Witch, Fireball and Steam Evil God

Chapter 369 They're all dead
Since the destruction of the surface, the shelter's restaurant has only served synthetic food. Zhuang Xiao disliked the taste of these foods, especially the synthetic meat, which tasted like marinated dried plastic. This discomfort became increasingly intense after tasting normal food in the dream.

Recently, enjoying a sumptuous lunch in her dreams every day has become her salvation.

But alcohol is a good thing, and no matter how the brewers in the shelter made it, it tastes no different from real alcohol.

Merlin booked a small private room, and a few bottles of wine would be a considerable expense, even for those of them who held some official position in the shelter.

Duli, also known as Mr. Mediterranean, seemed to be an honest man. From the moment he sat down, he kept his head down, his hands fidgeting and unsure of what to do.

"Come, Mr. Du Li, let me toast you."

Once all the hot dishes were served, Merlin began his formulaic toasting.

He was a man with a strong sense of purpose. He wasn't trying to build friendships or strengthen relationships; he just wanted to get Mr. Mediterranean drunk and extract some useful information from him. Zhuang Xiao had no doubt that if a bludgeon could achieve the same effect, Du Li would likely have been taken down by Merlin on his way here.

"Salute to the descendants of heroes!"

This form of address caused a noticeable change in Du Li's expression, and his unease intensified. However, under the influence of the atmosphere at the dinner table, he reluctantly raised his glass and downed the strong liquor in one gulp.

"Astronaut, what an amazing identity. We can't even go to the Earth's surface now, but your grandfather broke through the sky and reached a much more distant place."

"You know I can't tell you any more..."

Du Li said, "This is a confidentiality agreement."

"of course."

Merlin smiled.

Sometimes he doesn't need a direct and clear answer. Just now, Du Li's answer confirmed his inner guess. In fact, he didn't know the exact identity of Du Li's grandfather. Everything was based on the limited information he could find and his speculation after reading "The City of Truth".

In fact, the shelter left no information about that starship, at least not openly.

Du Li's honest and unassuming demeanor made Zhuang Xiao feel a little guilty. She felt that the prototype of that unscrupulous Mediterranean boss might not be Du Li himself, but his grandfather, or other members of the family.

But the guilt was quickly overshadowed by the thirst for knowledge.

What followed was just normal small talk among colleagues in the department. They chewed on the unpalatable synthetic food, but their most important task was to persuade Du Li to drink.

This Mediterranean gentleman was not good at saying no, and he had never been valued as much as he had been these past few days in his life over the past few decades. Before Chen Qi came to his door, he lived in the civilian area of ​​the NA district of the shelter, living the life of an ordinary person, and should have long forgotten those so-called "family secrets".

His alcohol tolerance was as honest as his personality; after a few drinks, he became a little dizzy.

People in the working class do not admire drinking. In their view, it is an expensive and unpleasant drink, and getting drunk always leads to trouble, doing more harm than good.

However, after trying it himself today, Duli discovered one of the benefits of drinking alcohol.

As the dizzy feeling washed over him, the fear that had enveloped him since the afternoon lessened somewhat. He no longer felt like he was in an icebox; the alcohol flowing through his veins warmed him up.

"I hope you can understand Minister Chen Qi. He has recently encountered difficulties in his work and had no choice but to ask you for help."

The light in the cubicle made Du Li feel a little dizzy, and the sounds around him seemed to come and go. "Facing your fear head-on must be really unpleasant, right?"

Confront your fears?

He was stunned.

Hmm, that's strange.

Did he mention this to Merlin?
This involves a confidentiality agreement, and Chen Qi made many promises to him when he invited him, such as that they would install a cognitive impairment chip on him, which records his grandfather's way of thinking, which would allow him to forget his fears and, more importantly, be able to think like a true hero.

Their grandfather was the pride of their family, but because of that so-called confidentiality agreement, they were not allowed to mention his name to anyone.

However, once again, the shelter failed to keep its promise.

The implanted chip malfunctioned, and when he saw Ethan on the other side of the dream, all the shadows from his childhood surged into his mind in an instant. He couldn't even see Ethan's face clearly; he only felt the writhing darkness seeping into his office.

This was absolutely a wrong decision.

Shelters should never be associated with that kind of thing!
This was Du Li's thought, but he dared not express it to anyone. This seemed to be a reflection of his life. Just like when he cut out of the dream, he had made up his mind to express his willingness to withdraw from the plan to Chen Qi, but because he failed to get a word in with Chen Qi several times, he left alone in a dejected manner.

Maybe tomorrow.

He could only silently comfort himself, as he always did.

"If you want to withdraw, perhaps I can convey your request to Minister Chen Qi."

The sound in his ear interrupted Du Li's thoughts, pulling him back to reality once again.

"No, no need. It's better for me to tell him myself."

"Actually, I'm very curious, what exactly happened on that ship?"

That ship,
Oh, it's that starship...

It carries a carefully selected crew and an army loyal to the People's Council.

Doolittle knew he shouldn't answer any of Merlin's questions. He sensed that the two men who had invited him had ill intentions, but perhaps due to the alcohol, those past memories kept surfacing.

An accident occurred during the voyage.

That coordinate is a trap.

The black hole blocked their path; its size was beyond human comprehension, and perhaps that galaxy was the black hole itself.

The starship was pulled in by gravity.

What followed was several days of darkness, during which any light inside the starship was swallowed up by the omnipresent darkness.

Unable to determine their location, the captain gathered a group of crew members before lights out, and they took refuge in the control room.

Outside the control room, it was eerily quiet. The starship was filled with highly trained soldiers equipped with the finest weapons, but only on the first day did they hear a few gunshots.

Two members of the team that went out to search for supplies went missing, and the cabin reeked of blood. Perhaps it was a good thing that they couldn't see anything at all.

