Chapter 92: 90. Mysterious Investigator (Two-in-One)

90. Mysterious Investigator (Two-in-One)

Drake Wu, a mixed-race descendant of New Yorkers and Shenzhou people, also supposedly possesses the genes of the Yomok people from the Winter Peninsula according to genetic testing. However, genetic testing is not exactly reliable; even if the same sample is split into two and sent to different testing agencies, the results are not necessarily the same. This is just as unreliable as his parents, whom he has never known from birth to this day.

Perhaps it is precisely this passion and obsession with his own origins and lineage that made him so infatuated with exploration and tracing things back to their roots, which also led him to become a Private Detective.

Drake had always wanted to visit the Shenzhou Region. Although most of the data from genetic testing is unreliable, the only two consistent results provided by the testing agencies were that he truly possesses the bloodlines of both a New Yorker and a Shenzhou person, and his appearance does indeed have many typical Eastern features, which made him yearn for the Shenzhou Region, where the Eastern population is most concentrated.

Unfortunately, two years ago, his profession was not legal in the Shenzhou Region. If he had actually gone there, he might not have starved to death, but he would definitely have been eating prison food.

Drake likes his profession very much; at the very least, it can take precedence over his idea of "falling leaves returning to their roots."

However, the opportunity has now arrived. Ever since that terrifying incident two years ago that shocked the world was made public globally, new reforms and systems have been implemented and promoted worldwide, and a profession similar to a detective—the Mysterious Investigator—has emerged as the times require.

A Mysterious Investigator is essentially a type of detective profession, only the primary subjects of investigation for this career are not people, but rather Mysterious Incidents hidden beneath the normal human world. The subjects do not have to be human, and even if they are human, they are by no means normal people.

This profession inevitably deals with death; it is a unicycle ride on a tightrope. One moment of carelessness means failure, and failure means total destruction.

No matter how mature and sexy those who love the detective profession appear on the outside, deep in their bones they hide a strong desire for exploration and adventure. Daily tasks like catching cheating spouses or acting as paparazzi are boring and dull to them; only those cases that are baffling and truly thorny make them feel the meaning of being alive.

Perhaps for this reason, Drake transferred his career to that of a Mysterious Investigator. After all, what could be more stimulating than challenging death?

It is not easy to enter this profession, and engaging in it requires undergoing a fairly difficult assessment.

Benefiting from his experience as a Private Detective and the fact that he regularly takes good care of his body, Drake became one of the first batch of licensed Mysterious Investigators directly recognized by the World Government in the world with almost no obstacles.

After becoming a Mysterious Investigator, Drake did not immediately engage in his professional work, but instead tidied up all his worldly affairs in the New York area. He spent a full year preparing before finally taking on his first Mysterious Investigator case, heading to the homeland of his bloodline, the Shenzhou Region.

He stood on the deck, gazing at the coastal port he was about to land at, his mood inexplicably excited and agitated. At this very moment, the oppression of the dark clouds, the mournful cries of the seabirds, and the angry waves of the black sea seemed like nothing at all, unable to overcome the joy in his heart.

Forty minutes later, the ship docked. Drake brought his simple luggage and disembarked. When his footsteps landed on the port filled with the smell of the sea, he felt a sense of groundedness as if his soul had landed, and the blood in his body was cheering for this land.

"Shenzhou, I have finally returned." Drake's eyes grew slightly hot.

Although he had many emotions and intended to live on this land for a long time in the future, Drake did not forget the purpose of his trip.

When Drake first went to the Investigation Union in Fallen Angel City in the New York area to pick up a mission a year and a half after obtaining his Mysterious Investigator license, his professional rank was still at the lowest F-Class, and the available field missions were extremely few; at the very least, there were only a handful of missions available for the Shenzhou Region.

He had long been left far behind by the agents of his cohort at the time; he couldn't even see the taillights of those guys.

Drake did not care about this; the level of his rank did not affect his idea of going to the Shenzhou Region or his interest in this profession.

