Chapter 174: Living a Life of Mischief
They came to this world to solve the white fog, but Arthur is now living in this kind of ghost place and is ready to live there for a long time. He looks like he wants to live here forever. Has this kid forgotten his original purpose?
What is he thinking about now?
Su Ming was very confused about this. He hoped that his super intuition could give him some clues, but his super intuition was always silent at this time, so Su Ming had to ask himself this stupid-sounding question.
"What's wrong with you? Have you forgotten why we came here?"
Arthur paused in his drinking and his expression became more serious, looking depressed and frustrated.
He sighed, put down his wine glass, sat on the bed, and said slowly: "Su Ming, I know you are very powerful, but after so long, you should have seen the horror of this world, right? Now let alone solving the white fog, we can't even survive... This is not a weirdness we can solve."
His tone was negative and pretended to be calm, which reminded Su Ming of Sisyphus pushing the stone.
Arthur is now like Sisyphus. He should have pushed the stone to the top of the mountain, but he stopped halfway up the mountain, and refused to go down the mountain or push up. He pretended and lied to himself that he was just taking a break and he could continue working after he had rested.
Although they were not from the same investigation bureau, Su Ming felt that he needed to persuade them.
"Arthur, it is our responsibility to deal with the white fog." Su Ming said.
"Are you going to die for your duty?" Arthur asked jokingly.
Su Ming shook his head: "I don't plan to die, but I don't think you are safe the way you are now. You can only be safe if you get rid of the white fog."
"Really? It seems that you haven't been beaten by this world yet. Let me ask you, are you dreaming?"
"Recently."
"Don't you think it's scary?"
"Of course, it is quite scary." Su Ming replied, vaguely realizing the reason why Arthur wanted to convince him.
From Xia Xiaoyu's reaction, we can tell that dreams are very scary for most people, and this must be the case for Arthur as well. Does he want to use dreams as a reason to stop?
In fact, Su Ming himself is not afraid of dreams, but he also knows that he cannot demand others to have his own conditions. After all, not everyone has super intuition.
“Just that dream alone is enough to make us feel overwhelmed. In that mental state, we would never be able to complete the mission.
Su Ming, do you know why I want to stay in this town? Because this is a town blessed by the dreamer. If you sleep here at night, you will only have good dreams, not nightmares. "
Su Ming lowered his head and thought for a moment, then asked, "So you plan to stay here forever?"
"No, of course not! Do you think I'm the kind of person who would abandon my mission!"
Arthur's expression darkened and he became agitated.
Then, as if realizing that he was not worthy of saying such words at the moment, his excitement quickly subsided and he collapsed again.
"I don't plan to live here forever, I'm just here temporarily. This place allows me to think calmly and wait for the right opportunity.
I believe the Bureau will definitely send stronger people here. Before that, what we have to do is to protect ourselves, keep ourselves in a normal mental state, and survive in this cruel world." Arthur added.
Su Ming was surprised by Arthur's change. When he was outside, he was such a proud man, but now, all his sharpness was gone.
Su Ming could tell at a glance that Arthur no longer had any desire to compete with him, and even no longer had any hope of leaving this world.
"He's finished." Xia Xiaoyu beside him said.
"He probably isn't completely finished yet. He just suffered too great a setback." Su Ming replied .
"Su Ming, what do you think? Stay here with me and wait for the people outside to come in." Arthur asked cautiously.
"Arthur, if it's just a dream problem, I think I have a way to solve it. The child I brought in is called Alice. She can resist abnormal mental influences. As long as you are with her, you will not be disturbed by the God of Dreams."
Hearing this, Arthur fell into deep thought. He frowned and remained silent for a long time. Then he stood up and said, "Come with me. I will take you to see Feiyun. I think you will change your mind after seeing him."
…
Su Ming and Arthur were waiting silently on a small chair next to the blacksmith shop. The clanging sounds in the shop were continuous, and the heat waves from the furnace hit Su Ming and Arthur one after another, making them sweat all over.
The hot sweat that was produced by the heat evaporated immediately when blown by the cold wind, leaving only the biting cold.
Su Ming watched Liu Feiyun use his special powers in the shop to slowly bake a red-hot block of iron, and then use a hammer to slowly deform it at the right temperature.
He was shirtless and hammered the iron with powerful and accurate movements. It seemed that he was more suitable to be a blacksmith than a commissioner of the Investigation Bureau.
"The winters in this world are very cold, and the summers are very hot. Even though the sky is full of dark clouds now, when summer comes, you will feel like you are walking in the Sahara Desert," said Arthur.
