The White Mist Disappeared

“Triple Echo... Splash... Piscine Light and Dragonsong...” “We're clearing it! We've reached the final enrage mechanic!” Inside the Deep Sea Flood Dragon Palace, the invincible Extreme Severing Carp Overlord let out a final roar. Seven fissures destined to rupture appeared on the floor, set to burst open one after another. If no one plugged them, rushing torrents from outside would flood the hall, drowning all eight sorcerers locked in the fierce battle! Therefore, players had to sacrifice their lives to plug the fissures. Yet, even if all seven holes were sealed, if they failed to slay the Extreme Severing Carp before it finished chanting its enrage miracle, it would still upend the dragon palace, wiping the entire party all the same! [Carp Sacrifice]—this was the enrage DPS check present in every Extreme, Unreal, and Ultimate raid in Epic, the ultimate test of teamwork! A single failure meant total ruin! Yaxiu hadn't expected that a random pick-up group he joined on a whim could make it all the way to the enrage phase on the verge of a clear, with almost zero mistakes from start to finish. The execution was so silky-smooth it brought tears to his eyes! It felt just like struggling to pay marital dues at home, only to sneak out for an affair and suddenly find oneself full of vim and vigor! As a healing sorcerer with the lowest damage output, Yaxiu was naturally the first sacrifice. Once his character was anchored inside the fissure by a miracle to withstand tens of thousands of tons of water pressure, his raid duties were completely over. The rest of the damage check fell to his teammates. With only 12% of the Extreme Severing Carp's health remaining, as long as Yaxiu didn't prematurely quit the raid—which would disengage his character from the mechanic and trigger an instant enrage wipe—the clear was basically in the bag. “Finally clearing it... With this clear on my record, I'll qualify for Unreal raids...” Just as Yaxiu was daydreaming about which Unreal raid to tackle next, he felt a violent thud in his chest. *Thump!* His skull hammered the heavy pulse through his ear canals straight into his brain. His heartbeat detonated at peak intensity, blasting his consciousness into fragments in an instant, only to slowly coalesce after a long while into a piercing ringing in his ears. The gaming pod detected Yaxiu's abnormal vitals and ejected him immediately. Light and fresh air, however, did nothing to soothe his spasming nerves. Yaxiu felt as though his very spine had been ripped out, taking his life, vitality, and even willpower along with it, leaving behind only an empty, agonizing husk. *Thump!* *Thump!* His heart faithfully pumped vitality into his vessels, attempting to reboot his poisoned central nervous system. His right brain gleefully analyzed the frenzied notes strummed by this inept performer; his left brain mobilized all its gray matter like riot police to suppress the insurgent mob of neural impulses; his frontal and temporal lobes cheered from the sidelines like enthusiastic pom-pom girls—all in an effort to cram his consciousness back into the shell— Useless! It was a neural shock that transcended willpower. A twenty-something wage slave was far too naive to resist raw physiological impulses; only when he reached his forties or fifties and was impotent enough to ignore erotica would there be the faintest hope of rebellion— *Phew.* With a long, slow exhale of foul air, a metaphysical self-awareness forcefully asserted dominance over every lower-level organ. The neurons that had just been running wild now trembled in terror; loose nuts and bolts tightened once more, and his body stabilized into a reboot. Yaxiu sat up straight and glanced at the gaming pod's display. “Oh dear. Early raid exit triggered the enrage. The party will definitely drag my name through the mud on the forums now.” He calmly described what was about to happen, as if it were someone else's affair. This was the first time Yaxiu had entered the “Flash of Inspiration” state in reality. In the Void Realm, whenever he faced a mortal crisis, he would enter this “Flash of Inspiration” state. For instance, during the vehicular chase against Commander Demilo, he had stayed in that state nearly the entire time, every maneuver as precise as a scalpel, which was how he had scraped together a victory in the end. In this state, Yaxiu virtually detached the ego of “I” from his physical body, observing everything with chilly detachment from a third-person perspective. And