Logan Sullivan’s chewing slowed down: “Has Julian West contacted the office?”

“No.”

“Hmm…” Logan Sullivan frowned.

The Special Investigation Bureau has a rule: whether it’s for classifying a case or actually starting an investigation, there must be at least two people on duty. Of course, Darrin Grant also counts as someone who can make up the numbers.

Occasionally, in special circumstances, if an investigator needs to act alone, they must contact the office at No. 4 Guangming Road at least twice a day, always keeping others informed of their location, progress, and any potential dangers nearby.

Julian West may be unreliable with small matters, but he rarely messes up big ones. He wouldn’t just disappear for no reason and ignore this rule.

Logan Sullivan hung up on Holly Harlow, tried dialing Julian West’s number, and as expected, it was out of service. He fished a Soulbound Order out of his pocket, dipped the tip of his chopsticks in soy milk, and wrote Julian West’s name on it.

The Soulbound Order acted like a compass, first swaying left and right, then gently turning in a direction. A very thin red thread extended from Julian West’s name, slowly stretching out, but the farther it went, the dimmer it became. By the time it reached under the table, the thread was nearly gray.

Then it snapped.

Chapter 96 Soulbound Lamp …

William Sherman, who had been buried in lesson plans, looked up and met Logan Sullivan’s gaze. Then he bent down to pick up the broken thread. As his fingers touched it, it crumbled like a pile of burnt ashes, turning to powder and falling away.

William Sherman withdrew his hand, sniffed his fingertips carefully, and then said, “It should be fine for now. There’s no sign of death, no blood scent. He’s still alive, just out of contact. Don’t worry, try to relax.”

Logan Sullivan said nothing, forcing down the last bun without much appetite. Then he pulled out a stack of sticky notes from under the table. Despite his notoriously messy lifestyle, his time management was surprisingly precise: three bookmark rulers were clipped to his notepad, the top one labeled “Urgent,” below that “Important,” and finally “Completed.”

The last column was empty, showing how overwhelmed he’d been lately—basically, nothing was unimportant.

From the handwriting that looked like a surgeon riding a rocket, William Sherman managed to decipher that under “Urgent,” only his own name and “Find a way to expel the broken bowl from Dad” were listed. The “Important” section was filled with a long list of work-related matters.

Logan Sullivan checked off “William Sherman” under “Urgent,” then added a third item: “Find Julian West as soon as possible.”

As he wrote, Logan Sullivan said, “Julian West actually comes from a proper Darion Sect background. Honestly, I don’t have anyone more orthodox than him under my command. Plus, he’s not exactly delicate-looking—his selfies could practically ward off evil spirits. And that guy is great at playing it safe, never causing trouble, especially since I only asked him to investigate a routine life-exchange backlash case that happens every seventh of the month. To be honest, he’s the one I usually worry about the least…”

He tapped his fingers on the table in turn. “Today I have to take someone over there. Are you coming?”

William Sherman had been preoccupied lately and hadn’t bothered with what the Soulbound Order group was up to. Hearing this, his gaze—so gentle it was almost liquid—lifted from his own checked-off name on the notepad, a faint smile on his lips. He didn’t seem to mind at all that Logan Sullivan had written his name as abstractly as a dog’s paw print. “Hmm, life-exchange?”

Logan Sullivan pulled up the email forwarded by Zach Warren on his phone. “This is it. Master, take a look for us.”

William Sherman, a total relic, had never used a smartphone before. He glanced at Zach Warren’s message, then tried to look more closely at the crime scene photos. But he fumbled with the touchscreen for ages and couldn’t manage to zoom in.

So he said to Logan Sullivan, who was gulping down soy milk, “Lower your head for a second, don’t look.”

William Sherman hovered his palm above the phone screen, and with a motion like plucking something from thin air, the photo of the deceased floated up like a 3D projection—an incredibly striking visual effect. At first glance, it looked like a corpse with a purple, swollen face was lying right on the dining table.

