Chapter 169: The Three in the Rainy Night

The light rain that had been falling since the afternoon continued without pause, and by evening it still had not let up—in fact, it showed signs of growing heavier. Xia De had been hoping the rain would stop before their nighttime operation, but by the time Doctor Shi Nai De and Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha arrived at the door, the rain was still pattering on.

The rainwater gathered into curtains, hanging down from the eaves above Xia De's doorway like pearls dropping one after another. The warm yellow glow of the gas lamp inside the entryway was blurred by the rain. In that strange halo of light, the doctor in his rain boots was the first to arrive at 6 Saint Delan Square on this damp evening, followed shortly by Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha, who had come by carriage.

"Good evening, Xia De."

The doctor was surprised that she addressed Xia De by name. But he said nothing—a middle-aged man would not pry into the affairs of young people.

Tonight there were two targets in total: Mr. Ponton, who owned a steam-engine specialty screw factory in the east of the city, and Mr. Roosevelt, the accountant at the Star Grass Public Tobesk Retirement Home. After the three of them gathered, they sat in Xia De's study, comparing a city map and planning their route.

In the end, they decided to go to Accountant Roosevelt first.

According to Doctor Schneider's investigation during the day, this accountant stayed at the retirement home throughout the workweek and only went home on Sundays; the Star Grass Retirement Home was also closer to Saint Delan Square.

With Doctor Shi Nai De footing the bill, the three of them boarded a carriage and headed for the retirement home. A rainy summer evening was unusually cool; the city lay silent beneath the sound of the rain. The gas lamps of the upper city, the candlelight of the lower city—all of these were part of this era.

The Star Grass Retirement Home was a public institution—of course, it still required a few pounds to get in. The three of them got off at the intersection. Xia De and Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha stood watch on either side of the street under their umbrellas, while Doctor Shi Nai De entered the retirement home alone.

On a rainy night like this there would be no passersby; the surroundings seemed wrapped in damp air and darkness. As Xia De stood at the intersection looking around, he also thought that if peeking through a doorway in an alley while visiting little Sophie last Saturday night had been like a horror story, then the present scene was probably more like a detective or spy novel.

The blue-eyed doctor emerged from the retirement home wrapped in his overcoat in no more than fifteen minutes, looking as though the operation had gone smoothly.

"I entered his dream and saw what the Mercury Blood had him keeping. A black cloak, and a gaudy biscuit tin that absolutely must not be opened. The former cannot be exposed to sunlight; the latter I recall—it is the poet-grade relic 'Man-Eating Biscuit Tin,' capable of devouring living people and converting them into biscuits. None of these are what I'm looking for."

He spoke in a low voice in the rain, waving to the other two:

"I obtained other intelligence in the dream. Accountant Roosevelt is a fence for 'Mercury Blood'; he doesn't know the details of their affairs, and there are no more leads here. Let's go—next target."

Doctor Shi Nai De's dream-entering ability was simply too convenient when dealing with ordinary people.

Mr. Ponton, who owned a steam-engine specialty screw factory in the east of the city, could not really be considered a man of influence and wealth in a place like Tobesk. He had a large house of his own in the east district of Tobesk, with a footprint roughly twice the size of Xia De's home.

This was an exclusive residential area; anyone who could live here had at least crossed the so-called lower threshold of the "middle class."

Once again, Xia De and Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha stood watch outside while Doctor Shi Nai De nimbly vaulted the fence around the yard and followed the gravel path looking for the direction of the bedroom.

This time he came back even faster. Xia De had the ability of 'Time Sense' and knew precisely that the doctor had taken only two minutes and eighteen seconds.

It wasn't only Xia De who was surprised—even Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha was taken aback by the doctor's swift action. The three of them, umbrellas raised, listening to the rain, gathered at the gate of Mr. Ponton's yard, and Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha offered her congratulations:

"Doctor, your arts grow more and more formidable. Half an hour ago you still needed ten minutes; now you can extract information from a dream in three."

"What do you mean, more and more formidable? Something big has happened..."

A sudden bolt of lightning streaked across the sky; the abrupt white flash lit up Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha's somewhat damp hair and the heavy expression of utter disbelief on Doctor Shi Nai De's face.

Then, from far away, came the rumble of thunder, a sound that seemed to shake the whole world.

Xia De, also standing in the rain, glanced sideways at the dark street; the hand holding his umbrella felt the dense patter of raindrops striking the canopy. The glow of the gas street lamps grew dimmer in the rainy night, the light confined to a small area beneath each lamp, not even reaching the insects that would normally be fluttering around them.

Xia De did not like this kind of weather; right now he greatly envied a cat that could be at home in a warm, dry place, lying on a windowsill listening to the rain and resting.

Ignoring the still-falling rain, the doctor stretched out his hand and pointed at the large mansion behind them in the night rain. Xia De came back to himself, and he and Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha hurried to look:

"Everyone inside is dead."

