A Psychiatrist's Bizarre Game Journey / Dream of the Mist

The most conspicuous thing about this place is that group of idiots standing on top of the containers. Zhou Ke'er and her friends could easily slip away while they were in the dark.

"Take this! This is the ultimate killing move developed by the Empire to precisely eliminate heroes and eradicate their existence! It's a technique that only members of the royal bloodline can use! To die by this move is an honor for you!"

The guard, seemingly confident of victory, was completely unaware of the approaching danger and laughed arrogantly.

"Noisy!"

The girl gritted her teeth and shouted. Judging from her appearance, she seemed to be enduring some great pain. Her originally pretty face suddenly became ferocious. From the golden light, black mist overflowed and condensed into the shape of half a Western dragon, which seemed to be roaring and venting its pain.

"Bang! Bang!"

Just then, two gunshots rang out, shattering the silence. This sudden attack, which caught everyone off guard, unexpectedly struck the girl directly in the shoulder, knocking her off the container and causing her to fall to the ground.

"Who fired the shot! Who gave you permission to fire?! We already said it would alert the enemy!"

Immediately, a commotion arose from the unseen area opposite. It was vaguely discernible that one of the officers had been so startled by the supernatural scene that he involuntarily pulled the trigger.

------------

174. The Great Rescue of the Heroes (Part 10)

"Brilliant! This is truly divine intervention; the effect is even better than I anticipated. Was it an accidental trigger pull?"

Zhou Ke'er was taken aback at first, then slightly surprised. She hadn't expected that a single bullet could directly break the guy's formation, which was even more advantageous than Zhou Ke'er had anticipated.

"Police?! Is that even possible? How did you manage to get them to help? Didn't we just knock out a policeman?"

Cold-cooked rabbit was surprised and couldn't help but ask.

"That's a long story, let's slip away first!"

With a wave of her hand, Zhou Ke'er immediately signaled that it was time to get out of there, and then used her Ghost Claw to grab the girl who had fallen from the front of the container, and carried her along the escape route that had been prepared in advance.

The police happened to be on the opposite side, and the girl who fell from this side was in their blind spot, so Zhou Ke'er naturally wouldn't let this opportunity pass.

"You didn't expect this, did you? This is my escape route!"

As Cold-Eating Rabbit fled, it would occasionally glance back at the girl being held by Zhou Ke'er with her Netherworld Claws and dragged around like a kite. It couldn't help but twitch its lips a few times, and looked at Zhou Ke'er with a subtle expression: "You really have a twisted sense of humor, treating an enemy like a kite to play with. No wonder you would do such a thing! She's a girl, after all. You have no mercy for her."

"Hey! How can you slander me out of thin air? I never even thought about any kind of 108 kinds of aerial training play!"

"I was worried she might still have the ability to attack, and carrying her around would be too dangerous, so I kept her at a distance! That way, even if she recovers and tries to attack, I can cancel the Netherworld Hand and easily shake her off!"

Upon hearing this, Zhou Ke'er immediately put on a wronged expression and explained.

"If you hadn't given me the exact numbers, I would have actually believed you! So, why did we bring her along? And what just happened? Now you can explain, right?"

Cold-cooked rabbit rolled its eyes, made a comment, and then asked again.

"It's a long story, so I'll keep it short. In short, in a word, Taiga Aisaka is indeed a hero."

Zhou Ke'er glanced at Dahe, who was being tossed around on Long Aotian's shoulder and was about to vomit, and said.

Taiga Aisaka was so dizzy from the jolting that she saw stars and didn't immediately understand what Zhou Ke'er had said. Instead, Cold-Eating Rabbit asked in surprise, "Why is it him again? Didn't we just say it wasn't him?"

"It's nothing more than a man-made cognitive bias that leads us astray. It's simply a trick that exploits information asymmetry; it's not something to be taken seriously..."

Zhou Ke'er explained casually, then took out her tablet computer, glanced at it, nodded, and ran to the end of the road, to the door of a small house separated by several shipping containers. She squatted down and groped around for a while.

Not long after, with a soft sound, Zhou Ke'er successfully opened a hidden door, revealing an underground passage: "We'll have to run this way from now on. This kind of spatial Netherworld Hand is quite difficult to operate, so it seems we'll have to rely on you guys to take her with us."

As Zhou Ke'er spoke, she pointed to the girl behind the group who was being held by the skeleton hand.

Her eyes were closed, her face was deathly pale, blood was gushing from her wounds, and black mist swirled around her, giving her an eerie appearance. She must have been unconscious.

As soon as Zhou Ke'er finished speaking, Coffee, who had been following behind, grabbed the girl without saying a word and continued to float behind the group.

