Chapter 1037: Chance Encounter

In the snowy weather, the smell of horse manure became more pungent. The street blocks in Nuo Er Street where lower-middle-class civilians lived had a security and hygiene condition that was at the same level. When Xia De turned into this street block, the winter streetscape he saw near Regent Park disappeared immediately. It felt like a mud pit in a winter sewer, but this was the current situation of the lives of ordinary civilians in the city.

The houses on Nuo Er Street were close together, leaning against each other tightly. The pipes on the peeling walls were also entangled like long snakes. The population density here was exceptionally high. On Wednesday during the day, even though most of the men had gone out to work, the children running around, or the women carrying young children, leading the second child, and following the eldest child, still made this place full of the breath of life.

Generally speaking, the best place to inquire about something is a nearby tavern. But Xia De still considered the possibility that this was a trap set by MI6, so he did not make direct inquiries. Instead, he circled around Noer Street to familiarize himself with the local terrain and the layout of the alley intersections.

At 10:20 in the morning, Xia De was walking on the street when his wallet suddenly fell into a snow pile on the ground. He picked up the wallet immediately, picked up the few coins scattered on the snow and put them back into the wallet, then continued to walk forward, and turned into a nameless garbage alley not far away.

And after Xia De entered that alley, two young men squatting on the side of the street, wearing gray flat caps and looking like they hadn't washed their faces for several days, looked at each other and followed into the alley with a smile.

Even though the heavy snow covered the filth in the alley, the fermented garbage still made the smell here exceptionally unpleasant. The steam pipes clinging to the edge of the low wall were puffing out white steam with a hiss~, blowing on the wanted posters on the wall that only had half left. Those warm and humid water vapors combined with the stench in the alley, making even the exposed skin feel uncomfortable.

The two young men walked for dozens of steps in the alley, but didn't see Xia De who had just walked in. They looked at each other and wanted to continue forward, when Xia De, holding a revolver, walked out from behind a pile of garbage not far ahead.

The alley was filled with sunlight. The sunlight was not enough to melt the snow, but at least it allowed the two to see the gun in Xia De's hand:

"I just want to ask a few questions."

Xia De said, and then added:

"Whoever dares to leave, I will shoot them dead."

Actually, he certainly wouldn't fire.

The two young men subconsciously raised their hands:

"Sir, please ask."

Idle young men were not uncommon in this era. If such people didn't enter factories to manufacture wealth for factory owners with their flesh and blood, they would likely join local social groups with vitality.

Xia De needed them:

"Do you live nearby?"

"Yes."

The slightly taller young man said, desperately wanting to lean behind his companion:

"We have lived nearby since we were young."

"You don't have to be afraid of me. I am actually a private detective, yes, the kind with a gun license. I am looking for a woman."

Xia De examined the two young men he was pointing at one by one. Their physical expressions and expressions were not faked. These were indeed people living nearby:

"Age is about thirty-something, about the same height as you."

He pointed to the slightly shorter man:

"Flaxen hair, curly hair, no glasses, probably moved here between 1851 and 1853."

The reason why he set the time within two years was because he didn't believe that the other party had returned to To Bei Si Ke for many years without the Military Intelligence Agency discovering it:

"She has a look that is not particularly typical of Ka Sen Li Ke people. That woman had lived in Ka Sen Li Ke for a period of time, but she was also very familiar with To Bei Si Ke language."

The Ka Sen Li Ke royal family wouldn't hire a maid with a look that was obviously a Northerner.

"She once wore a brown buttoned ladies' coat, and that piece of clothing didn't look particularly old."

This was the dress of the maid when Princess Ma Ge Li Te saw the suspected maid figure.

The tall young man and the short young man looked at each other, and finally the tall young man spoke:

"What you said, it could be Mrs. La Ge Sen, Miss Bu Lang, Mrs. Wu De, or Ms. Lai Na."

He said four names in one breath, and then hesitated to provide two more names.

There were too many residents here after all. Even though the neighbor relationship in this era was closer than in the Outsider's era, Xia De couldn't expect to get the answer from two idle social youths at once.

But the six names and information he got were also clues. Xia De planned to verify them one by one before lunch. If he didn't find anything, he would go to Miss Jia Lin Na's manor for lunch.

The first one he found was Mrs. La Ge Sen. Although she was only thirty years old this year, she was already the mother of five children.

Mr. La Ge Sen was a miner in the mine in the west of the city and was away from home all year round. When Xia De saw Mrs. La Ge Sen, she was helping others wash clothes. She thought Xia De was also a neighbor who came to ask for laundry, and while rocking the cradle of her young child next to the water basin, she enthusiastically asked Xia De if he was a neighbor living nearby.

This lady was not Xia De's target.

The second one Xia De found was Ms. Lai Na. This lady once had a very unfortunate marriage. After divorce, she lived nearby with her female friend. The two opened an accounting firm on this street together, specifically helping the poor living nearby calculate taxes, or helping those small shop owners handle annual accounts.

Of course, this lady was not Xia De's target either.

The third one Xia De planned to find was Miss Be La Bu Lang, who rented on the second floor of Bu Lang Bookstore at No. 15 Nuo Er Street. The owner of the bookstore was her uncle, old Mr. Bu Lang, and although this lady was unmarried, she was already engaged, and maybe she would move out of this street soon.

