After making arrangements for his funeral, the detective on the bed closed his eyes. Xia De pursed his lips and waited for a while, then freed his hand and checked his breath and pulse.
"Dead?"
He couldn't believe that the other party died so easily, and it really only took about ten minutes.
Before he could react, a black light suddenly flashed across the corpse's face. Xia De's heart tightened for no reason, and extreme fear instantly overwhelmed him.
But when he came to his senses, the black light dissipated into the air and disappeared.
As the light disappeared from the corpse, the skinny body, which looked like it had starved to death, gradually became fuller at a speed visible to the naked eye, as if someone was inflating the inside of the corpse until it turned into a normal corpse.
"How can this be considered normal? What is going on now?"
In the silence of the room, Shade looked around with some uneasiness. The uneasiness was not because he was alone with the corpse, but because he was in a strange environment. This world was not the same as before, and he had seen a corner of the truth of the mysterious and dangerous world.
The woman's voice in his mind sounded again, as if to remind Xia De that there was no "person" here:
You came into contact with 'Whisper'.
"What contact? What whisper? Can you tell me in detail?"
But the voice still did not give an answer.
The whisper is one of the "four mysterious elements" just mentioned by the detective. Obviously, the so-called relics and whispers are the truth that led to his death.
Although the depressing and unknown truth made Xia De overwhelmed, he was surprisingly not too frightened when he looked at the corpse on the bed.
"It would be great if this is all a joke."
At this moment, he hoped that this was acting, but rationally he knew that it couldn't be acting.
He stood by the bed in silence for a while, then walked around the four-poster bed to the window as quietly as possible, and carefully and calmly pulled open the heavy curtains. Immediately, the faint morning sunlight shone in through the gray fog on the street and the window glass.
This light seemed to temporarily dispel the uneasiness in my heart.
"It's morning?"
Because of the heavy fabric curtains, he thought it was night.
Bang bang bang~
The knock on the door suddenly sounded at this time, which startled Shade. He subconsciously let go of the curtain, but immediately held it and pulled it open completely. Squinting his eyes, he looked out the window. Outside this window was the street. He had no time to look at the strange scenery of the steam age in the fog. He first looked down to make sure that the person knocking on the door was a corpse carrier. He could see the carriage carrying the corpse, and then he turned to open the door.
"Because I know the exact time of my death, the corpse carrier I contacted can arrive so accurately."
He said in his mind and pushed open the bedroom door. Outside was the living room, which also had gas pipes that looked like they were from the steam era climbing up the wall, hand-polished solid wood furniture, and various piles of letters, books, and documents scattered everywhere.
The small blackboard hanging on the wall and the very formal coffee table and fabric sofa combination also resemble the style of a detective agency.
The curtains in the living room were not drawn, allowing the dim morning light from the fog to filter in, slanting onto the floor in front of Shad's feet.
In the light, the floating dust was floating quietly, like strange tiny creatures swimming. This sense of reality made Xia De feel a little creepy.
Opening the cold bolt and security chain of the door, there is a dark spiral staircase directly opposite, and there is another door next to it, which means that there are two residences on this floor, a bit like the apartment building in Sherlock Holmes novels.
Without finding a light, he could only spiral down the dark and oppressive staircase, his heart trembling wildly with every step. In the dark environment, Xia De, whose mind was too divergent, felt that there was something terrifying watching him.
From the second floor to the first floor, the stairs lead directly to the foyer. On one side of the foyer, the passage connecting to the first floor is completely blocked by wooden boards, as if it were a sealed coffin, leaving only the foyer available on the entire first floor.
This scene made the already nervous strangers even more confused:
"Why is the first floor sealed off? What's going on here?"
He passed by the shoe cabinet, picked up the fallen umbrella, and glanced at the gas lamp on the wall above the shoe cabinet. After carefully turning it on, the light made him feel calm.
He took a deep breath and opened the door.
The silent old man in a black coat stood at the door, with a logo of overlapping leaves on his chest, and behind him was the gloomy sky and choking fog. The old man looked up at Xia De and said in a low voice like leaves scraping against the wet and cold ground:
"Shad Hamilton?"
The language he used was the same as the dead detective, both of which were so-called Delarion languages.
"Yes."
Xia De nodded somewhat stiffly, motioning the seemingly numb old man to follow him upstairs.
So the old man called out to the depressed middle-aged man who was soothing the horse behind him. The latter had a gloomy face, just like the current weather.
The three of them walked up the stairs together. Xia De didn't know what to say, so he led them silently to the bedroom on the second floor with the number "1".
Almost no one spoke during the whole process. The old and middle-aged men could smell the smell of a corpse. They first put on gloves and confirmed that the detective's body on the bed was really dead. Then they handed Shad a document for him to sign.
It was a document confirming that the body had been handed over to the City Public Cemetery Administration for handling, and below it were two official seals from the City Public Cemetery Administration and the City Funeral Committee. At the bottom was a prayer for the deceased, and the translated meaning made the living Shade very uncomfortable.
