Chapter 5: The more you know, the faster you die.
"What is a night watchman?"
"Ha, I guessed you would ask that." Hades had a look of expectation, turned his back to Lu Li, and tiptoed to grab a square bottle of red wine from the top shelf of the cabinet.
Pulling two wine glasses from beneath the counter, Hades shook the wine bottle and with a "pop", pulled the cork out.
The dark red stream flowed delicately into the wine glass, swirling upwards.
"Do you want some?" Hades shook the wine bottle, gesturing to Lu Li.
"If it's free."
"Then forget it."
Hades capped the bottle, casually took the empty glass in front of Lu Li, picked up a wine glass and took a sip, slightly shaking his head: "Night watchmen are like you and me, they specialize in dealing with things like ghost monsters. The only difference is they have official backing. If you gain a little fame later, they will try to recruit you."
"Monsters?"
Lu Li noted the new term.
"Those are the things that even the charlatans at the church can't explain, bizarre in form, could be a building, could be some creature, or could be some tale... In short, they make no sense. Shut up! Don't ask anymore! I don't even know how to describe them!"
"Are there many of them?"
"Fewer than ghosts, most ordinary people might encounter them only once or twice in their lifetime."
"How should one deal with monsters?"
"Run, run as far as you can, don't even think about fighting them, they are not something we can handle. If you encounter one, contact a night watchman to deal with it." Hades seemed to have assumed Lu Li wanted to become an exorcist, so he didn't deliberately hide some key information. "I know what you want to ask, how to distinguish a monster, right? I don't know the answer either. I can only tell you, you'll know what it is when you encounter one."
"Have you encountered any?"
"Came across one once, luckily avoided it."
"Can you talk about it?"
Hades gently swirled his wine glass: "It's better for you not to know, it won't do you any good."
"It's only my affair, just speak." Lu Li's insistence wasn't swayed by the clichéd response.
"What if I say, after speaking, I might get into trouble?"
Lu Li fell silent.
"If you're willing to compensate me for some losses, I might 'accidentally' let something slip," Hades emphasized the word 'accidentally' as he rubbed his fingers together.
It was almost like writing the word 'money' on his face.
Without a word, Lu Li's dark eyes quietly watched Hades: "...Talk about something else."
"Tch..." Hades showed a disgruntled expression of an unaccomplished scheme.
"You just mentioned exorcists are more dangerous than going out to sea, is going out to sea dangerous too?" Lu Li didn't believe the dangers Hades mentioned were from the weather or sharks.
The swinging of the wine glass stopped, Hades had a strange look: "Do you really know nothing?"
As Lu Li was about to talk, Hades raised his hand to stop him: "Forget it, swallow down that prepared set of lies. I'm only interested in your money, not where you come from or what your purpose is."
So Lu Li reverted to his initial silence, quietly listening as Hades slowly narrated.
"If the world were a magnificent blooming flower, then this flower is now withering."
The ocean is the main body of this world, with most of the land existing in the form of archipelagos.
Belfast was located in the Earlen Peninsula Duchy. The lands of this world had been colonized and developed by humans long ago, and due to low technological development, exploration and activities regarding the ocean had always remained close to the shore.
Many explorers tried to venture far, seeking new islands and continents, yet few returned.
The greatest discovery among them was by the great explorer Solacevia Sim, who discovered a brand-new continent 300 years ago: Solaxim. Rather than this continent named after Solacevia Sim, people preferred to call it the Tillage Garden, or the Land of Hope.
This was one of humanity's greatest discoveries in hundreds of years of modern maritime history, but for over a hundred years thereafter, succeeding explorers could only find some islands or even coral reefs that scarcely qualified as such.
Back then, the furthest people could travel was only a few hundred nautical miles.
Until fifty years ago, when the Steam Engine was invented and quickly applied to ships, people finally broke free from the constraints of sailboats and ventured deeper into the ocean—
And then they tasted the bitter fruit.
Humanity lived on a small island named Ignorance in the dark ocean, an ocean vast and boundless, filled with infinite secrets, but we should not sail too far nor delve too deep.
What happened then is unknown to anyone, only that afterwards, no individual or group wanted to stray far from land to peer into the deep sea.
But the matter did not end there—in fact, the earlier voyages might have opened a wooden box named danger, starting from decades ago as the ocean grew ever more dangerous, with fog, ghostly apparitions, and underwater shadows beginning to frequently appear in the deep sea.
