The people in the room remained frozen, motionless, but their eyes were fixed on a single thing: the blood on the wall that resembled spray patterns! Everyone remained in this state until the silence was broken by the sound of a cloth rubbing against a wine glass.
All heads in the room turned towards the source of the sound and saw that it was the waiter, polishing a glass and observing the scene before him with indifference. He simply continued wiping the inside of the glass in his hand in a semi-circular motion.
"Ping! Are you listening to me?!" James spoke naturally, as if nothing had happened.
Xiao Ping looked towards him, his bright green eyes framed by blood trickling from his head. Xiao Ping didn't know what to say, so he parted his lips. "Ahem, ahem! I can hear you perfectly well." Xiao Ping's reply was flustered; he couldn't accept the scene before him. Even though he had violently assaulted the merchant, there hadn't been this much blood!
"Oh! Good then." Saying this, James walked towards the bottle on the floor, bent down, picked it up, and then handed it to Xiao Ping, saying, "We can continue now!"
"Yes, let's!" Xiao Ping replied before walking past the chaos caused by the fight. He occasionally glanced at the destruction, other times at the waiter's face, and stole anxious looks at the people James Bound had brutally beaten!
Seeing this, James's expression turned serious before he said, "Fights like this often break out among drunks from time to time, for entertainment or to assert dominance over certain areas. You always see people betting on the winner and loser, but they don't care if someone dies, why? Because it's not something they concern themselves with. So, you always find that people who come to taverns are either bandits or mercenaries, looking for wine, information, and sometimes female waitresses!" He sighed and said, "So, what I mean by saying this is that we won't worry about covering the cost of the damages, you stupid waiter! Not if we are the victors in the fight!"
Xiao Ping paid no attention to James's comment. He remained silent and thoughtful. He was well aware that sometimes the evidence was scarce, and he had to search for clues himself. Hearing this, Xiao Ping felt somewhat relieved about how to pay for the damages, but he felt conflicting emotions surging within him: hatred, gratitude, and fear, all colliding inside Xiao Ping. 'What a world... whenever I try to understand what's happening within it, a thick fog covers it every time I discover something...' Xiao Ping sighed and said, "That's fine!"
Xiao Ping, with James ahead of him, reached the dark corner of the room. There, the semi-dark round table sat quietly in its place, far from the vanished clamor which had left no trace. Perhaps due to what James Bound had done, the people stopped their noise and kept their heads down once more, but this time the fear in their eyes was more intense and heavier than before!
James Bound took one of the wooden chairs from the nearby table, sat on it, and faced Xiao Ping, who also sat on one of the chairs.
Without any preamble, James Bound placed his hands on the table, interlocked his fingers, and said, "Well, Ping, our task involves investigating the disappearance of someone." James Bound looked at Xiao Ping in front of him and said, "He's a middle-class young man, working at the bank owned by the aristocrat Frederick Kolassen!"
'Just as I expected, it's a disappearance case of someone from the middle class! Although I expected the missing person to be a commoner, I forgot that no one cares about them anyway!' Xiao Ping removed the hunting cap from his head, which was dripping with blood, placed it on his left side next to the liquor bottle, and said, "In short, the client wants us to investigate his disappearance, but why does the client value him so highly?! Is it because he works for Frederick Kolassen or whatever his name was!"
"You could say that!" James replied, his spectacles reflecting the faint light of the lanterns in the dark corner, and said, "The client is one of this person's relatives, but that aristocrat has no involvement in the task, as he might not even know yet!"
'Doesn't know yet?! This is truly foolish.' Xiao Ping cursed internally before saying, "I understand. But do you have a picture of this man we're investigating, or any information about the last known place he was before he disappeared?" Xiao Ping was eager to play the role of a detective and embark on a real investigation. He had read many detective novels back on Earth and loved the mystery and complexity of cases!
Xiao Ping knew that there wasn't even a fountain pen in this world, let alone cameras and electronic devices, but he just wanted to confirm and was preparing his answer in his mind. However, what he heard surprised him.
"Yes! I have a picture of him, and also the last location he was at before his sudden disappearance." James spoke casually before reaching into the pocket of his black coat, pulling out a white folder, and pushing it forward towards Xiao Ping.
'You don't have fountain pens?! But you have cameras?' Xiao Ping grasped the white folder with his fingers, looked at it, then lifted it, opened it, and took out its contents. Inside was a form with personal information about the missing person, and there was also a small picture in the upper corner of the form, along with another, larger backup picture of him.
He was a 27-year-old man, with ordinary brown hair and clear blue eyes like the sea. He had a thick beard, but his mustache was sparse. Below the picture, his personal information was written.
Name: Antonius Miros
Age:27
Marital Status:Married
Gender:Male
Last Known Location:The Seventh Manuscript in the bank archive
...
Xiao Ping stared at the form, pressing his fingers against the glossy paper. The face of the young Antonius Miros seemed both strange and familiar to him at the same time. His large picture, with his clear blue eyes and light beard, didn't trigger any direct memory, but something about it bothered him.
