“It looks like this person just vanished into thin air here,” the harbor investigator standing beside him sighed.
“No,” Elias said, shaking his head.
The harbor worker looked him up and down.
“By the way, what did you use to do?”
“I was a detective.”
Elias replied casually, his eyes still fixed on the footprints.
Strictly speaking, this answer was somewhat of a professional scam.
Jiang Huan had never been a detective, let alone a police officer.
Before crossing over, the most he had done was watch some true crime documentaries and read a few mystery novels.
When he came across a fascinating case, he would analyze it a bit. If he guessed right, he would feel like he was only a pipe away from being Sherlock Holmes.
As for actually investigating a case?
In his past life, he couldn't even find his own missing socks.
But those things had at least taught him one lesson: list the possibilities first, and don't be too quick to treat a guess as the answer.
Since arriving in this world, the events he had encountered had only grown increasingly massive.
First, it was investigating the room Firth left behind at the Coast Hotel.
Then, after returning to Hope County, he was inadvertently dragged into the Golden Rose case.
And not long after he returned to Hastings Port, he was caught up in the sea beast invasion.
By now, he had probably met with the Seventh Agency investigators more times than he had seen Arthur and Lottie.
If he still hadn't learned to ask about the timeline before looking at the evidence after all this, he would have lived in vain.
Of course, the traces before him weren't all that profound.
Where the tide rose, and what kind of salt frost it left behind when it receded.
What color the iron ring would turn when a mooring rope had just rubbed against it.
Which way the wood splinters would get caught after a supply boat scraped against the stone steps.
These weren't things Mr. Sherlock Holmes had taught him.
They were things he had picked up bit by bit from receiving the supply boat's dinghy at the lighthouse countless times.
Common sense from his old world, combined with the lessons he had learned since arriving here, and topped off with a bit of keeper experience.
Only by piecing these three together did he manage to resemble a proper investigator.
The harbor investigator obviously had no idea how complex this “detective's” background actually was.
He simply nodded thoughtfully.
“No wonder.”
“Don't be so quick to say 'no wonder' just yet,” Elias said, standing up and brushing the fine sand off his gloves.
“Just because a boat stopped here doesn't mean Robert boarded it.”
“It's also possible that a boat just happened to dock, and he coincidentally walked down here on the very same night.”
The harbor investigator glanced at the trail of barefoot prints that stopped at the edge of the stone steps.
“Could it really be such a coincidence?”
“I hope not, either.” Elias looked back at him. “Did any authorized vessels dock here last night?”
“No,” the harbor investigator replied quickly. “Ever since the sea beast invasion, this stretch of the coast has been completely cordoned off.”
“Civilian boats are banned from approaching, and rescue and harbor vessels must register every time they enter or leave.”
“I checked last night's shift log. No boats came here.”
Elias nodded.
An unregistered boat.
A missing person who had left the relief shelter under the influence of the shared dream.
And a stretch of stone steps that happened to be scraped by a hull.
The coincidences were starting to pile up.
But it wasn't enough yet.
He crouched back down beside the last footprint.
The sea breeze carried a salty, fishy smell from the water, already drying the surface of the wet sand.
The edges of the footprint were slightly pale, with only the indentations left by the toes remaining dark.
Elias didn't reach out to touch it. He simply leaned down, examining it bit by bit under the angled light of the lantern.
Soon, he spotted a tiny hemp fiber inside the indentation left by the big toe.
It was only half the length of a fingernail.
Its color matched the hemp fibers caught in the crevices of the mooring ring perfectly.
“Bring the lantern closer.”
The harbor investigator immediately lifted the lantern, lowering its hood.
The dim yellow light swept across the wet sand.
The hemp fiber hadn't fallen on top of the footprint; it had been pressed into the sand by the sole of the foot, with one end even buried beneath the ridge of mud squeezed out when the toes pushed down.
“The mooring rope shed its fiber here first,” Elias pointed to the footprint. “And only then did Robert step on it.”
The harbor investigator's expression grew serious.
“Which means... the boat arrived before he did?”
“At least the untying of the rope happened before his final step,” Elias said, leaving room for error.
He continued to examine the edges of the footprint, soon discovering a few pinhead-sized specks of black-silver residue.
They were mixed in with the wet sand. If one didn't look closely, they would easily be mistaken for grime left behind by the sea beast invasion.
Elias had the harbor investigator hand him an evidence bag, took a clean piece of stiff paper, and carefully scraped the residue into it.
Then, he walked over to the mooring ring and extracted the same substance from its crevices.
When he compared the two samples under the lantern light, there was no difference in their color or fine metallic luster.
The harbor investigator looked down at the evidence bag, then turned to look at the final footprint, which had rotated nearly a quarter-turn.
“By the time he walked here, the boat was already securely docked.”
“From what we can see, yes.” Elias sealed the evidence bag and tucked it away.