The sounds of fighting, gunfire, and screams came from not far away. It seemed that the guards and the police were fighting. The sounds were getting closer and closer, indicating that the guards were fighting back while following the trail of Zhou Ke'er and the others.

As for why they were so far apart... it's probably because they were entangled with the police and had to fight and retreat at the same time. It seems that firearms are quite useful.

"Wow?! How did you know there was an underground passage here? Was there a marker somewhere? I didn't see any along the way!"

"Cold Rabbit asked in surprise, and even Long Aotian showed the same curiosity. He had just seen Zhou Ke'er lead everyone to this dead end and thought the plan had gone wrong. He didn't expect there to be an underground passage."

"Ah Rabbit, do you know that the biggest difference between humans and animals is that humans use tools?"

Zhou Ke'er pointed to the tablet computer tucked into the inside pocket of her coat—it had taken her a lot of effort to find a coat with such large pockets when she was at Dahe's house. "Now that we know their exact location, how can we just rush over without any preparation?"

Furthermore, thanks to my arrangements, this area is now almost entirely surrounded by police. How can we possibly get out without going through here?

Even if we go this way, there's a possibility that police officers are watching us at the exit of the underpass. Therefore, it would be safer for us to take another route through the drain.

"Drainage outlet?! That's too... Wait, from what you're saying, the police aren't here to help us? We have to hide from the police? Didn't you call them to help us? What's going on?"

Cold-cooked Rabbit followed Zhou Ke'er into the underground passage, and only then did it realize what was happening, and couldn't help but ask quickly.

This guy's reaction is way too slow! If it were a flamingo, no, even if it were just a finger-like sand, it would be easy for him to follow Zhou Ke'er's train of thought, right?

Zhou Ke'er, who was used to dealing with smart people, was a little uncomfortable with the silly cold-cooked rabbit. She could only sigh helplessly. It seemed that she had to explain it to her from the beginning in order for her to understand.

Long Aotian, who was at the very back, closed the hidden door of the underground passage and put Dahe down so that he could walk on his own—because the underground passage was not wide, and it was really difficult to carry someone on his back.

Zhou Ke'er took the lead and walked ahead, then quickly explained, "Let me start from the beginning. At first, I almost fell for their trap, but after learning that their location hadn't changed at all, I had to start considering whether there was any information I had missed."

It has to be said, they were far too confident in their scheme, and they themselves were far too lazy to even move a few steps while wearing the markings. So, another possibility came to mind...

Taiga Aisaka is indeed a hero, but she is not so easy to kill. It requires some kind of method that takes time to prepare, as has just been proven.

Of course, it's also possible that one must be killed by some specific means to be summoned as a hero. There's no further evidence to support this possibility, and since the outcome is pretty much the same anyway, I didn't think about it any further.

To deal with this situation, well, even if I didn't realize Taiga was a hero, I would still prepare a backup plan.

As you've seen, my so-called backup plan involved the police. As for how I managed to do it...

Since the policeman just happened to show up, I couldn't very well refuse him. So I took a few photos of him and his police ID to create the illusion that he had been kidnapped by us... Well, I guess it's not really an illusion.

Then, just in case they didn't take it seriously, I lied to them and said that we had planted several tons of bombs at the chemical plant, plus there was a chemical residue leak, and that the nearby factory area would be targeted within the blast radius and blown up along with the chemical plant...

They also forged the identity of a vicious cult member, since the girl's attire did resemble that of a priestess, which they could use to their advantage, as their clothing made them easily identifiable.

In addition, I sent them photos of the girl unleashing her ultimate attack, along with a bunch of messages about how we were about to cleanse the world of those who did not believe in our Lord and heretics, to help them identify their target.

"Well... that's about it. It's just a rough plan, and this is the best we can do for now."

Zhou Ke'er explained all the details in one breath, and then took several breaths.

------------

175. The Great Rescue of the Heroes (Part 11)

"I'm using my tablet..."

Coming to her senses, Taiga Aisaka couldn't help but mutter to herself.

"Don't worry, I changed the IP address several times and added several layers of encryption before I did it. As long as they don't check carefully, they shouldn't be able to find it."

Besides, even if they investigate thoroughly, by the time they finish, our project here will have long been over.

Zhou Ke'er immediately comforted Aisaka Taiga after hearing her mutterings.

"But this means that even if we don't expose ourselves now, we'll be exposed sooner or later. Besides, our previous movements here will be easily traced, right? For example, the car we stole—the police could easily use that to locate us, and there are also many surveillance cameras along the way..."

Long Aotian pondered for a moment and shook his head, but then changed his expression and looked at Zhou Ke'er, saying, "However... that's understandable. After all, not everyone is as perfect as me, able to come up with a flawless plan in such a short time! You've already done quite well!"

