Chapter 498 - The Nightmare Plain: Part 1
Chapter 498: The Nightmare Plain: Part 1
A man, wearing a black-and-white striped patient clothes, was quietly staring at the door glass in front of a bakery, as if he was looking at himself in the mirror. He looked entirely normal. But as normal as he was, the fact that he was in this place was strange. Even Lin Sheng had to exhaust a large amount of holy power to stand here safely, let alone an ordinary human with no supernatural ability.
Lin Sheng slowly walked toward him. He could see the loose golden hair dangling down the back of the man’s head. The man was thin at the top, his neck had disappeared because he was too obese. Through the patient’s clothes, Lin Sheng could make out the beads of sweat on the back of his neck.
“Are you human, still alive?” He had thought of just killing him. But thinking there might be survivors here, he thought the better of it. So he asked.
The man was seen shuddering, his body tensing up as he tried to tilt his head in Lin Sheng’s direction, as if he had heard Lin Sheng’s voice.
“Please…. Help me…” The pleading voice of a male came from within the man’s body.
He forced himself to turn around. Now Lin Sheng could see his face. It was pale, sweating, and fat.
“I don’t want to die! Please help me! Please help me! I’m still young, I’m only thirty. My son is waiting for me. Please! Please help me! Please help me!”
As the man kept pleading, he got even more anxious, hotter and sweating like a pig as if he had done some strenuous exercise.
“Help me, help me, help me, help me, help me…”
The man’s upper body exploded all of a sudden. Thousands of black silks that looked like bundles of hair flew out after the explosion, piercing through the air with a loud shrill.
Lin Sheng’s face turned grim, followed by the burst of the bright holy light from his body. The pure and powerful holy power rose to meet black silks in midair. As the two forces collided, the sound of what seemed to be the vaporization of water rose. A large part of the black silks were purified, turning into black smoke before dissipating into the air.
But the holy light had not stopped. Following the direction where the black silks came from, it came down on the man with a loud boom. The man exploded, turning into black silks but was quickly purified by the holy light. Seconds later, all that was left was a piece of patient clothes, and the rest of his body had vaporized.
Lin Sheng stood stock on the spot, looking depressed as he gazed at the patient’s clothes on the floor. What happened just now had reminded him of a similar scene he had seen in the dreams.
“The woman in Blackfeather City… her method of attack looked just like this one!” He recalled the scene in the dream. “It looks like the Black Tide is reaching the level of that in Blackfeather City back then.”
He walked past the bakery and continued to explore in the surroundings. There were no more incidents.
Half an hour later, Lin Sheng returned to the spot from where he came and left the black mist. Tenko Kasumi and the Knight Lord were still there, her leaning on the wall puffing away, him dozing off on a stone bench at the sports field.
When Lin Sheng came out, they got to their feet and came up to him.
“Let’s go home.” Lin Sheng did not say more, but the dark mist’s danger index was rising in his mind. He was not scared of it, but it would be dangerous to others.
“Did you find anything?” Tenko Kasumi frowned. “Should we split up and get in there to investigate?”
“No need. Your holy power is still not up to snuff yet. It’s too dangerous to go in there recklessly. I have another plan in mind. Never stay in the black mist for longer than 30 minutes before the holy power of the two of you reached the level of Six Wing.” Lin Sheng warned.
The Night Lord and Tenko Kasumi nodded in acknowledgement. It was not the time to get emotional or show macho. They knew that Lin Sheng knew how much they got. Since Lin Sheng had said so, it only meant that the Black Tide was anything but usual.
“Now, let’s go home.” Lin Sheng said. “We need more leads and more experiments.”
The three of them followed the route they had come and headed to the Sanctum.
The black mist surrounding Shermanton looked just a little thicker than before, but the level of threat had increased far more than that. Life in Shermanton went on as usual except for the inconvenience from the communication and transportation cut off.
However, the TSSF, presenting the government, had met with the Sanctum. After they returned to their base, they issued a special order to disallow anyone from going near the black mist zone. The Darksiders had started to lay warning magic circles and defense lines around Shermanton.
As time went by, people in Shermanton started to feel something was not right. The black mist had reduced their land. Especially farm land, causing a shortage of food. Ration was implemented. Even then, with one million population in Shermanton, the amount of food required to feed the people was still astronomical high.
Dwindling food reserves began to worry the local government, which had become desperate. After they lost contact with the central government, they carried out a unilateral decision to send out a group of elites to check out the situation in the black mist, disregarding the warning that Lin Sheng had made. They thought they were strong enough. But one Sex Winger and three Four Wingers eventually went missing in the thick black mist and never came back again. The government had suffered a huge loss and made an ass of themselves.
As food supply became more and more critical, Lin Sheng ordered his team of researchers to use the healing, regenerative ability of the holy power to produce a special type of meat. As the holy power could speed up healing and regenerating tissues, using it to carry out a high quality animal cell cultivation experiment could produce a large amount of lab-produced pure meat.
Based on the same principle, Lin Sheng had also built a farm. The regenerative ability of the holy power had also worked on plants such as veggies and fruits with the same result.
A pig, after cutting out one-fifth of its meat, would heal itself in half a day with the help of the holy power. So in just half a day, they could produce a hundred kilograms of fresh meat. Such high production capacity had eased the food shortage problem of the two cities.
But Lin Sheng knew that this was only a temporary measure. Humans need a ton of other micronutrients; meat, veggies and fruits produced using holy power did not possess these things. Only food grown naturally could provide these essential nutrients to humans. So he quickly instructed Baine University to form a research team to tackle this nutrient issue while he was about to restart his exploration in the dreams.
As the real world was getting closer to the dreams, and Lin Sheng was unable to deal with the black mist, the only option for him was to restart his venture in the nightmare. He had found a lead that told him Ancellia, the Light of Hope, might have left a solution behind in the Infinite City.