Why is his holy light red?

Chapter 89 The More Information, the More Chaotic Things Become

A burst of tiny starlight suddenly exploded on the stone pavement outside the Church of Divine Grace, and Mercury, feeling a strong sense of dizziness, stepped out from the distorted light and shadow.

The intense feeling of being torn apart by space made him involuntarily close his eyes tightly.

Richard not only readily granted him full access to internal intelligence, but even used his superpowers to deliver Mercury to the church entrance.

The nickname "Thousand Star Hero" is indeed accurate; his superpowers look like thousands of stars shattering when he uses them. It's cool, but it really hurts your eyes.

"With this superpower, it's a waste not to use it for same-city delivery," Mercury muttered, rubbing his sore eyes.

Just now in the office, the branch president gave a heartfelt and insightful speech, but to Mercury, it sounded like a strong "old-fashioned" attitude.

He talks a lot about the big picture, but deep down he's all about how to maintain balance and compromise in the face of capital.

This group of power holders, who have reaped all the benefits of the times, blindly allowed the immortality technology to monopolize the city's medical and food lifelines in the early years. Now that the money monster has been raised and is too big to be controlled, they shamelessly ask young people to understand the difficulties they face in maintaining checks and balances.

Mercury was pragmatic from beginning to end. He believed that if the sky fell, the taller people would hold it up. He only cared about what he could see. He didn't want to care about anything else, nor did he have the ability to.

This lousy country is rotten to the core.

The deindustrialization policy implemented by those old guys drove up the prices of light industrial goods to exorbitant levels, forcing people at the bottom to spend all their meager wages on expensive consumables. Unable to save money or withstand risks, ordinary people would fall to the brink of financial ruin if they suffered a serious illness or a minor accident.

Living in this country that resembled a garbage dump, Mercury had several times wished he could swim across the Pacific Ocean and apply for citizenship in that great Eastern power.

Unfortunately, these federal politicians are so disgusting in their espionage and infiltration activities that the current citizenship background checks are outrageously strict. Someone like Mercury, whose family background is impeccably black, has a father who is a media professional who frequently deals with politicians, and a mother from a typical redneck family—his background is practically gleamingly dark.

If he really wants to get through this, he'll probably have to drop two bombs on the White House as a pledge of loyalty first.

Shaking off the jumbled thoughts in his head, Mercury walked up the steps and forcefully pushed open the heavy oak doors of the church.

The door creaked open with a dull thud. As soon as Mercury entered the chapel, he paused involuntarily.

There were far more people inside than he had expected. Not only was John, the person in question, already there, but two people who should absolutely not be there were also sitting on the bench in front—Black Egg and his brother-in-law, Loki.

Mercury walked over with a look of surprise: "What are you two doing here?"

Black Egg quickly rubbed his hands together and came closer, a fawning smile plastered on his face: "Boss, I heard from Leon that John is in trouble, so I thought I'd come and see if I could help in any way."

Mercury swallowed back the words, "Your speed at downloading short videos isn't even as fast as a smartphone." Although this kid wasn't much of a fighter, he dared to wade into this mess, and his intentions were undeniable. Mercury nodded in acknowledgment.

"It's good that you mean it." Mercury frowned, gesturing with his chin towards Loki beside him. "But why did you bring him along? Wasn't it supposed to be kept hidden for a while?"

Thanks to Loki's previous informant role, Mercury was able to successfully take down the Ogre Gang and the two clowns from the Black Moon Circus. Although the Ogre Gang members never knew Loki was the informant, it's always better to be safe than sorry; he should have hidden away until the matter was completely forgotten.

Black Egg patted his chest and boasted, "Don't worry, boss! The core members of the Ogre Gang are all gone, and the remaining henchmen have long been wiped out by gangs from other districts. Some have been recruited, and some have died violent deaths. That gang is completely dead."

Mercury didn't know if it was true or not, but since Loki's life was in his hands, he left the matter to Loki to decide.

Loki stepped forward, his expression somewhat hesitant but firm: "I heard from Leon that you are investigating cannibalistic succubi."

