Conan Rick's Investigator

Anyway, I can go to Innsmouth tomorrow, so I might as well stop being an "old eight".

Innsmouth, I'm coming!

……

The next morning, Qin Zhibo got up early.

Today's plan is to go to Innsmouth, a town a hundred kilometers away, and to go there and back so as not to delay tomorrow's outing with Carl Sanford.

So time is still very tight.

After "chewing" breakfast, Qin Zhibo first bought a harpoon gun at the fishing tackle store in Arkham.

This harpoon gun has good single-shot power, but its disadvantage is that it fires one shot at a time, and you need to manually reload the bow and arrow after firing, which means you only have one chance.

Qin Zhibo's skills include firearms skills. Although it does not include harpoon guns, aiming and shooting are actually interchangeable.

Seeing that there were daggers on the counter of the fishing tackle store, Qin Zhibo bought another dagger about 25 cm long and put it on his waist for self-defense.

After purchasing the basic equipment, Qin Zhibo went to the car rental company in Arkham Town and rented a Buick Lesabre.

During this period, the staff of the car rental company will also check the driver's license.

Of course Qin Zhibo didn’t have an American driver’s license, or if he did, he didn’t bring it with him.

So Qin Zhibo could only bring up the fact that he was Carl Sanford's man again, and the people at the car rental company immediately skipped this step.

"Don't you want to check whether what I said is true?" Qin Zhibo asked.

The staff at the car rental company quickly shook their heads and said, "No one would be so reckless as to pretend to be Mr. Karl's man..."

In this way, Qin Zhibo successfully rented a car and drove to Innsmouth.

……

Innsmouth is located in northeastern Massachusetts, facing the Atlantic Ocean to the east.

According to the information Qin Zhibo had previously found on the Internet, this town was once prosperous in the 19th century and could be called a city.

But since the authorities' large-scale purge and mass arrests of Innsmouth in 1927, it has become a dead city.

When Qin Zhibo drove here, he found that the term "dead city" was an exaggeration.

Innsmouth was not as dead as imagined. The entire town was still inhabited by humans, but the number of houses was far greater than the population.

The Buick slowly drove through the dilapidated streets that smelled faintly of fish. Qin Zhibo felt that the atmosphere here was a bit weird.

The people here are used to staying in the dark, observing people from outside the area furtively. Their people are everywhere, behind windows and in alleys.

They were secretly observing Qin Zhibo, and Qin Zhibo was also secretly observing them through the car window.

These people do not have what Mark Allen calls "Innsmouth face", but they also have some characteristics that are different from normal people.

Their foreheads are generally narrow, their eyelids are slightly swollen, their pupils are grayish white and light blue, and their noses are flat and narrow.

The locals all had gloomy and expressionless faces, staring at the car Qin Zhibo was riding in like sculptures with only their necks moving.

After driving on the street for a while, a man in police uniform stopped Qin Zhibo's car in front.

"What's the matter, sir?"

After leaving Arkham, Qin Zhibo was still relatively honest, worried that the other party would check his driver's license if they disagreed.

However, the indifferent policeman did not do so, but asked Qin Zhibo the purpose of coming here.

"I'm here to fish, sir..."

As he spoke, Qin Zhibo gestured with his eyes at the harpoon placed on the back seat of the car.

The policeman was silent for a moment, then put his hands on the roof of the car. "It seems the fish you are going to catch must be quite large..."

"But you have to be careful with everything here, especially the locals, they are a bit xenophobic..."

"Okay, I won't keep you any longer. I wish you a happy life."

The policeman released his hands from the roof of the car, and Qin Zhibo said "thank you" and drove away.

……

The Buick gradually drove to the seaside, and Qin Zhibo finally got rid of those gloomy-faced "observers".

The Innsmouth waterfront was a deserted area, mostly filled with burned or bombed-out houses, and a few dilapidated houses on the verge of collapse, full of maggots and filth.

This should be the area that was the focus of the authorities' raid on Innsmouth in 1927. The brutal modern methods have made it no longer possible for people to live here.

The Buick gradually drove through the narrow streets and arrived at the abandoned port on the seaside.

As soon as Qin Zhibo got off the car, he saw a decadent figure sitting on the edge at the end of the narrow pier.

Qin Zhibo walked over and wanted to say hello and ask where there were more fish nearby, because where there were more fish, there was a possibility that deep divers were hunting nearby.

"Hi~"

Hearing Qin Zhibo's voice, the person sitting on the edge of the pier slowly turned around.

It didn't matter that he turned back, but it almost startled Qin Zhibo and made him stumble.

This man actually has an Innsmouth face.

Severely bulging eyeballs, eyelids that could barely close, and rough, thick wrinkles on the neck...

This is a deformed monster that God has created during his rebellious period.

Qin Zhibo didn't expect that he could see the Innsmouth face here, even though he couldn't see it in the town of Innsmouth.

On his head, Qin Zhibo saw the symbol of his identity as a human being, his name was Zadok, and he was 76 years old.

Zadok was holding a bottle of wine in his hand and was not at all ashamed of his face when he saw strangers.

"Hi~ Hello, stranger!"

Zadok greeted Qin Zhibo in a slightly drunken tone, and Qin Zhibo had no choice but to nod in response.

“What are you doing…?”

"I'm drinking, hiccup—" Zadok picked up the bottle in his hand, "Can't you see?"