because “I” was uncoupled from “self,” “I” could remain utterly indifferent to the “self's” pain, anger, sorrow, joy, fear, and all other physiological and emotional reactions. All that mattered was maneuvering the chess piece of “self” to maximize its utility, like playing a game of chess. Come to think of it, this state matched his operator codename quite well. From now on, he would call it “Watcher Form.” Honestly, Watcher Form was fantastic, and Yaxiu wished he could maintain it indefinitely. If nothing else, being able to trigger Watcher Form at will during raids would allow him to execute mechanics flawlessly without any crutches—let alone Unreal raids, even Ultimate raids would be a walk in the park. Unfortunately, he could only enter Watcher Form passively during moments of extreme danger, and its duration was entirely beyond his control. Once out of danger, the taut “thread of the Watcher” in Yaxiu's mind would slacken, and his overclocked brain would promptly throttle down to power-saving mode— Like right now. “Ngh!” Yaxiu grunted. The moment he slipped out of Watcher Form, an intense wave of emptiness pressed down on him like lead, suffocating him. He felt as if he were drowning in the deep sea, every cell and organ crushed under tens of thousands of tons of water pressure, so excruciating he wished he could just black out. Dragging himself out of the gaming pod with difficulty, Yaxiu could barely keep his balance. The entire world looked like a wet oil painting, every streak of color leaving a heavy blur. The disruption in his visual cortex sent the pressure in his stomach spiking past its threshold, and with a wretched heave, Yaxiu vomited up all of tonight's dinner. Yet even as the stomach acid burned his throat, it jolted his willpower awake. Yaxiu drew several deep breaths, finally managing to reboot his operating system and reconnect all his peripherals. He barely regained basic mobility, though the “virus” still dragged down his processing speed so badly that he suspected his efficiency could only outpace the bottom one percent of his peers in all of Gospel. There weren't many people on the gaming floor; most were tucked away inside their gaming pods. Outside the window, the night sky was clear, and Fanmula was as peaceful and quiet as ever. Yaxiu glanced around but found no suspicious characters who might have cursed him. He dragged himself to the front desk to ask for help, only to find the young receptionist slumped paralyzed in her chair. Her eyes were vacant and her face expressionless. The lips that had once greeted Yaxiu warmly were tinged a purplish blue. Had it not been for her fluttering eyelashes and the steady rise and fall of her chest, Yaxiu would have thought she was about to become one of Harvey's clients. “Miss Petillo?” Yaxiu called out tentatively. She seemed to try to focus her gaze on Yaxiu, but merely controlling her eyeballs appeared to exhaust what little energy she had left. She couldn't utter a word, and her eyes held not a spark of light, just like... a broken doll. This wasn't the first time Yaxiu had seen people in this state. On their very first day in Fanmula, he had seen an entire train car of such broken people. Yet the Sennheiser District sat at the very heart of Fanmula, not on the city outskirts where the white mist thinned—wait, the white mist? Yaxiu whipped his head toward the window and rubbed his eyes, confirming that he was indeed looking at a crystal-clear night sky. He ran over and pushed open the window. A crisp, howling night breeze rushed in, smothering his face in wild kisses. The moon hung high, and stars glittered. From his vantage point on the second tier of the city in the Sennheiser District, Yaxiu had an unobstructed view of the countless twinkling lights across Fanmula. The air was so clean it was almost sweet, and the visibility was so high it made one itch to pull out an infrared scope and aim at the distant buildings. “The white mist,” he muttered, “has vanished?” ..... ... “I never thought I'd come to Fanmula on a mission one day, and I certainly never thought Fanmula's white mist would ever disappear.” Several hovercars sped across chaotic intersections. Even with autopilot systems assisting, under the terrifying impact of the entire city's population falling paralyzed, Fanmula's traffic had inevitably ground to a halt. Roadside walkways were strewn with collapsed citizens, as though someone had pressed a mystical button that plunged the entire metropolis into deep slumber. “Still, isn't this