I Forged the Myth of the Ancient Overlords
Chapter 397 - 397 396. Will you bloom too_1

Chapter 397: 396. Will you bloom too?_1 Chapter 397: 396. Will you bloom too?_1 Lu Ban had once read in a novel or seen in a movie that when a city’s crimes require detectives rather than police to combat them, it signifies that the city’s evil had reached a point of uncontrollable frenzy.

The Abandoned Capital was no different.

In this secret room, on the hospital bed, the woman’s body was as resplendent as a blooming flower.

Lu Ban didn’t cast his gaze on the woman right away but looked around the dark room.

The shelves were lined with various drugs. Lu Ban randomly picked up a bottle and could see it must be a controlled medication with addictive components that could greatly suppress pain. He turned to another bottle, an anti-inflammatory drug that caused severe damage to the body, commonly used to treat some fatal wounds.

Besides, there were several beautifully packaged bottles of wine, suggesting he sometimes surreptitiously drank here.

Clearly, Doctor Howes used this dark room for “other” work.

“Is this the real crime scene?”

Shia leaned closer, her nose twitching as if trying to pick up a special scent in the air.

“The hospital bed is in shambles; it looks like this woman suffered a great deal of torment.”

Cui Siter glanced at the condition of the body and the chaotic, bloodstained bed.

“This is also quite common. The Gang sometimes needs special patients taken care of, so they’ll find doctors to handle it privately since hospitals are too crowded and information might leak.”

If Doctor Howes could do those things for Lady Martina, then dealing with issues for the Gang was no big deal.

“Was it the doctor who killed her?”

Shia quietly looked at the deceased woman, Glass Flower blossoming from within her body, difficult to say if it was more beautiful or hideous than the flowers blooming on Doctor Howes’s body.

She noticed some traces of paint or coating on the woman’s body, remnants on her fingers and hem of her dress, as if she had been to a place where these substances were produced.

“Is there a scent of perfume?”

Seeing this, Cui Siter turned to Lu Ban.

“No, at least not the kind on Doctor Howes.”

Lu Ban shook his head and continued to scrutinize the internal organs.

He saw some coffee-colored sediment in the woman’s stomach, along with transparent alcohol and a few pitiable-looking vegetables.

“She didn’t eat much before she died, just bread, wine, and vegetable soup.”

“She was a Call Girl, active on Black Street, relying on selling their bodies for money. Sometimes they need medical attention due to a client’s violence or other reasons. It seems she was undergoing treatment when Doctor Howes died.”

Cui Siter deduced.

“I don’t think it was Doctor Howes who killed her or the other way around. This is certainly not something a human could do.”

“But why would someone kill two people here and then move Doctor Howes’s body to the first floor?”

Lu Ban was puzzled.

If it was a monster attack, a random act of violence, then the monster surely had no Sanity and would have killed these two people on the spot and fled, not bothering to manage the scene.

And if it were a human with Extraordinary Powers, why move Doctor Howes’s body to the first floor for discovery?

Because moving a body must have a purpose, either to hide or to mislead. The Call Girl’s body had been left here for two or three days; even if the murderer had intended to hide this body initially, by now they should’ve found time to dispose of it instead of leaving it for Lu Ban to find.

Very contradictory.

“Is there a possibility that their deaths were not due to a monster attack, but some kind of illness or curse? The woman fell sick first, and during the doctor’s treatment, the disease erupted and infected him. He went to the first floor seeking help, then died from the disease?”

Shia thought of the Demonic Beasts in the Black Forest. When the Demonic Tide came, some special Demonic Beasts would dwell within a person’s body, spreading like a disease, eventually breaking out and like a flower dispersing pollen, bringing death.

“If that’s the case, would we not be…”

Lu Ban said this while exchanging glances with the other two people.

“There shouldn’t be any problem, I haven’t started to sprout yet.”

Lu Ban continued, taking a deep breath of the dry air in the darkroom.

“Besides, if the ‘Glass Flower’ really were contagious, the people at the funeral parlor would have already blossomed. The fact that we’re still standing here means, at the very least, that the corpses resembling the ‘Glass Flower’ are not the source of contagion.”

“…You make a lot of sense.”

Cui Siter was relieved.

Lu Ban might seem careless, but he was actually quite shrewd.

“Even if one were to blossom, I think it’s not much of a problem. It’s a nice addition to the decoration.”

Lu Ban added another comment.

Cui Siter felt that he should take back his previous judgment of Lu Ban.

“So this person is indeed the one who died in the information obtained through the ‘Madman’s Knowledge’, and there’s a gang involved?”

Shia searched the room, seeming to find some food on the table. She brought her nose close to a box of biscuits that had been there for days; the box was opened, and the biscuits were damp with moisture.

The Mage girl picked up a biscuit, hesitating for a moment.

Dong—

The sudden sound of a clock chiming from nowhere startled Shia, and in her hurried confusion, she stuffed the biscuit into her mouth to hide it.

“Serial killings are actually simpler than individual cases, because you can profile the criminal through the characteristics shared between the different cases, but these two are too close together…”

Cui Siter noticed the change in Shia’s expression, puzzled, but seeing that she had no particular reaction, he continued talking.

“The paint and coatings from the factory might be a breakthrough. It’s one thing for Doctor Howes to have come into contact with them, but this woman as well—the source of this paint should be…”

As he murmured to himself, he suddenly heard a certain sound.

The sound was slow, but it was definitely separate from the silence of the space.

And this sound, it seemed to be coming from… inside the room.

The dimly lit room, barely illuminated by the light of a kerosene lamp, suddenly took on an eerie atmosphere.

Cui Siter could feel that the light around him had dimmed slightly, as if something had swallowed it up.

A trepidation, like that of prey targeted by a hunter, enveloped him.

Cui Siter reached for his holster, ready to draw his revolver for self-defense.

Just at that moment, a head popped out at the entrance of the darkroom.

“What are you guys… oh, my God!”

The stationed policeman came to check and caught sight of the corpse in the center of the darkroom.

Cui Siter felt that the oppressive sensation suddenly disappeared as if it had never existed.

He clenched his fist, then relaxed it, his palm now sweaty.

If he had remained in that state just a few seconds longer, he might have been dead, that was the certainty he held.

“Officers, please believe us, we’ve only just discovered this.”

On the other side, Lu Ban skillfully raised his hands and crouched down with his head in his arms.