"Creak—where's the lamp?"
Amid the sounds of fumbling, the faint light filtering in from the corridor was blocked by two burly figures.
"It's on your right-hand side. Quit getting in the way, I'll find it."
A series of soft rustling scrapes came from the darkness.
"What the hell is this sticky stuff?"
"Take your hand off, now!!"
"That's my goddamn nostril!"
With an exasperated curse and the soft scrape of flint, the magical wall lamp flickered to life.
One guard rubbed his nose while the other wiped something off himself as they walked in.
"The dock district ones should be..." The guard in front searched around by the light, his gaze sweeping ahead. "Why are there so many files piled up on the table?"
The two exchanged a glance and hurried over to the table.
More than a dozen reports lay stacked across its surface. Several on top had spread open, revealing stamped parchment sheets.
One guard opened the top report, gave the title a cursory glance, then opened several more beneath it.
"Damn it." The more he flipped through them, the stranger his expression became. "Aren't these exactly what we came looking for?"
"Why are they just sitting here?" The other guard rapidly scanned the shelves around them and shrank his neck. "Could it be those assassins..."
"Don't fucking scare me. It has to be that lazy bastard in charge of sorting the archives. He pulled them out to read during the day and didn't put them back before leaving."
"Good. Saves us from wasting time here."
"Check if there are any more. The captain said anything related to the murder cases gets taken."
As the two guards huddled together to inspect the files on the shelves, He Xi, still invisible, slipped out from behind a bookcase with three