Chapter 495 Carl Lawrence
"What happened? Why is it so noisy outside?"
The old woman sitting on the bamboo chair grasped the armrest with the back of her skinny hand and stretched her neck forward, trying to look out through the crack in the door opened by her husband.
"It's okay, Tina, it's just those undead spirits fighting again." John withdrew his gaze, tremblingly closed the door and pulled the iron pin, while turning back to comfort his wife.
"Here they come again." Tina sighed helplessly, fumbling to pick up the knitting needles on her knees again, complaining, "I really don't know how long these undead will cause trouble in this town. Is there no one who can take care of them?"
"Maybe things will get better with the new mayor. There will always be someone who can control these undead spirits."
John held the counter and walked back into the small shop that was the couple's activity space. He picked up the oil lamp that was placed on the counter when he opened the door to check and put it on the small wooden table in front of Tina. He sat down and continued to weave bamboo baskets with the shaved bamboo strips.
At Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence's age, it is difficult to fall asleep early. Rather than lying in an even smaller bedroom and staring into the darkness, the old couple prefer to do some handicrafts by oil lamp before sleepiness comes.
Because electricity bills are high and wires are easy to be stolen, even families like Lawrence who can afford it usually don't spend "huge amounts of money" to install electric lights. Daily lighting often relies on oil lamps and candles.
In a small grocery store, a white-haired old couple sat opposite each other under the dim light, quietly doing their own handicrafts. This scene seemed extremely warm and peaceful to people, as if it could calm people's hearts. Relatives and elders from their hometown would unconsciously appear in their minds, and a smile would unconsciously appear on the corners of their mouths...
But Yang Qiu did not have the sentimentality that only people with delicate and sensitive minds would have.
From Professor Yin's perspective, he saw the old expert staring at the household registration files of the Lawrence couple, especially... noticing that Carl Lawrence's death anniversary was June 3rd forty-five years ago, Yang Qiu flew over from Creek City.
Professor Yin Zhengliang would naturally not talk to himself the entire time while conducting an investigation. Before the old expert came to a clear conclusion, Yang Qiu, who only glanced at the anchor point from time to time, naturally had no way of knowing Professor Yin's investigative ideas.
But the two key pieces of information, forty-five years ago and June 3rd, were enough for Yang Qiu to take action - especially the latter, Westford Aubrey's memory was shaken twice, both on June 3rd!
What happened to Carl Lawrence on June 3rd 45 years ago? How did the Lawrence couple survive all these years? These may be important, but they are not that important to Yang Qiu... He only cares about one thing: the culprit who has caused the continuous population evaporation in Xinxili Town in the past few decades has finally been found.
High in the sky shrouded in the night, Yang Qiu, wearing a cloak, hovered in the wind, staring coldly at the town district below where Lawrence's house was located.
Yang Qiu did not rashly release his mental power to test... He could not be sure where the ancient god's consciousness, whose "existence" could only be detected by high-level spellcasters or high-level priests, was at this moment.
The "appearance" of the ancient god's consciousness in Carter Forest Farm does not mean that "Him" is there - to put it bluntly, this thing is part of some extremely powerful "will", and its "existence" can be projected arbitrarily to where "Him"'s believers are.
Compared to the Eternal Sleeper God who was once killed by the player and the Joy God whom Yang Qiu had faced before, this ancient god's consciousness is obviously more powerful and more polluting... but there are still countermeasures.
Right now is the peak time for players to be online; although online players are bound to be killed or go offline due to monster spawning, the number of players active in various maps is still over 30,000.
With these 30,000 anchor points in hand, Yang Qiu is confident that he can temporarily withstand the pollution of the evil god's consciousness, forcibly "open the door" and stuff this damn thing back into the void.
The key point is that this time cannot be too long... otherwise Yang Qiu himself will not feel well.
"This couple is a strong suspect, but there is still a small chance that it is not them...If we alert them, it will be troublesome."
The Lawrence couple are indeed very suspicious, but their son who died forty-five years ago is equally suspicious - since he is an ancient god suspected of dominating killing and death, then the messenger of God is also likely to be an "immortal".
The ancient god's consciousness with independent awareness was obviously not highly assimilated with the messenger who summoned him; if the wrong messenger was captured, alerted or angered, it would be a disaster.
After thinking for a while, Yang Qiu, who was hovering thousands of meters in the air and blocking the strong wind with his spiritual field, turned his gaze to the streets in the town.
"To be on the safe side...it's better to make two preparations first."
Professor Yin Zhengliang was walking through the alley when a strange yet familiar voice suddenly rang in his mind: "Professor Yin, please stop going to Lawrence's house for now."
"Lord Yang?!" Professor Yin blurted out subconsciously.