It was not strange that there was a bookstore in a street block where lower-middle-class poor people lived on Nuo Er Street. Detective Sparrow's map marked this old bookstore, and by using a special password, one could buy illegally assembled firearms from the owner of the old bookstore, Mr. Bu Lang.

Detective Sparrow's map only marked the firearms black market. After all, it was normal for a private detective to know such a place. But Xia De, who stepped into the bookstore, guessed that maybe what was sold here was not just firearms.

The second-hand bookstore was densely packed with shelves, and the counter was at the door, ensuring that no one would steal any books. It was warm inside the shop, but maybe because it was not ventilated often in winter, there was a smell of paper decay between the shelves.

That Miss Be La Bu Lang was not in the bookstore at this time, and it was the gray-haired Mr. Bu Lang who was watching the shop himself. But Xia De had already inquired when buying a scarf at the hat shop next door just now. Miss Bu Lang just went out to take the books borrowed by others, and would be back in twenty minutes at most, so he planned to wait in the old bookstore for a while.

Just like he bought a scarf that looked quite good, he felt that maybe he could buy some books from the old bookstore to fill his bookshelf.

When Xia De entered the door, Mr. Bu Lang looked at his attire and didn't ask, letting him wander in the bookstore. Xia De shuttled between the shelves, his eyes scanning the book spines, occasionally pulling out a book to check.

He soon took a fancy to "Secrets of To Bei Si Ke," which was an illegally printed book about urban legends of To Bei Si Ke. As a result, he opened it and found that it was indeed illegally printed content, but it had nothing to do with the book cover, it was that kind of illegal color book.

This made Xia De once think that there were other commercial functions here besides selling firearms. Fortunately, after pulling out several other books, the content inside was very normal. It seemed that it was just his bad luck to take the wrong book just now.

Besides Xia De, there were other customers in the old bookstore. Xia De continued to walk inside along the aisle between the shelves, and his heart thought about preparing Year-End Festival gifts for his friends again.

Turning the corner of the bookshelf, he looked up and actually saw a familiar person. Xia De couldn't even believe for a moment that he met Sir Lei Jin Si Pu Li Xia here.

This middle-aged noble from the Southern Kingdom, even indoors, still wore a hat and leather gloves, flipping through an old book with yellowed pages between the shelves.

He heard footsteps, looked up, and also saw Xia De:

"Mr. Han Mi Er Dun?"

The two had established a good relationship at the reading salon and when Princess Ma Ge Li Te visited the Academy. Meeting unexpectedly in the city at this time, they exchanged pleasantries.

Xia De was of course here for the detective mission, while Sir Pu Li Xia claimed that he liked to buy books in this kind of old bookstore.

Xia De certainly hadn't seen the Miss Be La Bu Lang he was looking for, after all, he was just a distant relative of the royal family, so Xia De didn't worry that the other party's purpose for coming here was the same as his. And the unexpected meeting today made him interested in talking to the Sir:

"Sir, do you like books very much?"

"Of course, in my home in Wei Lun Dai Er, I even specifically broke through the wall between the guest room and the study to build a very large library for myself."

Sir Pu Li Xia introduced with a smile, and then looked at the old books one by one around him:

"Knowledge is truly fascinating. Even if it is a very boring book, as long as you hold it in your hand and open the first page, you will definitely be able to find fun."

"Yes, I also like reading very much. Reading, although it can't tell me how to make money, at least it can remind me how to avoid being cheated of my savings."

Compared to the Sir's "sublime," Xia De's content was relatively vulgar, but the Sir still nodded with a smile:

"It is indeed like this, so I have always advocated that people read more books. Knowledge is power, and wisdom is wealth. Only by reading more books can one change one's destiny."

He said with great emotion:

"Knight, I have heard what you said at the Lake View Manor banquet, those views on popularizing education and improving population quality, I also agree very much. I really hope more people can know this truth. After all, as humans, isn't our greatest advantage this?"

He pointed to his head, then left Xia De with the book in his hand.

"Looking at it this way, this is a pretty good person."

Xia De muttered in his heart, but he didn't forget the things about the Sir's unknown past that the demon had once said.

"At least not someone like Da Ke Ni Si... Library retrieval."

With "the book Lei Jin Si Pu Li Xia just flipped through" as the retrieval object, three books flew into Xia De's hands. One was on the bookshelf next to him, and the other two flew from a slightly further position.

The titles of the three books were the essay collection "To Bei Si Ke's Moon," an astronomy notebook with technical terms Xia De didn't understand, and "To Bei Si Ke Book Catalog" which looked like an auction house brochure.

"Is he also looking for the yellow moon that the bard wants?"

Xia De muttered, flipping through the three books casually, and then found that some pages in all three books had been torn off.

It was a normal phenomenon for books in this kind of old bookstore to have missing pages, but after Xia De checked, he found that the tearing marks of the missing pages were quite new, and it could even be said that it happened within a few minutes:

"This... is not very good, right?"

Xia De frowned and looked in the direction where Sir Pu Li Xia left:

"Although everyone has some quirks, but..."

He put the three books back, trying to give Lei Jin Si Pu Li Xia a new image in his heart:

"Still have to continue to investigate, humans, after all, are still too complicated." ===== CHAPTER 1038 =====