Silver Hub Town.
Boboli came over with a plate of green, plump grapes and placed them in front of Morri, who was resting his head on his hand and sighing.
This medium-to-tall English teacher from England hadn’t stepped outside for over half a month. According to the agreement with Yang Zicang, Morri’s grounding was to continue until three years later, the day he himself would –answer the phone.-
–What did you talk about with Yang Zicang last time? Why can’t you say?- Boboli sat down on the chair beside him, picked up a fruit, and tossed it into his mouth.
Morri turned his head, thought for a moment, and looked at Boboli.
–He didn’t say I couldn’t tell you, on the contrary…-
–He? Who?-
Morri hesitated for a second, recalling Hong Haocheng’s words: –Bring Boboli along too.-
Yeah, that makes sense…
Someone like Boboli with such an extremely rare power-leveling ability—it was one thing to not know what use it had before. But failing to see his value now would be simply too foolish.
–What are you thinking about? You look like you’ve got a deep grudge.-
–Uh, nothing.- Morri put down his hand and thought:
Just like when I talked with Yang Zicang, revealing a bit of information about Hong Haocheng’s existence shouldn’t count as changing things now. Anyway, leaving or something like that is still far off; I just need to get through three years, and then it’ll be fine.
–Last time, Zicang and I talked about the reason I fell into a coma. The reason I was unconscious for so long is related to one person.-
–Ah,- Boboli said with a surprised look. –I was wondering why you were so worked up after that phone call. What happened? Tell me. Who was it about? Was it that Ms. Mai Ya, the one who provided the Enightmare phone?-
–No. It was a man named Hong Haocheng. He called me back from the future.-
–Huh? Who’s that? Never heard of him.-
–He’s our future teammate.-
–Wow! Anyone who can join us must be really popular!-
……
Zhang Miao nervously faced the battered Enightmare plane, clasped his hands together and bowed, his heart pounding.
–Big guy, please don’t eat me. With me around, you’ll save yourself a lot of trouble.-
After saying that, the man looked at a hole that was writhing and healing itself, then quickly strode into it.
Inside the plane, a sinister atmosphere lingered. Some –living- objects moving around slowly retreated after touching him. Intense pain wracked Hong Haocheng’s body. He pressed his palm against the door and slowly pushed it open.
–The Marked Bloodline…-
The mattress from the wedding bed had been flipped against the wall, but it was merely old, not destroyed.
–My wicked wife…-
Hong Haocheng clutched his head, which seemed ready to fall off at any moment.
–And some unknown ancient bloodline that devours monster souls and contains them… What kind of crazy world is this?-
Everything in here is turning old, as if left for years or even decades. Their –vital essence- is being absorbed by the plane, becoming part of the monster it is spawning.
[Come, come eat, come… now I can give you more of my lifespan.]
Hong Haocheng pressed his hand against the wall that had grown a fleshy membrane.
[I shared 2000 years with ourselves.]
Around 1,500 years remain.
As the extra lifespan was shared, the plane shook violently. The fleshy membrane rapidly spread across the entire shattered cabin, like a red metal of flesh and blood patching up the ruin.
–Cough!- Zhang Miao coughed as he walked to the door.
He saw the charred man pitch forward to the ground, but at the moment of impact, countless fleshy membranes grew there, catching his entire body and quickly wrapping it.
{I get it, –teammate- means helper!}
After devouring two struggling people, the plane Enightmare’s intelligence rapidly increased.
–Can you move? You’d better leave quickly, it’s dangerous here.- Zhang Miao urged.
{Danger… what does that mean?}
–It’s exactly like what you’re doing now—that’s danger. There are many people nearby coming this way, and some want to kill you.-
{Kill… us? Kill the dad who loves me?! Bad! Bad guy!}
The city was vast.
So even with tens of thousands of people scattered across the city, it still felt largely empty.
But now, the roar of car engines could be heard from multiple directions.
