The Undead Chapter 88: Two Trances
Who’s there? As a “magistrate”, Hugh had a keen intuition about monitoring and being monitored, and immediately felt a tightening in her heart, her thoughts racing as she considered what was going on.
In the last two to three weeks, she had not encountered anything that required special attention, and the few criminals she had captured did not belong to the Extraordinary, but at most had some connection with a certain gang, and there would not be anyone who would offend a bounty hunter who was well-known in the Eastern District for their sake, so she quickly narrowed down the scope of the target, and vaguely guessed to which force the person who was secretly staring at her belonged to.
A member of the Aurora Society? I didn t go to Mr. X s party last time, and it turned out that there was an accident there, and the scene was said to be very shocking …… The people from MI9 told me that Mr. X was killed on the spot, and took away the body, and the assassin had the power to use the level of a demigod …… The Aurora Society This is a lineup of Who did this thing? Everyone who received an invitation to the party is their target? Although Hugh was sometimes hairy and careless, with a rather direct way of thinking, he had a strong intuition in similar fields, and could always think of the key points at once.
And in the matter of Mr. X’s murder, on the one hand, she was glad that she was pulled away by Forsyth and didn’t go to the party to avoid the accident, on the other hand, she thought that she didn’t have any problems and could stand up to anyone’s investigations in any way, so when she met up with that masked man of MI9 last week, she was frankly confident and took on the task of investigating the truth of the case in passing, but unfortunately, she didn’t know exactly which other extraordinary people had attended Unfortunately, she didn’t know exactly which other extraordinary people had been at that party and had no way of getting started.
Well, that gentleman from MI9 told me that the people in the Aurora Club are either lunatics who have already developed a disease or latent lunatics who can t use normal human logic to speculate on their behavior, and even if they confirm that I am fine, they may kill me in passing in order to vent their anger and warn the real murderer …… Hugh moved forward with a highly tense spirit, and re-routing her movements through the East End.
On this route, she could always get help from her friends, and if she was attacked, there was a not insignificant chance of escaping or killing back.
As she walked, Hugh suddenly drifted off mentally and realized that she had somehow returned to her residence in the Chorwood district.
Hugh entered in bewilderment, drank a glass of fresh water, and was tapped on the shoulder by Forsyth, who said:
”Accompany me to the East End.”
Hugh was baffled for two seconds, and uttered words that felt familiar to his ego:
”You, going out for material?”
Foerth immediately denied this statement, stating that he had previously taken on a mission to help people search for the dust left behind after the ghosts had faded away, and that the spirits of the dead in the cemetery had long since been cleansed and sent to the kingdom of their respective gods, so he could only go to the East End to look for them.
Hugh hesitated:
”I am preparing to attend the party called by Mr. X. Can’t your business be postponed for a day?”
Forsyth immediately put on a bitter face, saying that he had delayed too much and that the mission was nearing its deadline.
Hugh sighed and agreed to accompany his best friend to the Eastern District to look for the deceased who had just died or had been dead for some time and had yet to be found.
The two were just about to head out the door when Hugh shivered as the wind outside caught his face and jerked him awake to see a minstrel sitting on a street corner, playing a seven-stringed lute and singing a popular song from the rural south.
Hugh frowned slightly and raised a hand to rub the corner of his forehead, always feeling that he had just been a little lost in thought, but unable to remember what he was thinking.
Continuing to maintain a high level of vigilance, she followed her intended route into a bar that would be selling lunch, and came face to face with a resident of the East End who would occasionally give her information.
It was a young man of twenty-three or twenty-four, with thinly trimmed eyebrows, brown hair down to his shoulders, not-quite-rugged features, and cheap makeup that gave him an off-kilter look.
”Sherman, has anything happened in the last few days?” Hugh greeted.
As far as she knew, the young man called Sherman always thought that he should be female, except that fate had played a nasty joke on him and made him a man, which had caused him to suffer very serious discrimination over the past years.
Sherman smiled with slightly exposed teeth:
”It’s quiet, no men have even offered me a drink.”
”Drinking is bad.” Hugh admonished seriously, crossing over to the other man and heading for the bar.
Sherman spat, swaying at the waist as he walked out the front door and all the way to the apartment he had rented.
He lingered in the doorway for a couple dozen seconds, took two steps sideways, and knocked on the door of the next room.
That wooden door creaked open and a low but hardly sweet female voice came out:
”Have you already made your decision?”
Sherman stepped inside, closed the door of the room with his backhand, and looked at the young girl sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed in a black dress, and said:
”I’m still a little bit unconvinced, I don’t believe it could be that amazing.”
In his eyes, that young girl had a slightly round face, a gentle temperament, and her looks were not only sweet, but also had a different flavor, very charming and very attractive.
Of course, in Sherman’s case, he was more envious than enamored.
That black-skirted girl responded with little expression:
”Haven’t you already seen my previous pictures?”
There was always an unconscious touch of melancholy between the turns of her eyes.
