“Did you remember everything I told you?”
Xia De finally came back to his senses in a daze, looking at everything before him with a sense of confusion. One moment in his memory, he was helping a friend with their funeral arrangements; the next, he found himself here.
This was a bedroom… definitely not a 21st-century bedroom. The dim yellow light in the room wasn't very strong. The somewhat darkened wooden floor was relatively clean, but the walls were already yellowing. A stack of books was piled in a corner, leaning precariously as if about to fall, and on a bookshelf next to the stack were some metal pots and picture frames, among other decorations.
All the photos were black and white.
Besides oil paintings, there were also two metal pipes on the wall. The visible pipe connections were somewhat rusty, and a thinner pipe branched off at the desk. The brown wooden desk was covered with papers, and the drawers on both sides were half-open, revealing documents and papers inside.
On the desk, a lamp connected to a brass pipe was still glowing. The heavy lamp's horn-shaped design was very novel—
“Hmm? Not an electric lamp? A gas lamp?”
It was difficult to tell if it was a gas lamp just by observing, but the pipes attached to the wall and the wall lamps connected to them certainly didn't look like electric lights. The warm yellow glow wasn't bright, only illuminating the desk area, but it inexplicably made Xia De feel warm.
By this light, he saw the decorative oil painting on the wall, the black and white single photo on the desk, and the newspaper spread out in the shadow on the floor. He couldn't make out any content on the newspaper, but he could see that it wasn't Chinese characters, but letters.
This sense of age, no matter where this was, it was no longer his hometown.
A smell of decay permeated the air, but it was more like the smell of a funeral home. Xia De remembered this smell; after all, just a moment ago, he was helping his unfortunately deceased friend…
“Did you remember everything I told you?”
The voice sounded again, and only then did Xia De fully awaken from his daze. The young man quickly realized that someone was holding his right wrist. Now that his consciousness and body were fully integrated, he thought to lower his head.
He was by the bed in what seemed to be a 19th-century man's bedroom. The bed was a four-poster bed, but only three sides had curtains. The visible parts of the bed frame and headboard all shimmered with a metallic luster under the gas lamp at the head of the bed.
The bedside lamp was shaped like a cherub holding it up, and Xia De was momentarily drawn to its exquisite design.
The person holding his hand was the man lying in bed. This middle-aged man, who was likely the owner of the bedroom, wore dark plaid pajamas and was entirely hidden under the covers except for his head and right hand.
He had distinctly Caucasian features, but his eyes were sunken, his cheeks drooped, and the right hand holding Xia De's wrist was terrifyingly thin. He looked as if he were about to starve to death. Xia De even believed that if he spoke a little louder, he would have to beg the man not to die.
Xia De knew nothing right now and needed to understand the situation from the man.
“So… this is a transmigration?”
He thought to himself, gaining a rough understanding of his current situation.
Fortunately, although the man in bed was weak, at least he had no corpse spots. Otherwise, Xia De would truly have to worry about his current predicament.
“Did you remember everything I told you?”
The weakened man in bed asked for the third time, his brown eyes deeply sunken in their sockets, staring intently at Xia De. Although Xia De didn't understand why he had inexplicably transmigrated here, at least he knew that it was best to play along for now, to understand the current situation before making plans for the future.
He opened his mouth to speak, only then realizing that the other person was not speaking Chinese, nor any language he understood, yet Xia De inexplicably understood him. He wanted to reply in the other person's language, but when he slightly parted his lips, he understood but simply couldn't speak it.
“No way? I understand but can't speak?”
For the moment, his ears buzzed, and his back itched with tension. Being unable to speak the language of this other world was not something he could have anticipated; this was the worst-case scenario.
A buzzing sound appeared in his head, and then he realized that this sound wasn't caused by his tension at all. He understood the voice in his head; it was a woman, a woman speaking, a murmuring sound:
“The sixth epoch, common era 1853, summer, on the day the silver moon shines, you arrived in this dark world. You understand that you need an identity, so you must inherit everything of this inexplicable body. Now is the first step, to prove, to prove that you can enter this world.”
