Chapter 356: Receptacle, Nature, and Trigger (Part 1/3)
Translator: Strivon
The little monkey was quite young, yet he was already a super enthusiast of this old road. He simply drove this plain and crude electric scooter to the same effect of driving a large horsepower motorbike.
Luo Nan followed the kid closely for some time and made sure that this fellow didn’t encounter any problems. He finally pulled his eyes off the kid to go research his own matters. He switched clairvoyance modes. The deep, starry sky unfurled with starlight, but all he did was check for special structures within it.
Of course, a dark cloud large enough to cover the starry sky would certainly be a big fish.
Currently, the enormous population of Xia City exhibited its astonishing effects to Luo Nan. There were two thousand ability users and two hundred million people in the city. The ratio was a hundred thousand to one. To pick an ability user or a Mutant out of all these people was certainly not an easy task.
Especially using Ink with his clairvoyance radius of two hundred meters. Even though Luo Nan was able to shame Cat Eyes, a professional, this range was not enough in the face of this modern metropolis. Plus, the stars, be they many or few, roamed around the spread, left and right, top to bottom. Their structures were ordinary and normal, containing universal similarities. Normal people were the overwhelming majority.
No matter how splendid the stars, one would become dizzy when looking at them for too long. The vast and hazy star atlas, the complicated structures, were like a labyrinth. Prolonged contact would cause fear.
Luo Nan really wanted to shut his eyes and look away, but he thought about how the targets were alive, how the targets could move at will, and how the star atlas was constantly changing. He could only grit his teeth in perseverance.
But he felt something after an unknown amount of time passed. Perhaps it was because of how long he looked at the star atlas, but there existed a different power within the star atlas, existing as a faint glimmer.
It might be a misconception on his part…. At the very least, there were some special characters that showed up below when he watched the little monkey, but they lacked a clear distinction from other people.
Ink took half an hour to fly back to the origin point, due to having to follow the little monkey’s speed. The exploration on Peony’s side had already come to an end. They had returned to the inhabited area from before. They were staggered apart, and Luo Nan could only go looking for them. He continued along the same route as the little monkey.
Luckily, nothing bad happened as the kid returned to the inhabited area. The little monkey soon met up with his companions at some empty area, and he immediately joined them in playing children battles.
Ink spiraled in the skies above, taking in the entire scene below. In the background, Luo Nan felt a little suspicious. It was hard to tell the ages of these kids, but they should be five years and older. Luo Nan was in educational institutions at this age, and he never had the chance to be this wild.
It was very popular for kids to be enrolled in early education nowadays. This was of universal importance to the parents. Practically no kid could avoid it. However, the inhabited area was a place existing outside of the conventional world. This wildness and freedom were not at all the style of the citizens of the metropolis. Talk of vagrants naturalizing into society wasn’t a baseless claim.
Luo Nan looked at it from a different perspective. After the little monkey had joined his companions, the subtle feeling of discrepancy grew larger upon the star atlas. However, it still wasn’t clear enough.
Luo Nan simply let Ink find a place with vegetation, and Ink stopped atop the branch of a tree, allowing Luo Nan to observe at close range. He looked down below, casting a net as far as the eye could see. Luo Nan was scared of missing something, so he locked onto a limited number of targets. He watched, searching for any patterns or clues. He prepared to draw meticulous Life Sketches of the little kid and his companions to further search for discrepancies.
He had just clarified his direction of action when Ink was discovered by these kids. They sure possessed great eyes.
“It’s that large bird from this morning!”
Luo Nan didn’t know who blurted the words out, but the words caused the group to surround and stare intensely at Ink. There were even little devils throwing rocks, wishing to hit Ink.
This action immediately drew the reprimand from the others, “Don’t be hasty! There’s a gun that can shoot nets in my dad’s car. We can capture the bird alive and sell it the gang later. We can get a high price!”
That little f***ing pipsqueak!
The little monkey was quiet compared to his companions. He didn’t utter a sound, and this somewhat comforted Luo Nan. At least this kid isn’t an ingrate. I didn’t watch after you in vain.
But in any case, a little monkey could never prevail against a dozen of brats. Luo Nan wasn’t willing to become someone’s target practice, so he immediately had Ink flap its wings and fly away.
The group of kids grew anxious upon seeing this. They already took Ink to be food upon a plate. They saw this broiled duck fly, and they found its departure hard to accept. They shouted and screamed as they threw stones like hail. It was all absolutely useless, however.
The kid who offered to grab the net-shooting gun moved quickly. His dad’s car was by the road. The kid opened the trunk and took out the net gun. He took aim and was about to pull the trigger, but for some unknown reason, his mind suddenly went blank, and he lost control of his legs. The earth became like the waves of the sea. It rippled back and forth. The trigger was pulled, but the muzzle was aimed at god knows where.
“Earthquake! It’s an earthquake!”
The frequency of earthquakes in Xia City had somewhat dropped in the recent month, but people were still very familiar with this sensation. The people staying in the inhabited area were extremely sensitive, because their housing structures had issues with their durability. The sensation right now was quite intense.
Some kids’ legs went weak, causing them to fall to the ground.
There were some adults at the side of the road watching the bustling kids. They were confused by their shouts, but they were even more baffled.
Earthquake? I don’t feel an earthquake!
Of course they didn’t feel it. This was because Luo Nan had unleashed an attack on the mental plane through Ink. The target was none other than the group of kids. The intensity was very subtle. It wouldn’t hurt anybody. It just caused one’s reactions to be sluggish for a while, causing their minds to be dazed.
Ink flew high into the sky. A feather dropped to the ground, and the curtain to today’s search operation had dropped as well. But the plan he had in his mind of seizing the initiative and amazing the world with a brilliant feat had ultimately failed to fall into reality.
It was hard to do work that was valued at millions and millions.
Even if it was in the form of compensation.
Luo Nan had gone from passiveness to activeness over the course of an entire fruitless day, his experience that of an ebbing tide. In the end, he realized that there were many matters in this world that could not be resolved in a single spurt of energy. His mood subconsciously became much calmer.
From his perspective, the search for the Mutants wasn’t a particularly pressing matter. It was the entire day he squandered with the vast and hazy starry sky. It was clear yet not clear, and he had no sense of where to begin. Luo Nan had things quite difficult.
Thus, Luo Nan came to realize that he placed more importance on Formatting Theory, on his cultivations.
When night fell, Luo Nan simply tossed Ink over to Peony. He also didn’t have the mood to go peeping on secrets and the like. Instead, he and Xue Lei went to the Divine Yu Gym in the Boshan Building.
Gym Master Xiu was reportedly moving his gym these days. Luo Nan believed that the gym was completely desolate, but he never expected to see the entrance to the front courtyard to be brightly lit and there to be a bunch of people present. Those were the parents of the students. They were waiting outside the practice grounds of the front courtyard.
Luo Nan was baffled. “I thought he stopped classes?”
“This is the last class. The gym master feels that class 5’s progress in their fundamentals just so happened get stuck at a node. He wants to teach them for a few more days. It can be considered destiny if at least one could become enlightened…. The courses have all been free over the past few days.”
“Oh.” This was what the Gym Master Xiu could achieve.
The course was pretty much over when Xue Lei and Luo Nan had arrived. Luo Nan followed Xue Lei’s intentions and simply entered the training ground, where they saw Gym Master Xiu.
Luo Nan was simply stupefied by the entrance to the grounds.