A correspondence-circle sorcerer would generally not voluntarily involve himself in trouble that had nothing to do with him. But for the sake of the 'Forged Philosopher's Stone,' the five-person team had nearly come face to face with an evil god right at Lakeview Manor; so even if everyone inside were dead, the doctor would not give up the investigation.

On the contrary, the death of ordinary people connected to Mercury Blood was precisely evidence that the man very likely carried an important lead.

To prevent the Zhengshen Sect from making trouble under the pretext of "tampering with a crime scene," before entering the house where only the dead remained, the doctor prepared shoe covers, gloves, and a hat for each of them, while Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha used a cord to tie back her long hair. Of course, they could not have predicted what would happen tonight, but according to the doctor, carrying these things on an outing was simply his habit.

Xia De found it hard to imagine just what kind of "big things" Doctor Shi Nai De had done in the past.

The house had three floors; the doctor had earlier climbed in through a window. But now that they were certain there were no living people inside, they went straight in through the front door. It wasn't that they used any arts or sorcery to pick the lock—the female writer simply poked at it a few times with a hairpin, and the lock gave way.

The moment they entered through the front door, the damp air rushed into the house. The interior was pitch black; then another sudden bolt of lightning tore through the night sky, and in the flash of lightning they came face to face with a woman dressed as a servant collapsed in the entrance hall, a dark pool of blood beneath her.

"She's been dead for at least two hours."

The psychologist crouched down to examine the body. Xia De and Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha tucked their umbrellas into the shadows beside the door and both stepped inside. Closing the door shut out the sound of the rain and also kept any passersby from noticing anything amiss.

The psychologist's skill at examining corpses was also quite impressive; by the faint light in his hand he inspected the fatal wound. The Light Art really was a very common sorcery:

"A weapon resembling a short blade, thrust straight into the heart. Killed in a single strike—the technique was very practiced."

"Could it be that one of the short-blade relics he was keeping went out of control?"

Because of last week's "Fish Scale" incident, Xia De thought of this possibility, and Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha appeared to share the same view.

"That possibility can't be ruled out..."

The doctor looked around at the darkness and asked:

"Did your other selves sense any Whispering Elements?"

Both Xia De and Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha adopted postures of tilting their heads to listen:

"No."

Both said.

But that didn't prove anything either; even if a relic had gone out of control, it wouldn't make the elements perceptible from eight hundred miles away. Last time, facing that fish-man, Xia De and Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha only received the prompt after they actually saw the creature.

Doctor Shi Nai De stepped aside, and Xia De and Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha stepped forward to examine the body. But they couldn't find anything either. A faint silver glow shone at Xia De's fingertip, and in that light he looked into the dead woman's eyes, which would not stay closed.

Something occurred to him; he blinked. Although the dampness of the rainwater seeping in from outside had diluted the smell of blood, he could still see a very faint trail of blood in the air, extending toward the interior of the house.

There was no reason for the knife used as the murder weapon not to be stained with blood.

He then tried the art 'Echo of the Past,' but unfortunately all he heard were scattered fragments of daily life; a place where people lived was not a good setting for this sorcery to take effect.

"You saw the blood trail?"

Seeing Xia De's eyes fixed on something ahead, the blonde girl who had worked with him once asked in a low voice.

Xia De nodded. Taking advantage of the moment while Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha was explaining things to the doctor, he turned his head toward the door and, keeping his voice low so that it just barely covered the sound of the rain outside:

"There's no blood trail toward the front door; the blood trail extends toward the interior of the house. That means the possible killer committed the murder here, then continued further inside, and never came back."

He analyzed in a low voice.

"Just like a real detective!"

Doctor Shi Nai De also lowered his voice and patted Xia De on the shoulder:

"Good, then let's follow the direction of the blood trail. We've already disturbed the scene, so if we can't find the 'Forged Philosopher's Stone,' we'll write down whatever leads we do find and leave them here, so the Church can see that we correspondence-circle sorcerers aren't all troublemakers."

Doing this was, in fact, already making trouble.

Xia De led the way, the doctor walked at his side, and Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha brought up the rear. In the silver moonlight at Xia De's fingertips and the steadily growing sound of rain outside, they pressed deeper into the house.

The second body was found in the dining room—a fifteen-year-old boy slumped over the dining table. A careful examination revealed that this time the throat had been cut clean through with a sharp blade.

"The bloodstains nearby aren't smeared, which means once that knife was brought in, it was a one-strike kill and then an immediate departure—so the blade's path didn't churn the area into a mess."

Xia De said, turning to survey the dining room. Apart from around the corpse, there were no obvious bloodstains left today elsewhere; the killer hadn't lingered here.

"The killing method is very practiced."

Miss Lu Lu Lu Yisha remarked. While the doctor examined the corpse's eyes, she looked around the dimly lit kitchen.

"Look, there are actually two sets of silver cutlery here—how wealthy. No, these aren't ordinary silver cutlery, this is..."

Pulling open the cabinet, the blonde Miss furrowed her brow.

"Antiques from the Norov Dynasty? This factory owner had these too?"