Detective Agency of the Bizarre
Chapter 673 - 673 192

673: 192.

Searching for Her Shadow 673: 192.

Searching for Her Shadow “Some dandelions got into the passageway, probably through the entrance…

But the problem isn’t them; it’s that the Exorcist found a passageway that had been sealed off,” the City Lord’s Assistant kept checking the time, as if something was urgently pressing him.

“The sealed passage had been broken through, and the traces are fresh.

It might have been left by the fleeing former City Lord.

The problem is that people who get close to it feel an involuntary attraction to walk into the passageway.

Those Exorcists were the first to come around and pulled back the Cleaner.

They strangely reported that the Sanity Value Counter showed no reaction…”

The City Lord’s Assistant didn’t know what these meant, so he could only relay all the information to Lu Li.

“It sounds like…” Anna recalled something, these bits of information made her feel as if she had heard of it before.

Walking into it unknowingly; the Sanity Value Counter not being triggered; those with stronger willpower could resist the attraction.

“The Bottomless Abyss,” Lu Li said.

The termination and dire outcomes of the Bottomless Abyss incident were still fresh in his memory: thirty-two Death Investigators, including one Legendary Scout.

Seventeen retired scouts, including one Legendary Scout.

But it was supposed to be somewhere in the Barren Lands, not on the Main Affinity Continent…

Could it just be a coincidence?

“How are those people now?”

“They’ve all come back, except for one Cleaner who was terrified; the others are fine.”

“Take us to see,” Lu Li put on his coat.

There were two secret passageways.

One led from the City Lord’s bedroom to beneath the garden fountain, and the other from the fountain to somewhere outside the city.

When they arrived at the garden, Exorcists and Cleaners dressed alike were gathered together.

The entrance to the passageway at the fountain had been completely excavated, exposed to the outside.

A diminutive figure approached Lu Li and the others, with a frail girl’s voice emanating from within: “Brother.”

“Dorin?

What are you doing here?” Dom was astonished; he had just been about to go back and wake up his sister.

“Brother, I had that dream again…” Dorin’s voice was laced with fear.

“Is it getting closer to you?” Dom’s expression became uneasy.

The bird-beak mask nodded, “It’s looking for me…

It’s very close now…”

Dom suppressed his unease, forcing a smile to say to Lu Li, “Mr.

Lu Li, Miss Anna, may I deal with some private matters first?”

Lu Li quietly glanced at Dorin and then walked over to the entrance of the passageway with Anna.

The Exorcists remaining in Valrend City consisted of part night watchmen and Exorcists, with no scouts—there should have been, but like most of the citizens, they didn’t react in time when the dandelions engulfed them.

Only a handful of night watchmen and Exorcists had managed to avoid disaster.

Still, there were only six Exorcists standing in front of Lu Li, which was already half of the Exorcists that remained in Valrend.

They told Lu Li about what happened in the passageway and the allure the Cleaners felt: “It was like something was calling me to go inside…

I’ve never felt anything like it, it’s indescribable…

like…

like the warm love of a mother.”

Linking the strange to family ties sounded odd but also filled the passageway with an indescribably eerie and abnormal atmosphere.

And those with stronger willpower, such as the Exorcists, could only feel the call without any additional lure.

“My suggestion is to have someone with a strong will re-seal the passageway, guard it after exploring the secret passageway, and prevent citizens from breaking the wall again.”

No one opposed.

They were not investigators with a strong desire to explore, and evacuating the citizens was more important than exploration.

As for knowing whether one’s will is steadfast, it’s quite simple: Exorcists mostly possess this ability.

Or one might simply choose a few people to approach, and if they are not lured by the calls from the depths of the diverging paths, they pass the test.

Lu Li returned to the nearby Dom Siblings and conveyed the arrangements to Dom, who would pass them on to City Lord Valenteel.

The City Lord’s Assistant hesitated several times before speaking, glanced at his sister, and with gritted teeth said, “My sister Dorin might be troubled by some strange occurrence…

can you help her?”

Lu Li didn’t answer, but turned his head to look at Anna.

“I didn’t sense any strange aura on her,” Anna responded indifferently.

“It’s not in reality…

it’s in her dreams,” Dom quickly explained.

“Sister, you tell them.”

Dorin, wearing a Bird Beak Mask for protection, nodded gently and began to speak weakly.

She had developed hypersomnia two months ago—a condition where one is excessively sleepy and involuntarily falls asleep.

Fortunately, before his sister fell ill, Dom had become the City Lord’s Assistant, and his salary was sufficient to afford Dorin’s medical expenses, although they were of little effect.

They, of course, had also sought out an Exorcist, but Dorin’s dreams were mostly disordered and forgotten within minutes of waking, leading to no results.

Dorin had no choice but to follow her psychologist’s advice and rest at home.

The change occurred a few days ago, when Dorin woke up from an afternoon nap, a startling first as she usually could be roused from deep sleep only by calling her name or the sound of bells.

This dream was different from the others; she remembered it clearly as if it had really happened: In the dream, Dorin woke up at home, walked to the window, and saw an inky shadow deeper than darkness itself moving on the distant streets, searching for something.

For some reason, Dorin realized that the shadow was looking for her.

At that moment, as if sensing something, the distant figure turned its head, and Dorin quickly hid from the window, her fear and pounding heart awakening her.

Dorin initially dismissed it as a mere sinister nightmare, after all, everyone has nightmares.

Until she dreamed the same scenario a second time.

As before, Dorin woke up in her bedroom, but feeling uneasy, she got out of bed, went to the window, and saw the shadowy figure was now closer than before on the street.

She hurriedly drew the curtains, climbed back into bed, and desperately tried to wake herself up.

“I was by her side then…

She was pinching her nose, nearly suffocating herself,” Dom said with distress.

This time, nobody considered it just an ordinary nightmare—even though nightmares can be sequential, the sudden onset of hypersomnia in the normally cheerful Dorin was an inexplicably bizarre condition in itself.

Now gaunt and withdrawn, Dorin filled Dom with sorrow, and he continued to take her to various doctors, but this time, he had turned from physicians to Exorcists.

Disappointingly, the results were still nil; the Exorcists couldn’t find the source of Dorin’s nightmares, the Sanity Value Counter was never triggered, and the Homogeneous Item for detecting contaminants had no effect.

This usually meant only two things: it was purely and coherently a nightmare; and the entity troubling Dorin was not a weirdness in the normal sense—not all weirdnesses could be detected.

The siblings both hoped it was the former, merely a stretch of bad dreams.

And just a moment ago, Dorin, due to her hypersomnia, had briefly sunk into a dream—

“I woke up from the dream, subconsciously looked at the window, and then…

and then I saw that dark shadow standing outside the window, staring at me…”

Dorin’s frail body was trembling.

“It has found me.”