Bizarre Detective Agency

   Chapter 128 Forty-three. Evil Spirit Ritual

   "Are you an exorcist?" Lu Li asked.

"Do not."

"night guard?"

   "No, I'm not those guys, but it's similar." The mysterious man ignored the shadows around him. He walked to a nearby dining table and sat down with the suitcase at his feet. "Well, it's nothing to tell you. I belong to another department, an investigator, and I'm still in the internship period."

  Lu Li noticed that he was still carrying that suitcase.

"I can tell."

  Lu Li put the flintlock in the holster, but did not release the handle.

   He doesn't think the night watchman or the official investigator, who has been in contact with the weird all the time, will keep the mysterious man's current optimism.

   "So can you tell me what happened?"

   "Yes. I am surprised by your calmness. Are you an exorcist?"

"Yes."

   "It's nothing to tell you." The mysterious man put the palm of the match on the table. "We were targeted by two evil spirits... Do you know evil spirits?"

   "Understand a little. This has something to do with the trouble we're having right now?"

   "Yes, we are in their ritual."

   "Ritual..."

The word    reminded Lu Li of what Haders once said, the "sense of ritual" unique to evil spirits.

   "Are you sure it's time to talk? And..." Lu Li retracted his gaze to observe the surroundings, and landed on the burning match in the mysterious man's hand, without saying the last sentence.

   How long can a match burn?

   "This match is homologous, and it can burn for a while. We are safe until it goes out." The mysterious man shook his palm wildly in order to prove this. The faint flame flickered on and off, but it didn't go out like a normal match.

   "But don't think about igniting other things, it's useless, we can only get help from others if we want to get out of this situation. So sit down and let's figure out a way to get out of the ritual."

  Lu Li kept silent, walked to another empty wooden chair beside the dining table and sat down.

   He noticed the edge of the faint light, and an illusory long skirt followed him very close.

   Anna, who was hidden in the inner world, showed her outline in the light of the matches.

   So matches are the same cognate as broken candles?

   "You want to know what happened, right?" The mysterious man ignored Anna, perhaps because he knew of her existence. He simply released his fingers and let the match fall freely onto the wooden table.

   This match, which smells of sulfur and burning wood, looks no different from other matches, and it still burns, and the water from the well on the wooden table does not run into the river.

  The faint light of indeterminate light and dark diffused dimly over the entire dining table, two figures were sitting opposite each other, and there was something eager to try in the darkness outside.

"I started to think that it was the bottom of the abyss that attacked us. Its ritual is to pull a person into the abyss and project it, just like our current situation. It is dark and invisible, except for some special props that allow us to see light. By the way By the way, we are still in the real world, and the real world is normal. The streets outside should be brightly lit at this time, and the tavern hall should be lit with the light of oil lamps—”

"That is to say, the situation is that we are sitting in the bright hall, and there are pedestrians on the street outside, but we are excluded because of the attack from the bottom of the abyss. If someone is in the tavern, he can see our All actions include conversations, but we don't see them."

"Completely correct."

The mysterious man nodded approvingly and continued: "But you just said that before the bottom of the abyss attacked us, you saw a strange claw like a dry dark shadow reaching out to the oil lamp, and then the oil lamp went out. This is the shadow of stealing fire. The ritual. It will appear from the darkness and extinguish the nearby fire source, um...Speaking of these two kinds of evil spirits appearing more and more frequently recently, they will only make people a little distressed before the disaster of the night, but now... "

   But now there are some more troublesome things in the dark.

   Lu Li asked, "How to deal with it?"

   "The bottom of the abyss is very simple, you only need to touch people or creatures who are not drawn closer to the ritual. As for the shadow of stealing fire..."

   A strange scene appeared, a dark and slender, dry ghost claw like a baby's arm appeared on the edge of the light, climbed up the table along the legs of the table, and spread to the burning matches lying in the middle of the table—

Snapped!

   The mysterious man suddenly stretched out his hand and slapped it on the ghost claw of the Shadow of Stealing Fire. The Shadow of Stealing Fire, as if frightened, suddenly retreated a lot, and retreated back into the invisible darkness.

"like this."

  "..." Lu Li fell silent.

   This is a little different from the evil spirits who were promoted by the resentful spirits in his imagination.

   "This is your first contact with evil spirits?" The mysterious man guessed Lu Li's thoughts and asked.

"perhaps."

   Maybe the umbrella girl I met once was also an evil spirit.

   "No wonder."

The mysterious man seemed to have answered his doubts, and waved his hand, causing the flames to shake: "Evil spirits are not as scary as you think...but they are scary. You think it's simple because you know their rituals. There is a saying that the horror of evil spirits lies in the unknown. You cannot know what the evil spirit is that attacked you, what its ritual is, or even whether it is an evil spirit that attacked you. If you are the only one being pulled into the ritual, there is no I tell you this, how long do you think you can hold it in here?"

   "Either run out of bullets and fall into the dark, or rush to the street to be rescued." Lu Li replied.

  The possibility of the latter is very low, because Lu Li's fourth bullet was aimed at Yingchuoren, and the consequences of pulling the trigger are unlikely to be good. .

  The mysterious man spread his hands: "This is the information that generations of people have exchanged for their lives."

  Lu Li lowered his head slightly, his tone as calm as ever: "Thank you for letting me know."

  The mysterious man may be just a casual mention, but it can save Lu Li, who knows nothing about these things, from taking a lot of detours.

"this is nothing."

  The mysterious man waved his hand and heard Lu Li on the opposite side continue: "But don't we want to leave the ritual of the evil spirit now?"

   "It's not the time... It's rare to be able to contact evil spirits at a relatively safe boundary. I need to observe for some more time." The mysterious man replied. "Are you afraid?"

   It sounds like there is a big difference between a night watchman and an investigator. The former avoids knowing too much, because the more you know, the quicker you die. The latter wants to know as much as possible - the more you know, the more likely you are to survive.

  Lu Li can't evaluate which is correct, maybe they are both correct. Ignorance and erudition, respectively, are the ingredients of their survival.

  Lu Li looked around: "It's not that I'm afraid, it's just that I'm worried that it will be too late to drag it on."

   "What...? Why do you say that?" The mysterious man had a bad premonition.

   "Because they seem to be approaching us."

   In the gloom, the surrounding shadows seemed to be closer than before.

   The mysterious man's expression became ugly, and he shouted in a low voice: "You go first! Leave me alone!"

"it is good."

  Lu Li nodded and fled to the exit of the tavern without hesitation.

   (end of this chapter)