"So why did we come here? If we didn't have to come in person, there wouldn't be any problem with being discovered, right? As for the issue of computer addresses being tracked, there are other ways to solve that, aren't there?"

Cold-cooked rabbit nodded in agreement.

"There are other methods? Who do you think I am? A top hacker? Are you out of your mind? Being able to change the IP address so the police can't find us right away is already pretty good, okay?"

Look at this tablet, it's an ancient relic from so many years ago. Who still uses this kind of thing after smartwatches came out? I should be grateful that I still use it!

Also, coming here was a must. Unverified reasoning is just conjecture, and I've said this many times. What if I'm wrong, and they actually have a real hero? What if the police I tricked mistakenly kill the hero?

Zhou Ke'er rolled her eyes at Leng Chi Tu as if she were an idiot and said, "Do you think I'm Chu Xuan?"

Cold-cooked Rabbit was speechless after Zhou Ke'er's sharp retorts. Although still somewhat unconvinced, he knew he couldn't even have come up with such a plan...

This further solidified her determination to cling to powerful figures—originally, she wanted to try a different style and see if she could become self-reliant, but now the result is obvious: clinging to powerful figures and taking advantage of others is more suitable for her, as long as she doesn't run into troublemakers like Zhou Ke'er.

"Besides, even if they find out about us... you have to understand that we're in the shadows, while those guards are in the open. And judging from the current situation, they definitely won't be let off the hook, so they're in more trouble than us."

If one or two more guards are killed, and an even stronger entity is summoned, then the police will definitely focus most of their attention on them and won't have time to deal with us.

Seeing that no one else was speaking, Zhou Ke'er paused for a moment, then added a few words of comfort.

Just then, a voice suddenly rang out from behind.

"Let me go! You filthy monsters!"

Coffee saw that the girl she was carrying had woken up and was thrashing about in mid-air, her head hitting the ceiling of the underground passage with loud thuds. Fearing she might kill herself, Coffee quickly lowered the height.

The underground passage is only about one person high; how could it withstand such a girl's tossing and turning?

As the girl awoke, the black mist surrounding her seemed to come alive, becoming active again and gradually solidifying into the shape of a ferocious Western dragon's head, which appeared to be roaring in pain.

Zhou Ke'er frowned slightly upon seeing this. This was the worst-case scenario she had anticipated. She had actually woken up so quickly, and... she could still cast her ultimate move even after it was interrupted.

Wasn't she supposed to rely on some kind of formation to unleash her ultimate move?!

In such a narrow underground passage, there's nowhere to hide. If that girl unleashes a powerful area-of-effect attack, everyone here will die instantly.

Don't even mention using a fire barrier; Zhou Ke'er didn't think such a randomly obtained low-level spell could block an elite monster's ultimate attack. Besides, the others didn't seem to have any defensive measures either. This was really bad...

The Netherworld Hand technique has just been dispelled and is currently on cooldown, so there's no way to turn her around...

However, it seems she had nothing to protect her when she unleashed her ultimate attack, as evidenced by the fact that she was shot down...

Wait, there's this too! Zhou Ke'er, who had been nervously thinking since hearing the voice, suddenly had a bright idea: That's right, he can also use spiritual power! Spiritual power with polluting properties might be able to forcibly interrupt the opponent's spellcasting!

Without a moment's hesitation, Zhou Ke'er turned and rushed forward, summoning the meager amount of spiritual power she had just generated. She slapped the girl on the forehead and shouted, "Ha! By the power of the law, withdraw!"

Of course, he was just shouting nonsense to sound imposing.

Seeing the girl's strange behavior, Lengchitu reacted quickly and darted away, showing a strong survival instinct. At least Long Aotian knew to first carry the helpless Dahe on his shoulder before running away.

Aside from Coffee, who was floating blankly in place, seemingly lost in thought, no one noticed Zhou Ke'er's actions.

Although the slap was delivered with great force, Zhou Ke'er realized that this tactic was completely ineffective after she made the move.

Well, it's true that the Contamination trait is effective against Mystic Energy. But the problem is... the amount is too small! This is quite different from the situation in the previous mod.

Back then, the polluting properties of spiritual energy seemed so powerful because it was like continuously pouring sewage into a small bottle of pure water—the effect was predictable. But now... with Zhou Ke'er's spiritual energy, it's like dripping a few drops of sewage into a bucket. There is an impact, but it's not significant enough to reverse the situation.

"shit!"

After realizing this, Zhou Ke'er's pupils suddenly contracted. She knew that she definitely wouldn't be able to escape in time, so she gritted her teeth and reached out to try to grab the girl's head and turn her face away. Who knows, the direction of the spell might depend on the direction she was facing?