Chapter 489: The Mystical Art of Fishing
"Hey, hey... this is terrible..."
Professor Yin Zhengliang left the Morgan Furniture Factory with a serious look on his face and returned to the town to investigate more families that might have been affected. Yang Qiu, who was in Creek City, had already associated something very bad with the result of observing Professor Yin's investigation.
At this moment, Yang Qiu's expression was no more relaxed than Professor Yin, who was at the investigation site.
Interfering with someone's cognition of a specific thing within a limited period of time is not as difficult as people imagine... In fact, some people who don't understand mental magic can do it.
For example, confine a group of people in a fully closed or semi-closed environment, and use means such as instigation, hype, fraud, and intimidation to make them believe that a pile of modern industrial defective garbage is actually priceless treasures. They will spend huge sums of money to buy them frantically, empty their wallets and still feel that they have gotten a great bargain - this is the most common short-term cognitive interference that can be done without knowing mental magic.
For example... let a man or woman in the courtship period believe that a carefully packaged scumbag is the perfect match for life, and work hard and beg the scumbag for love with all their heart - this is also a kind of cognitive interference, which only targets specific individuals and has a relatively long duration.
For example... relying on geographical physical isolation, by smearing, demonizing, and depersonalizing one group of people, they created a cognitive barrier for another group of people that "people in XX place are XXX and are not of our race", artificially creating the so-called cultural consensus and social consensus, allowing a group of self-proclaimed civilized people to acquiesce in or even support the slave trade... and so on.
Of course, this kind of cognitive interference imposed on people by shaping the environment and atmosphere can usually only be effective on people with relatively weak spirits and weak wills; if you want to influence strong-willed agents and investigators, you still need a strong external force to exert influence.
The most common external force that interferes with cognition is mental magic. For example, the lich Envi will secretly give mental hints to people who have seen his true face, distorting others' cognition of his appearance, so that people who have clearly seen him cannot remember his appearance after they part.
Aggressive mental suggestions will be detected, but this kind of interference that only quietly distorts a small part of cognition will be very difficult to detect. Yang Qiu, who had been hit before, had never noticed this before. It was only when he saw Envy again through Hal's vision that he realized that this guy had played such a trick.
Yang Qiu had no objection to this experience of having his self-awareness interfered with unconsciously… After all, Enwei had suffered a great loss because of his appearance. He was transformed into a lich long before his life span was up. In addition to the fact that he was indeed a ruthless person, it was also because of his appearance that he caused trouble and his physical body was destroyed.
But this is the extent to which a high-level spellcaster can do it - they can only distort a specific person's perception of a specific thing, and the effect is not so strong that it is difficult to remove; for example, Envi's cognitive interference will be cracked as long as there is direct or indirect contact with him again.
This is why the previous generation of night watchmen in Creek City found it difficult to define the "Incident No. 063".
Xinxili Town is not a closed town. There is a normal flow of people in this town. Those who normally enter and leave Xinxili Town (farmers, passers-by, tax officials) did not show any abnormality, and their lives were not affected in any way.
The only person who broke the peace, Sheriff Westford Aubrey, was unable to explain the situation and could only use vague words like "terrible" to describe his feelings.
What's worse is that the investigators who followed up the investigation after learning about the incident also encountered the same problem as the sheriff... Their cognition would be interfered with by some unknown force lurking in the town of New Seely, causing them to believe that "there is nothing abnormal in the town of New Seely."
After three unsuccessful investigations, the night watchman could only vaguely conclude that some kind of power lurking in the town of New Seely would interfere with the cognition of those who "knew that there was a crisis lurking in this town"; while for those who were unaware, the harm would be smaller to a certain extent.
But although less harmful and nowhere near as harmful as the “wild sects” that operate openly… the danger still exists.
The reason is very simple - it is possible to carry out specific interference on a large scale against people with certain specific knowledge, the intensity of the interference will be strengthened (Wesford completely forgot his initial uneasiness two years later), and the time limit is very long (no one can tell how many years the abnormal situation in New Seeley Town has been secretly continuing)... This is definitely not something that human power can do.
The previous generation of night watchmen in Creek City did not have any solid evidence to prove how much damage New Seely Town had suffered, but they still marked the event file with the word "suspected disaster"... This judgment was not wrong.
At this moment, by observing Professor Yin Zhengliang's investigation, Yang Qiu can be 100% sure that the word "suspected" can be removed.
This is the disaster.
It’s still very dangerous…a level one disaster!
The town of New Seeley is the home base of Mrs. Carter, a high-ranking official of the Whisperer Sect. No wild sect dares to operate in this place, and there is no possibility of incidents caused by level 4 or level 3 disasters.
