After making arrangements for his own affairs, the Detective on the bed closed his eyes. Xia De pursed his lips and waited for a moment, then pulled his hand free and checked for breath and pulse.
"Dead?"
He couldn't believe the other party had died so easily, and it really was almost exactly 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 an extreme sense of terror instantly overwhelmed him.
But by the time he came to his senses, the black light had dissipated into the air and vanished.
As this light disappeared from the corpse, the emaciated corpse, which looked as if it had starved to death, gradually plumped up at a visible speed, as if someone was inflating it from within, until it became a normal corpse.
"How is this normal? What exactly is going on now?"
In the silence of the room, Xia De looked around with some unease. The unease was not about being alone with a corpse, but about the unfamiliar environment. This world was not the world he knew; he had already glimpsed a corner of the mysterious and dangerous truth of this world.
The woman's voice in his mind rang out again, as if reminding Xia De that this was not a "person":
【You have come into contact with 'whisper'.】
"What contact? What whisper? Can you explain in detail?"
But the voice still gave no answer.
whisper was one of the "Four Elements of Mystery" the Detective had just mentioned. Obviously, the so-called relic and whisper were the truth that led to his death.
Although the oppressive and unknown truth left Xia De at a loss, looking at the corpse on the bed, he surprisingly felt no great terror.
"If this is all a joke, that would be great."
He wished this was acting, but his reason knew it couldn't be.
He stood by the bed in silence for a while, then quietly walked around the four-poster bed to the window. Carefully and calmly, he pulled open the heavy curtains. Immediately, the faint morning sunlight, filtered through the grey fog on the street and the window glass, streamed in.
This light seemed to temporarily dispel the unease in his heart.
"It's morning now?"
Because of the heavy fabric curtains, he had thought it was night.
Bang bang bang ~
A knock on the door suddenly sounded, startling Xia De. He instinctively let go of the curtains, but then immediately gripped them again and pulled them fully open. Squinting, he looked out the window. This window faced the street, and he had no time to admire the strange scenery of the steam age in the fog. First, he looked down to confirm that the knock was from the corpse bearers and that he could see the horse-drawn carriage for carrying corpses, then he turned to open the door.
"He was able to accurately know his time of death, which is why the contacted corpse bearers could arrive so precisely."
He thought to himself as he pushed open the bedroom door. Outside was the living room, also with what looked like steam-age gas pipes climbing the walls, handmade solid wood furniture, and various stacks of books and documents with alphabetical text scattered everywhere.
The small blackboard hanging on the wall, the formal coffee table, and the fabric sofa set also strongly resembled the style of a Detective's office.
The living room curtains were not drawn, allowing the dim morning light from the fog to stream in, casting slanted light onto the floor in front of Xia De's feet.
In the light, dust motes floated quietly, like strange tiny organisms swimming. This sense of realism made Xia De feel a bit eerie.
He opened the cold latch and security chain of the front door. Directly opposite was a spiral staircase leading downwards into darkness, and next door was another door, meaning there were two residences on this floor, somewhat like an apartment building in a Sherlock Holmes novel.
He didn't find a light, so he could only descend the dark, oppressive staircase in spirals, his heart seemingly trembling wildly with each step. In the dark environment, Xia De, whose thoughts tended to wander, felt as if some terrifying presence was peeking at him.
From the second floor, he reached the first floor. The staircase led directly to the entrance hall. On one side of the entrance hall, the passage connecting to the first floor was completely sealed off with wooden boards, as if it were a sealed coffin, leaving only the entrance hall usable on the entire first floor.
This scene made the already nervous Outsider even more perplexed:
"Why is the first floor sealed off? What exactly is going on here?"
He passed the shoe cabinet, casually propped up a fallen umbrella, and glanced at the gas lamp on the wall above the shoe cabinet. After carefully twisting it open, the light brought a sense of calm to his heart.
He took a deep breath and opened the front door.
A silent old man in a black overcoat stood at the door, with a symbol of overlapping leaves pinned to his chest. Behind him was a gloomy sky and choking fog. The old man looked up at Xia De, his voice low like leaves scraping a damp, cold ground:
"Xia De · Hamilton?"
The language he used was consistent with that of the deceased Detective, both being the so-called delarion.
"Yes."
Xia De nodded somewhat stiffly, motioning for the seemingly numb old man to follow him upstairs.
So the old man gestured to the dejected middle-aged man behind him who was comforting the horses. The latter's face was grim, like the current weather.
The three of them walked up the stairs together. Xia De didn't know what to say, so he silently led them to the bedroom of the room with the "No. 1" plaque on the second floor.
Throughout the process, almost no one spoke. The old man and the middle-aged man both carried the scent of corpses. They first put on gloves, confirmed that the Detective's corpse on the bed was indeed dead, and then handed Xia De a document for him to sign.
It was a confirmation document for the transfer of the corpse to the management of the City Public cemetery, with dual official seals from the City Public cemetery Management Office and the City Funeral Committee at the bottom. The very bottom was a prayer for the deceased, the translated meaning of which made the living Xia De very uncomfortable.