“The hull scraped the stone steps, the rope rubbed against the mooring ring, the hemp fiber fell first, and then Robert stepped on it.”
“His final step wasn't toward the sea, but turned toward where the boat was moored.”
“So we can be certain now.” He stood up, his gaze passing over the stone steps and out onto the rolling black sea. “An unregistered small boat docked here at the exact time of Robert's disappearance.”
“He likely wasn't dragged off the shore by something.”
“Instead, he boarded that boat of his own free will.”
Waves lapped against the bottom of the stone steps, washing away a few floating wood splinters.
The harbor investigator fell silent for a moment.
“What about the sea beasts?”
“We still can't completely rule them out,” Elias said, turning to walk back toward the cordon.
“Though, if it really was a sea beast, it would not only have to manipulate dreams, but also know how to row, tie a mooring rope, and bypass your Harbor Authority's registration.”
He paused, then offered a dry evaluation: “If there's really a sea beast that diligent, I suggest we find it a day job.”
The harbor investigator opened his mouth, seeming to want to laugh.
But in the end, his lips only twitched into a dry, hollow smile.
Elias noticed, but didn't press further.
He slipped his hands into his trench coat pockets and was about to leave when a voice suddenly called out from behind him.
“Hey!”
“Sir.”
He stopped and looked back.
The harbor investigator stood where he was, still clutching the evidence bag.
He glanced first at his nearby colleagues, then at the pedestrians passing outside the cordon, as if making sure no one was paying attention to them.
“Since you're an investigator...” he lowered his voice. “Could you give us frontline personnel a bit of a heads-up?”
“About what?”
“These monsters.” The harbor investigator licked his sea-breeze-dried lips. “I mean, those sea beasts that charged ashore that night.”
At this, he glanced back at the sea.
Night had fallen completely.
There were no boat lights in the distance, only the occasional greyish-white foam whipped up by the waves.
The man, who had only been slightly tense before, now had a look of uncontainable dread in his eyes.
“I was at the harbor that night.”
“I saw them with my own eyes.”
His fingers tightened unconsciously around the evidence bag, the transparent waterproof paper rustling under his grip.
“I've lived this long, and before, I only ever heard old sailors talk about monsters in the deep sea.”
“But that was the first time...” He paused, his Adam's apple bobbing with difficulty. “I've never seen anything so massive.”
The smile faded from Elias's face.
Seeing a sea beast several meters tall smash through the pier and crawl ashore through fire and dense fog with your own eyes was entirely different from reading casualty figures in the newspaper.
The disaster was over.
But what remained in the minds of the living wouldn't be carried away with the corpses.
The harbor investigator looked at him, as if finally summoning his courage.
“Has the god stopped protecting us?”
The sea breeze swept between them.
Elias didn't immediately brush the question aside with a joke.
He walked back to the man and patted his shoulder.
“Don't worry.”
“As far as I know, the god still protects us.”
The harbor investigator asked eagerly, as if grasping at a lifeline: “Really?”
“Which god do you believe in?”
“The Dawn Lady.”
“Ah.” Elias nodded, his tone a bit more assured than before. “Then rest assured, sir. She will protect you.”
The harbor investigator's tense shoulders relaxed slightly.
But Elias didn't take his hand back right away.
He thought of the Dead Tide old Crowley had mentioned, and the comet that was about to pass through the sky once again.
The man before him was just an obscure, frontline worker in the Harbor Authority.
He would probably never come into contact with the seals, never know about the pendulum, and no one would ever write the true dangers into the official documents sent to him.
But he was too close to Moon Bay.
So close that when disaster truly struck, he might not even live to receive an evacuation notice.
“However, I must give you a word of advice,” Elias's tone grew serious.
The harbor investigator's newly relaxed shoulders tensed up again.
“Please, go ahead.”
“If, one day, you see a comet appear in the sky,” Elias said, staring into his eyes, emphasizing every word, “leave Moon Bay by the fastest means possible.”
“Don't wait for orders from the Harbor Authority, and don't come back to pack your things.”
“Just run.”
The color drained slightly from the harbor investigator's face.
“A comet?”
“Trust me,” Elias whispered. “This is also the Dawn Lady's oracle.”
The moment he said this, he silently apologized to the Goddess in his heart.
Transmitting an oracle without authorization.
But if borrowing Her name could save an ordinary man's life, he figured the benevolent Dawn Lady wouldn't mind.
The harbor investigator clearly had no doubts.
He nodded vigorously, committing the words to memory.
“Alright.”
“Whether you believe it or not is up to you,” Elias released his shoulder, his expression returning to its usual mysterious air. “I've only told you this, you know.”
“The god wants you to live, alright?”
The harbor investigator stared at him blankly for a few seconds.
The eyes that had been constricted by fear finally regained a glimmer of light.
“Understood.”
Elias turned and walked away along the stone path outside the cordon, raising a hand to wave.
“Good luck, sir!”
The man shouted after him: “Good luck to you too!”
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