Out of curiosity, Logan Sullivan glanced up after ducking his head, and immediately paid the price: a mouthful of soy milk got stuck in his throat, and he nearly sprayed it all over the “corpse.”

…This was truly a case of feudal superstition defeating modern technology.

William Sherman carefully examined the corpse’s complexion, then reached out to “pinch” the corpse’s eye, as if turning the air into a 3D touchscreen—he could even zoom in and out on specific parts!

“This person probably didn’t die from life-exchange backlash,” William Sherman said, pointing at the corpse’s now palm-sized eye. “Come look at his eyes.”

“I just finished eating…” Logan Sullivan clutched his stomach in pain, but still followed his finger. In the greatly magnified eye of the corpse, the pupil was already dilated, but if you looked closely, there seemed to be a human figure reflected in the center.

Logan Sullivan paused, holding onto William Sherman’s hand. “Can you zoom in a bit more?”

William Sherman shook his head. “It’s just a photo. Any bigger and it’ll be too blurry.”

“No problem,” Logan Sullivan quickly wiped his mouth with a napkin, then tore a sheet from the back of the notepad and sketched the outline of the shadow. “Still better than our half-baked part-time tech.”

William Sherman asked casually, “Who’s the part-time tech?”

Logan Sullivan: “Holly Harlow.”

The table leg let out a loud creak, grinding against the floor with gritted teeth.

Logan Sullivan felt a cold, chilling gaze land on the back of his exposed neck. Pretending not to notice, he bent over the table, carefully tracing the image in the corpse’s eye with a gel pen. But with his back to William Sherman, he couldn’t help but secretly smile.

“There’s an old rumor in the underworld that a dead person’s eyes must be destroyed, or else the last person they saw will be reflected inside, and the police could find out who it was,” Logan Sullivan said as he traced. “But even Pleasant Goat knows that’s impossible. Otherwise, all the detectives would just study ophthalmology all day. Still, where there’s smoke, there’s fire… There’s always a grain of truth in folklore, right? So what’s this shadow in the dead man’s eye?”

William Sherman stayed silent.

Logan Sullivan turned back with a smiling gaze. “Hmm?”

William Sherman’s gloomy expression made it clear that he was very displeased about the topic of Holly Harlow. He was silent for a few seconds, then spoke a bit coldly: “It’s a soul-calling. If someone dies by a ghost official’s soul-calling, their eyes are clean. But if their life wasn’t up, and someone or something from the underworld forcibly took their soul, the dead person’s eyes will retain a shadow from the netherworld.”

“Hmm… So what do you think this is?” Logan Sullivan asked.

William Sherman lowered his eyes, suppressing his voice: “How should I know.”

“Oh, what’s wrong? Upset? Jealous?” Logan Sullivan teased shamelessly. “I love it when people get jealous. Come on, give me another one?”

William Sherman: “…”

“You used to act all aloof, like some untouchable male god. I got tired just watching you pretend,” Logan Sullivan said, sticking the note onto the back of one of William Sherman’s lesson plan drafts. “Come on, male god, there’s a scanner next to the desktop on the desk. Help me scan this and send it to the office, so they can check as much as possible before I get there.”

William Sherman took it, walked woodenly to the desktop, turned it on, and then stared blankly at the pile of equipment in front of him—this “male god” only knew how to turn the computer on and off and play PowerPoints others had made for him. Everything else was done by his teaching assistants. He couldn’t tell a printer from a scanner.

At that moment, Logan Sullivan suddenly moved behind him, wrapped his arms around William Sherman from behind, guided his hand to place the paper in the scanner, and walked him through the steps. Finally, as the machine whirred, he deliberately blew a breath into William Sherman’s ear: “Hmm, don’t know how? Why not ask your hubby to teach you?”

William Sherman: “…”

Logan Sullivan grinned mischievously, quickly gave William Sherman’s butt a squeeze, and before William Sherman could explode in embarrassment, darted away to the other side. He flipped open a calendar on the desk, tapped an email account and password written on it: “You can do this, right? Find the ‘Colleagues’ section in the contacts and send them the scanned image.”