Exposing Power 1

To avoid wasting time on sleep, over the past two days, I had maintained my fire elemental form at home, manipulating thousands of "fireflies" to search the city of Saltwater for clues to Maza's whereabouts.

Since I was home alone anyway, my fire elemental form would not attract attention. And those "fireflies" had not caused any particular commotion after dispersing throughout the entire city. While thousands of "fireflies" gathered together would certainly be conspicuous, once scattered, even if spotted by a passerby, the reaction would at most be something like, "Was that just a glowing bug that flew past?"

While busy, I was also trying to find ways to further optimize the "fireflies."

Although the current "fireflies" could store preset instructions, they still could not automatically conduct a blanket search. Simple automated commands like "follow the person ahead" or "report to me if a specific face appears nearby" could be executed, but something as difficult as "finding a specific person within a complex urban environment" remained beyond their capability. I still had to manually operate them no matter what.

I wanted to give the "fireflies" at least the ability to remember the scenes they encountered. With a memory playback function, I could at least go back and review things to search for any clues the "fireflies" might have missed. This direction of development should be feasible; since they could remember my preset commands, there was no reason they couldn't remember other things.

It felt truly complicated. Before meeting Maza, I had never paid so much attention to a camera-like skill such as the "fireflies." Yet now, they were evolving faster than anything else.

When the searching continued to the point where my consciousness felt stiff, I would temporarily relax, letting myself think about other things to restore the elasticity of my mind.

The Foggy Dream...

There were still many unknown aspects to that dream.

Originally, I had many questions I wanted to ask in the foggy dream. For instance, asking Number Four to clarify the giants and the apocalypse, or asking Number Two why she and Number One had such a strange reaction to the name "Xuanming"... But before I could ask, I was forced to log out of the dream.

I had no idea when the next time I would enter the foggy dream might be. If I failed to find Maza within the limited time, considering the mutual repulsion effect between me and anomalous entities, there might not even be a next time.

It was noon, and just as I was about to resume searching for Maza's whereabouts, one of the "fireflies" I had scattered outside suddenly transmitted an alarm signal.

I instantly jolted upright, reflexively thinking the "firefly" had found Maza, before immediately realizing something was amiss.

No, this "firefly" transmitting the signal did not belong to the ones I had dispatched to search for Maza.

This was the "firefly" I had left behind with Chang'an.

Because the fallen demon hunter incident still had lingering mysteries, even though I had parted ways with Chang'an, I hadn't retrieved that "firefly" yet, planning to collect it after some time had passed. I had also worried whether leaving a fragment of my spirit beside Chang'an might bring him bad luck, so I had subtly probed Maza about it before she left.

According to Maza, simply being in close proximity to others wouldn't actually trigger the "jinx constitution"—at least a certain degree of interaction was still required. Because of this, even though Maza always worried whether she might affect me, she had never worried about the neighbors upstairs and downstairs, nor the people who brushed past her on the street.

Just to be safe, recently I hadn't even looked toward Chang'an's direction. On one hand, I didn't want to undermine my resolve to part ways with him; on the other hand, I even feared that my gaze might transmit bad luck over.

Right now, however, I could no longer care about such details. Because the preset instruction I had given to the "firefly" beside Chang'an was: "If Chang'an is ever in potential mortal danger, sound an alarm to me immediately."

Through the "firefly," I saw the scene at Chang'an's location—

It was a spacious indoor space, dimly lit and dusty, appearing to be an empty, large warehouse.

Chang'an was right in the center of the warehouse, seated on a wooden chair. By no stretch of the imagination did he look like he was sitting there willingly. He was tightly bound, secured to the chair, resembling a prisoner undergoing a brutal interrogation.

You could even drop the phrase "resembling a," because at that very moment, Chang'an was being beaten.

Two men in black suits stood around him. One of them was repeatedly striking the defenseless Chang'an, while the other stood behind, using both hands to firmly steady the chair.

He had already been beaten black and blue, emitting painful cries. Yet the attackers turned a blind eye, showing no mercy as they kicked him and the chair crashing to the ground. If the beating continued any longer, it might actually cost him his life.

It looked like he had already been beaten for quite a while. Why had the "firefly" only just sounded an alarm to me now?

Along with this subconscious question, a fierce anger rose within my heart.

Even though I didn't know how far away they were from me now, or in which direction, it didn't matter at all. Wherever my gaze reached, my flames would reach. The moment I generated aggressive intent toward those two men in black suits, they were ignited by my "gaze."

The flames erupted directly upon their bodies, and not only that—the entire warehouse burst into a raging inferno under my excessive aggressive intent, plunging the interior into a boiling sea of fire.

