From the end of the world

Chapter 606 Parents
Unexpectedly, Ma Zao was so desperate that he actually asked me about how to get along with his parents.

"If you want to ask me for scriptures, then you have come to the wrong person," I said.

"Why? Don't you get along with your parents?"

Ma was confused at first, then seemed to recall something, "Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever heard you, Zhuang Cheng, mention your parents, and you've always lived alone... Could it be..."

As she spoke, she looked apologetic, as if she felt guilty for bringing up this topic. I guess she had some misunderstanding. In the "Apocalypse Era", death is common, and losing friends and acquaintances is commonplace, so it is easy for her to have such thoughts. So I clarified it in time.

"Don't think too much. My parents are still alive," I said.

"That's good."

Ma Zao breathed a sigh of relief, then asked in confusion: "If that's the case, then why do I always feel like you're so distant from your parents..."

"It's not your illusion. The relationship between me and my parents is indeed far from 'close'."

As I spoke, I explained my parents in detail to Ma Zao.

Having said that, there is not much to explain. In short, the reason why I am estranged from my parents is not because of some special bitterness or hatred, and there is no refreshing dramatic element. It is just a natural result. I personally think that it is a waste of time to try to find the main reason why I have become the current personality.

Since I was a child, my parents only paid attention to me out of obligation. And until I completed compulsory education and had all the abilities and physical conditions necessary to take care of myself, my parents' attention to me dropped drastically.

After I entered university, although I had not officially entered the society and found a job, I was already an adult, so I became independent and solved my financial problems by myself. Basically, I no longer saw them in my life.

Why are my parents like this? When I was a child, I had similar questions for a while, but later I let them go. In fact, there are not many factors worth digging into. Looking at the whole country and the world, such parents are not so special. Their marriage is just a makeshift one, and the child was born naturally. It is not the fruit of love, nor did they have any expectations for it. They just regarded it as a task to be completed at a certain stage of life.

My parents are just more aware of this and have the same opinion. Some people may accuse them of being indifferent, but they have provided me with the material conditions necessary for growing up. I have no complaints about them, only gratitude, and I will not easily let go of those who spread such malicious comments.

However, just like their attitude towards me, I only have roughly equal feelings and sense of responsibility towards them. When the overwhelming urge to pursue adventure, or even to pursue the end of the world, surges into my heart, the figures of my parents hardly appear in my mind, and they are even less likely to become a strong motivation for me to turn back. If I am accused of being an unfilial son without gratitude, I can't find an excuse or mood to refute it.

As for whether I felt lonely or isolated during my childhood, I never had any memory of that. I was not the kind of fragile child who would do everything to attract their attention if I was ignored by my parents, and would feel depressed and gloomy if I didn't get family affection.

When I’m bored, I’ll find some fun on my own by browsing comics and novels online, immersing myself in the bizarre world of fantasy.

Compared to the dull and boring reality, the world over there is more interesting. Unconsciously, such a seed was planted in my heart, and I wanted to find traces of strange existence in the real world. My attention turned from reading fictional stories to studying and verifying the strange stories of ancient and modern times, both at home and abroad, and personally testing the authenticity of the legendary magic and Taoism. As a result, people around me regarded me as a maverick weirdo.

I know that people like me don't fit in with the mainstream, but I don't think I was really special or weird at that time. If you expand the scope to the whole world, there are countless people who are more radical and have more eccentric tempers than me. For example, those adventurers who love extreme sports of life and death and like to walk on tightropes between high-rise buildings, those people don't all have special family backgrounds or dramatic life experiences, and there are many who come from ordinary backgrounds.

So, not once did I feel that my desires were anything truly unique.

I even have the confidence to say that most people in this world can resonate with my feelings - wanting to break away from the unchanging reality, wanting to pursue exciting adventures, wanting to know whether people like me can shine brightly on the magical and bizarre stage. Perhaps only one person out of a thousand ordinary people will take serious action, and I just happened to be that ordinary person who took action.

In fact, I would probably graduate from unrealistic fantasies like the other 999 ordinary people.

Until one day, I awakened my super powers.

