Chapter 1: The Dying Man
"Do you remember everything I said?"
Finally coming back to his senses in a trance, Shade looked at everything in front of him with some confusion. In the last second of his memory, he was helping his friend deal with his funeral, and in the next second of his memory, he came here.
This is a bedroom. It is not a bedroom in the 21st century. The bright yellow light in the room is not very strong, and the blackened wooden floor is still clean, but the wall has turned yellow. There is a pile of books in the corner, crooked as if it is about to fall, and on the bookshelf next to the pile of books are some metal pots and photo frames.
The photos are all black and white.
In addition to the oil paintings, there are two metal pipes on the wall. It can be vaguely seen that the clips connecting the pipes have been rusted, and one of the thinner pipes branches out at the desk. The brown wooden desk is full of paper pages, and the drawers on both sides are half open, and the documents and papers inside can be seen.
On the desk, the desk lamp connected to the brass pipe is still shining, and the trumpet style of the heavy desk lamp is very novel—
"Huh? Not an electric light? A gas lamp?"
It is difficult to tell whether it is a gas lamp by observation, but the pipes clinging to the wall and the wall lamps connected to the pipes are not electric lights. The warm yellow light is not bright and can only illuminate the area of the desk, but it makes Shade feel warm inexplicably.
With this light, he saw the decorative oil paintings on the wall, the black and white single photos on the desk, and the newspapers unfolded in the shadows of the floor.
This sense of age, no matter where this is, is no longer his hometown.
There was a smell of corruption in the air, but it was more like the smell of a funeral home. Shade remembered this smell; after all, he was helping his friend who had unfortunately passed away just a moment ago.
The voice sounded again, and Shade finally woke up from his trance. The young man reacted quickly and felt that someone was grabbing his right wrist. At this moment, his consciousness and body were completely integrated, and he thought of lowering his head.
He stood by the bed in this 19th-century men's bedroom. The bed was a four-poster bed, but only three sides were hung with curtains. The bed and the visible part of the bedside all shone with metallic colors under the bedside gas lamp.
The bedside lamp looked like a little angel holding it up, and Shade was attracted by this exquisite shape for a moment.
The person holding his hand was the man lying on the bed. This middle-aged man, who might be the owner of the bedroom, was wearing dark plaid pajamas, and everything except his head and right hand was hidden in the quilt.
White face, but with sunken eyes, sagging cheeks, and the right hand holding Shade's wrist was frighteningly skinny. This look was like a person who was about to be starved to death. Shade even believed that if he spoke a little louder, he would have to beg the man not to die.
Shade didn't know anything now and needed to understand the situation from the man.
"So. Is this a time travel?"
He thought to himself and had a general understanding of the current situation.
Fortunately, although the man on the bed was weak, at least there was no corpse spot on his body. Otherwise, Shade would be worried about his current situation.
"Do you remember what I said?"
The weak man on the bed asked for the third time, his brown eyes sunken in his eye sockets but staring at Shade.
Although Shade didn't understand why he came here inexplicably, at least he knew that it was best to continue acting at this moment, at least to understand the current situation, and then make plans for the future.
He opened his mouth to speak and then realized that the other party was not speaking any language he knew, but Shade could understand it inexplicably. He wanted to answer in the other party's language but opened his mouth slightly. He could understand but couldn't speak at all.
"No way? I can understand but can't speak."
Instantly, there was a buzzing feeling in his ears, and his back was itchy because of nervousness. Not being able to speak the language of the residents of the other world was not something he could have expected. This was the worst situation.
There was a buzzing sound in his head, and he immediately realized that this sound was not caused by his nervousness at all. He understood the voice in his head. It was a woman, a woman speaking, and it was a whispering sound:
[Sixth Epoch, Universal Calendar 1853, Summer, the day when the silver moon shines, you came to this dark world. You understand that you need an identity, so you have to inherit everything from this inexplicable body. Now is the first step to prove that you can enter this world.]
"System"
The instinctive reaction was that this was the legendary system, but he immediately realized that this was definitely not a system.
The woman's voice was unusually elegant and soothing, like reciting a poem in a whisper, which made people intoxicated. But the language she used was different from any language he knew and the language of the weak man on the bed.
The language was more ancient and more profound, like a breeze from ancient times, passing through the curtain of time and suddenly blowing to the present. Language itself is a concrete mystery. Even if he only understood the meaning of the language, he seemed to see the deepest darkness.
Although he understood this second language again, just understanding this language itself made his head buzz, and the stomach of his new body also produced a nauseating reaction.
This is a sense of mental oppression. The language used by the voice in the brain itself has extraordinary power.
"This is the language of this world! What's in the head is not a system, but something that originally existed in the body."
Shade made a judgment, and while his pupils shrank slightly, he had a more terrifying guess from what he saw:
"The new world, this world that looks like the Victorian Steam Age, is a world where the extraordinary and mysterious exist!"
He is not the kind of person who does not accept the status quo. Since time travel has appeared, the existence of the extraordinary is not completely unacceptable. It's just that the first task now is to figure out the current situation, answer the man's questions, and figure out his identity.
So, Shade tried his best to convey information to the voice in his head in his language:
"No matter who you are, please listen carefully. I want to accept everything in this body, but I don't have the memory of this body, and I don't have the language habits of this body."
[Now, you have it.]
It was as if a brick was forced into the top of his head and stirred maliciously a few times. Shade thought it was a miracle that he didn't faint.
He did not get the memory of his original body but was forced to have some knowledge about the "Delarian Kingdom Language, the common language of the human beings in the Northern Kingdom." But this knowledge only exists; like a translator, he was not able to immediately master all the slang, dialects, religious culture, allusions, or language habits.
"Sorry, sir, I am not in a good state. Can you repeat what you asked me to remember?"
Relying on this knowledge of the other world in his mind and then deliberately speaking it in a translator's tone. The weak man holding Shade's hand suddenly exerted force. It was hard to imagine that such a thin wrist had such strength.
"You are still like this; your brain is not working well. Okay, I'll say it again."
It seems that the original owner of the body is not smart, and Shade's words have not aroused suspicion for the time being.
"Shade"
The pronunciation of the name is very similar.
"I'm going to die. I knew I was going to die three months in advance, so I chose you from the homeless. I changed your life, gave you a new name, and let you learn to read and understand some common sense. After I die, you will get everything from me, my detective agency, and all my property. But you need to do one thing for me, a very simple thing—"
Although his tone was very weak, his terrifying eyes stared at Shade like a dying lone wolf. The great terror revealed in his eyes made the strangers who didn't know this world feel a little scared.
But Shade kept his breathing as steady as possible but didn't look him in the eye bravely. It wasn't that Shade was afraid at the moment, but from the sentence just now, he had a preliminary understanding of the situation of the original owner of the body.
Therefore, at this time, he should never look at the man but should look away in fear, which is in line with the known character setting.
"Inherit my detective agency. No matter what you do with it, at least keep it open. Three months later, on September 5, 1853, you will receive a letter. Take it back and burn it. This is the price you pay for all my inheritance."
His hand tightly grasped Shade's hand. Even if Shade pretended to struggle slightly according to his acting skills, he did not think he could break free. The other party's strength was great:
"This is me, Sparrow Hamilton, the only request to leave the inheritance to you, Shade Hamilton."
(End of this chapter)