"I know! It's not much information, but this is all his relative has!" James sighed and removed the black hat from his head, letting his short black hair show from beneath it.
'Antonius Miros... so he works in the archives,' Xiao Ping said, placing his finger on the line about the last location, "Why is this person's relative so concerned about what seems like a simple case of someone running away?"
James smiled coldly, leaning slightly forward on the table until his glasses reflected more of the lantern's light. "Because, Ping, this bank isn't like others. It deals with commercial secrets related to ship contracts and royal shipping lines controlled by the royal Dogma fleets," James pointed to the folder.
"And if this young man ran away, he might have taken very important documents with him, documents that don't just belong to the aristocrat Kolassen, but concern all the powers seeking control over the sea. The client fears his relative might have sold those secrets to pirates."
'Documents! Pirates!' Xiao Ping's eyes shone with interest. This connected the job to his favorite detective novel adventures. For a few minutes, he forgot the scene of blood and chaos James had left behind.
"Our task is simple," James continued, interlacing his fingers tightly, "to find Antonius before he reaches any ship. We must retrieve him and recover whatever confidential items he took. Those items are what will open the door to more clients for us."
Xiao Ping stared at James for a few moments. James seemed completely serious, as if what he was saying was the absolute truth. But something didn't sit right in Xiao Ping's mind. There was a fog covering aspects of the story, the same fog he had grown accustomed to in his new life.
'Shipping contracts? Pirates? Is that all?' Xiao Ping thought internally, before shooting a quick glance at James. 'No, there's something else. James doesn't care about ordinary "clients" or "shipping contracts." That's not his nature.'
"Well, James," said Xiao Ping, placing the folder on the table and pushing it towards James, "How do we start? Where do we look for this 'ship-seeker'?"
A faint smile, almost invisible, appeared on James's cold lips.
"We start from where he disappeared. The last place Antonius was known to be was his old home, on 'Odos Synithias' street."
"Odos! What?!" Xiao Ping sighed lazily before saying, "Why are street names so difficult, even harder than physics!" His face sank further into laziness and lethargy.
"Pfft, hehehehe." A laugh escaped James's lips upon seeing Xiao Ping's lazy expressions, and he continued, saying: "Ping! Don't worry about the details, let's just get our job done. And also, what's the story with your clothes and their foul smell? You'd better go buy some decent clothes for a detective!"
'Do you think I'd come here if I had money for food and clothes?!' Xiao Ping mocked James's words internally and hated the previous owner of this body even more for the miserable situation he had left him in.
"Heh---." James wanted to laugh and mock further, but upon seeing Xiao Ping's sullen and sad expression, he remembered Xiao Ping's desperate search for work and his need for money to buy food! This made him feel the suffering Xiao Ping was trying to escape.
James Bound felt guilty for mocking Xiao Ping, so he reached out, grabbed Xiao Ping's right shoulder, and said, "Sorry, I didn't mean that!"
"Don't worry about it!" A trace of Xiao Ping's sullen expression vanished upon hearing this.
"Well then, we'll go buy you some clothes!" James spoke with a happy expression on his face, and before Xiao Ping could respond, he added: "This is a simple gift to celebrate our partnership, so I don't want any objections!, 'At least I'll deduct it from your salary, hehe.!'"
Saying this, he pushed his chair back and stood up from the table, after taking his hat from the table, leaving Xiao Ping behind.
Seeing James leave, Xiao Ping shouted, "Where are you going?!" The tavern was very quiet, so when Xiao Ping shouted, everyone turned to look at him, but their gazes then shifted towards James's figure heading towards the spot where Xiao Ping had previously fallen.
Hearing Xiao Ping's shout, James put his hand into his black coat, pulled out a strange cigarette case and a lighter that didn't resemble the one Xiao Ping had found on the dead man in the shack during his search, of course.
He stopped and lit the cigarette, before putting the case and lighter back into his coat. He turned to look at Xiao Ping and the people in the tavern and said, after taking a drag from the cigarette and exhaling into the air: "I'll go clean up outside!, Don't move, don't make any moves, and just wait for me!" Upon hearing this, everyone felt a chill run down their spines.
Xiao Ping felt his strength being suppressed by a larger, more massive force. He tried to look at James's body, but something prevented him from seeing it clearly—a feeling, a predatory, oppressive sensation that reminded him of the situation he faced today, the feeling of suppression from the princess's guards. But that wasn't what he remembered; instead, he remembered the savage power of that entity which claimed to be Xiao Ping.
"Alright, I'll wait here and won't move!" Xiao Ping replied, a cold sweat forming on his cheek.
"Good!" James spoke coldly, and before reaching his hand into the wall, causing a door to appear in front of him and stepping out, he gave everyone icy glances, as if to say: Don't any of you touch him while I'm gone. He belongs to me! And he left.
...
End of Chapter~To Be Continued