–Kill the one who killed Red Moxel!-
On the long road, a man sticking his head out of a pickup truck window pointed at the sea of fire ahead and shouted:
–Hurry, that Enightmare is about to successfully hatch.-
–My god, that guy didn’t even fully ripen the Enightmare, yet he managed to kill the one who could fire artillery—this person’s Enightmare has awakened an incredible ability.-
–Those Crimson bastards must be ecstatic, but relying on a single newcomer won’t be enough to overturn their fate.-
–Not necessarily. Don’t you know about that guy from City Rank 41?-
–Which one? Oh, you mean that subway group. They just happened to encounter the Resister’s emergence, destroyed its containment, and obtained Cent-Arms and the complete postal remittance. Pure luck.-
–The one who showed up in our city today isn’t so lucky.-
Dozens of people near the explosion point had already begun approaching the plane wreckage. Just as they were about to reach it, the plane blasted again with a thunderous explosion.
Countless fragments whirled and spun, scattering across the sky.
–What happened?-
The light dimmed.
–Is it dead?-
–No, look!-
The dim light kept rising!
The dozens of people gathered looked up—from within the spreading smoke, a broken fuselage rose like a skeletal frame, tearing itself from the ground!
Like a blood-drenched demon of bone and flesh, it climbed into the high sky with a somber aura, charging beyond the city’s edge—where an endless expanse of azure waves stretched like the ocean.
The crowd immediately followed its slow, heavy trajectory, rushing toward the other side of the city.
Boom!
The plane, which hadn’t been flying very high, crashed into the blue water about a dozen li away, skidding further.
By the time Cheng Yunze and the others from the Four Phases Team arrived, the monster plane was already out of sight. However, a small boat on the blue waves transmitted a sensing image from a distance.
In the sensing image, a figure seemed to climb out from the top of the distant plane, lying on its back and looking their way.
–It’s that fence-sitter.-
–That newcomer didn’t kill him after all, Brother Chen. It seems the people inside might not have had their personalities changed by Enightmare after all.-
Cheng Yunze’s gaze turned somewhat gloomy. –People like him are more troublesome. Try to recruit him; if not, kill him.-
……
Morri talked about what he had been doing in the psychic field for thousands of years.
–So envious~- Boboli clapped happily upon hearing this.
–To raise the world’s civilization to a new level and give them a new language—no wonder you’re our Teacher Morri.-
Morri tossed a grape into his mouth.
–Just killing time out of boredom.-
–And that Hong Haocheng? He showed up on the day you woke up, hasn’t he appeared since?-
Morri lowered his eyes in thought.
He didn’t tell Boboli about Hong Haocheng writing a novel in the psychic field.
Of course, he also omitted the various inexplicable experiments that people on the continent had performed on him during the long years before his awakening—which he only gradually learned about later.
Including but not limited to, the burning of various substances and immersion in liquids—there were tens of thousands of useless formulas alone, yet these formulas were later unexpectedly found to have all sorts of strange uses, such as curing certain obstinate diseases, making dyes and perfumes, refreshing odors that invigorate the spirit, or fragrances that could induce unconsciousness… insect repellents and condiments, and… fertilizers.
All these discoveries were regarded by the Temple as –gifts– bestowed by the followers of the Undying King.
In addition, there were sacrifices of various monsters and manipulations of elemental symbols, thousands of prayers recited over the centuries, kisses from pure maidens and lifelong servitude, blood and flesh—and even more things that make one’s scalp tingle and feel utterly uncomfortable.
None of them woke him.
And all of this was still only what the Temple had clearly recorded.
Later, in his so-called –Dream Temple,– Morri often heard certain people in the confessional repenting on behalf of their ancestors—ancestors who lived who knows how many generations ago.
Those were experiments carried out by ignorant commoners in ancient times… during the first few centuries after he was discovered, when his body was scattered across the continent. Either they happened during the centuries when several kingdoms fought over him, or they were strange experiments secretly conducted by some fanatical guards after his body entered the Temple.
At times like this, Morri, in his little room behind the temple, listening to these confessions through a brass speaking tube, would want nothing more than to knead his face into a completely different shape.
–Hey, why do you clam up the moment this guy gets mentioned?-
Morri rubbed his face and let out a sigh.
–Yeah, it did happen a few more times afterward, but nothing worth mentioning.-
–What did he do? Nothing worth mentioning? Is this guy not a good person?-
–Tsk… his character…- Morri hesitated. –To go through such trouble to contact me, he must be decent enough, I suppose.-
……
Inside the dilapidated cockpit, which looked like the body of a demon.
The flesh encasing Hong Haocheng grew hotter and hotter, to the point that it absorbed and withered the bizarre flesh spawned by the Enightmare plane around it. It was like a demon being gestated.
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