At that moment the head chef in his clean white chef's uniform came over with two homemade desserts and said to Shaun and Lola in a respectful tone, "Beautiful lady, Mr Shaun, are you satisfied with today's dish?"
"Not bad, not bad, but the use of Peregrine truffles was unoriginal. To me, it's the season for white asparagus to be available, might as well serve it with a few white asparagus tips." Shaun said.
"Okay, Mr Shaun, I'll try a menu with white asparagus tomorrow. If you want white asparagus while you are in Cologne, you are welcome to come to my restaurant anytime." The chef said respectfully.
"Okay, thanks. Now the check please." Shaun said.
"As a token of my appreciation for your meal, there is no need to pay the bill." The chef said with a smile. Shaun said, "Oh, thank you for your generosity. In that case, I'll give you a gift." Said Shaun as he pulled out a stone from his carry on bag.
Seeing the stone Lola nearly spat out a mouthful of red wine in her mouth, choked and coughed a few times and said sorry.
The stone was just exactly what the secret stone looked like with strange symbols drawn on it with paint.
"It's Napoleon's lucky stone, that name is autographed by him, a treasure you won't even see in the antique market. You can get the signature authenticated, it's real!" Shaun said solemnly.
The chef froze, a little unsure of how to react.
Shaun put the stone in the chef's hand, patted him on the shoulder and left the restaurant with Lola.
Exiting the restaurant Shaun hurriedly said to a glaring Lola, "Don't tell the gatekeeper oh and I didn't do anything profitable with that signature." Shaun said as he thought to himself: "Would you really let flowers bloom in my head if you knew I was selling rocks on the bus."
Lola was silent for a moment and said, "I'll pretend that didn't happen."
Shaun said, "Thanks a lot."
At that moment Lola's phone suddenly rang, Lola answered it and it was Father Schwartz.
"Ms Lola, there is an impromptu incident that requires your help, there is a suspected apparition in Cologne's old town, most likely related to the unearthed short sword. It just so happens that you and Mr Shaun are in Cologne, so I'll trouble you to deal with it directly." Father Schwartz said to Lola over the phone, "There will be a Deacon Andre I sent to interface with you, he is the assistant previously assigned to Father Giovanni."
Hanging up the phone, Lola laughed bitterly, "Such is the life of an agent in the Spirit World, I thought today would be informative enough during the day, but there are always assignments to spice up your evening."
Shaun said: "You say that like you took inspiration from the restaurant chef earlier."
Lola said:"There is a spooky incident in Old Town that may have something to do with that short sword."
Shaun said: "Why don't I take care of it, I have some experience in this kind of case. You go back and rest first."
Lola said: "Forget it, we still don't know what kind of monsters will be involved in this incident, I'll be lazy and take a nap, I can't save you if you get KO'd again."
Shaun smiled sarcastically but couldn't refute it.
At that moment Lola's phone rang again, Lola answered it and said to Shaun: "It's Deacon Andre, he's meeting us at the main entrance of the cathedral. He is the assistant previously assigned to Father Giovanni, one of the suspects for betraying the Church. In fact, the statement I made earlier in front of Father Schwartz that there was no problem with Deacon Andre wasn't really what I had in mind, and I didn't expect it to coincide with the lead you got on the defector."
Shaun drifted off: "So, this Deacon Andre has a problem?"
Lola shook her head: "The problem really doesn't show anything, but if the problem was so easily seen, then it wouldn't be worth seeking our help. So before the truth comes out, every suspect has the possibility of betrayal."
Shaun thought for a moment and then asked, "The so-called betrayal doesn't necessarily have to be on the part of the Demon Spirit Agent, right?"
Lola said, "Of course it doesn't have to be, it's just that the style of the person who did it in the first place was similar to that of the demonic spirit agent, so it's said to be suspected."
The two walked and talked as they followed the railway line from the Hansaring area where the restaurant was located to the main train station. Train stations in major cities all over the world were the same, a place where all kinds of people congregated, travellers coming and going, drunks gathering to brag about their lives, and people like Shaun and Lola simply passing through, all of these people, along with the shops and restaurants in the train station, made up the train station ecosystem, the only place in the city where people flowed around 24 hours a day.
Across the train terminus was the cathedral, the second time Shaun had passed it in a day. When the two of them arrived at the main entrance of the cathedral, they saw from afar that there was a young man with a refined face standing there in the crowd, wearing a pair of glasses, with a tall and thin figure, wearing a white shirt and a tie of a dignified colour, when they saw Lola and Shaun, they revealed a smile and walked towards the two of them to greet them, saying: "Ms. Lola, Mr. Shaun, good evening. Tough you two have to continue working."
Shaun smiled first: "Good evening, Deacon Andre, you've been working hard too."
Lola nodded: "Please explain the situation."
Deacon Andre said: "Yes, let's talk as we walk."
The three walked from the cathedral to the old town, on the way Deacon Andre recounted:``Today the police department received a call from a family living in the old town reporting that they have been hearing the sound of a woman's crying at midnight since ten or so days ago, and that he has searched inside and outside of the house, upstairs and downstairs, and can't find the source of the sound, and that no one else, including family members and neighbours, have heard it either. "
"For a while he thought it was something wrong with his head or his ears until last night when he witnessed a female apparition in a long dress of extremely old style floating out of his window. His family lives on the fourth floor of an old sixteenth-century building in the old town."