The missions related to traveling to the Shenzhou Region at that time were as follows:

Mission One: Recently, multiple missing persons cases have appeared on the streets of Modu in the Shenzhou Region. Most of the missing persons are criminals. They always disappear strangely after entering places that surveillance cannot cover, and light red unknown mucus is often left at the scene of the disappearance. Please go to support the local organization's investigation team and help collect useful clues.

Mission Two: A mysterious phenomenon has appeared at Liuhua Port in the Shenzhou Region. Survivors have stated that they accidentally heard the sea calling their names. Influenced by some kind of summons, they walked into the sea either actively or passively. According to incomplete statistics, twenty-three people have disappeared after entering the sea, thirteen have drowned, and only three have survived. Please go to investigate the cause of the mysterious phenomenon.

After seeing these two F-Class Investigator missions, both of which possessed a certain degree of difficulty and danger, Drake only thought for a little while before accepting "Mission Two."

For some reason, Drake felt that the danger coefficient of Mission One seemed greater, especially the light red unknown mucus left at the scene of the missing persons, which could always provoke his detective intuition.

He remembered that the Xuanmi Group, the Abnormal affairs response organization in the Shenzhou Region, also had many public investigation findings from the Collapse Night in Cuizhu City two years ago. One of the findings in the underground ruins was consistent with the "light red unknown mucus" mentioned in Mission One.

In this way, making the worst-case assumption, the "owner" of that mucus might be the culprit who destroyed Cuizhu City back then.

Although Drake admitted that he loved adventure and exploration, this did not mean he would completely ignore his own life and death for it.

Besides, he had only just officially become a Mysterious Investigator; how could he bear to die easily without having even finished a few cases?

Choosing one out of two and eliminating one, the remaining one was his answer.

Drake took a ship directly to Liuhua Port in the Shenzhou Region and arrived in this city, which does not have a very long history.

This city did not have an Investigation Union established, and the travel expenses for this F-Class mission were entirely self-funded, with reimbursement determined by the results of the case resolution. Therefore, as a poor detective who didn't have much money to begin with, he could only stay in a cheap local inn.

The mission was for a period of 15 days. From the moment he stepped onto the land of Liuhua Port and completed the mission handover with the contact person, his mission time entered a countdown. Although Drake wanted to race against time, he also knew that this matter could not be rushed, and he had to treat it seriously.

First, he began to study the current investigation progress data provided by the contact person. After two days and two nights of sorting, Drake finally identified several major commonalities among those missing persons and victims. They had places they had both been to, people they both knew, and a certain special thing they had both done... In order to arrive at the correct commonality for this case, he now had to conduct a check one by one.

Drake also wanted to investigate this case together with other teammates; after all, if there were more people, it would be easier to complete the screening work.

But unfortunately, Drake discovered that apart from himself, no one else had taken this case.

Although he could understand that the Investigation Union system was still in its initial stage and the number of Mysterious Investigators recruited from the civilian population was not large, even the densely populated Shenzhou Region did not actually have more Mysterious Investigators than other regions. Having more people instead became an advantage for the Shenzhou Investigation Union to select the best from the best.

The mission contact person indicated that if he was willing to wait another two days, he could join a Xuanmi Group team that happened to be coming to this city for a mission.

Drake could not wait, so he had to do it himself first.

Passing through a long, narrow Tunnel, he first went to Jiacuo Temple, which was the temple that the vast majority of the victims in this case had visited. But after investigating there, apart from bringing back a sachet worth 998, he did not discover any abnormalities.

By the way, the monks in that temple were not pure; it is estimated that a few money-grubbing guys with impure intentions had mixed in. The things they sold were truly a rip-off...

Secondly, Drake found the people that the victims had almost all met, but he also gained nothing. Some of them indeed knew the person and might have been friends, while others just happened to appear in the same space-time by coincidence.

Helpless, Drake could only go to test the things that the victims had all done, yet the result was equally disappointing to him.

Finally, he reached a conclusion with a solemn expression: the commonalities he had found were all wrong.

Drake grabbed his hair, feeling slightly irritable. The case investigation had reached a rather difficult moment—the dilemma where he had basically checked everything that could be checked, yet still had no clue and did not know where to start.

