After watching Bernadette disappear from sight, Arya pointed to the corpse at the door and asked, "Do you need any help?"
Odis took a drag of his cigarette: "No need."
Aria nodded and said, "I'll come back tomorrow to learn how to make bullets."
Odis hummed in response to Aria's farewell.
As Aria left, he heard the neighbor's dog barking. Although there were no pedestrians outside, it was as if the airflow had suddenly started to move, no longer like before, as if he were in a closed space.
It seems that the area around us was sealed off by Bernadette, so no one outside heard the gunshots, which saved them from being questioned by the police.
After Odis finished smoking his pipe, he closed the door, put on gloves, and laid the two corpses out in the yard.
By this time, the extraordinary characteristics of the corpses had been revealed. These were Odis's spoils of war. He put them away in an exquisite wooden box before cutting open their clothes with scissors and then slicing open the flesh of the corpses with a dagger.
Odis went into the storeroom, put on a gas mask and deerskin gloves, took out a large bottle of yellow liquid from the bottom of the cabinet, and poured it on the corpse.
The corpse immediately emitted a "sizzling" sound as its flesh and bones were rapidly dissolved by the medicine.
While the dissolving process was underway, Odis grabbed a burlap sack and a large dry sponge, and then cleaned up the shop outside.
But of the four bullets that missed the target, three of them went into the wall, burning three blackened patches on it. The wall will have to be repainted tomorrow.
Another bullet hit the shop window, shattering a large piece of glass that needs to be replaced tomorrow.
After cleaning up the other traces, the two corpses were reduced to a pool of blood. Odis used a sponge to absorb all the blood, then put it into a burlap sack lined with oil paper and threw it into the trash can outside.
Finally, rinse them with clean water, and the two bodies were disposed of in this way.
Having skillfully handled everything, Odis sat behind the counter and began smoking his pipe again: He had to get promoted quickly!
...
Late at night, Tutwa Street in the southern part of the bridge area.
Wearing a long dress and sporting brown hair, Fors Wall sat somewhat worriedly on the sofa in the living room, occasionally glancing toward the doorway.
It's already late at night, and Hugh still hasn't returned.
As a bounty hunter, Hugh occasionally has to go out to work at night, but when she left this morning, she didn't say she would be back this late.
As midnight approached, Fors was about to go out to look for Hugh when she heard footsteps outside. She immediately breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that Hugh had returned.
A few seconds later, Hugh Deercha, with his delicate features and slightly chubby face, entered the room with a smile and said, "Sorry, Fors, there was a bit of an emergency, and I didn't have time to deliver the message to you."
Fors stood up and said, "It's good that you weren't in danger."
Then she asked, "Have you had dinner yet?"
The rumbling in Hugh's stomach answered the question for her.
Fors left Hugh bread and lamb stew with potatoes, but the stew was definitely cold and needed to be reheated.
Hugh put the soup pot on the fireplace to heat it up: "You probably can't imagine what happened to me today!"
"This morning I went to meet the man wearing the gold mask, and he told me that the police were investigating me!"
Fors, who was making tea at the dining table, was slightly taken aback: "Have you taken on any jobs you shouldn't have recently?"
If a bounty hunter is targeted by the police, it's basically the end of his career.
"That's what I thought at first too," Hugh said, looking at the flames in the fireplace. "We asked around through acquaintances, but couldn't get any information at all."
"So I changed my approach and started to review the recent cases I had received and reconnect with those clients."
The lamb stew with potatoes in the pot started to simmer and bubble. As Hugh recounted the story, he used a hook to pull the pot out, placed it on the fireplace, and served it on a plate.
At the dining table, Fors poured a cup of tea for both Hugh and herself.
The two sat facing each other. Hugh shoveled a big mouthful of potato into his mouth with a spoon, and held a piece of bread in his other hand. As he ate, he said, "This process took up a lot of my time. Just when I was preparing to continue the investigation tomorrow, I suddenly found a clue."
She took a bite of her bread: "Do you remember that mission to find the homeless people in the East End?"
"Of course I remember," Fors said. "After all, few people have the spare money to go looking for homeless people in the East End."
Then she asked, "Is there a problem with this commission?"
"To be precise, the problem lies with Byron, the one who issued this commission." Hugh chewed, his cheeks puffing out as he spoke. "I spoke with him for a few minutes and realized he was the one with the problem."
Not a single mistake, not a single poem, not a single post, not a single piece of content, not a single look!
"As you should know, there is the help of extraordinary forces; my intuition in this regard has always been very accurate."
"Byron seems surprised that I actually know I'm being investigated... That's right, if I hadn't met that man in the gold mask a while ago, I wouldn't have known that the police were investigating me."
"After the escape, the chase, and the interrogation, I learned that Byron wanted to introduce me to a occult gathering, and the police investigation was just a routine investigation by that organization."
Fors was somewhat surprised: "A occult gathering? An occult gathering that can mobilize the police for a routine investigation?"
Hugh nodded: "Yes, that gathering had an official Extraordinary background."
According to Byron, the organizer of this gathering had close ties to "Mechanical Heart" and was very well-informed.
"The gathering mainly focused on trading intelligence, and much of the intelligence was highly sophisticated."
Fors took a sip of tea and smiled, "Hugh, isn't this exactly what you need?"
For a bounty hunter, having access to high-level intelligence is a great help to her work.
Hugh said, "I'm still considering whether to join. The organizer of the gathering is too mysterious, and the fact that it's held in a fixed location makes me feel very unsafe."
Fors: "Huh?"
Hugh explained, "Byron said that the organizer of the party was codenamed 'The Leader,' and all the attendees knew that he came out of the basement and returned to the basement after the party."
"Nobody knows how he got into that room, and nobody knows how he left."
"Since the attendees were all intelligence personnel, they naturally thought of investigating the organizer of the gathering. Some of them staked out the place for a day and a night after the gathering ended, but did not see the 'leader' come out."
"There were also people skilled in creating mechanisms who bribed two servants hired by the 'leader' to sneak into the basement. They searched the basement for a long time but found no secret passage."
Fors paused for a moment, this sounded like a scene from a ghost story.