Chapter 606 Parents
Unexpectedly, Ma Zao, in her desperation, asked me for advice on how to get along with her parents.
“If you’re looking for guidance from me, you’ve come to the wrong person,” I said.
"Why? Don't you get along well with your parents?"
Ma Zao was initially puzzled, then seemed to recall something, "Come to think of it, I don't recall ever hearing you mention your parents, Zhuang Cheng, and you've always lived alone... Could it be..."
As she spoke, she gave me an apologetic look, as if she felt guilty for bringing up the topic. I guessed she had some kind of misunderstanding. In a "doomsday era," death is commonplace, and losing friends and acquaintances is commonplace, so she might easily have those kinds of thoughts. So I quickly clarified the situation.
"Don't overthink it. My parents are still alive and well," I said.
That's good.
Mazao breathed a sigh of relief, then asked in confusion, "If that's the case, why do I always feel that you seem distant from your parents..."
“This is not your misconception; my relationship with my parents is indeed far from ‘intimate.’”
As I spoke, I explained my parents to Ma Zao in detail.
That being said, there's not much to explain. Simply put, my estrangement from my parents wasn't due to some particularly deep-seated resentment, nor did it involve any dramatic or surprising elements; it was merely a natural progression. Trying to find the main reason why I've become the person I am today is, in my opinion, mostly a waste of time.
From a young age, my parents only showed me a perfunctory level of attention, and this continued until I completed my compulsory education and acquired all the necessary abilities and physical conditions for self-care. After that, their attention to me plummeted.
After I entered university, although I hadn't officially entered the workforce, I was already an adult, so I was effectively independent and had to find my own way to solve my financial problems. I basically no longer saw them in my life.
Why are my parents like this? For a time when I was little, I had similar questions, but I eventually let it go. Actually, there aren't many factors worth delving into. Looking at the whole country or the world, parents like this aren't that unusual. Their marriage was just a compromise, and the child was simply born naturally. It wasn't a product of love, nor did they have any expectations for it; it was just a task to complete at a certain stage of life.
My parents were simply more aware of this and shared the same opinion. Some might accuse them of being indifferent, but they undeniably provided me with the material necessities for growing up. I have no complaints about them, only gratitude, and I will not easily let those who spread such malicious rumors get away with it.
However, just as they treat me, I feel roughly the same level of affection and responsibility towards them. When an overwhelming urge to pursue adventure, or even the end of the world, surges within me, my parents rarely come to mind, let alone serve as a powerful motivation for me to turn back. If I were accused of being an ungrateful and unfilial son for this, I would find no excuse or inclination to refute it.
As for whether I ever felt lonely or isolated during my childhood, I have never had that memory. I'm not the kind of fragile child who would try everything to get their attention if they neglected me, or who would feel dejected and hopeless if they didn't get affection from their parents.
When I'm bored, I find ways to amuse myself by browsing comics and novels online, immersing myself in a bizarre and fantastical world.
Compared to the dull and boring reality, that world was much more interesting. Unconsciously, a seed of this desire was planted in my heart, and I wanted to find traces of strange existences in the real world. My attention shifted from reading fictional stories to researching and verifying ancient and modern tales of the supernatural, and personally testing the authenticity of legendary magic and Taoist arts, which made me a maverick and an oddball among those around me.
I know that someone like me doesn't fit the mainstream, but I don't think I was really that special or weird back then. If you broaden the scope to the whole world, there are countless people who are more radical and have more eccentric temperaments than me. For example, those adventurers who love extreme sports and enjoy walking tightrope between skyscrapers, not all of them have special family backgrounds or dramatic life experiences; many of them come from ordinary backgrounds.
Therefore, I have never felt that my desires were anything truly unique.
I'm even confident enough to say that most people in this world can resonate with my feelings—the desire to escape the monotony of reality, the yearning for exciting adventures, and the desire to know if someone like me can shine brightly on a magical and unpredictable stage. Perhaps only one in a thousand ordinary people will seriously take action, and I just happened to be that ordinary person who did.
Originally, I would likely have graduated from unrealistic fantasies, just like the other 999 ordinary people.
Until one day, I awakened superpowers.