"It's me." Yang Qiu calmly transmitted information to Professor Yin's anchor point, "I need you to assist me in investigating Carl Lawrence's grave."
"The child who died?" Professor Yin was stunned for a moment before reacting, "You suspect he is the 'Evil God's Messenger'?"
"But we can't rule out this possibility for now." Yang Qiu said, "The strength of this evil god's consciousness is different from those players have encountered before. If there is anything abnormal in the cemetery, I will kick you offline, and your 'account'... may never be used again. I will make compensation later."
Even with Professor Yin's determination, he couldn't help but feel a little creepy when he heard this...
What Lord Yang meant by this was that the evil god could even threaten the "player" who was merely controlling the skeleton body across the plane, forcing Lord Yang to destroy the skeleton body? !
"I understand." Professor Yin paused and agreed readily.
This "game character" of his was just "created" today. Besides, he himself is not a gamer, so he doesn't care whether his account will be "deleted".
Lord Yang specifically asked for his assistance instead of assigning tasks to players as usual, obviously because of this.
Understanding Yang's intention, Professor Yin did not delay at all. He immediately asked Qi Tian, who was accompanying him in the investigation, to stay in the town and rushed to the cemetery alone.
The public cemetery of Xinxili Town is located in the suburbs, only 600 meters away from the Morgan Furniture Factory. Professor Yin had been to this area when it was still daytime in the other world.
The god of death in this world openly preached in the western part of the Napalm continent. Even the most ignorant civilians knew that there was no hell or heaven after death, only two ways for the soul to disintegrate and disappear, or to degenerate into a ghost. The so-called "culture" of burying people alive with the dead had no soil to germinate, and the ancient profession of tomb robbery on Earth naturally had no chance to rise. Correspondingly, there was no corresponding profession of gravekeeper.
Of course, cemeteries, which are generally located in the wilderness and are filled with grave mounds, are still a popular setting for various folk horror stories... After all, ghosts do exist in this world.
Professor Yin, who had been jogging all the way while trying to avoid the players who were brawling all over the town, had just stepped into the cemetery surrounded by waist-high wooden fences and densely covered with thorns when he was horrified to see... hundreds of densely packed translucent ghosts floating in the air above the cemetery.
These hazy ghosts, which are too far away to be seen even by the players, do not seem to have a clear consciousness and are just hovering and wandering in the cemetery in a daze.
Professor Yin was shocked by this creepy and surreal scene, but he saw ... under the row of big trees in the middle of the cemetery, there was a little boy who was less than 1.2 meters tall and seemed to have merged into the darkness.
Professor Yin only had time to see the outline of a little boy before his consciousness quickly left this material plane.
When Professor Yin's vision returned to normal... what he saw was no longer the surreal cemetery, but the ceiling of the research institute.
And at the moment when Professor Yin was "kicked off the line", the skeleton he chose as the "game character" exploded on the spot.
It really did explode... The solid skeleton that had been nurtured for thousands of years by the rich magical aura of the Tarantan Wasteland and could withstand the tampering of players was directly blown into micron-sized dust. The fine bone powder, which was finer than the loose powder used for setting makeup, floated in the air in the form of mist.
The strongest mental force below that of a demigod was projected all at once through the matrix anchor points on the skeleton. It was indeed impossible to save this "player character"... If Yang Qiu had not taken into consideration that players played games carelessly and ordinary skeletons could not withstand the force, and had specially selected the ancient warrior skeletons "produced" by Tarantan, this skeleton with matrix anchor points attached would not have been able to withstand this intensity of mental force transmission.
In other words, as early as when building the framework of the game "Alien World", Yang Qiu had already made plans to use the players' "game characters" as consumables in case of emergencies... ahem.
By sacrificing a "player character", Yang Qiu's powerful mental power was cast through the air, instantly creating a subspace barrier that acted internally and sealed off the entire cemetery.
With lightning speed, he isolated the space inside and outside the cemetery. Yang Qiu flew over from the sky above the town and slowly landed in front of the cemetery.
The source of all tragedies in the town of New Seely still stood under the row of lush trees , motionless.
Yang Qiu landed gracefully on the ground and when he looked over, He... no, he, also looked at Yang Qiu with an inhuman gaze that was so calm that it made people feel cold in their hearts.
The two sides stared at each other across the subspace barrier. After a long time, Yang Qiu spoke expressionlessly: "Although I expected it, it is still surprising. You... are still Carl Lawrence."
The messenger of God who was assimilated by the ancient god's consciousness can be understood as gaining the power of God, but it can also be understood as... losing everything, from body to mind, from torso to soul, and becoming a puppet of God's will.
The little boy in the cemetery had an inhuman, cold look in his eyes, as if he did not regard Yang, who was there, as a fellow human. This trait of contempt for humans... is only possessed by humans.