a bit over the top?” Inside one of the hovercars, a Red Hat youth chewing gum remarked with a sigh, “To paralyze all of Fanmula just to catch a few people... If Fanmula were a pretty girl, what we're doing right now is the equivalent of forcibly ripping off her clothes, pulling down her panties, taking the elastic band out of them, turning it into a slingshot, and snapping her with it.” “Shut up, Wright,” Cleios said, her eyes red as she sniffled. “We got what we wanted, so stop acting cute. Let's finish the job quickly, get out, and give Fanmula back to them.” The two speakers were none other than two of the top ten Red Hat captains nationwide: “Weeping Red Hat” Cleios and “Deadshot Red Hat” Wright. Wright was the Red Hat captain of Modora. Since the two first-tier cities neighboring Azula were Modora and Fanmula, Wright had managed to catch this operation to capture Yaxiu. Cleios had always wanted to claim all the credit for Yaxiu herself, repeatedly insisting over the internal comms that she would catch him soon, so the other Red Hat captains further away chose not to get involved. Only Wright, who was closest, insisted on coming over to take a share of the glory, and Cleios had been powerless to stop him. Besides the two Red Hat squads, two agencies were accompanying them tonight. The Family Harmony Agency went without saying; their ability to commandeer smart home appliances was useful anywhere. As for the other agency— “No one has come out to intercept us yet. It seems Sennheiser really was caught completely off guard.” Wright called up a light screen. “Final payment transferred. Pleasure doing business.” “Pleasure doing business,” a voice replied from the screen. “The Time Gap Agency is dedicated to providing clients with the most comprehensive concealment services. We look forward to your next commission. Since our task is complete, our personnel will take their leave.” The Time Gap Agency—ranked first in Modora and tenth nationwide—was the guarantee behind the success of tonight's operation. For in essence, tonight's raid was a conspiratorial plot that caught Sennheiser flat-footed. And what conspiracies feared most was being uncovered in advance. Yet in Gospel Country, uncovering a plot against oneself ahead of time was all too easy. If nothing else, had the Sennheiser clan head simply asked the Book of Gospel on a regular daily schedule, “Will any major event threatening the family's safety occur today?”, tonight's raid plan would have fallen apart completely. What the Time Gap Agency offered was the service of concealing conspiracies and deceiving the Gospel. Although the Book of Gospel recorded all reality that had already transpired with absolute fidelity, schemes and conspiracies still lingering in minds and yet to be executed had room for manipulation. For example, if their raid was planned for the 19th, the Time Gap Agency could help make the Book of Gospel believe the planned date was the 22nd, thereby preventing the Sennheiser clan head from obtaining the correct answer from the Book of Gospel. Doing so naturally carried an enormous cost. If the Book of Gospel erred, it would refund ten or even a hundred times the points in compensation, depending on the inquirer's losses. But the Gospel never suffered a loss in vain; every time it made an error, it learned from the experience, making the next attempt to deceive it exponentially harder. The Time Gap Agency, which had comfortably occupied a top-five spot decades ago, had slipped to tenth in recent years—a testament to how rapidly the Gospel evolved. Yet before the Time Gap Agency was completely obsolete, every service they provided meant another group of people was destined to suffer an unforeseen strike. “Confirming mission objectives,” Cleios said into her communicator. “Yaxiu Heath. Regardless of who captures him, the merit will be split seventy-thirty, seventy percent to me.” “Next are Annan Doran and Banjie Doran. Although they don't have criminal records yet, they are very close to Yaxiu and might appear as criminals in the upcoming Weaving Ceremony. Conveniently, tomorrow is the day the second list will be published. We will detain them for forty-eight hours under the pretext of assisting an investigation, and the moment there's any sign of trouble, we can arrest them outright.” “That wasn't the deal!” a commissioner yelled from an adjacent hovercar. “Yaxiu goes to the Red Hats, Annan goes to the agencies!” “When the second list comes out, if Nabistin hasn't issued a bounty for Annan and