Chapter 178

Chapter 178: Friendly

Duncan carefully watched the old man’s expression. The strange feeling from just now had not faded. He could clearly see that Morris was not in a normal state, but unfortunately, he was no doctor.

“Do you need me to find a doctor?” he asked with concern. “How do you feel now? Do you have any dizziness or nausea? Or are you feeling dazed?”

Morris rubbed his forehead.

In his ears, Duncan’s voice seemed mixed with ten thousand overlapping howls of noise. At the same time as the sound waves entered his ears, dazzling, multicolored “colors” also rushed straight at him. These “messages” felt crammed with knowledge no humans could understand, testing his mind every single second. Yet even in a madness threshold state, he still barely held on to his sanity and slowly shook his head: “I’m fine. I just need to rest for a bit…”

The “existence” in front of him, whose true form he did not know, was showing concern for him. But now, Morris did not dare even imagine what kind of “reality” lay behind that appearance of concern. Perhaps it was a thousand pairs of eyes staring at him. Or perhaps dense, writhing teeth and tongues. Were those caring words a whisper from Subspace, or a roar from the Abyssal Deep, from the Deep Sea?

He thanked Rahm for granting him this moment of dullness. He did not have to pay too much attention to that truth.

He only tried to respond as a “person”, as normally as he could.

At the same time, he also tried to see whether he could actively shut the Eye of Truth he had opened when he got off the carriage. This God-given ability was what the followers of the God of Wisdom relied on when they explored the world. Yet now… its price truly deserved its place as the most dangerous divine blessing of the Four Gods.

He failed. The Eye of Truth was already open and could not be closed in a short time. And even if he closed it, what use would it be? A mind that had fallen into the madness threshold would not automatically recover just because he shut his eyes…

Morris thought in a daze. After a while, he slowly spoke: “I… just came to visit, to express my thanks… oh, yes, my thanks, on behalf of my daughter. Once again, thank you for your help at the City Museum last time. She asked me…”

He suddenly stalled, hesitated for several seconds, then picked up the thread of his thoughts: “She asked me to bring a letter. It’s in my pocket.”

The old man groped around and took a carefully sealed envelope from his coat pocket, then handed it to Duncan. Duncan took it and opened it on the spot. Apart from some greetings at the beginning, it contained a report on Nina’s physical and mental health and the doctor’s recommendations.

This was what Heidi had written after giving Nina hypnosis treatment last time. She had indeed said she would write a proper letter and send it over, and Duncan still remembered that.

“No need to be so polite. In that situation, stepping in to save her was only my instinctive reaction,” Duncan put the letter away and said to Morris with a serious face. “Also, thank Miss Heidi for me—since the hypnosis session last time, Nina has been much better and hasn’t had that strange dream these days.”

Morris nodded and pressed his fingers to the Sun acupoint at his temple. As he organized his words, he mentally reminded himself not to stare into Duncan’s eyes: “Have you… been well these days?”

“Me? I’m fine,” Duncan felt a bit baffled. He thought the old Mister’s way of starting a conversation today was strange. “I’m in good health, full of energy, and in a good mood—other than today’s terrible weather being a little depressing, there’s nothing wrong.”

The weather?

[Such a small change in the weather could make an Eldritch God feel “depressed”—was that the latest joke going around in Subspace?]

Morris felt his head was slightly better than before. After hearing Duncan’s words, he even had the mood to mutter inwardly. At the same time, he heard Nina’s voice coming from not far away: “Uncle! I put the bicycle away and closed the shop door! The wind outside is getting stronger and stronger… How is Mr. Morris?”

“He’s much better, but he still hasn’t told me what was wrong just now,” Duncan turned back to look at Nina as she walked toward them. “Why don’t you stay with the old Mr. later, and I’ll send Miss Heidi an express dispatch or a telegram and ask her to come pick him up…”

“No, no, no, I’m fine,” before Duncan finished, Morris suddenly raised his voice and waved his hands repeatedly. “There is no need to ask her to come. It’s just an old problem. Resting for a while will be enough.”

Duncan was startled by the old Mister’s sudden intensity. He looked Morris up and down twice. After confirming the man’s condition and attitude, he nodded: “All right, then I won’t go. Nina, go upstairs and make some soup. A hot meal might make Mr. Morris feel a bit better.”