Perhaps everything started to change from that point in time.

Thinking of this, I realized that I had stopped talking. Ma Zao looked at my face with a concerned expression. Seeing this, I gathered my thoughts a little and changed the topic naturally. "…But it's not good to have no news for more than four months. I also spent the Spring Festival in the afterlife. Maybe I should report my safety to my parents later."

I said this while looking around. "And..."

Following my gaze, Ma Zao also looked around, nodded sadly, and said, "Well, the atmosphere on the street has become more and more tense recently..."

The pedestrians walking on the street were taciturn and uneasy. Some shops that should have been open for business were closed. The air seemed to be mixed with some smells that were easily associated with disaster and war movies, making people want to cover their clothes tightly to prevent the strange wind from getting into their bodies.

According to Lu Chan's report, during the time I was active in the afterlife, many major events also occurred in the real world. The so-called "major events" here mainly refer to big news that are like atomic bomb explosions in the common sense world. The frequency of strange phenomena in the secular world has finally broken through a huge bottleneck, and the scale and intensity are incomparable to the past.

One of the most typical cases is a super-large-scale strange incident that occurred in a large southern city.

About half a month ago, the big city suddenly lost all communication. The outside world could not detect the situation inside, and no news from the inside was transmitted to the outside world. From the outside world's perspective, it was as if there was a super-giant bowl-shaped frosted glass covering the entire city, and the monitoring satellites could not clearly observe any images inside.

Vehicles were also unable to enter the city. When approaching a certain distance, time and space would become chaotic, and vehicles and drones heading toward the city would inexplicably turn back. No one knew what changes had taken place in the city.

More than a week later, a huge sea of ​​fire suddenly broke out around the city. Even the alloy armor materials used in military applications would vaporize the moment they came into contact with the flames. Any attempts by official and civilian forces to test the city would not allow them to cross the sea of ​​fire. Many people in the secular world believed that all humans in the city had been destroyed by the flames.

This super-large-scale strange incident is actually related to the "firefly" that I mentioned yesterday. I went to the scene to do a simple investigation in the morning, but I will explain the details in depth later. Here I just mention it as a "big bomb" that happened in the eyes of ordinary people.

In the eyes of ordinary people, this is just one of the super-large-scale bizarre events, and there are countless more jaw-dropping events. This has caused unprecedented panic in the secular society, and some people who believe that the power of the government and the army can suppress supernatural events have also become unable to calm down.

Some people have even begun to promote doomsday theories, believing that human civilization will sooner or later be swallowed up by increasingly bizarre events. They have not heard of true doomsday prophecies from anywhere, but have simply come up with those misguided arguments out of panic.

Zhu Shi told me that for safety reasons, she was considering helping Ma Zao take her parents to a safer place, but what happens next will depend on the wishes of the parties involved.

In addition, in order to prevent the couple from searching for their biological daughter who had "disappeared" from the military hospital, Mr. Zhu once used spiritual magic to make them mistakenly believe that their daughter was receiving treatment for amnesia in a state institution. Recently, Zhu Shi met with them again in person, sincerely told them the true situation of Ma Zao, and roughly explained the truth of various strange events happening in the world today.

Maybe I need to do the same with my parents.

Perhaps due to the impact of the current social situation, the company where Ma Zao's father works has some problems in operation and is currently unemployed, while the bakery run by his mother is temporarily closed for vacation. The couple should be staying at home at the moment. As we walked, we were getting closer and closer to the bakery, and Ma Zao's "homesickness" seemed to be getting stronger.

"Have I been a little impulsive? I was just out of anger when I said I wanted to meet them, but now think about it, what if my bad luck is passed on to them..." Ma Zao seemed to be hesitant.

Although she didn't really give up, she might have anticipated this happening, so she called me over for moral support.

"Don't worry, I can try to suppress your jinx power," I said.

Hearing this, Ma Zao was shocked: "Suppression... is this possible?"

"It should be possible, but it won't take too long," I said.

Since I have grasped the truth about the power of the broom star, and as the density of mana increases, my insights into the power of the broom star and more things have become deeper and clearer.

(End of this chapter)