And they were spreading towards land.
"You can find books about these things in any library... oh sorry, I forgot that the Belfast library was burned down," said Hades, shrugging with a certain schadenfreude. "So coming to Belfast at this time was really the worst decision you could have made."
Lu Li noted down everything in his heart and continued to ask, "What is in the darkness?"
"That would require a certain price," Hades hinted, raising an eyebrow suggestively.
"I will continue to buy bullets here afterwards."
"That's not enough, you need to come up with more," Hades tapped on the table.
Lu Li shook his head slightly, "Most of my money was spent on the Spirit-Calling Gun."
The smile faded, and the golden teeth no longer gleamed. Hades, being very pragmatic, issued a dismissal, "Then come back when you've gathered 1000 Shillings."
Lu Li's expression remained unchanged, "Do others know about this?"
"No one would risk telling you these things. Even if there were, they wouldn't for money," Hades wasn't worried about potential competitors, he leaned forward, getting closer to Lu Li, "So Mr. Newbie Exorcist, how many bullets do you want to buy?"
"Ten," Lu Li replied.
"Okay… wait, what? Ten?! You actually—No! I've told you so much, it has to be at least twenty!"
"Alright."
Hades's expression improved somewhat, and while giving Lu Li the bullets, he asked, "I have a question too."
Before Lu Li could refuse or agree, he hurriedly asked, "Why do you want to know these things? Don't say it's just curiosity."
"...To get home," Lu Li answered after a brief silence.
To get back, Lu Li first needed to know where he was and why he was here.
Hades misunderstood, thinking Lu Li was stranded here, and pushed a box of bullets towards him, his eyes filled with sympathy, "For free, and remember this,"
"Stay where there's light?"
"The other line."
Hades's expression showed unprecedented seriousness, and he whispered slowly.
"Don't dream of knowing too much. The more you know, the faster you die."
Chapter 6: Six. Shipwreck
Leaving the dim and quiet Detective Agency, the bluestone-paved street, bustling with passersby, dispelled the hint of oppression within my heart.
Although the sky was still shrouded in a fog that seemed impossible to disperse.
Lu Li donned his top hat, his dark eyes beneath the shadow devoid of emotion, calmly sweeping over both sides of the street.
No eye-catching, orange-painted carriages were seen on this street.
Discarding the thought of taking a carriage back, Lu Li discerned the direction from which he came, pressed down on his hat, and strode off, becoming one among the crowd.
Most men wore a black vest over their shirts, with outfits primarily in shades of black and gray. Some, to emphasize their status and wealth, wore leather shoes and carried walking sticks. The suspender pants often seen on Sailor Street were nearly absent here—clothing too was class-divided; only workers and laborers would wear the easy-to-clean and hard-to-shed suspender pants.
Women were dressed in brightly colored lace dresses. The length of the dress hems covered almost the entire foot, with layer upon layer of ruffles giving the dress a puffy look. As the counterpart to men's leather shoes and walking sticks, they covered themselves with lace veils, donned exaggerated wide-brimmed hats festooned with feathers that made the street crowded, and sprayed expensive perfumes on themselves.
Most of the passing carriages were enclosed, and occasionally, a strangely shaped automobile steamed by on the street.
The houses on the street stood two to three stories tall, painted in bright and deep colors, mostly with pointed or dome-shaped roofs.
Everything carried with it a distinctive Victorian aesthetic—
Not far off, a beggar was being shoved and chased away by a patrolling policeman on the street.
—and ignorance.
Undoubtedly, the street where Hades resided was one of the living places of Belfast's upper echelon. Most residents here were businessmen, doctors, lawyers, government officials, or impoverished nobility, as well as a certain Exorcist who held money as dear as life.
With tranquil eyes surveying the surroundings, Lu Li recalled the conversation he had with Hades before leaving.
"How should I carry it?"
Lu Li did not touch the delicately crafted Flintlock Pistol, which could be considered a work of art, but took the box instead—twenty silver-plated Cursed Bullets arranged in a 4x5 grid stood in the box, twenty-one in total, including the complimentary one.
"Take it with you," Hades tossed a leather holster from the apparently all-providing counter into Lu Li's arms. "Put the gun in the holster, and you won't have to face those damned creatures again."