"How do you know?" Su Ming asked.
"I heard from the locals. So even though the weather is very cold now, the tavern owner saw my ice-making skills and immediately kept me because I can be of great use in the summer." Arthur said with a faint smile, and Su Ming actually saw a hint of relief on his face.
"Sorry to have kept you waiting for so long. I didn't expect to meet you here. This is really lucky." Liu Feiyun wiped off his sweat, put on a dirty coat, walked out of the shop, moved a small stool to the side and sat down, staring at Su Mingdao, "It's great that you are still alive. I'm so happy to see you."
Liu Feiyun's attitude has also changed a lot. Su Ming can understand the changes in Arthur and Liu Feiyun's attitudes. After all, everyone is now in the same boat and they all share the same suffering.
Even if they were still competing for the Grasshopper King before going up the ropes, now that they were up the ropes, there was no point in fighting again.
"Show him your hands." Arthur said to Liu Feiyun.
Liu Feiyun nodded, untied the bandages wrapped around his arm one by one, and showed the strange arm to Su Ming.
The skin of that arm was like black charcoal, and the surface was covered with tiny cracks. A flickering red light could be vaguely seen in the cracks, like a charcoal fire from overnight that was about to go out. This was a phenomenon Su Ming had never seen before.
"Why did it turn out like this?" Su Ming asked.
"I overused my supernatural powers. Normally, I wouldn't burn myself when using fire, but when my mental and physical strength is overdrawn to the limit, my brain's control over my supernatural powers drops significantly, and I end up like this."
As Liu Feiyun spoke, he rewrapped the bandage on his hand, shook it, and said, "It's no big deal. Although it looks scary, it just hurts. Just soak it in water frequently."
"Do you know why Feiyun became like this? Because we encountered a monster!" said Arthur.
"What monster?"
“You must have heard of the three gods. You mentioned the Church of Hope before. You must have been to their village. We were with those people before.
But then we were attacked, attacked by the Plaguebringer.
At that time, we thought we could kill the other party with our own strength, but the final result was that we had no power to fight against it at all...that monster was too strong.
Su Ming, you haven't seen it with your own eyes, so you can't imagine how strong that monster is, but I want to remind you that it is definitely not an opponent we can fight against."
Arthur clenched his hands together, his muscles tensed, and as he recalled the past, he seemed to be back at the scene.
“The villagers had already told us that if we came into contact with that guy’s bugs, we would definitely die, but that guy’s weakness was fire.
At that time, I thought that with my special abilities and the help of Feiyun's fire abilities, I would be able to easily kill the opponent.
So the strategy we initially formulated was that I would create an ice bridge, approach the Plaguebringer, and then Feiyun would use his fire ability to burn the opponent to death.
I can also generate a low-temperature field that can drop the temperature within a certain range to below zero, so if there are insects approaching us on the way, they can be frozen directly.
Everything was fine at the beginning, and we successfully approached each other, but then, suddenly a large number of flying insects appeared. Those insects kept attacking us, and Feiyun and I could only use our respective special abilities to defend ourselves.
The plague messenger also kept his distance from us and didn't let us get close at all.
Finally... we had no choice but to run away. During the escape, we relied entirely on Feiyun's ability. My extreme cold field had no effect at all. The only thing I could do! ... was to use ice to create a safe path.
A lot of things happened afterwards, and I can’t remember clearly. I only know that the two of us were running around like headless flies, and finally arrived near this town in a daze.
It was then that the Plague Bringer gave up chasing us... I guess it was because he didn't want to get too close to the Dreamer's territory."
"I guarantee that the guy has been playing with us. It would be easy for him to kill us. Afterwards, I thought about it and realized that the only way to kill that kind of monster is to use ultra-long-range attacks... If only there were enough guns, modern weapons are much more reliable than super powers." Liu Feiyun sighed.
Su Ming listened in silence. Liu Feiyun said that modern weapons could effectively kill the plague messengers, but Su Ming knew very well that was impossible.
The size of the Plague Messenger would indeed give people the illusion that it could be shot through with a gun, but Su Ming had fought with the opponent in close combat and knew that was not the case. The monster could persist in the flames of Hell's Return state for quite a while, and even if it was hit by a few rocket launchers, it would probably be fine.
To be honest, he felt that Arthur was lucky to be alive. Apparently, the plague messenger they encountered was not able to drive the swarm of insects as fast as the one he encountered. Otherwise, based on Arthur and Liu Feiyun's performance in the story, there would be no possibility of escape.
