Detective Agency of the Bizarre
Chapter 557 - 557 Seventy-six

557: Seventy-six.

And the second one 557: Seventy-six.

And the second one To be truthful, the first trial did not reveal Richard’s corresponding wisdom.

Unlike Lu Li, who was calm and wise, he possessed only laughable courage and some luck, which allowed him to pass the overly lenient trial smoothly.

But it cannot be denied that such reckless youths are often the core of a story, the protagonist.

Perhaps this was why Richard was so obsessed and convinced that he could become the new Ancient God?

In the boundless darkness, Lu Li stood silently, waiting.

Gradually, a light emerged ahead, and Richard’s silhouette reappeared.

Different from the Richard initially seen, many changes had occurred in him when he appeared again, such as in his clothing and demeanor.

In the first trial, Richard had been anxious and uneasy, like a deer that had mistakenly wandered deep into a jungle fraught with danger, wary of everything, almost to the point of fear.

This time, he was still frail, but no longer had the malnourished, hunched appearance; his eyes were filled with excitement and thrill.

The Richard in front of him was closer to the one that Lu Li currently encountered.

Considering that Richard’s first trial was most likely a misstep, and the second trial was separated by at least several days, giving him enough time to realize what he had encountered and to plan accordingly, the changes in his demeanor were to be expected.

So, what would the well-prepared Richard do in the second trial?

Richard still couldn’t notice Lu Li behind him; in front of him, a row of carved wooden doors extended forward.

Lu Li, knowing what was about to happen, quietly watched as Richard walked up to the first wooden door and opened it.

The first Believer, Olivia Kikan.

For her child suffering from asthma, she had come before the Confessional to pray for divine help.

At first, Richard, like Lu Li, tried to converse; when he realized that his words could not be heard outside, they resorted to communicating through paper.

Standing behind the wooden chair, Lu Li watched him write down the hurried query, “Is his illness severe?”

A standard response, but rare for Richard.

“Little Kiken coughs up almost enough blood to soak an entire handkerchief…” Olivia Kikan sobbed.

“Are you willing to give everything for your child?”

“Of course!

I would rather give my own life for him to live a healthy life…” she replied.

Richard’s feelings became complex, perhaps due to his background of growing up on the streets without ever seeing his parents.

“He has a good mother, but I don’t know if you can give everything as you say you can…” Richard wrote subsequently on the second piece of paper.

“Do everything you can, steal, rob, kidnap, any means you can use to get money, for your child,” Richard’s written advice came next.

Outside the Confessional, Olivia Kikan clutched the paper, hesitating.

“Life hasn’t been fair to you, and you need not be fair to it.”

The third paper handed out determined something for Olivia Kikan, who then silently left the church.

The scene outside the Confessional changed as dusk arrived, and a Nun appeared sweeping inside the church.

Like Lu Li’s bad ending, Richard’s bad ending was equally disastrous—Olivia Kikan was arrested for theft, and her child, Little Kiken, died at home, uncared for.

Although Olivia Kikan was still alive, she was inevitably surrounded by boundless regret and despair.

Richard seemed somewhat regretful, leaving his seat and exiting the first wooden door before entering the second one.

In the narrow Confessional, Lu Li saw the proverb on the wall that he had seen before: “Only the truth can win over hearts,” missing a line from Lu Li’s “Ignorance is not a sin, arrogance is.”

The second Believer, Arthur Green Pierce.

To protect his daughter, Green killed the gangster who was harassing her and then fled to the church seeking help.

“You did the right thing!

All the bastards who hurt you and your loved one deserve to die!”

Perhaps Richard realized the last method did not work, so he changed tactics, or he was merely following his own inner thoughts.

Although the content on the paper was radical and bizarre, Green still felt much relieved.

“What should I do now?” Green asked helplessly.

“The gang won’t let you or your daughter go.

Go home, take up arms, repel those greedy and ugly jackals to protect your loved ones, God will bless you and spare you from suffering,”

Encouraged wrongly, Green left the church, and dusk arrived as expected.

In the church where the organ flowed, there was no sign of the girl’s entrance.

Only two Nuns were quietly discussing the unfortunate Green and his daughter.

The gang members found Green as expected, and although he was prepared and killed three or four of them, he too was stabbed and soon after died.

The police arrived, investigated the situation, and found the girl in the gang’s headquarters, disfigured beyond human recognition, missing ten fingers; tragically, she had gone mad.

Richard leaned back in the wooden chair, scratching his messy nest of brown hair, becoming increasingly agitated.

He thought he knew the truth, that he, “chosen” by the Ancient God, would smoothly pass these trials as he had the first time.

Seconds later, Richard got up and turned to enter the next carved wooden door.

“The difference between a Sage and an Ignorant is that the former knows what should and should not be done, while the latter does not,”

The maxim on the wall still had only one phrase, missing the sentence “Admitting one’s incompetence is more painful than death,” perhaps related to Richard’s complete lack of contemplation about solving the puzzle.

This made the first maxim laden with irony – appearing where Lu Li was, it seemed deliberately designed to provoke and make him lose his mind.

When it appeared by Richard, it became a fact.

Richard cursed under his breath and sat back in his seat to wait for the third Believer to arrive.

The third Believer, a Nameless Girl who stole gang finances for Olivia Kikan’s son and was pursued by gang members to the church for refuge.

When the girl rushed to the Confessional seeking help, Richard quickly wrote something down, and handed it out of the Confessional.

“Hide in here, they won’t dare come in,”

“Thank you!” The Nameless Girl said gratefully, pulling open the wooden door of the Confessional, then suddenly widening her eyes.

Richard sat in the wooden chair and looked up to meet her gaze, but the girl, her face peppered with youthful freckles, couldn’t see him at all as she stared into the empty Confessional.

Noises came from behind in the churchyard, revealing the Nameless Girl’s panic; she pushed down her unease about the Confessional and hid inside, shutting the wooden door.

She kept as far away from the wooden chair in the center of the Confessional as possible.

Knowing the girl couldn’t see him, Richard no longer cared about her and turned to observe the two gang members approaching the Confessional from outside.

The obstructive Priest was ineffective, the gang members searched the entire church, headed for the only place someone could hide – the Confessional, and broke open the wooden door.

They found the girl hiding inside, panic-stricken, and dragged her out with sinister laughter.

“You bastards!”

Richard shouted angrily, rushing outside to stop the gang members, then ran into something that felt like physical air.

His screams were unheard by anyone.

Richard was like an invisible person, unknown to anyone.

Watching the girl’s desperate eyes, some change occurred in Richard’s mindset.