Chapter 119

Chapter 119: A Pair of Friends

From the moment the Deep Sea priest judged that there might be an supernatural Runaway inside the museum to the moment he finished his self?blessing and led the charge into the fire, only about ten seconds passed.

Duncan watched the group rush toward the flames. The fire squad on the plaza immediately moved to support them, working with practiced skill. They used the hoses to cover the entrance, cooling it down and clearing a path. Another team quickly formed up. On top of their standard protective gear, they hung the insignia of the Deep Sea Church and something like amulets. They also rushed into the Ocean City Museum.

The constables who stayed at the edge of the plaza took over calming and guiding the rest of the citizens. They began contacting the nearby Cathedral to receive the fire survivors who had already been marked as possibly corrupted.

They were well trained and worked together tightly. It was not just something they had drilled countless times. It felt like something they had done in real disasters countless times.

This was the face of a city?state that had survived in a strange world full of supernatural phenomena and grown prosperous. They could quickly pick out the shadow of the supernatural in any disaster. They could suppress corruption before it exploded beyond what Mortals could bear. Both supernatural and ordinary people received full education and training in these matters, until their basic responses became muscle memory. Only then could the whole group keep living on.

Duncan saw all of this, but he did not have much time to think about it. He checked every soot?covered survivor at the edge of the plaza, but Nina was nowhere to be seen.

He suddenly looked up at the museum.

From inside the burning Ocean City Museum, a somewhat familiar aura was drifting out.

He started to walk toward the museum, but after only two steps, a constable blocked his way: “Mister, it’s dangerous ahead. Please leave it to the professionals.”

Duncan glanced at the constable, nodded, and turned away.

Arguing with the officials here would only waste time and get in the way of the professionals’ work. Duncan was a practical man, so he simply gave up on the main entrance of the museum. He circled quickly to the other side of the plaza and hid himself in the shadows of a building.

The next second, a white dove flew straight across the plaza and dove right through a side window of the museum that was spitting flames.

Some people saw this and only thought it was a poor pigeon, scared and half?stunned by the smoke and fire. After a few sighs, they stopped paying attention.

Inside the Ocean City Museum, Duncan stepped out of a vortex of ghostly green flame.

Smoke, firelight, and heat rushed toward him at once.

Duncan did not fear these things, but he could feel this mortal body’s functions straining under the conditions inside the burning building. If he just walked forward like this, his soul might be fine, but this body would definitely not survive.

But he was not acting blindly. Before he rushed in, he already knew what he had to do.

The place was full of fire—and fire was very obedient.

Duncan held his breath. A faint trail of ghostly green flame flowed under his feet, then vanished in an instant. With that brief contact, he had already formed an invisible link with the flames around him. Just like in the underground sun cultists’ gathering place beneath the abandoned factory, he felt the surrounding fire submit to him.

Even the burning air itself began to change. It no longer affected this body’s breathing.

Duncan took a gentle breath and walked toward a door that was sealed by raging flames.

“Back.”

The fire pulled back at his word. It retreated and slowly died out behind him, revealing a corridor full of smoke and scattered embers.

Duncan glanced over his shoulder, then looked at the signs on the nearby walls. He judged that he had “landed” in an office on the edge of the main exhibition area. The corridor in front of him was a service passage used by the museum staff. At the end of it lay the main exhibition halls. On one side were stairs and a shaft lift leading to other floors.

He stepped into the corridor and moved forward, searching ahead while he focused his mind, trying to sense where Nina was inside the museum. Honestly, he had no idea if he could pull it off.

It was his first time trying something like this. His senses might now be far beyond a normal person’s, and Goathead had said “a captain’s intuition is the surest compass,” but for him, trying to sense someone’s aura from far away like this was still an unfamiliar, high?level trick—something he had only seen in stories.

He was only trying it now because, back on the plaza, he had felt a faint trace of a familiar aura from inside the museum for a moment. That gave him the idea to try.

Duncan walked down the corridor. The flames along the way retreated and went out one by one. He still could not sense where Nina was, but suddenly, he felt something else.

“Hm?”

He muttered in confusion and turned toward the direction his senses pointed. Not far ahead, on the lower level beneath a staircase, a “mark” was growing clearer and clearer in his perception, pulsing faintly.

The mark’s owner seemed to be very much alive and kicking.

Duncan hesitated for only a moment, then broke into a run, heading straight toward the source of the feeling. He ran through the flames that kept backing away and dying out. He went down a staircase that was already starting to crack and loosen, while pushing his control over the fire as far as his body could safely handle, trying to suppress the blaze in the whole building.

