Operation Red Book

In March 1881, on a dark and windy night.

The waves were surging, and the surging waves hit the steep cliffs violently.

There was not a trace of light in the dark night sky, and a Gothic building standing on the cliff was hidden in the darkness.

A faint glow of fire could be seen through one of the windows, and a figure was standing in front of the window with his hands behind his back, his entire face buried in the shadows.

In the flickering firelight, if you look closely you can see his waist-length straight golden hair and the black sickle placed beside him.

The figure's hands were crossed on the windowsill, and his right hand was tapping his nails regularly on the iron window frame. Each nail was painted with shiny black nail polish.

The figure wore a sterling silver ring on his left hand. The blood-red diamond on the ring shone with a faint light. Two inconspicuous letters were engraved under the ring - GH.

The ocean outside the window was roaring, venting its emotions in the empty world.

From inside the window, there was only the "tap tap" sound of a figure knocking on the window. The three candles on the table flickered, and the melted wax dripped onto the slightly withered rose petals.

"Brother Shuyang doesn't want me...Brother Shuyang doesn't want Shuyun..."

A puppet with strange joints crawled out of the darkness. Its entire body was burnt black, and only two black eye holes and a row of sharp fangs were left on its oval wooden head.

The joints of its body were twisted and it crawled on the ground tremblingly, making a shrill sound from its mouth, which became faster and sharper.

"Brother Shuyang wants to accompany Shuyun...tsk tsk tsk tsk...make Brother Shuyang into a puppet...hahahahaha..."

"waste."

The figure uttered a sentence in Chinese, his voice was cold and harsh.

"Pull it down and bury its soul."

The figure switched to a London accent, which was even more chilling than the Chinese accent.

The puppet was dragged back by countless pale hands stretched out from the darkness. With the sound of "clicking", followed by a sharp scream, the surroundings returned to their previous silence.

"Ravenna, come here."

A crow with red eyes flew over and perched on the window frame. It lowered its head to straighten its smooth feathers, and tilted its head to feel the touch of the human figure.

"Tell Lord Dorian a message. Dalton has suffered enough. It's time to find a way to have him go and apologize to Lord Dorian."

The crow cried hoarsely, spread its wings and flew up. Suddenly, a fierce flame rose up in the fireplace in the room, and the flames kept licking the crow's feathers.

The crow cried again, and dived into the flames, taking the flames with it.

The figure continued to knock on the iron window, as if nothing had happened in the room.

In April 1881, Ivy and Joshua had been working at their respective posts for almost a month.

Joshua had a workstation by the window at Johns Newspaper. When he had no tasks, he would carefully organize the documents and letters on the table.

Most of those documents and letters were incident reports handled by SCO and correspondence with superiors.

Joshua particularly liked these documents and was willing to read them even though they were written in obscure official language.

To him, this was no different from the detective novels he had read in the past, and he was happy to spend his quality time on these things.

The SCO members who lived in the newspaper were all very kind. Thomas and Luna always liked to gather around him and listen to him talk about the future and detective novels, even though they always thought that they were stories made up by Joshua.

Thomas always had a big smile on his face, while Luna didn't show any expression fluctuation. She only showed curiosity when she heard him talking about Ivy, and patted his hands to indicate that he should continue.

Luna always follows Joshua and asks about Ivy, and every time Luna says she is "Joshua's girlfriend."

Joshua would patiently correct her every time - "Not my girlfriend, but Miss Ivy", but Luna would just stare at him and the next time she would say "Joshua's girlfriend".

Belle was always busy in her own room and would only come out to randomly arrest people when she made a new potion. Joshua had been caught by her several times.

Once he slept for three whole days after drinking it, but felt like he had only slept for 5 minutes; once his body grew several times larger, so big that the entire newspaper office couldn't accommodate him, so he had to fold himself on the ground and wait for Bell to make the antidote.

After doing this several times, when there was a noise in Bell's room, Joshua and Luna quickly hid in the closet. Alexander, who was too big to hide, was caught.

Alexander is also liked by Thomas and Luna. Although Alexander always has a stern face, Thomas secretly told him that Alexander has more than 20 cats and more than 10 dogs at home. Joshua also observed that there are many plants and dolls on Alexander's workstation.

The most annoying one was Jacob, who always dragged Joshua to the local church during working hours. When he was there, he would always open the Bible and talk, and would always ask people to kneel down and repent, saying that this was God's will.

Hilda and Walter often disappeared, and Bell told him that the time bomb of the bomb crisis was created by Hilda.

In fact, there are huge spaces above and below the newspaper office, which are used as laboratories to create weapons for Hilda.

Walter has been passing on useful information. Alexander told him that this is because Walter looks very ordinary, does not need to sleep or eat, and only needs a bag of blood. He is a good at collecting intelligence.

Mr. Victor often stayed in the office alone. From time to time, some ice could be seen through the crack in the door. Every time Victor came out, he shed tears.

Everyone at SCO turned a blind eye, only Joshua cared about him: "Are you okay, Mr. Victor?"

"You know me, I'm fine, thank you for your concern...if you'd like to listen to me for a while."

Joshua readily agreed the first time, and then shivered in the cold as he listened to Victor speaking some unclear words in Russian. This state lasted for the entire afternoon.

After this, Joshua still cares about Victor, but he will then say, "I'm busy, sorry."

Victor would cry and say he was going to find Mr. Johnson.

Holmes often visits the Freesia Café, mainly hoping to run into Moriarty, but Moriarty always avoids him.

Every time Joshua told Moriarty that Holmes was out, he would enter the Freesia Cafe, drinking coffee and doing math problems.

There had not been any dangerous missions during the past month. Alexander often went out alone, quickly finished a task, and then came back to write documents. He would throw them to Joshua and then take care of the flowers and grass around him.

Joshua met with Ivy every night and talked about the day's work and the text that appeared in the red book.

The Red Book describes Joshua's interview process and Ivy's puppet crisis at the Chinese dock, and also raises three questions:

1.Why does the Shuyun doll move?

2.Who is the Grim Reaper at the Chinese Wharf?

3.Which family does Mr. Zhu belong to?

All six questions appeared, and Ivy and Joshua couldn't answer any of them. They could only stare at each other, and then they had to go back to their respective posts with the questions, looking for opportunities to collect answers.