Chapter 118

Chapter 118: The Fire Scene

Thick smoke rose into the air, with faint firelight flickering inside it. People were running along the street, shouting in panic, and the moment Duncan heard their cries, his eyes widened a little.

The Ocean City Museum… the one near Crossroad District… Nina!

This afternoon, Nina had gone with her classmates to visit the Ocean City Museum near Crossroad District. That was exactly the direction where the smoke was rising!

Duncan started forward at once, wanting to run straight toward the museum. But he quickly realized that getting there from this part of the city would not be easy. Even if the smoke looked close to the naked eye, the winding streets would waste a lot of time. Taking a cab was not realistic either—not only was traffic here not that convenient, but even if he did manage to flag down a car, no driver would want to head straight into a burning building.

His mind raced. He was anxious, but he did not lose his calm. After he quickly sorted through the situation, a bold idea appeared in his heart.

“AI!” he ordered silently, suddenly speeding up as he slipped into the shadows of a nearby alley.

A flash of green spirit flame swept past. AI, who had been patrolling nearby, appeared out of thin air, flapped her wings, and landed on Duncan’s shoulder.

Duncan turned his head to look at the pigeon and had already sorted out his plan in his mind.

He knew this bird could carry physical objects across space and keep the “cargo” perfectly intact during the trip. He also knew her carrying capacity was quite large—so far, none of their tests had reached her limit.

So… could she “carry” him to the Ocean City Museum?

The bold thought quickly grew firm, and Duncan could not help a small sigh in his heart. He had never tried having AI carry a living person through space. It was a very dangerous experiment. And lately he had not managed to find any cultist willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of research. Originally he had planned to wait for AI to bring back some “prey” before arranging human trials. He had not expected something like this to happen so soon… but maybe that was just as well.

Since he could not find a test subject, he would use his own body and soul, which were not afraid of death, as the first experimental target. No matter what, AI could at least keep the “cargo” intact during transport. That meant this body should arrive whole in the streets near the Ocean City Museum. And if this body really died again in the teleportation because of some mysterious power… he would just project himself from the Vanished again and possess it. He would treat it as a second upload.

“I want you to ‘deliver a shipment’,” Duncan said as he patted AI’s wing. “Deliver it to the Ocean City Museum in Crossroad District—the big white building you flew past this morning.”

AI tilted her head. As clever as a human, she had already guessed Duncan’s intention the moment she saw the dark smoke on the horizon: “A trip that starts the moment we say go?”

“Just tell me if you can do it.”

“Then let’s…”

“Do it.”

Without another word, the pigeon beat her wings hard. A burst of green spirit flame exploded out of nowhere, turning her into a skeletal dove made of spirit flame. She rose into the air and circled quickly around Duncan.

In the next second, the ghostly green blaze flashed and vanished. Duncan’s avatar turned into a stream of light and disappeared into the whirlpool of fire.

One second later, a snow?white pigeon shot up from the shadows deep in the alley and soared toward the next street, heading straight for the thick black column of smoke that was growing more and more intense.

Near the Ocean City Museum in Crossroad District, fire squad members who had rushed over from the fire station were already trying to fight this sudden blaze. Thanks to the District’s good basic infrastructure and the museum’s special status as a public building, there were not only resident fire units nearby but also plenty of emergency pumps and evacuation exits.

By the time the fire squad members started trying to put out the flames, some of the people trapped inside the museum had already escaped through the emergency exits on either side of the main building. They gathered anxiously at the edge of the plaza.

People were talking in terror about the flames that had suddenly burst out in the corridors and halls. They spoke of strange, howling explosions from the depths of the museum and twisted, impossible shapes in the fire. Some people were clearly having hallucinations under the pressure and kept describing scenes that were far too terrifying. That only made the panic spread faster.

But the professionals were already at work. The priests from the Cathedral on the plaza and the resident Guardians were very experienced at handling early signs of corruption caused by mass mental stress. Two priests had already walked into the crowd. They lit censers beside the people who were most agitated, trying to calm their emotions. Several Guardians began to split the crowd apart, taking away those who showed potential signs of corruption, preparing to give them later mental comfort and a Will Test.

In the shadows of a building a few dozen meters from the museum plaza, a cluster of green light and flame suddenly rose up.

