beside the stairs, it came to a halt.

It was a fist-sized wooden idol, which seemed like the image of some creature.

More specifically, an image of the Mother of the Marsh or an unknown Evil God.

The lower half of the idol was like some kind of beetle, but its upper half was the torso of a human female, somewhat similar to a centaur in mythology, only with a beetle instead of a horse for its lower body.

Giggling—

The Sanity Value Counter on the wrist suddenly made noise.

Lu Li stepped back, taking Jojo with him, who was still staring motionlessly at the wooden idol.

Only when they were more than three meters away from the Evil God idol did the counter finally return to calm.

“He wanted to sacrifice us?” Jojo came back to her senses, panting in shock, “I just looked at the idol and it felt like my soul was being sucked in…

Is this the Evil God?

It’s terrifying, just a sculpture but…”

“We’re just too fragile,” Lu Li replied and said to Anna, “Bring the corpse down and close the cellar door.”

Anna complied, carrying the man’s corpse into the cellar and then closing the wooden door of the cellar.

The strange noises from the ground were now blocked outside.

The corpse was placed where Lu Li and the others had previously stood.

Lu Li and Jojo found two oil lamps on the cellar’s supporting beams, lit them, and returned to stand before the fallen body.

The corpse’s face was too gruesome to look upon, with flesh blurred by holes and only the remaining root of the tongue still trembling slightly from the vibration.

Jojo could not bear to stare directly and turned away with her oil lamp to explore the cellar.

Lu Li didn’t mind the gore, but seeing too much could cause psychological issues, so he had Anna turn the body over, face down.

The man’s khaki uniform turned a wet brown-gray due to the blood; Lu Li rummaged through his pockets and found nothing but candy wrappers.

Lowering his gaze to the man’s feet, Lu Li noticed shoes that did not match the clothing—straw sandals—and his trousers rolled up to the ankles because they were too long.

This man was not a policeman at all.

He was likely a resident seeking refuge or a Believer searching for survivors who had taken shelter in the Police Station and put on a policeman’s clothes.

Lu Li stood up and looked around.

The cellar was dimly lit in all corners as Jojo had lit the oil lamps and candles during his search for clues.

With no corners left to illuminate every part of the cellar, darkness could only shrink into the shadows.

She stood in front of a row of shelves, searching for things they could use.

Lu Li took an oil lamp and walked towards Jojo, sharing the information he had found.

Rather than the truth, Jojo was more concerned about something else, “Did you know this all along?”

Although Lu Li was indifferent by nature, and his face always showed calm, Jojo’s keen awareness sensed that Lu Li had realized this fact much earlier, instead of maintaining a stoic exterior.

“It was just a guess,” Lu Li responded, indirectly confirming Jojo’s suspicion.

Jojo was somewhat helpless, “Then why did you dare to follow him and even voluntarily come down…”

“I’ve said before that we have no other choice,” Lu Li replied.

For finding Oliver, their only option was to locate survivors and then ask if they knew of Oliver.

Finding a missing person in a town overrun with Followers?

That seemed more reliable than cooperating with an Evil God.

“Of course, I know…” Jojo sighed, storing Lu Li’s help in her heart, and lifted her oil lamp to illuminate the shelves full of food.

“At least we didn’t come here for nothing.

There’s so much food here, and it’s far from the surface, an ideal place to hide,” she said.

Standing in front of the shelves, both with their backs to the corpse, neither noticed that the blood pooling in the shadow of the man’s body, as if guided by something, extended towards the Evil God wooden idol beneath the wooden stairs.