Perhaps everything started to change from that point in time.
Thinking about this, I realized I had stopped narrating. Asaha looked at my face with a concerned expression. Seeing this, I composed myself and naturally steered the conversation away from there.
"...However, it's not good to be out of touch for more than four months. I also spent the Spring Festival in the afterlife. Perhaps I should let my parents know I'm safe and sound."
As I said this, I looked around, "And..."
Following my gaze, Mazao also looked around, nodded melancholically, and said, "Yeah, the atmosphere on the streets has been getting more and more tense lately..."
The pedestrians on the street were taciturn and uneasy. Some shops that should have been open for business had closed their doors. The air seemed to be mixed with a smell that could be associated with disaster or war movies, making people want to cover themselves up tightly to prevent the strange wind from getting into their bodies.
According to Lu Chan's report, during the time I spent in the afterlife, many major events also occurred in the real world. These "major events" are essentially news events that, from the perspective of the common world, are akin to an atomic bomb explosion. The frequency of strange phenomena in secular society has finally broken through a huge bottleneck, and their scale and intensity are incomparable to those of the past.
One of the most typical cases is a bizarre event that occurred on a very large scale in a major southern city.
About two weeks ago, that large city suddenly lost all contact. The outside world couldn't probe the situation inside, and no messages were transmitted from within. From the outside perspective, it was as if a gigantic, bowl-shaped frosted glass had covered the entire city, making it impossible for monitoring satellites to clearly see any images of the interior.
Vehicles are also unable to enter the city. Upon approaching a certain distance, spacetime becomes distorted, causing vehicles, drones, and other tools heading towards the city to inexplicably turn back. No one knows what changes have occurred within the city.
A little over a week later, an enormous inferno suddenly erupted around the city. Even military-grade alloy armor vaporized upon contact with the flames. No attempt by either official or civilian forces to probe the city could cross the inferno, and many in the secular world believed that all humanity within the city had been destroyed by the fire.
This massive and bizarre incident is actually related to the missing "firefly" I mentioned yesterday. I did a brief investigation at the scene this morning, but I'll go into more detail later. I'm just mentioning it here as a "bombshell" that happened in the public eye.
To the average person, this was just one of many bizarre and large-scale events; countless other astonishing occurrences followed. This triggered unprecedented panic in secular society, and even those who believed that the government and military could suppress supernatural events became increasingly agitated.
Some have even begun to promote doomsday theories, believing that human civilization will sooner or later be swallowed up by increasingly bizarre events. They haven't heard any real doomsday prophecies from anywhere, but rather have simply concocted these theories out of panic.
Zhu Shi told me that, for safety reasons, she was considering helping Ma Zao move her parents to a safer place, but the specifics would depend on the wishes of the parties involved.
Furthermore, to prevent the couple from still frantically searching for their biological daughter who had "vanished" from the military hospital, Mr. Zhu had used mental magic to make them believe that their daughter was receiving treatment for amnesia at a government institution. Recently, Zhu Shi met with them again in person, sincerely informing them of Ma Zao's true situation and explaining the truth behind the various strange events happening in the world today.
I might need to do the same thing to my parents.
Perhaps due to the impact of the current social situation, Asaho's father's company has encountered some operational problems, and he is currently unemployed. Meanwhile, her mother's bakery has temporarily closed for a break. The couple should both be at home right now. As we walked, we got closer and closer to the bakery, and Asaho's feelings of "feeling apprehensive about returning home" seemed to grow stronger.
"Was I too impulsive? I only said I wanted to meet them because of a fit of anger, but now that I think about it, what if my bad luck spreads to them..." Ma Zao seemed to be having second thoughts.
Although she wouldn't actually give up, she probably anticipated this would happen, which is why she called me over for emotional support.
“Don’t worry, I can try to suppress your jinx power,” I said.
Upon hearing this, Asaha was taken aback: "Suppression... is that even possible?"
“It should be possible, but it can’t take too long,” I said.
Having grasped the truth about the power of the comet, and with the increase in my magical power density, my understanding of the power of the comet, as well as of many other things, has become increasingly profound and clear.
(End of this chapter)
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