He didn't say the pointless nonsense of "if I hadn't asked, would you have given me the holster," silently righted the holster, and scooped the Flintlock Pistol into it, slipping it into the inner pocket of his coat.
His palm only touched the gun for a brief few seconds, but even so, that space affected Lu Li, tainting his mood with suppression and gloom.
"Here's a friendly tip; don't use her too much."
His dark eyes refocused, landing on Hades, "Reason."
"Like I said before, to put out the flame in an oil lamp, you first have to deal with the outer shell protecting it. But when you are in the same space as them, you are akin to another kind of them. As you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you."
"So, the longer I use it, the closer I become to the form of a ghost?"
"It's worse than that. You're still living, but you've been tainted with too much of their essence. Until overuse leads to you always being in that layer of space without the need for a Spirit-Calling Gun—alive in the Ghost World, tsk tsk tsk. That's not even the worst part; the truly bad thing is, you won't be able to avoid them."
Lu Li walked up to the newspaper stand, and the old man behind it, with graying hair and a black vest, smiled politely, "What do you need, sir?"
"A newspaper."
"Do you want the local Belfast one?"
"Yes."
"Alright, please wait a moment."
The old man turned to get the newspaper as Lu Li stood straight in front of the stand, waiting.
"Besides the Spirit-Calling Gun, is there any way to deal with ghosts?" Lu Li asked, then after a thought, he added, "A way with no negative consequences."
"Of course, there is."
The long-missed gold tooth emerged before his eyes, "You could hire Hades the Exorcist; aside from Shillings, you won't lose anything else."
"What's the price?"
"It depends on the strength of the ghost. For an ordinary spirit, it's just 300 shillings."
"Strength? Do ghosts also have ranks?"
"If humans are divided into poor, commoners, and nobles, why can't ghosts be?"
Hades snickered, scoffing at Lu Li's naivety.
"Here's a free piece of information: Ghosts are categorized into three levels of power—specter, grudge spirit, and evil spirit. However, to the general public, they're usually all referred to as specters."
"Why did you say the more you know, the faster you die? This is my last question."
Sensing Hades was trying to usher him out, Lu Li asked his final question.
"Sir, here's your newspaper, one shilling."
The old man brought a neatly folded, brand new newspaper.
Handing over a coin, Lu Li unfolded the newspaper, and the smell of ink spread through the air.
[The Earlen Peninsula Duchy's Parliament passed the "Red Wine Act" with 8 votes in favor, 3 against, and 1 abstention. The "Red Wine Act" ensures that the grape cultivation area on the Ailen Peninsula does not exceed that of the previous year.]
[Baron Scandal! Last night, Baron Joshua hosted dozens of young men in his estate's garden for an all-night revelry—]
[MP Oliver has proposed increasing the daily labor hours from 10 to 12 without changing the wages. This proposal was met with criticism from other members—]
Hades' last two sentences resurfaced in Lu Li's mind.
"You'll understand, time will tell you the answer." and, "If you want to ask something else, remember to bring money early! If you take too long, I'll raise the price!"
As his gaze briefly passed over the news articles, Lu Li folded the newspaper and asked the old man, "Do you have the newspapers from a few days ago?"
"The ones from the day before yesterday are sold out, but I have everything else from the past seven days."
"Give me one."
Lu Li searched his pockets but couldn't find a 5-shilling coin, so he handed over a 10-shilling note instead.
Just then, a commotion arose from around the corner.
Several boys covered in sticky sand ran from around the corner, shouting as they sprinted.
"The Rod has had an accident!"
"There's been a fishing boat accident! They encountered something strange, and it's at the harbor now!"
"Several people are dead!"
The three shouting boys ran past Lu Li from behind, carrying with them a gust of damp sea breeze.
The pedestrians on the street and the shop clerks looked at each other in disbelief as the emotion known as panic began to spread. It manifested in the quickening pace of people's steps and the orderly street descending into chaos.
The idle patrolling officers snapped to attention and, shouting, chased after the boys.
"Sir, here's your newspaper and change."
Lu Li accepted a small stack of newspapers and some coins, and asked, "How long does it take to get to the harbor from here?"
"Over twenty minutes on foot, faster by carriage, sir you..."
"Thank you."
Lu Li nodded his thanks, not waiting for the old man to finish, and started heading in the direction of the harbor.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
200+ Power
Ranking 
5 Power
stone 
Paragraph comment