Chapter 1866: Chapter 1063: Fallen Leaves Detective Agency
After opening the script box, Yang Xiao was surprised to find it empty.
At that moment, the unease in Yang Xiao’s heart grew more pronounced. The situation now looked very unfavorable for him, as it meant that besides the name "Youjian Mountain Station," he had no other valuable clues.
Yang Xiao recalled Jiushan Cangxuan’s warning, this time not only would he receive the Ghost Script much earlier, but more troubling was that the window of time from receiving the Ghost Script to entering the Nightmare World would also shrink drastically.
This was Japan, and the only thing Yang Xiao could rely on was the Jiu Mountain Family. He decided to immediately seek out Jiushan Cangxuan and use the Jiu Mountain Family’s resources to search for clues about the "Youjian Mountain Station."
"Knock, knock, knock."
Before Yang Xiao could stand up, suddenly, the door was knocked on without any warning, startling the already tense Yang Xiao.
"Who?!" Yang Xiao shouted sharply.
But the person outside the door didn’t answer, responding only with increasingly dull knocking.
"Knock."
"Knock."
"Knock."
The knocking was unhurried, maintaining an odd rhythm, dull and dragging, like a dying person reluctant to take their last breath.
At this moment, Yang Xiao’s scalp tingled. The people from the Jiu Mountain Family would never joke like this with him—it was a ghost, the ghost had come!
Yang Xiao didn’t expect it to come so quickly, leaving him no time to prepare.
Instinctively, he was about to take out the Ghost Lantern, but in the next second, a pair of ghostly hands shot out from the box, catching Yang Xiao off guard, grabbing him and dragging him into the box, where he disappeared.
...
Uncertain how much time had passed, Yang Xiao awoke groggily, his head throbbing and his cheeks stinging as if someone had slapped him hard while he was unconscious.
It was noisy around him, with someone speaking in a bad tone, accompanied by the sound of shoving.
After struggling a few times, he finally managed to open his eyes. It was a rather large room, like an office, with a bright incandescent light above that was quite glaring.
"Damn it, this is really something..."
Yang Xiao realized he had entered the task world. He didn’t mind entering the Nightmare World; he just wished it could be a bit gentler each time.
The ghost script appearing in a food box was already absurd enough, and the sudden emergence of those ghostly hands in the box almost scared Yang Xiao to the point of wetting himself.
"So wicked..." Yang Xiao had told himself more than once that if he ever caught those responsible for the cursed script box, he would shove the Ghost Bamboo Stick down their throat.
Yang Xiao tried to twist his body to sit up, and his vision gradually cleared.
He saw a few silhouettes moving not far in front of him, both men and women, among whom a man and a woman were tussling—actually, it was the man unilaterally attacking.
The woman being attacked by the man was crying nonstop, others were intervening, and the scene was very chaotic.
"He’s awake! He’s awake!" Suddenly, someone trying to break up the fight noticed Yang Xiao and exclaimed in delight.
Now everyone turned to look at Yang Xiao and approached him; the man and the woman separated, and the man quickly walked over to Yang Xiao, half-squatting to look at him, his face bearing scratch marks, "How are you?"
"What are you guys doing, starting a commotion just after arriving?" Yang Xiao only felt that this time his teammates were unreliable. The task hadn’t even started yet, and there was already infighting, which was very unfavorable for the upcoming task.
The man’s cheeks were swollen, and the woman wasn’t any better off, with blood streaming from her nose, clearly having been beaten badly.
The woman stood a little farther from Yang Xiao now, and a teammate was comforting her. Yang Xiao noticed the woman’s gaze upon him was a bit odd.
Yang Xiao considered himself a gentleman, never stooping to physical altercations with women—except for evil cultivators. He immediately advised, "I say, a grown man resorting to hitting a woman is pretty unreasonable, isn’t it?"
"We’re all teammates, meeting here by fate, and we should be thinking of working together to survive. Why resort to violence over something so trivial? Take a step back and everything will be peaceful." Yang Xiao’s voice was hoarse, his cheeks stinging, and when he touched his face, he found it was swollen.
"She slapped us while we were unconscious; your swollen face is from her slaps," the man explained, "Brother, do you want to look in the mirror, your face is as swollen as a pig’s head."
"What?!" Yang Xiao took the mirror handed by another person and discovered his handsome face was badly swollen, still showing palm prints.
"I woke up when she hit me, that’s when I beat her, your slaps were more frequent," the man advised Yang Xiao, "Brother, you might want to tolerate it, after all, I retaliated."
"How dare you insult me!" Yang Xiao jumped up, ready to settle accounts with the woman, suppressing anger only made him more furious, holding back only made him feel more aggrieved.
This time it took 6 or 7 people to pull Yang Xiao away, and the woman, frightened, kept explaining she was a newcomer and thought they had passed out; to wake them, she resorted to such measures.
The matter reached a temporary conclusion under everyone’s appeasement. Putting aside grievances, Yang Xiao started to re-examine his surroundings: this was an office, somewhat messily arranged, the environment quite old; the leather sofa against the wall had its leather peeling off.
"This is a Detective Agency, there’s a sign on the door, ’Fallen Leaves Detective Agency.’" At this moment, a woman around fifty years old suddenly spoke, her voice quite composed.
Yang Xiao had already noticed the unusualness of this office. Every drawer here was locked, the filing cabinets were made of very sturdy, thick iron, and there was a black safe hidden under a desk placed in the corner.
