Chapter 147: What Is A Shell?
The investigation of Zheng Yu’s Home attic can be considered concluded here. The attic indeed hides some dark sinful secrets involving a certain abnormal ritual, but the effect of this ritual still awaits further inquiry. Zheng Yu has handled the information on these rituals very cleanly, so cleanly that not a single clue can be found anywhere in the house.
After expending so much effort, only obtaining these vague clues, Chen Xiaolin is naturally dissatisfied. As she went down the stairs, she pressed Li Duojin: “What Xiao Peng, the daughter at Zheng Yu’s Home, said about seeing her mother in the attic—how do you explain that? You haven’t investigated this yet.”
“There are indeed several special magnetic fields remaining here, but I didn’t see any belonging to a woman, which means it may have existed, but later the energy maintaining the magnetic field was insufficient and it dissipated.” Li Duojin descended the stairs with hands behind his back. Seeing Chen Xiaolin squinting at him, he sighed, “Don’t understand? Then in words you’ll understand, simply put, my eyes can indeed see several vengeful spirits who died in the attic, but I didn’t find Zheng Yu’s deceased wife. She may have already left.”
“You… aren’t you a master? And you know how to explain metaphysics with science?”
“It’s not exactly rigorous science, more like pseudoscience.” Li Duojin smiled faintly.
“If that’s the case, how could Xiao Peng see it? Does she have some special ability?” Chen Xiaolin asked curiously. This was also a point she was quite concerned about.
Li Duojin shook his head: “I don’t know about that, but it doesn’t rule out the possibility. There are indeed people in this world born with special abilities. Agents above B-level in the Mysterious Group more or less have some special abilities, just not as exaggerated as portrayed in movies—like destroying heaven and earth or shuttling spacetime. Of course, to ordinary people, that’s already powerful enough.”
Chen Xiaolin: “Is your special ability seeing those things?”
Li Duojin: “Yeah.”
“Then those religious ceremonies you performed are definitely all fake!?”
“Who said that.” Li Duojin immediately became serious upon hearing this and said earnestly, “Don’t think I only have that little ability.”
Chen Xiaolin was skeptical. Although she believed in supernatural events, things like anomaly events merely exceeded scientific norms but could still be reluctantly explained by science to some extent. But frankly speaking, Li Duojin’s religious ceremony scenes were truly too much like a charlatan, making it hard not to arouse suspicion.
Seeing Chen Xiaolin still unbelieving, the earnest Li Duojin couldn’t help but laugh and said: “It’s fine, you don’t have to believe it. This matter has nothing to do with you anyway.”
At this point, Li Duojin restrained his smile again and admonished Chen Xiaolin seriously: “Considering that Zheng Yu’s crazy murderous behavior was caused by an abnormal ritual, and this ritual likely hasn’t ended yet, my suggestion is that you best not dig deeper into this event. You’re just an ordinary person; continuing to follow up could ultimately cost you your life.”
Chen Xiaolin also replied very seriously: “If you’re telling me to give up the investigation, then I can clearly tell you I won’t give up. I have my own reasons I don’t want to abandon.”
“You really like Mr. Zheng, huh.”
“You’re really gossipy too, but unfortunately, wrong direction in your guess. The reason I’m persevering isn’t for that purpose.”
Li Duojin blinked, pushed open the door to leave the villa, and smiled: “Then I can only wish you good luck, Miss Chen.”
“Hey, don’t you want to meet Xiao Peng? She might have special ability.” Chen Xiaolin tried to keep Li Duojin around longer. Whether the master identity was real or not didn’t matter; what mattered was that he was actually a mysterious investigator. This identity was beneficial for her investigation and protecting herself while investigating the anomaly event on Zheng Yu.
Li Duojin: “I do have some interest, but it’s not very meaningful. Moreover, the younger sister has now lost both parents and must be very sad. In that situation, it would be difficult and time-consuming for a stranger like me to communicate with her. You could try communicating with that younger sister, ask what her father has been doing during this time. Though it might not give you accurate clear answers, if there is intelligence or clues, I’d be quite welcome if you’d share with me.”
“Since Mr. Li you don’t want to go with me, if there really are clues, how could I share them with you?” Chen Xiaolin’s red lips curved slightly, her eyes sly. She walked to Li Duojin with hands behind her back and chest out, quickly closing in, tiptoed, looked up and said, “Unless by then, you also share some intelligence with me. How about that?”
Li Duojin’s expression barely changed. Without any hesitation, he nodded and agreed: “Sure.”
The two immediately hit it off.
……
Li Duojin returned to the hotel where he lived and immediately continued investigating records related to those blood-colored symbols via computer.
The World Investigation Bureau’s database system is becoming more and more perfect. Although the information in it definitely doesn’t have the deep foundation of the Mysterious Group’s database system, because it’s a compilation of information from various parts of the world, it can somewhat make up for richness in variety. Moreover, Li Duojin guessed those symbols were likely not native products of the Shenzhou Region, and with high probability from overseas, so this database system might play some unexpected role.
Searching with the keywords “graphic symbols” and “ritual”, Li Duojin found several hundred records. Fortunately, not too vast; his patience was sufficient, so he went through them one by one.
Blessed by luck, Li Duojin actually found information on these symbols in this not very perfect system.
According to the records, these symbols are a kind of hieroglyphs called Kahn script, a script widely circulated in the New York region during ancient times. It was developed and used by several tribes, but amazingly, those ancient humans only applied Kahn script to major seasonal activities like worship rituals; for daily life, they used another common script.
Li Duojin tried to translate the photos he took at the scene back then using the information, but it was too difficult. After more than twenty minutes, he only translated a few words, of almost no value, except for the graphic combination symbol Zheng Yu carved on his own head at the time.
That symbol translated roughly means one thing—“shell”.
But what is the meaning of this shell?
Could it mean that Zheng Yu is just a body controlled by an anomaly?
“Continue translating. Only after full translation is it possible to interpret useful information.” Even at rest time, Li Duojin planned to continue. He compared against the text dictionary left in the database, matching and translating one by one.
Happy holidays, finally recovered from yang con, but didn’t dare go out tomorrow.