I remember something strange happened when I was with the cannibal gang. I didn't think much of it then, but now it makes sense, and it's definitely related to this case. I thought I had to tell you about it in person.

"Making a phone call is just as good," Mercury said.

"No." Loki shook his head repeatedly, took a deep breath, and said, "If you hadn't given me this opportunity, I wouldn't even have had the chance to start anew. I had to come in person to repay this kindness."

"Okay, we'll discuss it in detail later."

Mercury didn't stand on ceremony any longer and walked straight past the two men to Flora, who was sitting on the bench.

The little girl was wrapped in a large, old coat, and some color had returned to her face. When she saw Mercury approaching, she tried to force a slightly stiff smile.

"After being frightened by that face, did you feel anything strange in your body?" Mercury squatted down in front of her, his voice very soft.

Flora's fingers twisted the hem of her dress tightly, her voice trembling: "It's strange—as soon as I close my eyes, that face floats out in the darkness. It's blurry, but I just can't forget it."

Mercury's heart sank; he had indeed been marked.

According to the diary, the nightmare demon uses this "visual residue" to continuously ferment fear in the subconscious. Once the victim completely breaks down and starts having nightmares, if they have these nightmares for seven consecutive days, the monster will completely take over the control of their dreams.

Everything that happens in the dream will then affect the body in reality.

But this death countdown mechanism must never be told to Flora; any additional intimidation will only hasten the spread of the curse.

"It's alright." Mercury patted her shoulder, his tone full of confidence. "I've figured out what this monster is all about, and I'll take care of it soon. What you need to do now is find something to do, keep your mind active, and stop thinking about that damn thing."

Flora nodded vigorously, as if grasping at a straw.

"Go and wipe the floor and pray in front of the idol; God will watch over His lambs," Sister Mary said, stepping forward at the opportune moment.

Mercury always scoffed at God, but faith proved to be a remedy in the face of supernatural fears.

The nun put her arm around Flora's thin shoulder and led her to the inner chapel at the back, tacitly leaving the chapel to this group of people who were ready to solve their problems.

Mercury stood up and, without a second's hesitation, walked straight to John, who was leaning against a pillar, idly scrolling through his phone: "Have you looked closely at the sketches in the diary?"

"I've seen it." John didn't even look up, his finger still swiping across the screen. "It's quite lifelike. But I'm standing right here, and nothing's happened to me."

Mercury grabbed his phone, stared into his eyes, and said with unprecedented seriousness, "John, don't gamble with your life. Although you've been hiding it, I can roughly guess your abilities. You can turn back time, right? Otherwise, a normal person's lifespan wouldn't be enough for you to get all those ridiculous certificates."

He paused, then shared his speculation with John: "Is it possible that your future self went back thirty years to investigate this case, only to be caught by the nightmare and die in the past?"

John finally stopped. He looked up at Mercury's alarmed expression, then suddenly smiled and shook his head.

"I will indeed die, but I will absolutely not die in the past." John sighed, and decided to lay it all out. "Fine, since we've come this far, telling you won't hurt. My ability isn't about going back in time. I can create a separate clone of myself at a specified point in time."

Seeing Mercury's slightly surprised expression, John continued to explain, "That clone carried my memories and existed independently at that point in time. Until its timeline synchronizes with my current one, its memories will be completely poured into my mind, and the clone itself will automatically disintegrate and disappear."

"So even if that clone was cut into pieces by some monster in the past, it has no effect on me now."

Because before our timelines overlapped, we were two completely separate individuals.

Mercury's eyelids twitched. This ability mechanism was even more powerful than he had anticipated; it was practically a risk-free cheat code for gaining experience points. Since the one who died was a shadow destined to disappear, the safety of John's main body was now secured.

Just as Mercury was about to breathe a sigh of relief, John's smile vanished, and he said something that left Mercury even more bewildered: "However, there's a strange thing. My ability has a limitation: the time my clones can enter can never be earlier than my birth date."