At the same time, the mark in his mind grew sharper. In the end, he even began to faintly hear the “voice” coming from it—

“…My hand? Hey, these are just small burns. Give me two or three days and they’ll be fine…

“Yeah, I’ve always been pretty strong…

“Don’t worry, I blocked up the crack under the door. The smoke won’t get in for now… You’re really smart, you even knew there was a water room here… Uh, you checked the route map before? The teacher talked about it in class? Safety education… um… I might not have listened very well, hahaha…

“You said you saw a dog just now? You must’ve seen wrong. How could there be a dog in a place like this, hahaha…

“…What do we do about this one who fainted? You don’t know either? All right… at least she’s still alive… It’s fine, we’re definitely going to be rescued…”

He was not mistaken. That was Shirley’s voice.

Duncan recognized the mark. It was the little bit of fire he had placed on Shirley not long ago, and her voice was now reaching his mind through that mark.

Back on the plaza, that instant when he had felt a trace of familiarity from the museum seemed to have come from this mark as well. He had not tried to contact it on purpose, but because he was too close, he had sensed its presence anyway.

This mark was the first one Duncan had ever actively released, so there were still many things about it he did not understand. But now it seemed that the connection between spirit flames was even more useful than he had imagined.

As that thought passed through his mind, another question rose up:

Shirley was talking to someone, and from the sound of it, that person was her friend… Who was with her?

…

The closed water room had become a temporary shelter. The narrow, cramped space kept out the disaster drawing closer outside. Water still ran in the sink not far away. The electric light had gone out, and the flickering firelight coming through the window was the only source of light. Nina curled up carefully beside the sink, and she could almost count her own heartbeats.

They were beating abnormally fast.

Her new friend, the girl named Shirley, was checking the seals on the doors and windows. Shirley’s hands had been burned by the flames, but she acted as if nothing were wrong and kept working busily. On the floor not far away lay another lady. Nina had never met this woman before. On the way here, in the chaos, she had seen a loose brick knock the lady out. She and Shirley had dragged her into this room together.

From the woman’s clothes and style, it was clear she was not a poor person from the Lower City like Nina, but a proper young miss from the Upper City. Unfortunately, in the face of disaster, proper ladies and the poor of the Lower City did not seem very different.

The sound of water from the sink suddenly grew weaker, then stopped.

“…The main pump just shut down,” Nina said. She had been listening to the sounds in the room the whole time. “The fire is very big.”

Her “new friend,” who was a whole head shorter than her, walked over and squatted down in front of her. In the dark, their eyes were on the same level.

“Are you really scared?” Shirley asked quietly.

“I’m very scared of fire…” Nina hugged her legs tightly. Even her voice was shaking a little. “Really, really scared of fire.”

“…Actually, I’m pretty scared too,” Shirley said after a two?second silence. “All right, I’m the most scared—I’m more afraid of fire than anything…”

“You can’t tell at all,” Nina said, shaking her head. “You were charging around like crazy just now.”

“I was charging around because I was scared,” Shirley said, flopping down to sit beside her. “I’m so scared that if I ever stop, I’ll never have the courage to rush in again… But now it’s fine. The two of us are damn well stuck in here, and there’s nowhere left to run, so we can only sit here like two idiots and wait.”

In the dark, Nina reached out and bumped Shirley’s arm. She suddenly noticed that Shirley was trembling too.

So Shirley really was very scared as well.

“You swear,” Nina said softly. “I thought… you were a very well?mannered, good student.”

“At a time like this, there’s no point in pretending. I’ve always been like this,” Shirley said, a bright smile on her smoke?blackened face. “And… forget it.”

She seemed about to say something more to Nina, but in the end she swallowed it back. She turned her head to glance at the door and said: “Come on, use that smart brain of yours. How long do you think we can stay alive in here?”

Nina raised her head and looked around: “I… don’t know either. But as long as we keep the smoke out, we’re safe for now. This room is very sturdy, and it’s at the bend of the stairs. It shouldn’t collapse for a while.”

Shirley gave a careless “oh,” then hesitated for a moment before speaking again, slowly: “So… I mean, if I—if I had a way to get us out of here, but it might be pretty scary, would you… want to try it?”

“A way?” Nina looked at her in confusion. “What way?”

“Well…” Shirley stood up, then suddenly sat back down again. “Ah, forget it. Let’s wait a bit longer. It’s not time yet. Not yet…”

Nina: “…?”