”But that might have been your twin brother or brother, and I find it hard to believe that there really is a way to turn me back into a woman ……” Sherman said less firmly.
The black-skirted girl smiled without laughter and said:
”Then you can pretend this whole thing is a lie and you can go back.”
Sherman clenched his hands a little bit and was silent for a long time and said:
”I… I’m willing to give it a try, even though I know you’re most likely lying to me, I still want to give it a try.
”So, what will it cost me?”
”Obey my orders and do something for me, don’t worry, it must be something you can do.” The black-skirted girl said, “To truly change your gender, you need to drink the medicine three times and complete some ritualized things, which I will teach you.”
At that, she gave a self-deprecating laugh:
”You may consider yourself a female name.”
……
It was nighttime in the Bakerland Bridge area, inside an alleyway on Iron Gate Street.
Hugh stood under a gas street lamp that had been broken by who knows who, remembering the events of this afternoon.
After ascertaining that she was no longer being followed, she returned to the Chorwood district, watched Forsyth covertly, and found that the dear friend had not been out, and had stayed at home as usual, spending a great deal of time reading novels, newspapers, and magazines, and wasting away in her room with the curtains drawn, for nearly an hour, as if in the process of skilling in her own extraordinary powers, until there was really nothing else for her to do, and she then turned out the paper, and wrote for a quarter of an hour the beginning of a new book, and then tore it out with one hand, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it into the trash.
She also smoked too much …… and drank too much …… Hugh gritted his teeth darkly, and saw a man in black formal dress come out of the shadows at the other end of the alley.
This man was tall and straight, and his face wore a mask made of gold, revealing his eyes, nostrils, mouth and cheeks, and it was the same MI9 officer who had contacted Hugh.
”What’s the emergency?” He asked directly.
Hugh, short though he was, said with no loss of gravitas:
”I’m being followed by someone in the East End, suspected to be someone from the Aurora Society, and they seem to be looking into the matter of the last party as well.”
Hugh had originally prepared the topic of one of the people the other party had asked to find earlier, intending to normalize this urgent request for a meeting with clues that didn’t promise to be true, and now she had the Aurora Society as a better and more appropriate excuse.
”The Aurora Council’s lunatics are like that, they won’t back down even though they know we’re looking into this just as much and searching for them, they wouldn’t always be taking hits if they weren’t.” The golden masked man let out a laugh and said, “Frankly, I’m surprised that they didn’t just surround you and take you to an unoccupied place for questioning or séance.”
Hugh was about to reply that the Aurora Council men hadn’t been following him for too long when he suddenly thought of the trance that had made it so difficult to let go of himself and mentioned it with deliberation:
”I’m not sure exactly what happened to me; for that short period of time I seemed a little disoriented and couldn’t remember what I was thinking.”
The man in the golden mask was silent for a moment, and it took a dozen seconds before he said:
”The tracking and investigation of you should have already ended …… Aurora will pay more attention to this matter than I can imagine, I will report it up.
”Well …… you said before that the number of extraordinary people who received invitations but didn’t attend the party is quite high?”
Hugh nodded his head and said:
”No more than a third of those who receive invitations participate in each gathering.
”This is the normal state of affairs for most gatherings, and Mr. X’s will be no exception.”
The man in the golden mask thought for a while and turned to ask:
”Any leads on the person I asked you to look for last time?”
”The one formerly known as Tris?” Hugh saw the other party nod and shook his head, “Not yet, she should be a veteran.”
The golden masked man laughed at once:
”She has killed more people than the bounty missions you have completed, if there are clues, try not to get close, she is very dangerous.”
Hugh let out a “hmm” and stepped to the point and said:
”Any new commissions this time?”
”Why have you suddenly become positive?” The man in the golden mask asked, slightly surprised.
Hugh responded frankly:
”I’ve almost saved up enough merit to exchange for the ‘Inquisitor’ magic potion formula, so I hope to obtain it sooner.”
”Actually, there is no need for that, you can directly exchange the magic potion, that will save a lot of merit honors.” The golden masked man actually spoke from Hugh’s perspective.
I already have Extraordinary Characteristics! Hugh shook his head:
”That will be a long time, maybe I can buy the materials in another extraordinary gathering.”
The golden masked man didn’t regulate any further and said with a half-sigh, half-smile:
”Good luck, then.
”There’s a more complicated commission this time, and if you can complete it, the merit should be enough.”
Hugh pressed back his elation and asked:
”What kind of mission?”
The golden masked man said in a slightly odd tone:
”Keep an eye on the people that Viscount Stepford comes into contact with, and include each and every one of them in a report and submit it to me.
”It doesn’t require you to monitor them often, when you have a spare moment or pass by, just take note of them in passing, trust me, you’re not the only one doing this task, you’ll get a certain amount of merit for submitting one valuable report a week, every week.”
Viscount Stafford …… Hugh was suddenly in a bit of a trance again, and this time, she knew why.
This Viscount was the Head of the Palace Guard, her father’s former second in command!