The ghostly green flame swirled and gathered, like a door opening in midair. Duncan stepped out from it. Threads of fire still clung to his clothes, drifting away on the wind as he walked out of the shadows. AI flapped her wings and settled neatly back onto his shoulder.

Duncan glanced back at AI and quietly noted down this new experience and the feeling of performing a “live teleportation.”

Just as he had expected, AI had reached the Ocean City Museum by “flying,” not by instantly arriving as she did when Teleporting between the antique shop and the Vanished.

That meant AI’s teleportation had to be built on anchors. When she teleported between the antique shop and the Vanished, the anchors were the antique shopkeeper and the “Captain.” But when she carried one of those anchors with her, she could only fly honestly through the space of the Mortal Realm to get from place to place.

As for what it felt like to be “carried” in flight by AI… it was strange.

He had not lost consciousness during the process, but he could not clearly see his surroundings either. Through the link of the spirit flame, he could vaguely share AI’s senses. He could faintly see views from high above and feel the air rushing past his body. But all these shared senses seemed to be separated by a layer of the Veil. They were not as clear or direct as his own body’s senses.

Maybe it was because AI’s body was too different from a human’s. Or maybe it was because AI had her own will and could not be completely taken over.

But those were small problems, and Duncan did not care about them right now. Unlocking AI’s “new function” in a moment of crisis was already a huge gain. He could study the details later. For now, the most important thing was to find out how Nina was.

Flying was not as fast as true teleportation. It had taken a few minutes to get here from the nearby district. But compared to running or taking normal transport, this speed was already amazing. He had not lost much time on the way.

Duncan could already see the burning building. The white main structure of the Ocean City Museum had three floors. The fire on the first and second floors was the fiercest. Thick smoke poured from several windows on the second floor, and flames burst and rolled out of some of them. A column of smoke also rose from the rooftop, with faint tongues of fire licking out from it.

The way the flames were spread made it look as if a giant pillar of fire had exploded on the first floor and punched straight through the upper floors and the roof.

The fire squad members had opened several hydrants at the edge of the plaza. Huge jets of high?pressure water blasted toward the museum’s main building, trying to cool the outer walls and prevent this century?old structure from collapsing in an even more deadly way. Some survivors had gathered at the edge of the plaza, accepting comfort from the priests or answering questions from officials.

Duncan walked straight toward these survivors, looking carefully to see if Nina was among them.

Halfway there, he heard some of the survivors trembling as they described what they had seen.

“…The fire just appeared in the air! It really came out of nowhere! It was like it had been burning for a long, long time but no one could see it, and then it suddenly showed itself!”

“There was a howling sound, a sharp howl, like a demon laughing!”

“…A man whose whole body was burned black crawled out of a room—Goddess above! He was wearing clothes from decades ago… He crawled out of the room, but that room wasn’t on fire before! The fire only started after he came out!”

The survivors at the edge of the plaza were deeply terrified. Many of them were talking over each other as they described what they had seen. Duncan walked up beside them and saw a priest of the Deep Sea Church in a long robe, with a short black beard, frowning deeply.

“The panic rate is too high. A third of them are mentally unstable,” the Deep Sea priest said quickly to the Guardian warrior beside him. “They show signs of being corrupted by supernatural power… There may be something unclean inside the museum. When will support from the main Cathedral arrive?”

“At least half an hour.”

“…That’s not good. We don’t have that long. If there really is something unclean, at this scale it will probably go into a runaway state in ten, maybe fifteen minutes…” The black?robed priest glanced at the burning museum, then suddenly turned to an attendant at his side. “Have the constables take over things here.”

Then he grabbed the front of his priest robe and tore it off in one motion, revealing a black shirt and trousers underneath. He raised the Storm Canon in his hand and shouted a short, loud benediction:

“Please, bear witness! We go forward without fear!”

The other Guardians shouted together: “Please, bear witness!”

Right after the benediction, a faint mist rose around the Storm believers, wrapping their bodies like protective waves. In the next second, they charged toward the burning building.

(A young man from Earth named Colin died in a car accident, crossed into a chaotic era where supplies were scarce, and obtained a “Bronze Immortal Gate”… )