The old man and the middle-aged man checked the corpse's condition, while Xia De sat at the bedroom desk and picked up a cold steel pen.
His mind was a bit chaotic now, but he realized he could understand what was spoken and written, but he couldn't write. Fortunately, the Knowledge he had just received, besides the ability to speak, also included the ability to write. He translated his name into the phonetically similar "Human Northern Common Language delarion" and intended to sign it.
On the cold page, there was nothing noteworthy in the content, roughly confirming the transfer of the corpse and that the funeral expenses had been settled.
"But from another signature on the document, belonging to the committee's secretariat, it seems that names in this world are much like Western names in my previous life, divided into three parts, and formal documents require a middle name. The given name is 'Xia De', the surname can follow 'Hamilton', but the middle name..."
The confused and uneasy Outsider temporarily didn't know if the deceased Mr. Hamilton had given a middle name to the original owner of the body. But now was not the time to search the room; he had to quickly come up with a name to use for the time being.
【Suren (Suellen).】
The murmuring voice in his mind sounded again, the whisper almost making Xia De jump. The voice gave a word, a word that existed in both the ancient language used by the woman and the Northern Kingdom common language used by the Detective, its meaning being "Silver Moon."
"I can use this as my middle name, but you need to explain."
Xia De tried to communicate again, feeling unusually nervous in his heart, and the woman's murmuring voice truly sounded:
【This is fate, Outsider. The Silver Moon is your fate. When you gather the Four Elements, push open the door to the extraordinary, and behold this terrifying world, the meaning will naturally reveal itself.】
Frowning, Xia De suppressed the panic in his heart, thought for a moment, and then forcefully signed his name:
Xia De · Suren · Hamilton (Shade · Suellen · Hamilton).
The corpse bearers did not ask Xia De for a death certificate or a cause of death report, nor did they intend to notify the police for an autopsy. It was as if the Detective's death was as common as the departure of a stray dog on the street.
After retrieving the "Corpse Transfer Authorization and Commission" from Xia De, they gave him a receipt with the grave location, then silently carried away Mr. Hamilton's body, dressed in pajamas.
Xia De saw them to the door downstairs; he himself did not go out. He watched as the body was placed into the narrow coffin in the carriage. The coffin was lined with brown cloth, which looked like it was stained with blood.
The middle-aged man drove the carriage, carrying the coffin and the old man, and they disappeared into the thick fog in the distance down the street.
"Well then, goodbye, Sparrow Hamilton Detective."
He thought silently, closed the door, and Xia De stood for a moment in the dim light of the entrance hall, then ascended the frighteningly dim stairs again. The Outsider's steps were somewhat heavy, but with no one else around, there was a strange sense of relief amidst the tension:
"It was simpler than I thought. They didn't ask about Mr. Hamilton's cause of death, didn't even care if I was really Xia De · Hamilton, and didn't even ask for a tip for moving the body... Hamilton Detective had indeed arranged everything."
The corpse left here with many secrets, leaving countless mysteries for Xia De, this despicable Outsider who had occupied someone else's body. He actually had many more questions he wanted to ask Mr. Hamilton, and countless doubts awaiting answers.
But the dead cannot be brought back to life; he had to accept the fact of the other's death and strive to establish himself in this seemingly very abnormal world.
The only good news was that the house on the second floor, which previously belonged to Sparrow Hamilton Detective, now belonged to Xia De. He instantly became a homeowner in this different world that resembled mid-19th century Victorian England.
The first floor was sealed off with wooden boards, the "No. 2" room next door on the second floor was locked from the outside, and the staircase leading to the third floor was completely broken. Therefore, in this empty house, only Xia De was left.
He returned to the room with house number "1" on the second floor, carefully checked every corner of the dark study, living room, washroom, and bedroom, confirming that there was truly no one in the shadows, then let out a long breath and sat on the living room sofa, leaning his head slightly to look at the morning fog outside the window, feeling a little relieved.
Xia De finally had time to sort out his current situation:
"I transmigrated and inherited a Detective agency. The original owner of the body might have had issues with his mind, trained by the previous Detective to help him complete a seemingly simple task after his death... Sparrow Hamilton Detective had secrets, and mysterious powers exist in this world. The Detective's death and the voice in my head both prove this, and what I need is to gather the Four Elements. The Detective's death has already brought me into contact with 'whisper'..."
He rubbed his face. Although worried, the current situation was at least not bad. Although Sparrow Hamilton Detective died suddenly, at least Xia De had a foothold in this new world.
This was enough to support him in living, exploring the secrets of this world, and perhaps finding a way home.
Xia De was not someone who simply accepted his lot, but he was certainly not someone who complained about everything. Unexpectedly leaving his homeland to come here was certainly unfortunate, but for now, all he could do was accept it, live well here, and strive to live even better.
"By the way, to see this world with the extraordinary, the mystery of the steam age, those rituals and spells... how could I be content with being ordinary?"
Xia De sighed softly, and the woman's laughter echoed in his mind, as pleasant as a breeze blowing through a lavender field.