Chapter 3

After making his own arrangements, the detective on the bed closed his eyes. Shade pursed his lips and waited for a while, then freed his hand and checked the corpse’s breathing and pulse.

"Dead?"

He couldn’t believe that the other person had died so easily, and it was really almost ten minutes.

Before he could react further, a black light suddenly flashed across the corpse’s face. Shade felt a sudden tightening in his chest, and an extreme sense of terror instantly overwhelmed him.

But when he came to his senses, the black light had dispersed and vanished into the air.

As the light faded from the corpse, the emaciated body, which looked as if it had starved to death, gradually became fuller, as if someone was inflating it from the inside until it became a normal corpse.

"Is this even normal? What’s going on now?"

In the silence of the room, Shade looked around uneasily, not because he was alone with the corpse, but because of the unfamiliar environment. This world was not the same as before; he had glimpsed a corner of a mysterious and dangerous world.

The woman’s voice in his mind spoke again, as if reminding Shade that this was not a “person”:

"You have come into contact with the ‘Whisper.’”

"What kind of contact? What whisper? Can you explain in more detail?"

But the voice did not respond.

The “Whisper” was one of the four mysterious elements the detective had mentioned earlier. Clearly, the so-called “relics” and “whispers” were the truth behind his death.

Although the oppressive and unknown truth left Shade at a loss, he surprisingly felt little fear when looking at the corpse on the bed.

"If all of this is just a joke, that would be great."

He hoped it was a performance, but his rational mind knew it couldn’t be.

Standing by the bed in silence for a while, he quietly circled around the four-poster bed and approached the window, carefully and calmly pulling back the heavy curtains. Immediately, the weak morning sunlight filtered through the fog on the street and the glass on the window, illuminating the room.

This light seemed to temporarily dispel his unease.

"Is it morning?"

Because of the heavy curtains, he had thought it was night.

Knock, knock, knock~

The sound of knocking suddenly rang out, startling Shade. He instinctively let go of the curtain but then immediately grabbed it and pulled it open. Squinting, he looked out the window. Outside was the street, and he didn’t have time to admire the strange scenery of the steam age through the fog. He first looked down to confirm that the person knocking was the undertaker, seeing the horse-drawn carriage for the corpse, before turning to open the door.

"Knowing the exact time of his death, the undertaker could arrive so precisely."

He thought to himself as he pushed open the bedroom door. Outside was the living room, with gas pipes from the steam age climbing up the walls, hand-polished solid wood furniture, and various stacks of lettered documents scattered around.

A small blackboard hung on the wall, along with a formal coffee table and fabric sofa set, giving it a style reminiscent of a detective agency.

The living room had no curtains, allowing the dim morning light to filter through the fog and slant onto the floor in front of Shade.

In the light, dust particles floated quietly, like strange microscopic creatures moving. This sense of reality made Shade feel a bit uneasy.

Unlocking the cold door latch and security chain, he faced a dark, spiraling staircase leading downward. There was another door next to it, indicating that this floor had two residences, much like an apartment building in a Sherlock Holmes novel.

Finding no lights, he had to descend the dark, oppressive staircase, his heart pounding with each step. In the darkness, the overly scattered thoughts of Shade made him feel as if something terrifying was watching him.

From the second floor to the first, the staircase led directly to the foyer. On one side of the foyer, the passage to the first floor was completely sealed off with wooden boards, like a sealed coffin, making the entire first floor unusable except for the foyer.

This scene made the already nervous outsider even more puzzled:

"Why is the first floor sealed off? What’s going on here?"

He passed the shoe cabinet, straightened a fallen umbrella, and glanced at the gas lamp on the wall above it. Carefully turning it on, the light calmed his mind.

Taking a deep breath, he opened the door.

A silent old man in a black coat stood at the door, a leaf emblem hanging from his chest, with a gloomy sky and choking fog behind him. He looked at Shade, his voice low and raspy, like leaves scraping against wet, cold ground:

"Shade Hamilton?"

He spoke the same language as the dead detective, known as Delarion.

"Yes."

Shade nodded somewhat awkwardly, gesturing for the seemingly numb old man to follow him upstairs.

The old man then called to a dejected middle-aged man who was calming the horse behind him. The middle-aged man’s face was as gloomy as the weather.

The three of them climbed the stairs together. Shade didn’t know what to say, so he led them in silence to the bedroom of the room with the “1” sign on the second floor.

The entire process was almost silent. The old man and the middle-aged man both had the smell of a corpse. They first put on gloves, confirmed that the detective on the bed was truly dead, and then handed Shade a document to sign.