Banjie, I'll release them. You can settle your agency squabbles on your own then.” The commissioner grumbled something under his breath, but ultimately lacked the courage to defy the Red Hats. Once Cleios switched off the communicator, “Deadshot Red Hat” Wright shot her a glance. “You want to protect the Purple Moth?” “My target is Yaxiu Heath,” Cleios replied. “Not Annan.” “But she can create chaotic madmen who can disrupt the Weaving Ceremony. What if—” “Wouldn't that be even better?” Cleios sniffled and gave a grin. “Capturing one Yaxiu would've been enough to make me the number one Red Hat, but now you bastard had to cut in for a slice... If there's another Yaxiu, I'll be the number one Red Hat for the next fifty years!” “The world's about to end in the future, and you still care about some ranking?” Cleios blinked, taken aback. “But... I'm a Red Hat... Of course I care about my ranking...” Wright fell silent for a moment before waving his hand. “Forget what I just said... Still, keeping Annan safe won't be easy.” “Annan is still a law-abiding citizen right now. Who would dare harm her?” “There's someone in the car behind us who would,” Wright said flatly. “Don't forget who dispersed the white mist that has shrouded Fanmula for hundreds of years. The Secret Guard from Nabistin is a judicial catastrophe beyond even the Book of Gospel's restraint.” Through the rearview mirror, Cleios could see the armored guard seated in the car behind them. It wore a full suit of black knight armor; not an inch of skin was exposed, and even its eyes were hidden behind the visor. Seated in the back row, it looked like an ancient tombstone. Ever since gun sorcerers became the mainstream combat faction, armor had naturally been kicked into the dustbin of history. Virtually no sorcerer would wear such heavy plate anymore, unless bound by obstinate, ancient tradition. And the Secret Guard was an ancient tradition that had endured for centuries. They were the Isu royal family's most faithful shields and sharpest blades. From the day of their emergence, they walked Gospel Country in the guise of dark guardians. No one knew who they were, or even whether they were human—given that they did not eat, drink, excrete, or seek amusement, many sorcerers believed the Secret Guards were actually suits of animated armor. Yet it was precisely these walking suits of armor that represented the supreme authority of the Isu royal family. And not merely as symbolic representatives; they could directly mobilize royal resources to achieve any objective—such as dispersing the heavy mist of Fanmula. Neither the agencies nor the Red Hats had the power to disperse the mist. A few days ago, Wright and Cleios had still been waiting outside Fanmula like hunters waiting by a stump, expecting Yaxiu and the others to leave on their own. That was when this Secret Guard approached them, saying it would disperse the mist and assist them in capturing Yaxiu Heath. Dispersing an entire city's white mist in an instant without harming the city was no ordinary miracle; it could only be a divine miracle petitioned from the Gospel. And indeed, once the Red Hats and the agencies were prepared, the Secret Guard summoned its Book of Gospel, and after some inputs, the white mist of Fanmula vanished. Cleios couldn't fathom how many Gospel points such a divine miracle had cost. Perhaps emptying a century's worth of savings would allow her to afford it, but she would never squander points so recklessly. Points that a Sanctuary Sorcerer might not even earn in a lifetime had been casually spent on a municipal environmental project. In all of Gospel, only the fabulously wealthy royal family could indulge in such extravagance. Cleios had assumed the Secret Guard was there to capture Yaxiu and Annan on behalf of the Isu royal family, but the Secret Guard had shaken its head, stating that it would not interfere with the capture. It had a different mission this time. “To be honest, the Secret Guard did us a huge favor,” Cleios said. “Dispersing the white mist not only paralyzed all of Fanmula's citizens, but at this hour, the Sennheiser clan head should still be in the dreamscape. Without the white mist as a medium, she can't return from the dreamscape at all. For at least an hour, all we have to deal with is a Sennheiser clan without a commander.” “In return for the Secret Guard's help, we should make as much noise as possible to draw all of Fanmula's attention to ourselves. That way...” “The Secret Guard can locate its target much more easily.”