On the fourth day, the two missing men returned to the control room, but the rest of the first search team went berserk. They attacked the returning men recklessly, but the other crew members swarmed in and subdued them. The captain then isolated the berserk men.

His grandfather was one of those who were quarantined.

Everyone thought they'd gone mad. The psychiatrist in the control room believed that developing a mental illness under such circumstances wasn't surprising. Their immediate priority was to find a way to steer the starship out of the black hole's range. The crew in the control room continued to actively seek any possibility of escape. But...
They're doomed.

He felt that the omnipresent darkness was actually some kind of life form that they could not understand, and that something had boarded their ship from the very first day they were trapped in the darkness.

The reason why my grandfather was so certain, and why he and the first patrol launched a desperate attack on the two returning men, was because of a secret they had never told anyone. At the end of his life, my grandfather made a final phone call home, telling them the secret that had been weighing on his heart.

It was the seventh day since the starship entered the black hole, and his tone sounded more like a confession.

My grandfather said that everyone else in the control room was dead, and he was the last survivor.

However, they heard other people's voices on the phone. The atmosphere on the other end was actually quite lively. The crew members seemed to be discussing what to eat for dinner, and everything sounded normal.

The crew called out their grandfather's name, inviting him to dinner, a little wine before bed, and to discuss their travel plans once they reached the Empire, for they were almost there.

The starship successfully crossed the black hole, and the beautiful planet was now within reach.

In this relaxed and pleasant atmosphere, the grandfather revealed his secret.

Those two crew members were already dead.

On the day they were searching for supplies, they had a disagreement with other team members. The argument between them became increasingly heated, and then an inexplicable anger surged into their hearts. Under the control of their anger, they all lost control. The grandfather only remembered that he and the others pinned the two men to the ground and stabbed them in the body with a dagger again and again until they stopped moving.

At the same time, everyone lost their minds.

They couldn't tell the captain, so they hid the bodies in the storage room and fabricated the lie that the two men had disappeared.

Now, the two people on the other end of the phone are calling out the grandfather's name.

They don't seem to care about it, or perhaps they have no memory of that period at all.

And at the end of this phone call, there was no warm farewell.

Du Li remembered that his grandfather's voice suddenly became very strange, the footsteps were getting closer and closer to his grandfather, and he heard the noise of radio interference.

“He knows everything.”

These were the last words their grandfather left them. It happened when Du Li was very young, so young that he had no concept of this strange phone call. He only vaguely remembered that his mother, who answered the phone, froze on the spot in shock and couldn't say a word until the call ended.

He recalled that the committee had conducted a long investigation into the matter, and every now and then many strangers would appear at their home, search through all of his grandfather's belongings, and then pack them into cardboard boxes and take them away.

His grandfather never called back.

There were no call records, and no details to support the claim that they had ever received a call. The committee concluded that the mother had suffered a mental breakdown and sent her to a mental hospital for a month of treatment. After that, the mother accepted the committee's assessment and never mentioned the matter again.

This is indeed a logical judgment.

Human signals cannot travel between black holes, so how could my grandfather have made a phone call to them in the last moments of his life?

unless……

The grandfather made a deal with an unknown entity in the darkness.

As for the last message their grandfather left for them on the phone, no one could fathom its deeper meaning.

Duli still remembers these things because seven days after his mother's funeral, he received an anonymous letter containing a chip.

The chip recreated the scene from that day: a peaceful afternoon for them, when he was sitting on the sofa watching "Tom and Jerry" when his mother's cell phone, which was on the TV stand, rang.

"I really should go back!"

Du Liqiang roused himself and stood up from the table. His mind was a complete mess, and past memories flashed through his mind like a revolving lantern. Under the influence of alcohol, he didn't know if he had violated the confidentiality agreement, but now he really had to go home.

He saw that Zhuang Xiao and Mei Lin seemed to be deep in thought, and this time, neither of them tried to stop him.

Back home, Du Li took off his shoes and socks and went straight to sleep.

Since his parents passed away, he has been living alone. He wants to forget everything, but the memories of the past are like the monsters in ghost stories that hide under the bed. Every time the night is quiet, they will show their fangs.

He made a decision.

Tomorrow he will express to Chen Qi his determination to withdraw from the experiment.

However, this sleep was not restful.

Du Li didn't know if it was because he had drunk too much alcohol, but he was sweating a lot and woke up several times in the middle of the night. He was in a daze, and with each time he woke up, his room seemed to have changed.

He always felt that someone had broken into his apartment.

This time, as the bed shook, he finally lost his temper.

There is a .45 caliber pistol in the bedside table drawer. It was a gift from his grandfather, and keeping it in the drawer gives him a sense of security.

This was perhaps the unluckiest day of his life.

The desk lamp was broken, and in his dazed state, he could only fumble for the pistol in the drawer, release the safety, and hold it tremblingly in his hand. In reality, he had never fired a gun before, nor had he ever hurt anyone.

After finishing all this, Du Li took a deep breath and got out of bed.

The phone screen showed that dawn was approaching; this was the last darkness before sunrise.

He bent down slowly and clumsily crawled to the ground, something he had done countless times before—checking the gaps under the bed frame or ripping open the half-closed door of the wardrobe, only to find it was all a false alarm.

There are no ghosts in this world; they are just things people make up to scare themselves.

However, the next moment, Du Li felt his heart stop beating.

He saw a pair of eyes in the dark gap under the bed. The eyes were bloodshot and staring at him. They were shrouded in darkness, and he couldn't see their features or shape. The only thing Du Li was sure of was that they were lying on his bed in a way that defied gravity.

"boom--!"

4:21 am.

A gunshot rang out and echoed for a long time in the corridor of an apartment building in the southern district.

(End of this chapter)