The possibility of a second-level disaster is not high... Xinxili Town is densely populated. If an unstable space-time rift suddenly appeared and caused an invasion of void demons, the matter would have become a big deal long ago.
The possibility of a forbidden sealed object appearing is not high. After all, this thing is just a dead object and does not have the flexibility to screen and interfere with the target. The groups targeted by the sealed object and the non-targeted groups involved in the incident caused by the sealed object will all end up dead.
A powerful force that was born naturally or descended for some reason without anyone worshipping, sacrificing or summoning it, with an instinctive consciousness to avoid the risk of exposure and hide its own presence - this can only be explained as a part of the will of an ancient god that descended on the town of New Silli.
The reason why we can be sure that it is only a part of the will of a certain ancient god and not the ancient god's will itself is because... if the will of a certain ancient god really came, the Rhine Kingdom would have been screwed long ago.
A tentacle of an unknown ancient god was fused into Yang Qiu's own soul. He was very clear about how outrageous this shit was - if he had not been able to withstand it and was merged by that tentacle, there would be no Nightmare Butcher. There would only be a madman who claimed to be a messenger of a certain god, who would turn the Rhine Kingdom into a scorched earth in half a year or less, and then either fight against the Gold Coin Church or the Storm Church, and finally be eliminated by the church at a huge cost.
There is no such thing as rationality for these so-called divine creatures who have been lost in the void for tens of thousands of years. There are only different degrees of madness - even the least crazy one, when it comes to destroying a country or slaughtering a city, is no different from a naughty child carrying hot water to flush an ant nest.
It's impossible to expect players to destroy this annoying thing, so Yang Qiu has to do it himself.
The problem is... if Yang Qiu rashly enters the town of Xinxili, it might cause a stress response from that ghost thing.
There is the breath of an unknown ancient god in his soul, which cannot be hidden, especially when facing those divine creatures who are also in the upper dimension.
Yang Qiu could only wait patiently, waiting for Professor Yin Zhengliang to come out personally, or perhaps any other player, to find a more specific and clear target...
"At a time like this... even I can't help but hope that the so-called metaphysics can take effect."
Turning his attention away from Professor Yin Zhengliang who was investigating aimlessly in the town, and turning it to the group of players in Carter Forest Farm, Yang Qiu muttered to himself.
Only those who work hard can win. This player was unwilling to give up "Mission No. 063" and returned to Xinxili Town to investigate. Yang Qiu certainly encouraged this kind of quality player behavior - compared to those guys who went to the forum to scold the planner for designing the task chain with JIO when a link was stuck, this kind of stubborn player is more lovable.
At this moment, Ai Pin Cai Ying and his friends were still lying patiently on the top of the hill in the forest farm, watching the two lazy guys in the depression below.
Of course, Yang Qiu has never arranged special luck values for player accounts... After all, this world is not a game, and Yang Qiu even if he wants to.
The "characteristics" of Wulong and Fengchu, two fishermen who can catch anything but cannot catch fish, are also a mystery to Yang Qiu...
As soon as Yang Qiu turned his attention to the anchor point of the player Wolong in Beibu Gulf, he "saw" something ...
“?!”
After "staring" at the weird thing that appeared in Wolong's field of vision in Beibu Gulf for a while, Yang Qiu shifted his attention to Ai Pin Cai Ying, who was squatting in the back and had a "full view" of the two fishermen.
With the vision of hard work, Yang Qiu finally saw the thing in front of the two fishermen...
It seemed to be the upper body of a... "person".
From the perspective of hard work leads to success, right in front of the two anglers, Wolong and Fengchu, who were sitting cross-legged by the river, there was a "person" floating in the water, looking at the two anglers curiously.
The reason why the word "person" must be put in double quotes is that... this thing just looks like a humanoid creature, but it is definitely not a person, not even a ghost.
The head of "it" looks like a white mold that was barely squeezed out of the rough shape of a head when doing 3D modeling on a computer . There is a pair of big dark eyes like ET in the eye sockets, but it has no ears, mouth, nose, or neck.
That's right, there's no neck - the white model head just floats above the shoulders.
Strictly speaking, the shoulder area does not exist. It is just a floating layer of something that looks like black cloth covering an invisible object, with a long strip similar to a torso pulled down.
The players are reflections of souls projected from across dimensions. No one knows how many ghosts and spirit monsters they have killed, so there is no such thing as not being able to see ghosts. Since this thing is floating on the water and staring at the two anglers, and even Crouching Dragon and Phoenix, who are monitoring them, have no reaction at all, it proves that from the perspective of the players themselves, they really cannot see this thing.
It is confirmed that this thing is definitely not a physical entity, nor is it an energy aggregate (spirit)... Yang Qiu couldn't help but twitch his mouth.
"Although I did expect some metaphysics - but this is too metaphysical!!"
