Detective Agency of the Bizarre
Chapter 810 - 3. Surging Undercurrent

Chapter 810: 3. Surging Undercurrent

"Surviving for the sake of survival is meaningless."

Lu Li flipped the grilled fish over the fire.

"That’s what I like about you." Friday casually tossed another fish over, shaking the water from her hands before returning to the fire. "You always say such philosophical things."

"Did it move you?"

Lu Li placed three grilled fish aside, picking up the last sea fish he caught, gutting and cleaning it.

"No." Friday warmed her hands by the fire. "Look around, is there a way out?"

The bloody fish entrails were thrown into the dark river, and Lu Li washed the sea fish in the cold river water, dripping as he returned to the fire.

"The dark river."

"Only fish and boats can go upstream, we can’t." Friday took the three grilled fish beside her and placed them over the fire.

The harsh reality remained unchanged: they were trapped in the underground rock layers.

Lu Li skewered the fish, taking the three grilled fish handed over by Friday and placing them together on the fire. Water dripped from the fish tails into the fire, sizzling.

The gray-green fish skin slowly turned the color of food as it baked.

While grilling, Lu Li observed the rushing river along the rocky edge.

The water surged beneath the rock walls as though squeezed from the smooth edges. Such rapid currents couldn’t form from seeping water; there was an upstream.

And Lu Li needed to find a way upstream.

The tuna was the first to be done, though not fully cooked, but Friday wanted it less well-done.

Holding the grilled fish, she dipped it under her cloak’s shadow, and soon there was the sound of chewing.

Ordinary human eating sounds.

"Burp—"

Friday threw the fish bones and sticks into the fire. "I’m full; the rest is yours."

Lu Li quietly waited for them to be fully cooked before taking them off the fire to eat.

The three grilled fish restored much of the exhaustion from his body. After eating, Lu Li began preparing to leave the rock cavern.

"My suggestion is to wait a bit longer." Friday seemed to notice Lu Li’s intentions. "Do you want to dive into the rushing cold dark river with a near-dead body?"

She simply persuaded Lu Li.

The Doomsday Apocalypse enhanced Lu Li’s endurance, but that didn’t mean the injuries were nonexistent.

Lu Li needed to recuperate now.

"I’m on a lucky streak; we won’t starve." Friday said, as if reassuring Lu Li.

This clearly solved the biggest problem of the rock cavern.

Fatigue surged over, and Lu Li went back to rest by his coat.

When he slowly awoke, Lu Li saw Friday with her back to the fire, holding a simple fishing rod made of branches, fishing by the rushing dark river.

Next to her lay similar-sized sea fish, their origin uncertain whether caught or fished.

During his brief wakefulness, Lu Li ate several grilled fish, then went back to sleep.

He constantly felt drowsy, sleeping long enough, but it was difficult to determine if it had been six hours or twelve.

He could only count the times to calculate the passing time.

During the third wake interval, Lu Li checked his wounds and the evil spirit radio. Its internal mechanical parts seemed damaged by water, unable to function properly. At least Lu Li hadn’t heard any sound from it.

The former had already scabbed over.

After eating, Lu Li went back to sleep.

Sleep occupied most of Lu Li’s life in the underground rock layers.

When he awoke the sixth time, Friday was no longer fishing, quietly leaning against the rock wall, flipping through the salvaged book, with dead fish laid beside her.

The dried book had become fluffy and wrinkled, but it didn’t hinder reading.

By the tenth time he woke, Friday seemed tired of the repetitive grilled fish, the food changed to a calf or sheep’s hind leg.

By the fifteenth wake, the food returned to sea fish. However, the rock cavern now had new cookware—a cooking pot.

Lu Li said that mere fish and salt couldn’t make the food tasty. Friday didn’t believe him, and as a result, she didn’t eat any of the cooked fish, instead catching some spices when he awoke the sixteenth time.

By the twentieth waking, the wound scab had already fallen off. Inquiry cast towards Friday, she gestured for Lu Li to take a look.

Unwrapping the bandage from his chest, the ugly new tender flesh clung like a spider, ugly and crawling across his chest.

Lu Li reached out and touched it. Under the skin without the support of chest bones was only emptiness, like a war drum covered with skin.

No matter what, the wound had healed; next, it was time to leave on his own.

"I’m going to take a look underwater." Lu Li told Friday, rewrapping the bandage to protect the wound.

"I’ll stay, ready to fish you out when you’re about to be swept away."

With the answer he wanted, Lu Li began to move his body.

"We’re deep underground where the evil spirits can’t reach, so there’s no need for light," Friday added.

A minute later, Lu Li took off his shoes, sat on the bank, and extended his legs into the icy cold rushing dark river, holding onto the bank and sliding down.

The dark river was shallower than expected, with the water only reaching his chest when his feet touched the bottom. But it was wider, with a large dark space under each side of the rock walls.

The rock cavern was like an island in the dark river.

As he grew accustomed to the breathlessness caused by the cold, Lu Li took a deep breath, his body sinking into the dark river, holding onto the narrow rock wall and moving upstream.

The first attempt, Lu Li got less than five meters before being pushed back by the current.

Climbing back onto the "island," Lu Li sat by the fire to warm up, analyzing the information from his exploration: the rock wall sloped upward, with an incline akin to the streets of Belfast.

If the dark river structure didn’t change further along, and the rock layer was ten meters from the surface, Lu Li could surface before running out of breath. If twenty meters, he could surface before drowning. If thirty meters... that wasn’t much different from hundreds of meters.

His lung capacity and stamina couldn’t hold out that long.

Lu Li didn’t act recklessly. In the subsequent waking intervals, he continued exploring repeatedly, with the farthest reaching about ten meters out, and the most dangerous being a loss of direction. If not for glimpsing the shore’s fire in the darkness, he would have unknowingly followed the current past the island until running out of breath.

Twenty-third waking.

It might be morning above ground, or perhaps the dead of night.

Lu Li simmered a pot of hot meat soup, adding salt, pepper, and a pinch of sugar, placing carrots and broccoli in as the meat neared tenderness, and ladled the soup into an empty can.

"Hope you find the road to the surface today," Friday raised her meat soup-filled can, offering it to Lu Li as if toasting.

Lu Li raised his can, clinking it against Friday’s.

After a bowl of heartwarming meat soup, Lu Li immersed himself into the dark river, retracing the path he had followed over a dozen times, moving upstream.

The rushing river pulled him back, with the biting cold stealing his warmth.

Lu Li moved forward step by step, each step unwavering.

A minute later, Lu Li had advanced more than ten meters, but from this point, the upper and lower rock walls began to converge.

The dark river grew narrower, harder to navigate... and more despairing.

Perhaps not far ahead, the rock walls would close to a narrow gap only a few centimeters wide.