Detective Agency of the Bizarre

"Did I ruin your plan?"

The Mother of the Marsh thought Lu Li was doing it on purpose.

"No, you saved me."

If the Mother of the Marsh hadn't descended, he would have already become a pile of fertilizer.

Stepping away from the range covered by the umbrella mushrooms and slime, Lu Li observed the eerie creature whose consciousness had been hijacked: "Its delirium affected me."

The eerie, illusion-manipulating entities are always difficult to deal with, like spirits with assorted bizarre rituals.

The vivid, sinister red and black spots resembled warts covering the mushroom cap; it was fortunate the slime wasn't toxic, otherwise, even the Mother of the Marsh would not have had time to save Lu Li.

"Delirium? I have not sensed any power from its grotesque form..."

Lu Li frowned and once again observed the umbrella fungi: "Can you gather its memory... perceive the form of its power?"

"If you require it, I can uncover its memories... its feeble power won't lead me astray."

The Mother of the Marsh naturally knew the ultimate fate of the ghost girl she once saw.

Such things won't happen to Her, already an Alien God.

"I'll leave it to you."

Lu Li thought again of the Tailcoat Ghost and inquired about its whereabouts. The Mother of the Marsh answered that it had already been taken to the Agate Lake Camp.

The obscure aura gradually surged and permeated as Lu Li moved away, from the boiling obscurity, warned by the Mother of the Marsh.

The umbrella mushroom entity faded in color, slowly wilting into rot that could not integrate with the soil, unawares as it was devoured by the Mother of the Marsh.

"A stone, capable of bestowing beautiful dreams, lies deep within the house."

The Mother of the Marsh whispered again, indicating that another culprit was behind the delirium.

Because of the Mother of the Marsh, Lu Li did not need to take an "enter or not" test; he merely required an oil lamp bright enough to light his way and stepped into the dilapidated Haunted House.

The familiar layout remained unchanged, even remarkably intact, as if the lucky survivors had instinctively avoided this Haunted House back then, just as sailors avoid tsunamis or sunken vessels.

"Ghost... house, why is this place so strangely named and arranged?"

Hundreds of years ago, the Mother of the Marsh was puzzled by why the classroom would be adjacent to a sick room and why there was a dry well inside.

"Haunted houses were a kind of business, where people from the Old Era would come for thrill and adventure."

"Did you capture the eerie creatures for entertainment?"

"It was humans masquerading as ghosts."

Lu Li's gaze swept over the thick dust-covered items, and before him, the scene of dust fading slowly emerged.

Workers with uneven pale makeup, draped in white cloaks, peeked and made ghost faces from behind the windows, only they couldn't scare Lu Li.

Nor could they scare Anna beside him.

"Why are they dressed so oddly?" Anna curiously stared at the Haunted House workers scaring visitors going back and forth.

"Their dressing more fits people's concept of ghosts, rather than real ghosts."

"Are real ghosts... like me?" Anna, with her messy short hair, lowered her voice as her clear eyes peered at Lu Li through her bangs.

Lu Li's gaze fell on that face softened by the disarray in her hair: "You are a real ghost, but you don't fit people's concept of a ghost."

"I always feel like you're saying something bad about me..."

"No."

"What do you mean by 'no'?"

The vibrant scene faded in color, with large dirty clothes hanging over window frames, and dust covered everything in sight.

Gentle whispers continued to sound in his mind: "You're daydreaming again..."

"The delirium has appeared again, did you feel it?"

"There's nothing here."

"How much further?"

"Just ahead, deep within here..."

Lu Li remained silent, following the Mother of the Marsh's guidance, through familiar yet unfamiliar sinister scenes.

"Right there... the stone that bestows beautiful dreams."

The Mother of the Marsh pointed to the office by the Haunted House's exit. Then Lu Li thought, he could have simply gone around from the outside instead of retracing his steps through the Haunted House.

The office, still wet with undried slime, had a pure white stone untouched by the slime, lying quietly on a desk.

This peculiar stone was irregularly polyhedral in appearance, with cross-sections so smooth as if cut and polished, resembling an art piece or detached from a certain object.

As he observed, Lu Li realized its color wasn't purely white. Unlike any color on the spectrum, its pure white resembled more of a "light," a "light color" that didn't emit light, as if it did not belong to this world but was a meteor from beyond the starry sky.

"I still can't sense its power... but my memory tells me, touch it, and you'll fall into a beautiful dream."

The Mother of the Marsh, like Lu Li, couldn't sense any power from the pure white stone.

"Only by getting close and touching?" Lu Li realized something.

"Yes."

But the last two times, Lu Li's delirium occurred while he was still far away.

He quietly observed the pure white stone, as if it was drawing Lu Li to find it.

In this dark world, trust no unwarranted kindness.

But the Mother of the Marsh could help Lu Li fend off any hostility.

Her power descended, spreading over Lu Li's palm, as they together touched the pure white stone on the desk.

"What are you thinking about?"

An illusory pale hand waved in front of his eyes.

"It seems you've been daydreaming since you came in. Did something happen?"

Lu Li was slightly dazed, his focus shifting back from the desk to Anna's delicate face, many memories shrouded in mist, no longer clear.

"Nothing."

"Alright..." Anna suspiciously tilted her head, staring at Lu Li for a moment, deciding to let him go: "Where shall we go next? The beach or the lake? I've wanted to see the Belfast coast and Agate Lake for a long time, and the seagulls there too!"

"Okay."

"Okay."

Lu Li responded simultaneously with the gentle whisper in his mind, waking each other.

His hand had already moved away from the pure white stone.

"I returned to the time when I was still a princess... it could even affect me."

Both Lu Li and the Mother of the Marsh had brief beautiful dreams.

"Bring it back, the Master of Dreams who holds dominion over dreams might know something."

"Hmm."

Lu Li extinguished the oil lamp, removed the lamp cover, and placed the pure white stone inside. As long as he didn't touch it, it seemed he wouldn't be forced into a beautiful dream—although Lu Li was lost in delirium twice before.

The discovery of the pure white stone forced the second Agate Lake Trial to an untimely end, as the Mother of the Marsh shielded Lu Li back to the Agate Lake Camp, carrying the oil lamp with the pure white stone inside.

The Eternal Dreamer had not yet awakened. Lu Li waited with the true body and twisted figure of the arriving Mother of the Marsh within the Vine Church.

The residents studied in the schoolhouse; not many figures moved about in the camp in the afternoon, after fifteen Banyan Tree Guardians had erected a defense for the front of the Agate Lake Camp.

With two hours left until dusk, the Eternal Dreamer awoke and summoned Lu Li and Them into the room.

"You brought a fragment..." The Eternal Dreamer gazed at the light color inside the oil lamp.

"Do you recognize it?" Lu Li asked.

"Hmm... I cannot tell you what it is, but it can aid your Dreamwalker. And for the troubles you're encountering... Lu Li, perhaps you need a psychologist."