John stared into Mercury's eyes and said, enunciating each word clearly, "Thirty years ago, when the cannibalistic nightmare struck, my mother wasn't even pregnant with me yet. How did that serial killer manage to capture my clone?"

Mercury was confused by John. If that were the case, wouldn't it mean that the John of the past wasn't an alter ego, but rather that his original self had been inexplicably transported to thirty years ago?

The clues became a tangled mess; the more you knew, the less you understood.

Mercury could only forcibly cut off his thoughts and turn his gaze to Loki beside him: "You just said that something happened to the Ogre Gang before?"

Loki paused for a moment, seemingly sorting through the details in his mind: "About four months ago, I had just joined the gang. That night, Hannibal booked out the entire Chainsaw Bar. I saw him pull out a bunch of syringes filled with some unknown liquid and hand them out to his henchmen. I hadn't even made it into the inner circle yet, I wasn't even allowed to watch. They hadn't even started injecting them before I was kicked out."

He paused, his tone turning somewhat chilling: "The strange thing is, a few days later I discovered that almost all the people who received the IVs that night had disappeared, and only two of them returned to the streets alive and well."

"Every day, addicts in the Root District kill themselves with drugs, so I didn't initially think about superpowered drugs at all. But when Leon mentioned nightmares," I remembered another overlooked detail.

"Later, I went to the Chainsaw Bar again. The bartender told me that on the night they handed out the syringes, Hannibal's gang suddenly went crazy and almost destroyed the bar. What's even stranger is that as soon as things calmed down inside, several bulletproof cars drove up outside. A group of professional thugs dressed in black suits, who didn't look like street thugs at all, got out and took someone away from the cannibal gang."

Chainsaw Bar.

Mercury remembered the name. It was one of the few neutral areas in the Root District, where the boss was a shrewd and influential figure who had connections in both the legitimate and underworld circles.

Upon hearing the location, a brilliant idea flashed in Mercury's mind.

Mercury immediately opened the top-secret file sent by Richard, his finger swiping rapidly across the virtual screen to bring up two files spanning thirty years.

He extracted the coordinate maps of the two crime scenes and overlaid them.

The red dots overlapped glaringly.

The first kill of the "original Nightmare from thirty years ago" and the first prey of the "new generation Nightmare from half a month ago" were both near the Chainsaw Bar, with an error margin of no more than fifty meters.

"So, the live test subject that the group of thugs in suits took from the ruins is very likely the nightmare we're talking about now."

Mercury pressed the lock screen button and sneered, "The thug in the suit who took this person away is very likely sent by Immortal Technology. Because this person has awakened abilities beyond reptilian transformations, he is of great research value to Immortal Technology."

But Mercury thought for a moment and then said, "But that still doesn't explain why John appeared thirty years ago, nor why the mask and notebook in the box look brand new."

Al, who had been standing silently in the shadows, waited until Mercury had nothing more to say before stepping out and asking in a low voice, "The clues aren't clear enough yet. What are you planning to do next?"

Mercury showed no sign of discouragement. He turned his phone back on and flipped the screen. On it was a list of coordinates that Richard had classified as top secret.

"These are all illegal laboratories in the Tree Root District, and they may have been secretly taken over by Immortal Technology. If that new Nightmare is a monster they created using a potion, then it's very likely that it's being held in these places. I will investigate all these coordinates within seven days, before the Nightmare completely controls Flora's dreams."

"You don't have a search warrant. So many places, almost covering the entire Root District, how are you going to search?" Al frowned. "I don't need a search warrant," Mercury said firmly. "The Root District has its own rules."

Seeing that El was about to say something more, Mercury smiled and said, "Of course, it would be even better if the Angel of Light were willing to help. He could use his X-ray vision to take a look, and we wouldn't have to go through all that trouble. So, my beloved father, could you ask the Angel of Light for help?"

"Don't disappoint me, Father. You are someone even the president of the Hero Association of Yaliu Tree City has to respect."

El's expression froze, and he could only say dryly, "Okay, send me the map, and I'll ask the Holy Light Angel for help."