Dark Light Chaser.

Chapter 580 Hunter and Prey

After leaving the airport, Ai Liang began to check local transportation information.

Hope Town is not a tourist town, and has never developed a tourism industry.

The entire town has a population of less than a thousand people; it is a truly rural village.

Unsurprisingly, the city bus service from the nearest urban area to Hope Town only runs twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening, which is far less than the at least three trips a day at Asia Union.

However, almost every villager from the town who works outside the town owns a car, so the bus stop is just a manifestation of the local government's infrastructure construction.

Or perhaps the bus stop only exists because of strong demands from local residents.

The villagers knew they wouldn't need it most of the time, but since other places had it, they wanted it too, so they submitted an application.

Judging from the starting point alone, it was quite simple...

However, even if no one rides the buses, Asia Union's buses will run empty every day without reducing the number of trips.

The Sicilian government opted to cut unnecessary spending from its budget.

This is a good thing for Ai Liang.

He came to Sicily not to have dinner at the headquarters of the Haixin Society. In order to minimize unnecessary casualties, the means of transportation to Hope Town should be as few as possible.

Because it's very convenient to destroy it that way.

Ai Liang went to a nearby supermarket and bought several bags of steel wool.

Using the phone's navigation, they found the designated shuttle bus, then refracted light to bypass the surveillance cameras and stuffed a steel wool ball into the exhaust pipe.

To ensure everything went perfectly, he also tampered with the spark plugs.

Based on local efficiency, it would take at least one to two days from finding the problem with the car to solving it, which would be enough time for Ai Liang to turn the town upside down.

After a preliminary test using telekinesis, Ai Liang has learned the approximate size of the town.

By combining the town's area with the base in Gis's memory, the approximate size of the Haixinhui base was obtained.

Ai Liang immediately used telekinesis to compress space, locking down that area and cutting off the other side's escape route.

Considering the presence of local residents, he did not immediately expose the underground base of Haixin Society to the sun, but instead chose to conduct an on-site inspection first.

The aura of curse I sensed in Hope Town was definitely not an illusion.

Hai Xin Hui isn't stupid. After all, Geese is a fusion warrior, and one of the best among them.

This person, however, lost contact with Qianhua City the moment he entered the Asian Union.

If nothing unexpected happens, then something definitely did happen.

The hypothesis that the culprit behind Giss's disappearance would follow the clues to the Haixin Society may be a later conclusion compared to other possibilities, but it can never be ruled out.

The anomaly in Hope Town is very likely a tactic employed by the Haixin Society to counter the enemy.

If there's any hope for the villagers in the town, Ai Liang wouldn't mind lending a hand.

But if they have already been corrupted and infected by the strange phenomenon, Ai Liang will not force herself to take responsibility; at most, she will let them die quickly.

In the end, they were just a group of strangers.

From the moment Haixin Society built its base below Hope Town, their future was already sealed.

Ai Liang concealed his form and took off from the spot, arriving at the highway near Hope Town. He reappeared and walked along the main road towards Hope Town.

Ai Liang knew that Hai Xin was definitely watching everything happening on the ground, but that didn't matter.

His purpose in this trip was to negotiate with the Haixin Society, and he wanted them to show up on their own initiative.

Unfortunately, according to Ai Liang's telekinetic perception, the gate to the Hai Xin Society's base showed no sign of opening.

Even the atmosphere of the town remained unchanged.

The deathly silence made Ai Liang squint her eyes.

Do they not care when strangers come to town?
Or is it that only those who make some unusual moves will be subject to close monitoring?

Ai Liang took a step forward with a sense of caution.

In an instant, a cloud of gray fog rose into the sky, and the scenery within a ten-kilometer radius of the town changed dramatically.

The sky was covered by a gray fog, and not a ray of sunlight could be seen.

The surrounding flowers, plants, and trees gradually turned from lush green to a grayish-white, as if they had been stripped of their own colors.

Even without light, the surrounding scenery remained clearly visible, and the view was not obstructed in any way.

But unlike the bright sunshine, the light here is a dark, cool tone.

That chilling aura that seeps into your bones is enough to make you shiver just by looking at it.

In addition, there were grayish-black remnants floating in mid-air, which were unclear whether they were ashes or paper scraps left after burning.

It gives you the feeling of being in Silent Hill.

Ai Liang's expression did not change at all.

From the moment the plane landed, he had been using telekinesis to envelop himself, so he didn't have to worry about the gray fog encroaching on him at all.

Ai Liang turned around and looked behind her.

As expected, there was only endless darkness behind me.

He was standing on the edge of a cliff, and if he took even the slightest step, he would fall into an abyss.

"So the whole town was shrouded in this thing all along... No wonder I could vaguely sense the existence of the curse but couldn't find its exact location."

At this point, Ai Liang was finally able to clearly perceive the source of the eerie aura.

The eerie aura he had sensed earlier was the hidden inner world before him.

What we previously perceived through telekinesis and what we saw through satellites were probably just smokescreens created by the Haixin Society.

The real town has long since transformed into this ghostly realm before us.

Ai Liang raised her hand and used her telekinesis to capture a piece of ash that was drifting like willow catkins.

Just as Ai Liang was about to analyze it, these thin ashes actually began to burn, emitting a golden flame that was out of place with the surrounding environment, before disappearing completely.

Ai Liang was not discouraged. He changed his approach and used telekinesis to create wind pressure to blow the ashes to the ground.

This time, the ashes did not burn, but instead floated up again in mid-air after the man-made gale ended.

After several simple tests, Ai Liang roughly figured out the specific function of these ashes.

"It doesn't burn upon contact with a physical entity, but rather it disappears upon contact with an entity that doesn't belong here..."

Ai Liang looked at the ashes scattered all over the sky: "It seems to be some kind of warning and monitoring method for the movement of outsiders."

This is definitely a special space created by the Hai Xin Society using strange powers.

It has only been a few days since Gis went missing, and the other side has already set up such a large-scale operation, which clearly indicates that they anticipated an attack on headquarters.

Therefore, Haixin would use the headquarters' location as bait to set a trap, waiting for the attackers to walk right into it.

It seems that Hai Xin will blame the Hermit for Giss's disappearance.

If the Countermeasures Bureau had captured Gis alive, they wouldn't have uttered a word, and would even have been worried that the Countermeasures Bureau would come to interrogate them. They wouldn't have dared to set up this kind of operation.

"Are they treating me, a newly minted apostle, like prey?"

Ai Liang looked up at the sky and said, "Since that's the case, I'll play along with you guys."

(End of this chapter)