Chapter 123 Thirty-eight. Peeping in the dark

  The mysterious man took the oil lamp, turned around and stepped on the wooden ladder next to him without a word. He disappeared in the corner, and the halo of the oil lamp and the sound of footsteps gradually faded away.

   "A strange outlander, right?"

  The old woman withdrew her gaze and said to Lu Li.

   "Why don't you look outside." Lu Li looked at her and asked.

   "This is a normal tourist." The old woman smiled contentedly. "But it's too late."

   Ordinary people may walk away disappointed. It just so happened that Lu Li had received a lot of similar baptisms in Hades, until the old woman opposite him wanted what he wanted.

   "It's okay, I haven't had dinner yet, so I don't plan to rest for the time being. You can prepare a table of food and talk while you eat."

   The old woman's smile became sincere: "We'll go upstairs to inform you when the meal is ready."

"OK."

  Lu Li picked up the oil lamp on the bar, turned around and walked upstairs.

   In the narrow corridor, the oil lamps hanging on the walls are faintly shining, and they are very long apart, so that the second floor is not as bright as the hall downstairs.

  Lu Li took off the keychain hanging on the oil lamp, with the words "203" written on it on a note. Standing in front of door 203, the music could hear footsteps and the sound of the bed moving behind the wooden wall with poor sound insulation.

   The mysterious guest lives next door.

  The key was inserted into the door hole, there was a small click, and the wooden door was pushed open with a creaking sound. Oil lamps shone into the dark room.

   is facing the window where the three of them are connected, and the stars and fires dotted in the night make the real objects in the room reveal their shadows.

  Lu Li stepped into the guest room, and a smell similar to the damp decay of wood penetrated into his nose.

  The room is very ordinary, with a low single bed in the corner, a dining table, and a clothes rack behind the door, and nothing else.

  Lu Li put the oil lamp on the dining table in front of the window, walked over to the bed and touched the sheets. Fortunately, the bed was dry.

  Squeak-

  Lu Li turned his head, the door was closing slowly and automatically without wind, and Anna's figure slowly emerged behind the door.

   "We're going to eat here? The food won't be a problem..."

   The room doesn't seem to be soundproof, and Anna's voice is very low.

   "This is a town, not a den of evil spirits."

  Lu Li relaxes Anna, who is suffering from persecution paranoia.

   "But I think that woman is weird..." Anna was still a little worried.

  Lu Li looked at her and said, "If you insist, we can change to a tavern."

   "Hmm... Forget it, maybe I just made a joke about Sarkoche." Anna was not sure, so Lu Li didn't need to bother.

Sarkoche was a nobleman a hundred years ago. The reason he was recorded in history was a joke he made at an aristocratic ball: he suspected that a nobleman who hated him was going to kill him at the ball, so he was afraid In the corner of the dance, distance yourself from people. At that time, a lady with a broken heel also came to the corner and took off the high heels and held them in her hands. Her shadow was cast on the wall, and it looked like she was raising a knife - so the Sarkoche passed out, and has since become a laughing stock.

   Similar to Lu Li, who was bitten by a snake for ten years and was afraid of a rope.

   Lu Li was noncommittal and said nothing.

  Some things are still on the carriage. After reading the room, Lu Li picked up the oil lamp and went back to the first floor to retrieve some things from the carriage parked in the backyard.

   The twilight is dark, and the blood-colored tentacles are hidden in the night, unable to peep.

   A kerosene lamp hung from a stable post at the edge of the backyard, barely illuminating the surrounding of the stable.

   Animals also need to stay in a light place after darkness comes. But they are slightly better, and being in the dark only makes them a little more dangerous, rather than dying like humans.

   But even this is enough to make biological insects rare in the wild.

   Lu Li speculates that perhaps the slow growth of plants is related to the disappearance of some insects. But the biology of the world hasn't even started yet, and they want to know that there is still a long way to go.

Approaching the carriage beside the stables, Lu Li patted the brown horse's head and saw that there was water mixed with hay and beans in the trough, so he ignored it and got into the carriage to get the unfinished bread and Anna's books. Book.

   When he opened the curtain of the carriage and walked out, Lu Li's peripheral vision suddenly became keenly aware that the dark corner that the oil lamp could not illuminate seemed to be twisted, and something was hiding behind the wall.

  Lu Li raised his black eyes and stared at the corner wrapped in rich darkness.

   "What did you see?" Lu Li's actions caught Anna's attention in the dark.

   "Do you feel anything?" Lu Li stepped out of the carriage and whispered in the gap with his head lowered.

   "Um...nothing."

  Looking back at the dark corner with his feet on the ground, he retracted his gaze after a while, and suddenly said in a normal voice, "Maybe it's my eyesight."

   Anna was shocked when a suppressed and fast voice sounded in her ears.

   "Be vigilant. Like you said, there might be a problem here."

   Back at the tavern, the bright hall made Anna gradually relax, and no one could see her floating around Lu Li. Occasionally, out of curiosity, she would come up to a portrait on the wall.

  The smell of food wafted from the open door of the back kitchen, which attracted her attention, and floated to the door behind the bar to look inside.

  The open pot is serving sweet and sour broth with oval green fruits.

   "What is the kitchen doing?" Lu Li, who was sitting at a dining table, asked at the right time.

  The old woman who wiped the table with a rag in front of the bar replied: "It's a special product of the Shadow Swamp, the light fruit. It grows in the swamp where it will be exposed to light, and it tastes great stewed with rabbit meat."

   "It's a pity that there has been no sunlight for a long time, the plants do not grow, and the fruit of the light has become very expensive. Only you outsiders will be willing to use this stew."

   Lu Li didn't propose to eat this kind of thing, but since it was already cooked, and in terms of smell, it was within the acceptable range of Lu Li.

   "Don't worry, it will be stewed in half an hour." The old woman turned to look at the clock on the wine cabinet and said.

   "Perhaps you can talk to me about the unfinished business just now." Lu Li replied.

"Guest, you are so impatient." The old woman told some ambiguous jokes, put down the rag, went around the bar and sat down on the wooden chair opposite Lu Li: "But before that, can the guest tell me why you came to the town? ?"

   Lu Li said half-truth: "I am a detective, and I was commissioned to investigate the whereabouts of a person in the Shadow Swamp."

   "So you want to know something about Shadowswamp?"

"Um."

"Going to the Shadow Swamp..." The old woman's eyes were slightly blurred, as if recalling something, and she said slowly: "Before I talk about that, please allow me to remind you, don't go into the depths of the swamp, as long as you don't go deep there, you won't be able to. have trouble with."

   "What do you mean by trouble?"

   "Those swamps that don't seem to be deep, and...some things that live in them."

   (end of this chapter)