"I can see that, and I can see that you are drunk." Qin Zhibo said.

"No! I'm not drunk! Not drunk!" said Zadok.

"Yes, that's what everyone who gets drunk says..." Qin Zhibo continued.

"It's them!"

Zadok suddenly changed the subject as if he had gone mad, and smashed the wine bottle into the air in front of him with an angry expression, as if he was venting his anger on something.

"It's Obed Marsh!"

"It was he who brought faith! It was he who founded the esoteric religion! It was he who brought the bloodline of those fish! But now his descendants want to destroy it all!"

"Damn Marsh family! I can't be played around like this. I will never drink these devilish drugs!"

As he spoke, Zadok took out a few green and white capsules from his worn pocket. Qin Zhibo recognized the eye-catching color of the capsules at a glance.

It is a targeted drug manufactured by STK!

Before Qin Zhibo could reach out to stop him, Zadok angrily threw the capsule in his hand into the sea.

"Damn it! I will not yield to the devil's will!"

"I will return to Father God Dagon and serve our Heavenly Father and Savior forever!"

"In the eternal mansion of Lalaye, the sleeping Cthulhu awaits your dreams!"

Old Zadok gasped, and the thick folds on his neck trembled.

Suddenly, his eyes turned to the hillside by the sea, and a layer of fear instantly covered his bulging eyeballs.

"Quick! Let's go!"

"It's the Marsh family! They found me! They all know!"

"They're coming to take me away from the Father—I'm running for my life!"

Zadok's voice trembled, and before he could finish his words, he spread his bony claws and fled madly along the coastline.

Chapter 513 Innsmouth: Fish Transformation

Old Zadok stomped the sea water with his webbed feet and fled into the distance in a panic.

Qin Zhibo looked at Zadok's back, then looked back at the hillside by the sea.

There was nothing noteworthy on the bare hillside with a bit of scorched soil, not even a single person in sight.

What is he afraid of?

From Zadok's drunken words just now, Qin Zhibo probably understood something.

Obed Marsh, the bringer of Innsmouth's unique local culture, created the Esoteric Cult here, gradually turning the locals into a hybrid with the Deep Ones.

But after the Great Purge of 1927, Innsmouth became a "dead city".

In the more advanced modern society, the descendants of Obed Marsh established STK, which is dedicated to developing targeted drugs to treat "Deep One Syndrome" and giving them to the people of Innsmouth who have been contaminated by the Deep One's bloodline.

The current head of STK, Walter Marsh Jr., should be a member of the Marsh family that Zadok mentioned back then.

Normally, this should be a blessing. Targeted drugs can correct the errors in the bloodline, and the people of Innsmouth can live with a relatively normal appearance.

But it is not ruled out that there are old stubborn people like Zadok who do not want to take medicine and only want to return to the embrace of their "ancestors".

Mark Allen once said that the final destination of hybrid divers is the eternal ocean.

What surprised Qin Zhibo was that Zadok mentioned Cthulhu again.

Not only that, there is also "Dagon", which seems to be the beliefs of the local esoteric religion in Innsmouth.

At present, Qin Zhibo has no idea what these things are.

Qin Zhibo shook his head, temporarily put aside these chaotic and dirty words, and concentrated on the matter at hand.

Looking at the deep blue sea, Qin Zhibo saw the waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

The sea water here is not as dangerous as the Pacific Ocean, but it can still give Qin Zhibo obvious discomfort and depression at noon.

At the mouth of the river, about 3 miles from the coastline, there is a huge rock fortress that is as dark as a devil.

"Okay, now let's see where we can find 'Fantastic Beasts'?"

If you want to catch a deep diver, you have to go into the sea, but before going into the sea, you must first overcome your fear of sea water.

Qin Zhibo materialized the [Fear in the Bottle] in his palm, bent down and filled the bottle with some water on the shore.

In an instant, Qin Zhibo felt as if a nerve in his brain was dislocated.

This feeling is very mysterious and magical. When I looked up at the sea again, the discomfort I felt with the sea water completely disappeared!

"It's really good!"

Qin Zhibo couldn't help but cheer excitedly, and even sang a happy song when he was deeply moved.

"I'm not afraid of sea water~"

"I'm a bit nervous~ I'm not afraid, no, no, no~"

Qin Zhibo danced around like a lunatic, and only stopped after a long time, preparing to put the cork back into the bottle.

But during the operation, Qin Zhibo accidentally glanced at the sea water in the bottle.

At this moment, Qin Zhibo felt an unprecedented sense of oppression and uneasiness approaching his heart, and even his breathing function became difficult at this moment.

Qin Zhibo was so frightened that he stumbled and fell to the ground. The brown bottle filled with sea water also fell to the sand, spilling some sea water.

The Atlantic Ocean water moistened the ordinary sand, and Qin Zhibo stared in fear.

Qin Zhibo: Will -15

After a while, the sea water on the beach either leaked or evaporated, and Qin Zhibo came back to his senses from his dazed state.

It was not until now that Qin Zhibo realized why this was called "Fear in a Bottle".

Although this prop can block all fears of similar objects in the bottle, it will also concentrate all fears on this one object in the bottle.

This means that if there is a mouse inside, then you will not be afraid of any mouse in the world, but you will be extremely afraid of the mouse in the bottle.