"What exactly did I overlook?" Drake pondered. He returned to his inn room and once again re-examined the clues he had analyzed, attempting to find his own loopholes.

Perhaps it was a case of "thinking by day and dreaming by night"; Drake had recently become somewhat obsessed and crazed with investigating the case, to the point where he didn't even know how cold and deathly his current appearance was. It was only when he entered a dream that he dreamed of a voice calling to him in the dream.

Immediately following this, Drake had the idea of wanting to find the source of the voice in the dream, so he ran barefoot all the way, chasing after the voice that seemed to be seducing his soul and spirit.

Running and chasing all the way, he finally arrived at the beach of Liuhua Port.

Listening to the sound of the night waves rolling, Drake faintly heard that there really seemed to be a human voice interspersed in the sound of the waves. Looking at the black sea where water and sky merged into one, Drake became somewhat lost. In the hazy night, he walked off the beach, step by step toward the rolling waves of the sea.

"The waves are very big right now; are you sure you still want to go into the sea?" Just as Drake was in a daze, his consciousness was suddenly awakened by a cheerful voice.

The moment his normal consciousness returned and revived, Drake suddenly discovered that he hadn't been dreaming at all. He had truly walked barefoot all the way from the inn to the beach, not even knowing that his feet had been cut open. It was only now that he felt the intense pain; the ruptured wounds on the soles of his feet had even mixed with mud and sand, making it even more uncomfortable and painful.

Drake fell to the ground all at once and hurriedly cleaned the sand off the soles of his feet.

While feeling lingering fear for his experience, Drake looked cautiously at the young man who had appeared by the beach in the middle of the night and asked, "Who are you, and what are you doing here?"

"My name is Li Nuowei. I'm watching the sea, and I'm also waiting for you," the young man said with a smile.

For some reason, Drake felt panicked the moment he saw the young man's eyes. That kind of abnormally dilated pupil was something he had only often seen on the faces of patients in a Mental Hospital. When he heard the young man say he was waiting for him, Drake became even more unsettled. "Waiting for me? Do you know who I am?"

"Your name is Drake Wu, a dirt-poor Private Detective, only you just happened to get an 'official position' recently, so you wanted to come out and explore a bit." Li Nuowei acted as if he hadn't noticed the change in Drake's eyes and was still grilling meat naturally.

Drake said in a deep voice, "But I don't know you. How do you know about me?"

Li Nuowei laughed, "You told me yourself."

Drake was taken aback, looking at the young man before him who was at most eighteen or twenty years old; he carefully recalled his own past, yet he still had absolutely no impression of the other party, having never had any contact with him at all.

Seeing Drake reveal a cautious expression, Li Nuowei tried his best to put on a sincere face and said with some profound meaning: "My past is your future." Having said that, he put on his electric scooter helmet and left in a very leisurely manner.

Since Li Nuowei would appear here and even say things similar to chuunibyou remarks, Drake felt it necessary to re-understand and get to know him; perhaps the other party knew the truth about some mysterious events.

However, Li Nuowei was unwilling to say more, nor did he give him the opportunity to ask.

After Drake stumbled out of the beach, he only saw the back of Li Nuowei riding away on his electric scooter.

Seeing that he could not immediately catch up to Li Nuowei, Drake could only sit properly on the stone steps to quietly wait for the arrival of sunrise, while incidentally thinking about and recalling his own behavior and actions over these past few days.

After recovering for a while, Drake held the plastic bag between his legs and limped back into the inn, then he cleared a large portion of space and wrote everything he could think of regarding his actions over these past few days on the blackboard, then compared them with the other victims to see if he had any commonalities similar to the victims.

However, after Drake circled those commonalities according to his understanding, he felt even more like vomiting.

Drake frantically scratched his hair, his mind gathering a storm, his gaze sweeping over the various documents; when his eyes swept across the map, Drake stopped, which also made him suddenly realize an important matter: "Could it be that it is not about looking at where they have been, but looking at what they all missed and ignored?"

Subsequently, after he continuously compared the survival route records and maps of those missing persons and survivors, Drake finally figured out the core key.

"Tunnel! It's the Tunnel!"