While the old man and the middle-aged man were checking the condition of the body, Xia De sat at the desk in the bedroom and picked up the cold pen.
His mind was a little confused now, but he also realized that he could understand what he heard and read, but he couldn't write. Fortunately, the knowledge he just received not only gave him the ability to speak, but also the ability to write. He translated his name into the "Dlarion language, the common language of the human north", which sounded similar, and he planned to sign his name.
There was nothing noteworthy on the cold pages, probably just confirmation of the transfer of the body and that the money entrusted for the funeral had been paid.
"But judging from the signature of the committee secretariat on the document, the names of this world are very similar to those of the West in the previous life. They are divided into three parts, and the middle name must be added to official documents. The first name is 'Shad', and the last name can follow 'Hamilton', but the middle name..."
The confused and uneasy strangers did not know whether the deceased Mr. Hamilton had given the original owner of the body a middle name. But now was not the time to search the room, and they had to come up with a name immediately to deal with it temporarily.
Suellen.
The whispering voice sounded again in his mind, and the whisper almost made Shade jump. The voice gave a word, which existed in both the ancient language used by the woman and the common language of the Northern Kingdom used by the detective, and its meaning was the silver moon.
"I can use this as my middle name, but you have to explain it."
Xia De tried to communicate again, feeling extremely nervous, and the woman's whispering voice really rang out:
This is fate, stranger, the silver moon is your destiny. When you gather the four elements, push open the door to the extraordinary, and see this terrifying world, the meaning will naturally appear.
Frowning, Xia De suppressed his inner panic, thought for a moment, and signed his name forcefully:
Shade Suellen Hamilton.
The corpse carrier did not ask Xia De to provide a death certificate or a death report, nor did he intend to notify the police to perform an autopsy. It was as if the death of the detective was as common as the departure of a stray dog on the street.
After getting the "Permission to Transfer the Body" from Shad, they gave him a receipt with the location of the grave, and then silently moved the body of Mr. Hamilton, who was in his pajamas.
Xia De sent them to the door downstairs, but he did not go out himself. He watched the body being placed in the narrow coffin in the carriage, which was covered with brown cloth that seemed to be stained with blood.
The middle-aged man drove the carriage, carrying the coffin and the old man, deep into the thick fog at the far end of the street.
"Well, bye, Mr. Sparrow Hamilton."
Thinking silently in his heart, Xia De closed the door and stood in the dim hallway light for a while before going up the stairs that frightened him. The steps of the stranger were a little heavy, but there was no one around, and there was an inexplicable sense of relief in the tension:
"It was simpler than I thought. They didn't ask about the cause of Mr. Hamilton's death, and they didn't even care if I was really Shad Hamilton. They didn't even ask for a tip for moving the body... Detective Hamilton really had everything taken care of."
The body left here with many secrets, leaving countless mysteries for Shad, a despicable outsider who occupied someone else's body. He actually still had many questions that he wanted to ask Mr. Hamilton, and countless questions waiting to be answered.
But the dead cannot be resurrected, he must accept the fact of the other person's death and try to gain a foothold in this world that seems abnormal.
The only good news was that the house on the second floor that had previously belonged to Mr. Sparrow Hamilton now belonged to Shad, and he suddenly became a homeowner in this strange world that resembled the Victorian era in the mid-nineteenth century.
The first floor was sealed with wooden boards, the next door "room 2" on the second floor was locked from the outside, and the stairs leading to the third floor were completely broken. Therefore, Shade was the only one left in this empty house.
He returned to room number "1" on the second floor and carefully checked every corner of the lighted study, living room, bathroom and bedroom. After confirming that there was really no one in the shadows, he breathed a sigh of relief, sat on the sofa in the living room, and tilted his head to look at the morning mist outside the window with a slight sense of relief.
Xia De finally had time to sort out the current situation:
"I traveled through time and inherited a detective agency. The original owner of this body might have a brain problem, so he was trained by the previous detective to help him complete a seemingly simple task after his death... Detective Sparrow Hamilton has a secret. There are mysterious powers in this world. The death of the detective and the voice in my head have proved this. What I need is to gather the four elements. The death of the detective has brought me into contact with 'Whisper'..."
He rubbed his face, although he was worried, but the current situation was at least not bad. Although Mr. Sparrow Hamilton died suddenly, at least Shade had a foothold in the new world.
This is enough to sustain him, to explore the secrets of this world, and perhaps to find a way back home.
Xia De is not a person who goes along with his life, but he is not a person who complains about everything. It is unfortunate that he left his hometown and came here inexplicably. All he can do for the time being is to accept it, live well here, and try to live better.
"By the way, let's go and see this extraordinary world, the mystery of the steam age, those secret rituals and spells... How can we be content with being ordinary?"
Xia De sighed quietly, and the woman's laughter sounded in his mind, as comfortable as the breeze blowing through the lavender fields.