"The police department didn't take his words seriously at first, and after his frantic third call, they notified the church out of an abundance of caution. We immediately correlated the time of the apparition's first appearance with the time the shortsword was unearthed, and sure enough the apparition appeared a day after the shortsword was unearthed. We don't think this is a coincidence, which is why we notified the two of you, hoping to get your help."
Listening to Deacon Andre's narration, Shaun thought to himself: "This is a good thing, if the ghost is really related to the short sword, then communicating with her directly will enable him to know the background of the short sword."
Lola, on the other hand, said: "It seems that this person has a psychic constitution, so he sees and hears things that other people can't perceive. Let's find him first and ask."
It was already 8:30pm, and the old taverns lined the old town, so it was a lively time. The three of them walked to the Alter Markt old marketplace, and Deacon Andrei stopped in front of a row of old townhouse buildings, pointing at one of the red houses and said to Shaun and Lola: "This house is about four hundred and fifty years old, and the shop on the ground floor(note) was originally Cologne's oldest pharmacy:Jan von Werth, who had been in business for four hundred and fifty years Apotheke, which had already closed down a few years ago due to business problems, and Cologne lost a piece of its history as a result. The shop is now converted into a chocolate shop."
"Mr Hessel, who reported the crime, lives on the fourth floor of the building."
The three of them went up to the door and rang the bell, explaining their purpose and indicating that they were from the church, and then the bell rang to open the door. Behind the door was an extremely narrow staircase, and the hallway smelled of damp wood characteristic of old buildings. As he went up the stairs Deacon Andre introduced himself, "This building was damaged during World War II, and after World War II it was renovated and is not the same as it was before World War II, but the building still retains most of the old brick and wood materials."
Up on the fourth floor, the seventy-year-old Mr Hessel had already opened the door and was waiting for them, and immediately got excited when he saw them, saying, "God, finally someone believes what I'm saying! Those policemen are all fools!"
Andrei calmed him down and said, "Mr Hessel, the church will help you, please tell us a little more about what happened." With that he gave Shaun and Lola a wink and pulled Mr Hessel to sit on the couch.
Shaun and Lola didn't move and slowly made their way round the house. For an agent of the Spirit World, de-spiritualisation was a relatively common first class task, so they were both relatively experienced. It was now around nine o'clock in the evening, there was still some time before midnight, and it was relatively noisy outside, a normal spirit body would not go out to roam at this time of the night, so it was likely that it was still hiding in this building, or even right in this unit.
"Secret Stone ~ Spirit Body Touch!" Shaun secretly held the secret stone in his hand and triggered a skill that came with the original secret stone. This skill allowed the triggered person to touch a spirit body in the real world without having to spiritualise themselves, in addition to the skill of seeing spirit bodies in the real world that they normally had. It's like touching an ordinary person in the real world, or the agent can touch a spirit object after entering the spirit world with a spiritualised body, like a frequency converter between a spirit and an entity. However, the agent will also be subject to physical attacks from hostile spirits after triggering this skill.
Shaun and Lola were actually examining every suspected antique object in the house as if they were casually browsing through the photographs Mr Hessel had placed in the living room. Spirits loved to hide inside old objects, and age would slowly give even an ordinary object a spiritual quality.
Suddenly, Shaun locked on to something that was a small, rustic ceramic kettle with a flat body
and a small belly, and a plainly shaped decorative pattern on the body. The jug was placed in the ancient wine cabinet in the living room, unassuming alongside some traditional German glassware.
Shaun didn't move and signalled Lola to come over. Lola came over and looked at it, nodded, and walked over to Andre and Hessel, signalling to Andre that she had found something.
Then Lola said to Mr Hessel:Â "I wanted to ask you a question, where did you get that little ceramic kettle in the liquor cabinet over there?"
Mr Hessel said, "I bought it at a seasonal second-hand antiques market. The guy who was selling it said it was dug out of a fifth-century site in Cologne and asked for two hundred euros. I said, "Are you crazy, I'll give you 20 euros at the most, but I wouldn't have bought it if it didn't remind me of a story my grandmother told me when I was a kid! It was a forty euro deal in the end."
Lola nodded and said to Mr Hessel, "In the name of God, I suspect this pot is unclean. We need to take it away to purify it. After purification we will return it to you. You will be able to sleep well starting tonight and never hear the cries of the ghosts again."
Mr Hessel said, "Of course, beautiful lady. Thank you very much for your help!"
Saying goodbye to Mr Hessel, the trio made their way downstairs to the old bazaar, during which Shaun could see a thin layer of light released from Lola's hand holding the small pot enveloping it.
"We need a secluded place to communicate with the spirit inside the pot." Lola said to Deacon Andre.
~~ Dividing Line ~~~
Note:The ground floor in Germany is the first floor in the customary Chinese designation, while the ground floor in China is called the ground floor in Germany. The latter goes by Chinese custom all together.
jan von werth pharmacy is the oldest pharmacy in Cologne, with a history of 450 years, but unfortunately in 2012 closed for business, now the original site is a chocolate shop.