I quickly closed my eyes. Right now, there were two scenes in my mind. One was my home, and the other was the warehouse where Chang'an was. Since I was currently at home, the center of my consciousness was also at home. But just like shifting the weight between left and right feet, I shifted the center of my consciousness to the warehouse.

Then, I opened my eyes once more.

The surroundings were no longer the living room of my home, but a warehouse engulfed in a sea of fire.

Chang'an was lying on the ground, his back to me, struggling frantically like an injured earthworm, terrified of being swallowed by the sea of fire. Bound to the chair as he was, he couldn't even stand, let alone escape the blazing inferno. And needless to say, my flames would never harm my own people, nor would they harm Chang'an.

I walked toward him, and hearing my footsteps amidst the roaring flames, he turned his head in a panicked and disheveled manner.

Then he saw my face.

"A-A... A-Cheng!?" he stared dumbfounded, "You, you, you..."

"It's me." My emotions were complicated.

I had thought we would never see each other again, yet I hadn't expected to meet under circumstances like this.

Moreover, this was the first time I had ever displayed my supernatural abilities in front of Chang'an. I cared deeply about what he thought of me.

In the past, I would fuss over this and that, feeling I shouldn't expose my supernatural powers in front of people. I wasn't so particular anymore. I had already used them in front of Zhushi, and laid my cards on the table with Maza; there was no reason not to tell Chang'an. Besides, I had lied to him last time, distancing myself under the pretext of being cursed by the hole in the 15th-floor room; exposing my supernatural powers now would also make it easier to set his mind at ease.

Chang'an stared blankly at me for several full seconds before uttering the second half of his sentence: "You... turned into a ghost!?"

"..." I was almost choked by his nonsensical reaction.

Come to think of it, I was currently in my fire elemental form, which looked no different from a ghost the color of flame.

"I'm not dead yet." I said, as I withdrew from my fire elemental form.

He wore an expression of worldview-shattering shock. From his perspective, it was understandable: a friend he hadn't seen in days reappeared, only to make his entrance in such a magically extreme way. If it were me, I'd likely find the reality I was witnessing equally hard to digest.

Three or four seconds later, as if snapping back to reality, a look of terror suddenly appeared on his face as he looked past me.

I immediately turned around.

However, in that direction, there was nothing. No enemies, no danger, no anomalous entities. If anything, there were only the two men in black suits, covered in severe burn wounds from my flames, lying unconscious on the ground. Was there anything else besides that?

Chang'an asked with a trembling voice, "A-Cheng, did you kill someone...?"

"Kill someone?"

It took me a second or two to realize what he was afraid of.

Even though they were hateful targets who had been beating him just moments ago, seeing them burned into such a wretched state still seemed to evoke a sense of sympathy in him. This wasn't some kind of "saintly compassion," but rather a sense of empathy at the sight of one's own kind—a natural human reaction.

It was just that he had misunderstood; I hadn't intended to burn those two to death outright. After all, I still wanted to interrogate them about who they were, where they came from, and why they had beaten Chang'an like that. Although, truthfully, I had really wanted to burn them to death just then, and I had been genuinely angry in my heart. They had dared to treat my friend like that, and I had wanted nothing more than to refine them into charcoal on the spot... Wait a minute. Could I have inadvertently mixed a hint of that emotion into the flames?

Besides, they had been lying on the ground making not a sound this whole time—were they actually dead?

I immediately stepped forward to check, testing one of the fallen men in black suits with a kick. He offered no response like a corpse, and no blood or bodily fluids were leaking from him; presumably, even his wounds had been seared shut by the flames.

Through my sensing mediated by the residual embers and heat, I could also tell that they had lost their breath, and their hearts were no longer beating.

They were really dead?

Why did something feel off? The "tactile sensation" of the burning just now also felt somewhat familiar...

"They... are they dead?" Chang'an asked with a fearful and bewildered voice.

"Nothing we can do about it. Let's just burn them to ashes and toss them into the bushes outside," I quickly made a decision. "More importantly, Chang'an, who on earth are they? Why did they come after you?"

As I spoke, I cleared away the surrounding sea of fire.

Through the heat that the fire had previously spread to the outside of the warehouse, I had also perceived the surrounding terrain. This place seemed to be in a remote suburb, and the warehouse itself appeared abandoned; the commotion that just occurred shouldn't immediately attract attention.

I myself didn't mind, but I couldn't let Chang'an get implicated in a murder case.

Chang'an stared at me blankly: "A-Cheng, what are you talking about..."