Nina blinked and glanced in confusion between Duncan and her teacher. For some reason she felt the atmosphere here was a little strange, but she quickly nodded obediently: “Oh!”

The girl ran lightly up the stairs, and the thump-thump-thump of her footsteps gradually faded.

After Nina left, Morris also felt his mental pressure lessen a little again. Compared to the massive pressure Duncan brought, this bit of relief was almost negligible, but he still let out a quiet breath.

Then the old man who dealt with history all day fell silent for a moment, and only then carefully chose his words and spoke: “Was my behavior just now very out of line?”

Duncan’s eyes had been fixed on Morris’s changes the whole time. At first he only felt that the other man’s words and actions were unusually strange today. But slowly, he seemed to see a trace of a familiar… “feeling” in the old man’s reactions. As he tried to recall where that familiarity came from, he casually replied: “It was a little strange. So what exactly is going on?”

Morris was silent for two or three seconds before he spoke in a low, cautious voice: “In my line of work, constantly dealing with history and knowledge, the mind can sometimes be a bit sensitive.”

He only wanted to probe a little, to see what attitude this “Subspace existence” in front of him truly had, this being who always behaved kindly on the surface and had never caused any trouble while living here.

When Duncan heard that seemingly meaningful line, he immediately frowned. All of a sudden, he knew what that familiar feeling was!

Morris’s strange reaction had appeared on another acquaintance as well… on Dog!

The Abyssal Hound at Shirley’s side, the Abyssal demon that possessed a special “true vision”! Dog had also been this terrified and nervous when he saw him—because the dog could see some of the “true situation” beneath this human body. The difference was, Dog was a Abyssal demon with an extremely high resistance to corruption, while Morris was a fragile human. So Morris’s reaction would be even stronger. In other words…

Duncan vaguely guessed the truth and immediately raised his head to look into Morris’s eyes: “You saw something you shouldn’t have, didn’t you?”

Morris drew in a cold breath.

But in the next second, the doomsday he had expected did not descend. On the contrary, he again felt the mental pressure on him rapidly lessen, even shrinking to a level that, even without Rahm’s blessing, he could barely endure as a human!

Silently, Duncan shifted his “main consciousness” back to the Vanished, and only used the “remote control” skill of walking the Spirit Realm to control the body in the antique shop.

After this period of “practice”, he could now direct his distant body normally even while controlling it remotely, and could sense the environment around that body. The only effect was that the power he could draw on would be weaker—but there were no enemies here anyway.

He wanted to see whether this would make Morris feel a little better.

“Feeling better now?”

Duncan’s deep, gentle voice sounded beside him, jolting Morris back to awareness.

The old man hurriedly lifted his head. He saw Duncan’s solid, clear, harmless human form. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that the surrounding environment had stabilized.

The chaotic lights and shadows had vanished. The noise was gradually dying away. The torn buildings, the flowing flames, and the crawling, twisted dark things all disappeared from his sight. His mind was rapidly recovering, and the dangerous madness threshold state even showed signs of improvement.

He looked at Duncan in disbelief. Duncan gave him an apologetic nod: “Sorry. I really didn’t expect a human to have such ‘good eyes’. In the past I only ever scared a Abyssal demon, and a Abyssal demon’s nerves are much tougher than a human’s.”

“I… I’m much better,” Morris swallowed. The process of his mind gradually recovering was actually uncomfortable too. He could feel his heart pounding as if it were about to burst. But at least this let him regain most of his ability to think—and let him analyze useful information from Duncan’s words. “I… ah, I never thought I would see your true form. I was too careless. These years of living away from my faith have made me lax…”

Duncan did not pay attention to Morris’s muttering at the end.

He was thinking quickly, wondering how he should wrap up the situation in front of him.

After all, this great Historian was not Dog. The latter could be dealt with by scaring him a bit, but the old Mr. could not be handled with such crude methods.

“I’m very curious,” he said suddenly in the middle of his thoughts. “Why can you see?”

“I…” Morris opened his mouth and, after a slight hesitation, chose to be honest. “I am a follower of the God of Wisdom Rahm.”