It was a document confirming the transfer of the body to the city’s public cemetery management office, with the seals of both the city’s public cemetery management office and the city’s funeral committee at the bottom. The prayer for the dead at the bottom made the living Shade very uncomfortable when translated.

The old man and the middle-aged man examined the body, while Shade sat at the desk in the bedroom and picked up a cold steel pen.

His mind was a bit chaotic, but he was aware that he could understand and read but not write. Fortunately, the knowledge he had received earlier included the ability to write. Translating his name into a phonetically similar “Northern Common Language of Delarion,” he planned to sign it.

The cold paper contained nothing noteworthy, just confirming the transfer of the body and that the funeral expenses had been paid.

"But from the signature of the committee’s secretary on the document, the names in this world are similar to those in the Western world of his past, divided into three parts. The first name is ‘Shade,’ the last name can follow ‘Hamilton,’ but the middle name—"

The confused and uneasy outsider didn’t know if the deceased Mr. Hamilton had given the original owner of the body a middle name. But now wasn’t the time to search the room; he needed to come up with a name to cope with the situation.

"Suellen."

The whispering voice in his mind spoke again, making Shade almost jump. The voice provided a word that existed in both the ancient language used by the woman and the Northern Kingdom’s common language used by the detective, meaning “Silver Moon.”

"I can use this as my middle name, but you need to explain."

Shade tried to communicate again, feeling extremely tense. The woman’s whispering voice really responded:

"This is your destiny, outsider. The Silver Moon is your destiny. When you gather the four elements, open the extraordinary door, and glimpse this terrifying world, the meaning will become clear."

Furrowing his brow, Shade suppressed his inner panic, thought for a moment, and signed his name forcefully:

Shade Suellen Hamilton.

The undertaker didn’t ask 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 a stray dog’s passing.

After taking the “Body Transfer Authorization” from Shade, they gave him a receipt with the location of the grave and silently carried the corpse of Mr. Hamilton, who was still in his pajamas, away.

Shade saw them off at the door downstairs but didn’t go out. He watched as the corpse was placed in the narrow coffin on the horse-drawn carriage, which was lined with brown cloth, as if stained with blood.

The middle-aged man drove the carriage, carrying the coffin and the old man, into the thick fog in the distance.

"Well, goodbye, Spire Hamilton."

He thought to himself, closed the door, and stood in the dim light of the foyer for a while before ascending the dark, frightening staircase again. The outsider’s steps were heavy, but with no one else around, he felt a strange sense of relief amidst his tension:

"It’s simpler than I thought. They didn’t ask about the cause of Mr. Hamilton’s death, or even if I was really Shade Hamilton. They didn’t even ask for a tip for moving the body. Detective Hamilton had indeed taken care of everything."

The corpse, carrying many secrets, had left, leaving Shade, the despicable outsider who had taken over someone else’s body, with countless mysteries. He had many questions he wanted to ask Mr. Hamilton, and countless doubts that needed answers.

But the dead cannot come back to life. He had to accept the fact of the other person’s death and try to stand his ground in this world, which seemed abnormally wrong.

The only good news was that the second-floor apartment, which had belonged to Spire Hamilton, now belonged to Shade. He had immediately become a homeowner in this world, which resembled the mid-19th-century Victorian era.

The first floor was sealed off with wooden boards, the neighboring “2” room on the second floor was locked from the outside, and the staircase to the third floor was completely broken. Therefore, in this empty house, only Shade remained.

He returned to the room with the “1” sign on the second floor, carefully checked every corner of the dark study, living room, bathroom, and bedroom, and only after confirming that no one was hiding in the shadows did he let out a long breath, sit on the living room sofa, and look out the window at the morning fog, feeling a bit more at ease.

Shade finally had time to sort out his current situation:

"I’ve crossed over and inherited a detective agency. The original owner of the body might have had issues, trained by the previous detective to help him complete a seemingly simple task after his death. Detective Spire Hamilton had secrets, and this world has mysterious forces. His death and the voice in my head prove this. I need to gather the four elements, and his death has already exposed me to the ‘Whisper.’”

Rubbing his face, although worried, the current situation was at least not bad. Although Mr. Spire Hamilton died suddenly, at least Shade had a place to stay in this new world.

This was enough to sustain him, to explore the secrets of this world, and perhaps find a way home.

Shade was not someone who settled for whatever came his way, but he was also not someone who complained about everything. Being mysteriously transported from his homeland to here was certainly unfortunate, but for now, he could only accept it and live well here, striving to live better.

"By the way, I might as well explore this extraordinary world, the mysteries of the steam age, and those rituals and incantations. How could I be content with a mundane life?"

Shade whispered, and the woman’s laughter in his mind sounded as pleasant as a breeze through a lavender field.