“Sys…”
His instinctive reaction was that this was the legendary system, but he immediately realized that it was definitely not a system.
The woman's voice was exceptionally elegant and soothing, like reciting poetry in a whisper, making one intoxicated. But the language she used was different from Chinese and different from the language of the weakened man in bed.
That language was older, deeper, like a breeze from ancient times, passing through the veil of time and suddenly blowing into the present. The language itself was a materialized mystery; even just understanding the meaning of the language, Xia De felt as if he saw the deepest darkness.
Although Xia De understood this second language as well, merely understanding the language itself made his head buzz, and his new body's stomach felt nauseous.
This was a spiritual oppressive feeling; the language used by the voice in his head itself possessed extraordinary power.
“This is the language of this world! The voice in my head isn't a system; it's something that already existed in this body!”
Xia De made his judgment. As his pupils slightly constricted, a more terrifying guess arose from what he saw before him:
“The new world, this world that seems to be in the Victorian steam era, is a world where the extraordinary and the mysterious exist!”
He wasn't the type of person who couldn't accept the current situation. Since transmigration had occurred, the existence of the extraordinary wasn't entirely unacceptable. However, his first task now was to clarify the current situation, answer the man's question, and figure out his identity.
So, Xia De tried his best to convey information to the voice in his head using his own language:
“Whoever you are, please listen. I want to accept everything about this body, but I have no memory of this body, no language habits of this body.”
“Now, you have it.”
It was as if a brick was forcefully shoved into his skull and maliciously stirred a few times. Xia De considered it a Miracle that he didn't pass out.
He didn't gain the original body's memory, but rather was forcibly injected with some Knowledge, Knowledge about “Delarion Kingdom Language, the common human language of the Northern Kingdom.” But this Knowledge merely existed, like a translator. He couldn't immediately grasp all the idioms, dialects, religious culture, allusions, or language habits.
“Excuse me, sir, I'm not feeling very well. Could you please repeat what you asked me to remember?”
Relying on this Knowledge, he intermittently translated Chinese into the alien “Northern Human Common Language” in his mind, then deliberately spoke it with a translated accent. The weakened man gripping Xia De's hand suddenly tightened his grip. It was hard to imagine such a thin wrist possessing such strength:
“You're still like this, not very quick-witted… Alright, I'll say it again…”
It seemed the original body's owner wasn't very bright, so Xia De's words didn't immediately arouse suspicion.
“Xia De…”
The pronunciation of the name was very similar.
“I am about to die. I knew three months in advance that I would die, and so I chose you from among the vagrants. I changed your life, gave you a new name, taught you simple literacy, and some common sense. And after I die, you will inherit everything I own, my Detective agency, all my property. But you need to do one thing for me, a very simple thing—”
Although his tone was very weak, his terrifying eyes stared at Xia De like a dying lone wolf. The great terror revealed in his gaze made the Outsider, who was already unfamiliar with this world, feel a chill in his heart.
But Xia De kept his breathing as steady as possible, yet didn't bravely meet his gaze. It wasn't that Xia De was afraid at the moment, but rather that from the previous sentence, he had a preliminary understanding of the original body owner's situation.
Therefore, at this moment, he absolutely should not meet the man's gaze, but rather should fearfully avert his eyes, which would fit the known character setting.
“Inherit my Detective agency. Whatever you want to do with it, at least keep it open for business. Until three months from now, September 5th, 1853. At that time, you will receive a letter. Retrieve the letter and burn it. This is the price for you to receive all my inheritance.”
His hand gripped Xia De's hand tightly. Even though Xia De, acting, pretended to struggle slightly, he didn't believe he could break free at all. The other person's strength was truly great:
“This is my, Sparrow Hamilton's, only request for leaving my inheritance to you, Xia De Hamilton.”